Social Casual Gaming - What an Hilarious Misunderstanding

Series of clicking, stages, badges and helping co-players. A casual routine shared with friends. Entertainment. This is what more or less 40% of people use Facebook for. This is social casual gaming.


Tiina Zilliacus from Ironstar Helsinki  gave an introduction to social casual gaming industry in previous  N2's Social Media Hub, the new monthly arena for media professionals to discuss current topics and to mingle around.  The themes also covered content marketing á la Vapa Media and the rationale of CRM - or Romantic CRM - in marketing served by Kari Tervonen from N2. To me and based on the amount of questions for others as well, Zilliacus' presentation really blew up the bank. 


MUAHAHAHHAHA! They are not REAL games! AHAHAHAHAA! Middle aged women and their game logic! Who would REALLY play Facebook games? But then again, we all have our odd habits. Usually they're hidden from friends but social games are quite the opposite when every task you make is posted on your wall. It's as okay to build a virtual farm or a bar in Facebook as it is to smash egg snatching pigs on a bus ride home. Social casual gaming seems to be an hilarious misunderstanding for the trendy ad people and hard core players. 

The numbers are serious business, though. According to AppData, at the moment the top three social games include CityVille, FarmVille and Texas HoldEm all by Zynga. CityVille, which was launched last December, has 96,153,837 monthly active users (MAU) whereas FarmVille still goes strong with half from that. That's loads of city cash or farm bucks.  

Thank God the customers are rational grown-up people! Pleaded Zilliacus when compared their game to HABBO which has been popular among youngsters and teens almost a decade. Surely the popularity of social gaming makes you re-think how to benefit from game dynamics and elements in your marketing, but there is no point to overlook teenagers' creativity. All the arenas in HABBO are user-generated and goods have a secondary market. That is more than clicking. However, as a new segment of players arises from Facebook users, also HABBO is ensuring it's new player acquisition with a Facebook app. 


Winds of change are blowing also in this new game business as developers have their own game going on with Facebook which is making Facebook credits a mandatory currency from the beginning of July 2011. Is it an inspiration or a headache?

Behind The Scenes of Animation

My favorite animations since childhood have been Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Night Before Christmas and the good old Molletje. And now that I'm browsing IMDb's list, memories full my mind of escapes to the theater. First one ever was Aladdin with my big sister. Then, somehow, the parts changed and I became the cool auntie taking her kids to the movies. The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wall-E, Toy Stories and yes even Alvin and the Chipmunks. Ultimately, it is the story that satisfies the viewer's thirst for miracles but undoubtedly animation still takes my inner child to higher levels.

To find out how animations actually come alive before we hit the theaters, me and my fellows popped in to Anima, a Finnish animation production company. Anima is well present in Finnish TV: political satire Itsevaltiaat and sitcom Pasila probably ring a bell to most readers along with many commercials upon which Anima Boutique has had their hands on. 

However, the specific reason why we wanted to visit Anima was the amaze over how an award-winning 3D movie Niko and The Way to the Stars, which was sold over 120 countries, arised from a small Finnish company. In discussions with Production Manager Sini Lindberg, we went through issues from business to production along with specific techniques used, all in all get the idea what does it take to make animation movie. And let me tell ya - a lot.

The animation industry is highly competitive. No need to emphasize the freedom that stock exchanged studios, like Disney owned Pixar and DreamWorks which goal is to release two movies per year, have compared to  entrepreneurs. However, this doesn't mean that you can't compete with the big fishes. To achieve the quality set by the West, you just need to join forces on a broader level. 


Niko and The Way to the Stars was Anima's second 3D movie and naturally European level co-production with A.Film, Magma Films and alike. When compared to an in-house production, the creation of funding and production networks takes more time. And obviously, when the distribution of production is scattered all around Europe, the risks of errors increases the amount of iterations. Rendering doesn't turn out the way it's supposed to.  To notice that the snowball, which your figure was supposed to throw is missing actually starts a snowball effect to correct the error. Thus to succeed in complex co-production you need to have  spot-on management.

www.nikomovie.com

As usually in the movie business, sequels are the rule rather than exception. In animation, however, this has many advantages. In stead of the full process of modeling, designing and surfacing figures, the main characters are already existing and ready to be remolded to your imagination. In the limits of new script, you can probably re-use also some of the sets. All this enables faster overlapping production processes. To what extent this is benefited can be seen if Niko's next adventure is released.


It would have been interesting ponder upon how the marketing approaches used differ for a small production company/co-production and across different target markets.  Movie and TV business in general is the playground for transmedia storytelling and how this was used in Niko's case was out of our time available. But definitely something I'm going to look into if and when the sequel is coming up.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

It is said that repetition is the key of all learning. Yawn. People who repeat and memorize go to factory line. After climbing the ladder for 15 years, they still j u s t produce sausages from the CEO's stool. Not ranking any professions here but attitudes.

Key of all learning, whether real life or work, is testing. People who test question what they learn, produce and invent. They develop and create. At best by sharing and being open they can excel themselves. Testing alone and with a group. Testing your idea and your comfort zone. 

Being present in what you do is experiencing, which on the other hand in most cases is not easy nor nice. However, succeeding is not dependent on thick skin. In this process of testing you only have to test yourself and be able to change.

The question of originality and creativity is topical in all fields. Also MariKoo had her say on the subject over Uutisraivaaja competition. Pls check the open discussion and ideas around this competition. Surely we're able to do the same?

Ego. Scared to fall flat on your face. Then not giving 100 %. Not sticking your face out because afraid of demeaning. Afraid of not being good enough or somebody stealing your idea. Perfection and envy are the archenemies of creativity. In stead of being open to what ever you shut away.