Archive for September, 2009

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True Games expanding with new dev studio in Austin, Texas

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Proving yet again the strength in microtransaction-supported titles, SoCal games publisher True Games has recently announced that they’re launching their own in-house games development studio. Based in Austin, Texas the new studio will be headed up by industry veteran Frank Lucero. This new studio will be True Games first foray into developing their own free-to-play, microtransactions supported IP, with one title already in the works.

truegameslogoThis new development is just another jewel in the crown for True Games. Over the summer of 2008, True Games founder Jeff Lujan brought aboard Peter Cesario, formerly of K2 Network, Namco, Vivendi Universal and 20th Century Fox fame. A little over a month later, True Games signed an exclusive deal with GOA to publish, distribute, and operate their upcoming title, Mythos, currently being developed by Petroglyph Studios, in the European market. And earlier this year the company launched their first official offering, Warrior Epic, developed by Possibility Space.

The new development studio in Austin is just further step forward for True Games. The Lone Star State arm of True Games will primarily be focused on art, programming, and design. In fact, True Games is almost a tad over-eager to get the new ball rolling, as the development studio is not yet fully staffed, and the company is aggressively recruiting on their corporate website.

“The decision to base this studio in Austin had a lot to do with the exceptional talent pool that exists in the area,” said Jeff Lujan, Founder and Chairman of True Games Interactive. “We are confident that we are building a talented and passionate team that will deliver the best possible games for our community.”

Again, the new studio will be headed up by long time industry figure Frank Lucero. Lucero brings over 15 years of expertise to the True Games table and has design and programming experience with both Console and PC titles in the MMO space. Prior to coming on board with True Games, Lucero spent seven years at Wolfpack Studios/Stay Bullet Games working on various MMO and Wii Games, most notably the (now closed) Shadowbane series. With True Games, Lucero will be in charge of overall operations and management of the new studio.

With their first title Warrior Epic doing well, and the much anticipated Petroglyph title Mythos just around the corner (a 2010 release date is scheduled), it looks like True Games is truly ready to take their game to the next level. Publishing and operating titles is truly nothing to sneeze at, but developing your own Intellectual Property from the ground up is the next logical progression for businesses of True Games’ caliber. Lets see what Lucero and team deep in the heart of Texas can come up with!

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Nexon’s Min Kim on tap to deliver Keynote at GDC China

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

One of the best known, and most experienced individuals in the free-to-play video games industry, Nexon’s Min Kim is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the 2009 Game Developers Conference China. The GDC China, presented by Think Services will take place at the Shanghai International Convention Center, this October 11th-13th.

min-kimKim’s address, titled “A Fantastic Westward Journey,” is slated to be filled with colorful anecdotes and words of advice to Chinese developers in regards to Nexon’s experiences in bringing popular Korean titles, as well as the free-to-play business model that has long been associated with the genre. Kim will also focus on how microtransactions were born in Asia, and for a long time, were thriving only in this market. Not so much today. He’ll talk about how this successful business model initially received a cold shoulder in the North American and European markets, but has today become a revolutionary catalyst in these markets, citing specific examples from Nexon’s breakthrough hit, the MapleStory franchise. Keep in mind that Nexon’s MapleStory is a very strong candidate in the free-to-play benchmark category, with over 92 million users worldwide, 6 million of which reside in North America.

“Min Kim will be an exceptional and inspirational keynote speaker for China,” said Meggan Scavio, GDC China event director. “Nexon’s success is proof that there is a market beyond Asia for these types of non-hardcore MMOs. Moreover, the game industry has been taken by storm with Nexon’s microtransaction business model. The Chinese audience stands to gain a tremendous account of firsthand knowledge, anecdotes and advice from Kim to take back to their companies and studios.”

