1. Jon Radoff, CEO, GamerDNA GDC Austin 2009
Emerging Trends in Gameplay: The Blurring Lines Between Casual and Hardcore
Jon Radoff, CEO, GamerDNA GDC Austin 2009

2. Agenda What is changing about players? What is an online game?
Are there better
ways to
Segment audiences?
Casual vs.
Hardcore?

3. stories
quizzes
history

4. Gamer Stereotypes of the past…

5. Games are not a media category.
Games are played by everyone!

9. 9 7 %
OF TEENAGERS PLAY GAMES

10. Couples
play
games

11. Families
play
games

12. People of all ages play games

13. What Twitter can tell us about gamers
Almost 1 million tweets/month tracked by TweetMyGaming about games

14. Heatmap of Game Twitter Conversations

15. Rock Band overwhelming game conversations 9/9/09 – at Wow’s expense

16. Since 5/31, 7.6% weekly compound growth in tweets about games

17. Casual games
vs.
(Hard)core games

18. Casual games vs. (Hard)core games
(AKA, The Most Stupid Dichotomy Ever Created in the Game Industry)

19. A core game from 1978
A “casual” Flash game from 2009

20. What are better ways of categorizing the market?

21. What is an online game?

22. World of Warcraft

23. World of Warcraft
Madden NFL 09

24. Madden NFL 09
Guitar Hero III

25. Web-based, easy-to-play, collectible
Duels, Warstorm, Planet Storm
Web-based and iPhone
30 million daily active players in Sept 2009
Browser based Strategy Game
In May 2009, the Travian website is more popular than the World of Warcraft website (430 vs. 540 on Alexa)

26. Social gamers vs. Experience Gamers

28. But it isn’t just guilds – games with any social components are more successful

30. Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero 3
Why did Rock Band command high daily attention levels? Q:
Daily Players of Rock Band vs. GH3
Don’t even look at it, we really wanted to get to know their users better – they just didn’t know! We were able to get down to a couple layers of value with harmonix. What does it look like? Looking at the same scale on GH3 – we get some interesting conclusions.
Harmonix is getting to know some of the deeper questions and we’re facilitating that through – confidentially of course, custom quizzes.
That data is custom tailored for HMX – they don’t have an ability to get to it. 30

31. Grand Theft Auto IV
Daily attention from launch day

32. Call of Duty IV
Daily attention from launch day

35. Segmentation based on thematic (rather than gameplay-type) genres

36. Bioshock – What are they also playing?

37. Every game has its own distinct segmentation

38. Concurrent Halo 3 Players
GTA IV Released - 59% Drop
“Heroic” Map Pack - 42% Increase
“Legendary” Map Pack – 46% Increase
“Mythic” Map Pack – 62% Increase
“Bungie Day” Free Map - 65% Increase
Title Update – 95% Increase

39. Halo 3 Audience Segmentation
Initial Market
Genre Loyal
Brand Loyal

41. Initial Market
Genre Loyal
Brand Loyal

42. Competitive Set Analysis

43. Top 10 other games played by World of Warcraft Players

44. Top 8 Games played by MMO Players

45. Conclusions Larger, more diverse audience than ever
The definition of “online game” has evolved
Don’t get caught in “casual vs. hardcore”
More helpful segmentations: social vs. less social players, thematic tastes, brand-loyal vs. genre-loyal, competitive sets

46. Thanks! Jon Radoff, CEO, GamerDNA jradoff@gamerdna.com
GamerDNA: tarinth.gamerdna.com
Twitter: jradoff
Thanks!