INTERVIEW: In the Nick of time

Can you tell us a little about Nickelodeon’s gaming (and virtual world) portfolio?
Back in 2000, we discovered gaming was quickly becoming one of the things kids enjoyed doing the most online. Games also provide valuable opportunities to drive business through advertising, paid subscriptions, item sales and brand building.

To date we have built gaming destinations (Turned Nick.com into a gaming hub and built Nick Arcade), launched Nicktropolis which combines everything kids love into one, acquired platforms such as Neopets and AddictingGames/Shockwave to expand our reach as well as expanding our gaming efforts on all platforms, including mobile.

Going forward we are committed to growing the area and have formed focused Divisions in Virtual Worlds and Gaming. We have great pipelines in both of them

How successful have these properties been?
In 2007 we registered 22 billion game plays on Nickelodeon Kids and Family digital sites and we reach 20M game players each month on our game sites. Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group’s digital sites registered its best month ever in June as the number-one kids and family online destination in total visits and time spent .

You recently unveiled your new Games and Virtual Worlds Divisions, does this mean Nickelodeon are looking into publishing their own titles?
In the online space, we are publishing our own titles. We have the production expertise, IP, and distribution to be successful in this space. We are still committed to working with our great licensing partners in the console space

What does this new division mean to Nickelodeon going forward?
The focus is on developing virtual worlds and casual MMOGS based on pre-existing Nickelodoen properties or new properties birthed as Virtual Worlds.

We believe Virtual Worlds and Casual Games have their own distinct attributes and need focused efforts in order to be successful. We have therefore set up two dedicated groups to maximize our creative and business opportunities.

The press release mentions several virtual world properties but also mentions handheld, CD ROM and console properties, how will this group be working in these areas?

Again, the focus in onself-publishing for online and other digitally distributed platforms. For retail console and handheld product, we still plan on working with our licensing partners

What’s changing from what was going on before?
The growth in online and digital distribution has really opened up ways for us to directly link to our consumers. In particularly, online, we need to be relevant with our audience. What video is to TV, games is to online. We have to excel in games to be leaders in online with our audiences

Nickelodeon appears to have capitalised well on the casual gaming phenomenon, what do you anticipate going forward?
The goal is to be the leading Virtual World and Casual Games developers and publishers for Kids and Families. We have committed $100 million in the casual gaming space and we announced that we’re launching even more games, 1,600 this year, across our sites and we’ll launch new sites and services, both free to play and subscription, like NGames.com.

We will also be increasing multiplayer games and continue our focus on virtual worlds, which we believe are the next generation of general entertainment for this generation because they are the intersection of gaming and community.

You currently licence out some of your properties, do you foresee a future where these will be dealt with in-house?
As mentioned before, we are focused on licensing in the retail console and handheld side of our business