And while most of us primarily know Nexon and Kim from the MapleStory franchise, Nexon was hard at work years before MapleStory’s success. The company is responsible for developing the world first internet quiz game, QPlay, and in 2004 they set a world record with 700,000 concurrent users playing Crazy Arcade BnB. In addition to MapleStory, Nexon is also the firm that developed KartRider, a title that approximately 30 percent of all South Koreans have played at one time or another.

Moving forward, Nexon is in the midst of a portal and marketing revamp that will presented under BlockParty.com. This new portal will feature a total of eight titles on US shores by the end of 2010 which will include Dungeon Fighter Online and Dragon Nest.

Assuming that Min will discuss Nexon’s entire timeline, there’s bound to be many a valuable lesson, and hopefully some highlights and reasoning behind the new revamp of Nexon’s portal offerings. Stay tuned, as the GDC China is just around the corner, and if Austin was any indication of the plethora of gaming industry news covered at the GDC conferences, the China conference might just yield a number of free-to-play/microtransactions supported games highlights.

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EA’s foray into free-to-play, Battlefield Heroes now counts over 2 million registered players

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Late last week EA announced that their free-to-play, or Play4Free as EA likes to dub the genre, shooter Battlefield Heroes has officially topped the 2 million registered users milestone.

bf_heroes_fall_mapOfficially launched only three months ago, the third person shooter initially attracted over 1 million players in July, suggesting that overall game growth is slowing. A member of the successful Battlefield series, Battlefield Heroes comes out of Sweden based DICE studios. BFH is a sibling of another Battlefield title currently offered in a digital distribution only format, a more traditional rendering of the genre’s World War II action themes, Battlefield 1943.

Looking to not only hold on to these 2 million registered users, as well as draw in a completely new crowd, EA/DICE will be releasing a host of new content, as well as offering users the possibility to name the new content pack. Titled ‘Heroes of the Fall’ and set against the yellow, orange, and red shades of autumn, the new map will be focused on infantry fighting in close quarters of a village with intersecting canals. This new geography will funnel players to clashes at bridges and crossways, while also allowing stealthy players to use backstreets to launch flanking and rear attack maneuvers.

A new map isn’t the only thing being introduced to the popular free-to-play, as this content update will introduce an entirely new class to the game: the Gunner, as well as improvements and upgrades to the friends system. “Along with this new map, ‘Heroes of the Fall’ includes a slew of changes including upgrades of the Gunner class and improvements to the friends system,” said Ben Cousins, General Manager, Battlefield Heroes team. “We’ve also added a brand new ranking system for the game – players can earn cool new titles for their heroes as they play – showing everyone on the battlefield how dedicated they are.”

And sticking true to their already community heavy involvement and interaction, the folks at EA/DICE are offering users the chance to name the new map. While the development team will be selecting the name, this promotion seems like a great way to get the already engaged community even more involved.

There’s been no official word on updates to the in-game item shop, but given that Battlefield Heroes is primarily advertising and microtransaction purchases supported, I’d not be surprised to see updates to this aspect of the game as well. The new Gunner class will most certainly offer players a new way to play a game that they may or may not have already played a number of times, thereby giving the user a whole new class to customize.

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$1 Billion of user-to-user transactions taking place in Second Life

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Building on their information released at last week’s GDC Austin, Linden Lab has recently revealed some truly staggering numbers with regards to their secondary market transactions platform. The company stated that Second Life residents have transacted the real world equivalency of over $1 billion in player-to-player transactions, while spending over 1 billion hours inhabiting the virtual space.

Second_Life_LogoAgain, adding to their statements at the GDC focused on retaining current users, the company revealed that Second Life’s economy has grown 94 percent year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009. “Now at nearly USD50 million each month in user-to-user transactions, the Second Life economy is on an annual run rate of more than a half billion US dollars, making Second Life the largest virtual economy in the industry,” the company stated. With an economy like that, it’s no wonder Linden Labs is focusing on keeping current players happy, and staying right where they are. Perhaps a larger challenge than originally thought, as Linden Lab received an F from the better business bureau back in February of this year.

