Casual gaming sites: www.chinesegum.com, and marketing games

I came across this site, www.chinesegum.com  and this review on this site. This site is a pretty standard gaming site you'll find but what interested me the most was the review. Take a look. 

In this final part of my review on ChineseGum.com, I'd like to discuss my experience on the site.

First off, I am a huge fan of the Gamelist.  It wasn't just a collection of my favorite games, but it acted like a playlist on my iPod.  I could click on my Gamelist and a window would pop up with an area to play the game and below that were tabs for each category.  If I wanted to, I could easily jump from one game to the next without having to return to my profile page.  Also, being able to favorite not just games, but other gamers' Gamelists was a nice touch.

Beyond that I enjoyed the selection of games.  It was nice to have a selection that were more casual games.  A lot of Flash games have broken past the definition of casual and have become complicated and long.  Which is fine, I completely support Flash games furthering themselves in the game industry.  But, sometimes you want to play games reminiscent of Bejeweled.  And yes there are probably hundreds of variations of Bejeweled out there, but that doesn't mean I don't want to play them.  To me, these games are more along the lines of casual games than the gritty tower defenses you see a lot of on Flash sites nowadays.

That being said, I'm sure a lot of the games I ran into on this site I could find elsewhere.  But the fact is, they'd be buried away and I'd have to know exactly what I was looking for to find it.

In regards to appealing to the female gamer, I do believe the site's design is not as dark, harsh, and intimidating as some sites.  Also the selection of games, as I said before, are more casual.  According to the Casual Game Market Report in 2007, done by the Casual Games Association, women had a slight majority over men as casual players, making up 51%.  But they made up 74% of paying casual game players.  So based on those numbers, the decision to focus on simpler casual games is an effective choice.

In regards to connecting designers with players, I look forward to seeing some growth on the site.  Right now the framework is definitely there.  The site is set up with plenty of opportunities for designers to blog about their projects, to be represented in designer spotlights, and to communicate easily with players.  However, right now it appears not too many designers have taken advantage of this.  I find this disappointing.  As one of my goals as Examiner is to help shed light on ways to get into the industry, I would highly suggest taking advantage of any opportunity to connect with players.  If players get to know you and like you, you'll have a following, which leads to more hits, which leads to popularity, which leads to bigger and better things.  The framework is there at your disposal and the market is a thriving one, don't miss out on the opportunity.

Overall, I really enjoyed the site.  It is still fairly young and has a ways to go.  From what I can tell though, it is off to a good start.

http://www.examiner.com/x-4242-Baltimore-Gaming-Lifestyle-Examiner~y2009m3d13-ChineseGumcom-bringing-back-casual-Flash-games-for-women

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We've all learned in class that statistics show that the number of women casual gamers as slightly higher than men. But what i did find is that for some of us girls, some sites you go on, like the author of the article suggested, is quite intimidating and dark. And she also mentioned that the 'casual games' are much more complicated and long compared to the ones before. I feel that this doesn't only affect female gamers, it also affect non-regular casual gamers. 

So what's the best way to go about marketing the games/game sites? For me personally, i won't go search up a game and play it. I don't take the initiative to find new games to play. Most of the time, the only way i start to play a game is when a friend sends me a link and i get curious. That being said, with facebook, twitter etc, it's a smart way to marketing through those channels that targets peer to peer communication. For example, having people to test out games and then pass it on to their friends. Hey, if the game is good, word will start spreading and games will become more popular. So instead of having a vast variety of games on a game site that only regular site-goers will go to, try different channels. This may even help promote the game site itself!