'Flash will become casual platform of choice,' says Boonty boss

His talk offered up five predictions for the future of casual games, warning the market to prepare for both ups and downs.
One key growth area is Flash which should become the central platform for casual during 2009.

"Most people don't like this, but Flash will dominate, especially on PC," he said. "The technical capabilities are ever increasing, and I suspect Flash 10 will be adopted by 99 per cent of users worldwide by 2010."

Key is Flash's predicted ubiquity is that "the download barrier is finally removed", he said.

"Every time you put try before you buy games online and put the same version on alongside it in Flash, you see an increase in the downloadable version by 150 per cent," he explained. Because you reach more people.

Boonty itself has rebooted its cafe.com service around Flash, providing all games in the accessible format because it lowers the barriers to play and generates a more immediate connection with players, he said.

Older gamers, or what Nouzareth called "the silver target" was another key growth area for 2009, he added, describing games for players aged over 30 as "the fastest growing market for casual games", even though "the younger people are the more likely they are to define themselves as a gamer".

The games market for more mature players is less crowded, he added, explaining that his site cafe.com had secured thousands of regular female players over the age of 30 - many of which are more likely to keep playing casual games like Mahjong on Boonty's site than women in their 20s and 30s.

But despite market growth and stability in its delivery format, online casual games will see a decline in display advertising over the next two years, said Nouzareth. "It's a certain fact," he said, describing an imminent "huge decline in advertising" sparked in part by the credit crunch and also historical precedent.

After five years of post-bubble growth in online advertising in general, figures for Q2 and Q3 (from Price Waterhouse Coopers which Nouzareth provided) have shown the amount spent on advertising online has fallen or remained flat - and things will be no different in games, he warned.

That said, he also predicted a further rise in online social games. "Social games are soaring and they are here to stay," said Nouzareth. "I am convinced this will only grow bigger and bigger." With 4m active users daily served by the likes of Playfish and Zynga on Facebook, he added, developers can "make a great game, and get great traffic, with little resources" on those services - provided they correctly leverage the platforms and take heed of policies on content put in place by Facebook.

Lastly, Nouzareth predicted that mobile games, and the casual games market it can excite, "will finally take off". Much of that will be thanks to platforms like the iPhone (one of his slides said 'Thank you Apple!'), he added, which standardise the experience and also provide a proper, open distribution method.

"This market has been somehow growing for hte past five years but only in the past few months has this taken off. It's a true breakthrough for the industry," he added.

And it won't just be iPhone dominating, he said, nor will the industry make the leap to a 'one size fits all' device: "One thing I don't believe in is convergence between PC and mobile - it's too difficult to achieve, and is a myth."