Linden Lab was also quick to point out that the total in-world hours, approximately 1 billion, has the real world equivalent of 115,000 years. But what exactly are these users doing? “Everything from meeting and socializing with friends; to attending live concerts; to creating, selling, and shopping for virtual goods; to learning a foreign language; to attending business meetings; and much more. User hours grew 33% year-over-year to an all-time high of 126 million in Q2 2009,” stated Linden representatives. On average, Second Life residents spend approximately 100 minutes in-world per visit, which the company is proud to point out is, “significantly greater than those seen with popular social networking Web sites and reveals the uniquely high level of engagement Residents have with Second Life.”

Specifically speaking to the in-world virtual items trading and sales, Linden Lab reports that residents are creating over a quarter of a million new good each day. These items may range from clothing to vehicles to buildings to automatic language translators, and just about everything else imaginable under the sun. At the time of the statement, Linden Lab reported that more than 270 terabytes of content is available within Second Life, with a growth rate of around 100 percent each and every year. Speaking from a primary marketplace point of view, since Linden Lab is the creator and vendor of virtual land, the company is not only the worlds largest platform for user-generated virtual goods, but also an industry leader in the sales of virtual goods. Perhaps the virtual world equivalent to Donald Trump?

Other statistics from Linden Lab include:

  • More than 18 billion minutes of voice chat have been used in Second Life since voice was introduced in 2007. Voice minutes grew 44% year-over-year from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009, and more than 6 billion minutes of voice have been delivered in 2009 alone, making Linden Lab a major VoIP provider.
  • Approximately 1,250 text-based messages are sent every second in Second Life, and more than 600 million words are typed on an average day. Roughly 60% of active Second Life Residents are based outside of the US, representing more than 200 countries, and the Second Life Viewer is available in 10 languages.
  • The total land area of Second Life is now equivalent to approximately 2 billion square meters — roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. Land in Second Life has grown roughly 18% since Q1 2009 and approximately 75% since Q1 2008.

“These metrics give a sense of some key aspects of Second Life — the deeply engaging nature of the 3D world, the immense use of Second Life as a communications platform and the scale and strength of the economy based on the huge number of unique virtual goods users are creating,” commented Mark Kingdon, CEO, Linden Lab. “These numbers are a snapshot of the success of Second Life and its Residents today, and a validation of Linden Lab’s leadership in the virtual worlds space, but there’s much more to come. This is a year of renovation for Second Life, and we are well positioned for reinvigorating our growth in 2010 with a range of strategic initiatives that will enhance the experience for existing Residents and propel our expansion with new users.”

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SGN splurges on hiring binge – bags more than a few industry heavy hitters

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

If the question of the rise and dominance of social games has ever come into question, a perusal through the past years headlines, and the associated talent defecting to smaller, up-and-coming social games firms should give a pretty clear picture as to what’s going on. Chalk up another major shift in the social gaming industry, as SGN has recently announced that they’ve been on a bit of a hiring binge as of late, and have netted some serious talent.

Randy BreenFormer Electronic Arts and LucasArts executive Randy Breen will now be reporting to SGN’s CEO Shervin Pishevar, in his new role as Chief Operating Officer. Breen, a long time and founding executive at EA, was responsible for the Road Rash series of games, one that’s sold million of copies and spawned a number of sequels and off shoots. Likewise, at LucasArts Breen was the man in charge of overseeing product developments within the Star Wars and Indiana Jones license lines.

Serving as new Director of Game design at SGN is Randy Angle, another industry veteran, who’s worked on a number of projects, most notably the Lord of the Rings. Another EA vet, Margaret Foley-Mauvais has been hired to serve as Art Director, while Dan Brazelton joins the SGN team in the role of Executive Producer. Brazelton brings to the table 17 years of gaming and film industry experience. And rounding out the new netting at SGN is Adriana Gasoigne, formerly of Hi5, who will be serving as the company’s Director of Global Communications.

