Art Meets Commerce

Forbes describes the ongoing struggle to create Facebook games that both entice players into logging online daily and make a return on investment.

The COO of Playfish, a leader in this type of game development, describes how he aims to create games that are “very engaging, entertaining worlds and lead to the discovery of new friendships and relationships.” 

Playfish and its competitors make money by advertising and selling virtual goodies.  They host video ads on their site and sell gifts to give to friends — including $40 virtual lip-shaped couches. 

(We live in interesting times, don’t we?)

Here’s Forbes list of the 10 hottest games.

If you haven’t seen this ad for CW’s teen show, Gossip Girls featuring the Parents’ Television Council’s scathing review yet, you will now: they are everywhere.

Gossip Girls could have responded to the Parent’s Television Council with a “very special” episode showing teenagers the consequences of risky behavior. Instead, the show created an entire advertising campaign around negativity. There’s two other ads in the campaign featuring the quotes “every parent’s nightmare” from the Boston Herald and “a nasty piece of work” from the New York Post.

Is the ad campaign itself “nasty?”  Sure, but I think it’s clever and different enough to break through to the target demographic who want to do everything their parents find “inappropriate.”

Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how Mickey feels about online videos, but the guy who runs the biz side of Disney World is giving them a whirl …

NPR did a great piece on Michael Eisner (CEO of Disney)’s year-old broadband production company, Vuguru. Vuguru produces “low-budget, quick-and-dirty Web series” using online video.

The company is producing Foreign Body, its third Web series, which is serving as a promotional tool for Robin Cook’s novel of the same name.   Fifty 2-minute videos will be made in all, and one video is released each day for viewers to download for free.   At the end of the online series, the characters’ stories continue in the novel that fans will have to buy.

A few weeks ago, my friend Yvonne, who is in her early 30’s, invited both friends and family to a party. Her mother-in-law was particularly excited to attend because Yvonne’s college friend, Dave Gilbert, was a fellow party-er.  Gilbert, Yvonne’s mother-in-law had recently discovered, had designed her favorite computer game.  (Gilbert is owner of Wadget Eye Games .)

This cute coincidence is illustrative of a larger trend.

The game Yvonne’s mother-in-law loved is a “casual game,” which are those computer games that are not shoot ‘em ups or epic games, but simple games with simple rules — think Tetris and Bejeweled.

According to a report by the Casual Games Association, 200 million people play casual games online. Women account for 51% of this large pie (according to one report , this number is 76%.) Women also make up 74% of people who pay for games. And people over the age of 35 account for 62% of all gamers.

Casual games: designed by young men, played by their moms.