Nickelodeon MTVN Kids and Family Group recently made a series of announcements relating to Shockwave.com and AddictingGames. These two online gaming destinations have experienced major growth of late; during 2006 AddictingGames saw its unique users grow 100 percent, while Shockwave.com grew its users by nearly 50 percent. AddictingGames had 21.3 million unique visitors and 343 million page views in March, while Shockwave.com garnered 19.7 million unique visitors and almost 117 million page views.
"We bought [AddictingGames] from a small team in Canada when it was about the third of the size of what it is now," detailed Dave Williams, the newly named Senior Vice President across both AddictingGames and Shockwave. "It started as a series of links to their favorite sites, then it evolved into a directory before we eventually bought it out. We realized it was much more like a conventional media site, as in users were treating the games like videos, playing things once [and] then looking for new ones. We enhanced it and added our own resources and now they're over 1000 developers.
"Shockwave.com has been around for a very long time. It was originally built as a multimedia showcase for all the stuff you can do with Adobe Shockwave. Since then, we've built in all sorts of technologies for games. The site features something for everyone, with puzzle and casual games that really appeal to the women 30+ group and other games for early teens. It has helped build up brands for advertisers, which is very appealing to third-parties. Our daily project and photo sharing results in an amazing amount of sharing that you can't do in any other medium. We're also probably more focused than anyone to try and get [casual games] to work for advertisers."
In yet another sign of the web 2.0/game 3.0 phenomenon, one of the new features of the site is a game upload feature. User-created content is bound to have an increasingly profound effect on this industry. Already, the company has received 200 new game submissions in the past month, empowered by a game sponsorship program, which pays developers of popular games for integration on AddictingGames and provides them with enhanced distribution and marketing.
"One of the challenges for lightweight casual games is that there isn't much of a business model for them," explained Williams. "We worked on solutions for our two different sites. On AddictingGames, we offer to sponsor a creator's game with our brand and that helps create traffic for the site because it might be distributed to other websites. On Shockwave, there's a royalty pool that's based upon the amount of revenue received. I think this is going to drive content going forward because we're willing to pay for their games. We have multiple options for users, but advertising is at least as important as something like subscriptions for us. A couple other sites have mentioned something like this, but I think we've been making more from ad sales than anyone else.
"I think what we're seeing from AddictingGames... is that a lot of these users know Flash, whether for their job or from their school. They're having fun with it and getting their games published using our method. Really, it is a site that is born off its users and it is very much part of the heart of the site."
The announcement also touched on new integrated advertising deals with Nissan and HP. "Shockwave has been known for game customization for advertisers; we helped build some of the original advergames. At the same time, our sphere of online games lend themselves to user generated content. We get dozens of submissions of content users want to see. We try and reconcile these two factors with advertiser sponsored games. It demonstrates a way that we can integrate user content with advertiser needs."
"The Shockwave Mother's Day photo sponsorship offers a more engaging user experience than could be provided through a standard ad banner buy," said Steve Kerho, Director, Media & Interactive Marketing, Nissan North America. "It demonstrates an understanding of how to reach the Quest target through leveraging the strengths of the Shockwave brand, since 65% of Shockwave users share photos with others."
"HP consumer PCs are the preferred choice for casual gamers worldwide," said Tracey Trachta, worldwide director of consumer advertising, Personal Systems Group, HP. "We're excited to be working with Shockwave because they offer us a unique vehicle to reach both parents and children in a safe, casual gaming environment."
"Games like this have been sort of under the radar for something that could be the basis of a business. We have the resources and we can afford to invest more... I think it's going to be a great thing for the consumer," added Williams.