“We’ve experienced tremendous growth over the past year, and I’m thrilled we have attracted a leader like Randy Breen to SGN and assembled a world class team to capitalize on our position within the booming social gaming industry,” said Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN, in a statement.

Based in Palo Alto, California, SGN has now topped over 100 hires, and has been in operation since 2007. Owing their success to the rise of social gaming, SGN has also served as a primary influencer in and producer of such titles in the social gaming space. Their first success can be attributed to a Facebook app, Warbook, and SGN quickly followed up this success with a number of additional titles. Quickly spreading their reach to Myspace and Bebo applications, SGN started focusing on iPhone games over the past year.

While they may have had a decent following and interest in their work with social network based games, this expansion into iPhone games is what truly put the company on the map. SGN has sold over 400,000 copies of it’s F.A.S.T. jet fighter game, and approximately 24 percent of all iPhone and iPod touch users have a copy of the firms successful iBowl app on their device. And lest we forget that it was SGN that was the very first to bring the successful Mafia games genre to market.

Again, it’s quite clear to see what’s going on here. A number of execs and non-execs alike are either fed up with, or see greater opportunities in social gaming then the traditional stalwarts of the industry. Granted, a number of larger games development firms are now interested in, and/or beginning their own exploration of social gaming, but is it already too late?

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Turbine to tackle console MMO and microtransactions?

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

What would a hot day in Texas be without a little dust raising? It looks like Turbine’s VP of Product Development, Craig Alexander raised a little dust himself, as well as a few eyebrows when he took the stage on the last day of the GDC Austin 2009 event. In his presentation Alexander stated that the market of MMORPG’s on consoles, specifically Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 could be worth in upwards of $2.3 billion a year. Obviously a number no one is willing to pass on. However, up until now, no one’s taken a fair stab at making this dream a reality. To this end, according to Alexander, Turbine’s about to take a serious run at tapping this multi-billion dollar market.

craigalexanderIn his address, Alexander confirmed that the Westwood, MA based Turbine studios is in fact current at work on a console MMORPG. Citing the technical challenges of the physical operating procedure Sony’s PS3 employs, Alexander said that the team is developing for the PS3, with plans to shortly there after port the title to the Xbox. But if it sounds so easy on paper, why haven’t there been more serious attempts at addressing this market? In the end, it comes down to one simple answer: Money. According to Alexander, any decent attempt at this project is going to cost somewhere in the $20 million range just to develop. Given that Turbine has recently started receiving funding from a proposed $50 million investment round, their popular Lord of the Rings Online shows no signs of dipping in popularity, and their most recent experimentation into the world of hybrid subscriptions/microtransactions supported Dungeons and Dragons is out of the gate with a label of success, it’s fair to say that Turbine has the cheddar to make this a reality.

Alexander says that part of the difficulty in creating an MMORPG for a console is that in order to succeed, it must be radically different from the current state of play. A console MMO would need to have better graphics, less grind, and much more social interaction than is currently employed in the unofficial ‘standard elements your MMORPG must contain’ handbook. Speaking to the fact that many consider MMO’s a purely PC based form of play, Alexander was quick to point out that the same arguments were previously made when applied to sports sims and the FPS genre, but now market leaders Madden and Call of Duty have a massive console audience and following.

When talking monetization, Alexander primarily focused on subscriptions. Notably, he pointed out that reoccurring billing (subscriptions, if you will) options are already available on both platforms, and that the Xbox Live services are a clear indication that set top box players are willing to set up subscriptions and pay for additional enjoyment. If any of this sounds familiar, don’t forget that the rumor mill was rife with speculation back in May when the idea of LotRO microtransactions being utilized in the Xbox 360 item shop circulated. Alexander flatly and specifically denied this rumor of porting LotRO to the Xbox during his presentation.

