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EPR Archived News |
LAVAMIND AIMS PLAYACTIVE AT THE $600 MILLION CASUAL GAME MARKETReleased on = November 18, 2005, 9:38 pm Press Release Author = LavaMind Industry = Entertainment Press Release Summary = Gazillionaire is the award winning game of business strategy. Press Release Body =
LavaMind, a San Francisco-based game company that has been producing award-winning
games for over a decade, has just launched PlayActive (www.playactive.com), a game Over the past five years, the market for casual games has grown from almost nothing to a multimillion dollar business dominated by puzzle games, card games, and word games. By 2008, analysts forecast the casual game market will reach $2 billion, with $1 billion coming from downloads and rest coming from advertising and subscriptions. The growing appeal of casual games isn't a mystery. "Most people can’t afford to sit down a play a game for two hours," says Naomi Kokubo, President of LavaMind,"but they still want to play. That's where casual games come in. They're the snack food of the game business. It's like having a power bar instead of a whole meal." The sweet spot for casual games is women in their 30s and 40s, but it's not just
women playing these games -- it's boys, girls, men, and even the elderly. "The
beauty of these games," says Kokubo, "is that they're truly mass market. Believe it
or not, even hardcore gamers enjoy them as a break between other games, and the
elderly are using them to maintain their cognitive skills. It's addictive exercise PlayActive's goal is to design games so that the player is satisfied with the experience within five minutes, but the game itself goes on and on. "Usually, someone tries our games for a micro-break, expecting to play less than 10 minutes," says Kokubo, "but they wind up sticking around for an hour or more. It's all psychological." Unlike the video games, casual games don't cost millions to develop. "Because of the lower development costs, we can afford to experiment," says Kokubo. "Our goal is to launch 10 games over the next year, with each game targeted at a slightly different demographic within the casual market." As the casual game market grows, analysts expect it to rival the PC and console game
markets. PlayActive plans to grow with the market, increasing the production value
of its games and expanding its distribution from the PC and Mac to interactive TV
platforms, wireless devices, portable media players, and even Internet connected LAVAMIND: LavaMind (www.lavamind.com) is a San Francisco-based game publisher that owns and
operates the PlayActive game portal (www.playactive.com). LavaMind has published
numerous titles, including the games Serpengo, Wordigo, Gazillionaire, Zapitalism CONTACT: LavaMind Web Site = http://www.lavamind.com/download.html Contact Details = Address: ., San Francisco Phone Number:
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