Though he's still most famous for
(more or less) creating the arcade and console industries with Atari, a company he co-founded in 1972 before creating Pong and the Atari 2600, Nolan
Bushnell still has new ideas to contribute to the gaming business more than thirty
years later.
Though he left Atari all the way back in 1978, Bushnell went on to run Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre, as well as 1980s game company Sente. More recently, a new venture is delivering games in a whole new context with his chain of uWink gaming
restaurants, which feature digital tabletop games in a fun, family-friendly environment.
As chairman of the board of casual-specific in-game advertising firm NeoEdge, Bushnell pays
close attention to the casual games revolution - here discussing his views in how
companies are missing the boat on audience targeting, as well as looking at how
games might become the most successful medium for ad delivery.
Here, Bushnell and NeoEdge
marketing VP Ty Levine answer Gamasutra's questions about the state of the casual games
market and - of course - a few about Atari, past and present.
First
of all, why target casual?
Nolan Bushnell: I've always been a
contrarian. When people are talking about the size of the video game market,
they're talking really about the habits and money based around 15 million
people in the United States.
That's basically five percent of the regular console game market.
If you look at the numbers, casual gamers
right now are 40, and they actually probably should be closer to 100 million.
And I'm trying to get back to the number of game players that existed basically
in the '70s. In '79, 40 percent of the population of 250 million
self-identified as a game player, meaning that they've played a video game
within the last week.
When you look at that, you say, "What
happened?" And I say that games got violent and lost the women, and got
complex and lost the casual gamer. So now we're starting to see those coming
back, and I actually believe that that market size will actually get bigger.
The old story says that if you want to lead a mob, figure out where it's going
and get out in front and say "Follow me!" (laughter)
So
why go for the in-game advertising, versus say, starting a casual portal or
something like that?
NB: I believe that the problem of growth
for the casual game market is really about monetization structures. There are
still a lot of people who will not put credit cards on the internet. There's
even a larger number - i.e., kids and teenagers - that don't have credit cards.
As a result, there's a real barrier to growth because of monetization issues.
Advertising just gets rid of that.
What
do you think about that versus the "free-to-play, pay for items" model,
like Nexon's Nexon Cash cards?
NB: It's still... any time you pay, you're
going to have to have some kind of a credit card or some kind of a sponsor
putting things up or scratch-off cards, like you have in China and Korea. All
of those have an issue with them that is obviated by advertising.
What
do you think are the biggest issues with cash cards? Because you can go into
Target and buy those and that sort of thing?
NB: I think that those will work to some
level. It's just that most people don't know about it right now.
A
lot of companies are getting into the in-game advertising space. How does one
differentiate?
NB: Primarily through technology. If you
really want to do something exciting, you have to wrap games seamlessly, you
have to give advertisers feedback, you have to easily convert. And not
necessarily a priori - that is, think about advertising as you are building the
game, but being able to go in and monetize your game after the fact with a
really good game-serving engine. NeoEdge does that and provides all of the
accounting data backup stream. It just does it the right way.
Ty Levine: It's a seamless experience.
They've literally taken something that's already been created - the game
itself. We're able to go in and take the game apart and put these ad insertion
units in there without disrupting or modifying the experience that people are
going to have while playing the game. That's really the key.
How
would that be possible? From a design standpoint, how is it possible to do
without interrupting the flow?
NB: Most games have some kind of a natural
break point, particularly in the casual games space where there's "Round
1, Round 2." You know, that sort of thing. That gets pretty easy. Getting
to a point in Halo is a little more
difficult, except for when you get killed. (laughter) That sort of thing.
Or
loading screens.
NB: But also, a lot of the other
advertising in games... I call it the metaphorical equivalent of banner ads.
With us, we have 30 second spots, which is the stock in trade. So an advertiser
can click "network, cable, game," and it becomes part of an
integrated and clever advertising strategy.
And then the other part about it, and why
I'm really hot on this, is that if you look at actual remembering of the ad, we
are so much better than either cable or network television, in terms of
remembering the ads, and what have you. So over time, we should end up with a
higher CPM than television. And television has done pretty well on their
current CPMs.
TL: The brand recall is often in the 40
percentile, which you just don't see in any other medium. We just recently did
a major CPG brand. It's a shampoo. I actually use it. I can't use the brand
name, but that's beside the point. 66 percent of the people watch the entire
ads that they saw. 87 percent watched at least half of the ad. You don't get
that in any other medium, especially when you look at TV, and 93 percent of the
people that own a DVR are skipping ads.