And while the rumor didn’t pan out, it’s clear that with the implementation of a hybrid model with Dungeons and Dragons Online, and this confirmation that Turbine is seriously committed to a perhaps industry revolutionizing MMO for consoles project, clearly something major is afoot at Turbine. If they can truly hit the nail on the head and show us something that’s never been seen before, the pure subscription based model may have merit, but if they fall anything short of perfect, we may see them revert to something they’ve already seen work, and work well – the microtransaction/subscription hybrid model.

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fatfoogoo getting serious about social

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Throughout our lifespan, fatfoogoo has created a number of monetization and payment platforms and options for a wide range of gaming companies. In 2006, when Martin Herdina and Daniel Petri set out to make a virtual marketplace for the trading and purchasing of virtual goods and services, the initial idea was to provide a marketplace for consumers to meet and trade/sell in-game virtual items and services. While this platform proved to be successful with gamers, game operators made it clear that they would rather keep a tighter hold on what was and what was not being traded within their titles. Et Viola, the modern version of today’s fatfoogoo was born with a white label services and technology model. And while there are a number of ‘traditional’ games and titles that we provide our services to, the undeniable growth and popularity of social games, as well as a number of other browser based games, has been certainly something we’ve been looking at for quite a while now.

ff_logo_whiteSpeaking to Justin Smith of insidesocialgames.com last week, Martin states, “We’ve been working with social app and game developers since the end of 2008, as the requirements are very similar to classical online game business models. The first social networking project we did was to provide store, white-label payments and virtual currencies for the avatar engine mEgo, now we are just working with Gogogic on powering Vikings of Thule – and some really exciting social apps/games projects are currently under the hood.”

As Smith states, we are based in Vienna, Austria, miles away from some of traditional games development hotbeds, we’ve also established offices in the UK and the US, with our very own Stevie Case running point on working closely with North American operators/developers.

“Our technology is purely international, so it’s capable of supporting multi-languages, multi currencies, multi-byte character-sets and different VAT-rates,” Herdina says. “However, in terms of business development we are mostly focusing on talking to potential partners in North America and Europe.”

Realizing that while social gaming might share a number of traditional facets, it also takes on it’s own brand of monetization. Specifically, in-game advertising can often be relied on as a primary means of revenues. To this end, we’ve partnered with a number of managed offer platforms in order to facilitate this monetization mechanism. “We treat offers as an alternative payment option, and therefore work with quite a few offer providers in different regions to ensure ideal coverage, like PayBuyPartner, AdParlor, GratisPay, and SponsorPay,” Herdina says.

With this particular attention turned out social games, naturally, facilitating the ease, and variety of payment options is key. We’ve partnered with a number of payment providers specifically focused on social games in order to ensure the highest levels of both client and customer satisfaction. Payment options include credit cards, direct debits, mobile payments, and prepaid cards, to name a few.

“We are expecting our ongoing and future projects in the social app/game space to contribute a significant part to our success in 2010,” Herdina says.

If you’re headed to the Browser Games Forum in Frankfurt this November, Martin will be speaking and available for questions both days.  To have a better look into who we are and what we offer, please visit our solutions section.

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Big Numbers from Big Players at Austin ‘09

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Last week’s GDC conference in Austin spilled out a ton of information not only about what’s up and coming in the gaming industry, but also the current state of affairs. One of the most interesting sessions saw EA, Turbine, K2, Linden Labs, and IMVU pony up and lay down some eye opening, if not eye popping, facts about their microtransaction and virtual goods monetization business models.

EA, perhaps the biggest and oldest games makers now involved in the freemium market reported that after initially only selling character customization options, sales were simply OK. Specifically speaking to Battlefield Heroes, once EA instituted Boost packs, these items/options quickly shot to the top of the list. Learning from this lesson, and perhaps overcoming the initial public balk, EA is now trending towards introducing these options into all of their freemium products. The focus here is on in-game advantages that drive higher conversion rates over that of purely cosmetic items. Using this formula, EA expects a 7-8 percent conversion rate in it’s freemium games, but realizes that rates may be driven down to the 5 percent range, do to the influx from social network traffic.

Turbine is looking good with what at the time raised a few eyebrows when they announced that their long time subscription title Dungeons and Dragons switched to the free-to-play model. Turning more than a few heads, Turbine execs announced that the free switch has significantly increased subscription rates, as well as concurrency rates. To be fair, Turbine is offering a subscription/freemium hybrid model, which the company believes to be the optimal solution, capturing both hard core, play all the time fans, while also hooking the players that only want to pay for what they want, and not for what they don’t. Subscription players are given a dedicated monthly allowance of virtual currency, and free players are given the option to purchase virtual currency with RMTs. Both allow players to unlock a variety of in game content.

K2, publishers of Knight Online, Red Stone, War Rock, Global MU Online, and Sword of the New World, report that every single cent of their revenues are derived from in-game item sales. Citing their key focus on community management, K2 claims an extremely high ARPU. “ARPU is high, relationships is long and persistence is everything.” Given that their revenues are items sales driven, K2 is aggressively pushing for expansion in Turkey, Brazil, and Eastern Bloc countries, areas were the freemium model has thus far been tremendously successful.

Linden Lab, publishers of perhaps one of the most well-know Virtual Worlds, Second Life stated that their annual revenue was over $80 million, and that they’re closing in on the $100 million mark. The company monetizes in one of three ways: Currency sales, premium subscriptions, and a hosting package that allows users’ 3D items to persist throughout the games. Given Second Life’s rocky, sometimes controversy filled, track record, the folks at Linden are now focusing on plugging the holes, and retaining active users as opposed to seeking out new Second Life residents. Linden Lab execs say that the largest stumbling block they’ve encountered is in-game fraud. Remember, Second Life allows users to create their own items for sale within the game, sometimes leading to a removal of currency from the virtual economy. The company considers this fraud/loss risk a basic price of doing business.

Rounding out the top 5 on parade at the GDC Virtual Worlds Monetization talk was IMVU. The firm says that 80 percent of their revenues come from sales of virtual items, and 20 percent from advertising. While 20 percent is a sizeable contribution, IMVU says that this revenue is only possible due to it’s expansive virtual world. They stressed importance on non-paying users, as they add to a large community, and encourage others to be drawn in. Comparing themselves to eBay, IMVU execs cited it’s catalogue of over 2.5 million virtual items made by 20,000 users. The top designers of virtual items within IMVU properties annually earn over $100,000 annually, however, the IMVU market functions on the long tail model, whereby the top 10 catalogue items only account for .2 percent of all sales.

Thanks to Ada Chen for outstanding notetaking.

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Gaia Online Lays Down the Law on Free-to-Play success

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Dave Georgeson, senior producer at Gaia’s free-to-play casual MMO zOMG took the stage yesterday at the Austin GDC, laying out his three tenants of free-to-play success – Make it fun for everyone, get users so interested that they want to buy, and ultimately, make the purchase easy.

Fun

gaiaonline“The first thing you need to do is identify your audience, then own it,” he said. “…If you don’t do that, you’re missing a very critical step. Get that core right and then figure out the other things. Good things happen when you nail the niche.”

Knowing your audience was key during Georgeson’s talk, but particularly in the development stage. Reflecting on Gaia’s growth, Georgeson stated that Gaia Online originated as a go-to location for artists and fans of anime. Gaia quickly realized that this niche had tremendous potential, and appropriately built a business model around it.

Growing slowly over the past half decade, Gaia has been adding features gradually, and has developed a “20 ring circus”, all with the focus of keeping current users engaged, all the while continuing to pull in new users. Their free-to-play MMO zOMG, which launched in 2008 is just one piece of the much larger Gaia Online puzzle.

Georgeson urges free-to-play up and comers to continually market to, and engage users with current games and upcoming teasers, something Gaia is committed to rolling out every two weeks. “Do everything you can to get your customers excited, so they never want to quit. If players get bored, there are a million of other things for them to do. Don’t wait three or four months to roll out a big feature with nothing in between,” said Georgeson.

And this engagement doesn’t stay just at home. Gaia also takes the interaction off their home site, and communicates with the community via a myriad of social networking platforms including forums, Facebook, and Twitter.

Buy

While Georgeson admits that only 10 percent of your user community will actually make the leap from non-paying to paying, games developers should “Accept it,” but overall aim to entertain everyone. In other words, although there’s 90 percent of your audience that aren’t going to pay a dime, they are very critical to a title’s success, because they keep that 10 percent interested in, and continuing to play (and pay) the game.

“If you don’t have critical mass in your MMO, then the people who are willing to buy won’t stay,” he said. “When you put together features, build things that entertain everyone. Players like to buy anything that promotes self-expression, a sense of belonging to the community, and anything that lets users get to an end-goal faster or easier,” Georgeson added.

Moving this point forward, Georgeson urged developers to look beyond just the sale of virtual items. In-game shortcuts such as time savers, name/server changes, and premium features should be on the list of “for sale”. Whether the newly exposed to the free-to-play model North American market will accept these pay options is yet to be seen, but looking down the road is the fastest track to success.

Ease

Third on Georgeson’s “Must Do’s” list is making it easy for users to pay. He urges all developers to implement multiple forms of payment, and these payment options will not cannibalize each other. “There are a lot of payment options in the world. If you can, utilize them all. If you can barter with chickens, then do it.”

And while we’re not quite finished with the chicken bartering monetization module, fatfoogoo does have just about every other form of game, virtual world, and/or social networking monetization and payment option available. Check out what we have to offer in the solutions section, and let’s talk!

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USA Network sets stage for casual gaming

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Major television network USA Network, a division of NBC Universal announced today that they’ve entered into partnership with NeoEdge Networks, Bunchball, and Bigpoint. All three games developers will contribute to USA’s Character Arcade, a casual games portal. Startup GlowPlay was tapped by the network to develope the portal’s interface and social features. Character Arcade features roughly 50 ad-based casual games, free-to-play titles, complete with virtual goods sales via microtransactions, and the obligatory social networking features as the hook.

USA's Character ArcadeNeoEdge will be contributing the ad based games segment to Character Arcade. As part of the agreement, NeoEdge will then in turn wrap ads around a number of USA’s properties and distribute them across their own games distribution network which includes top slots such as MSN Games and Yahoo! Games.

German based Bigpoint will handle the free-to-play, microtransaction based games in the form of MMO’s. While the focus of Character Arcade seems to be pointed in the short-and-sweet casual game, Bigpoint’s contributions are sure to add variety to the lineup, perhaps even drawing in players that have never previously considered an MMO.

Rounding out the deal, Bunchball, responsible for return traffic and community interaction will be kicking off with a rewards and points platform. Bunchball is also planning a full Facebook and Twitter integration packet, as well as supporting interaction on a number of other social media centric destinations. Using their own proprietary SocialLink technology, as well as Facebook Connect, Bunchball’s contribution will allow fans across various networks share scores, set up challenges, and interact via chat as they play together. Another selling point in Bunchball’s corner: USA can then offer further return and interaction incentives through their own virtual goods system.

If “traditional” and/or “old” media stepping up their game (literally) and entering new territories sounds a bit familiar, remember, back in March we reported on the Syfy, ZooKazoo, Acclaim Games partnership deal. As part of this deal, Syfy was/is looking to diversify their offerings and engage an audience that may or may not have ever thought of themselves as “gamers.” It looks like USA is doing just about the same thing here. However, this is a prime example of new meeting old. The USA Network counts 36 years of air play, they’ve tapped four relatively new firms to deliver a package that appeals to both new and old, while delivering a quality and positive end user experience.

In an interview with Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat, USA Network VP Jesse Reniss sums it up, “The intersection of social media and games is the hottest part of the industry now. The projection is that casual games will be a $10 billion to $11 billion business by 2011 and that is something we want to be part of.”

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