Note: The week after Thanksgiving, we'll also be kicking off a special four-part series of op-ed columns from each of the EA label heads. The first entry will come from EA Casual's Kathy Vrabeck. In the meantime, please enjoy this interview.

---

Five months ago, Kathy Vrabeck, Activision's former president of publishing, crossed lines to run the new Electronic Arts label, EA Casual. The label, which operates Pogo.com and EA Mobile, while new, isn't just in the development phase. With EA Playground and Boogie, the label's first two games reached out to the different audiences on the Wii and the recent release of the family friendly trivia game, Smarty Pants, hopes to solidify its position at home through the holidays. GameDaily BIZ had a chance to chat with Vrabeck about the release of the game, her initiatives for the EA Casual group at large and potential product for next year's WiiFit.

GameDaily BIZ: The term "Casual" has been used in so many ways, whether small Flash games on the PC, downloadable titles on consoles, or easy-to-play Wii games. What does casual really mean to you?

Kathy Vrabeck: Well, that's a great question. I'm trying to be as loose in my definition as possible because the great thing about casual gaming is that it means different things to different people. It's certainly a broad array of platforms... certainly here at EA, we consider games going on in the mobile space to be casual by their very nature. You do it when you want. You get your 10-minute game fix not when you want to play for three hours. So we're really thinking about it from a consumer experience – targets who don't associate themselves with the core gamer so that can be kids, middle aged women, teen and tween girls. The interactive experiences that they're interested in playing don't look a lot like video games.

BIZ: Between EA Playground, Boogie and now Smarty Pants, what do you see as your focus now?

Vrabeck: Our target demographic for each of those games is a little bit different. And you just mentioned our three latest console forays in the space; obviously there's a lot of work in online with Pogo also for the holidays. For Smarty Pants, we're going after the whole family. It's the first all family trivia game for the Wii. We think it takes advantage of the Wii's unique controller with the minigames or just simply raising your hand to get called on in the game so the gesturing is a big piece of it. It's all ages, so questions are appropriate for young and old and it's a whole family game. If you look at EA Playground, it's clearly targeted at young kids. Where you're looking at games that are traditionally played on a school playground... so you have dodgeball or tetherball, things that young kids play. Those who aren't necessarily into sports yet but certainly, we think, wanting to recreate those fun experiences that they have on the playground. Boogie, is a little bit differently targeted. We're seeing that as a product that is really resonating with young girls who want to have the microphone, want to sing, and play with their friends and make their character do crazy things. The three games you've referenced each have a different demographic target, but what they're all aligned on is casual games; they're quick to the fun, they're very easy to pick up and play and they're targeted to consumers who don't want to spend three hours in front of their TV playing a harder core game.

BIZ: With a franchise as popular as Pogo, why not simply release bigger Pogo games on console?

Vrabeck: We have had a DS SKU out there, Pogo Island, which has been fairly successful. With the nature of the console games, we haven't seen many successful compilations. If you think of what drives Pogo's success, and there are certainly some great games in there, it's about the process in creating your mini and being on the service and getting your points and getting your badges and your gems and playing against other folks while watching your leaderboard scores. A target that is very comfortable on a connected PC and is not as familiar with the console game space isn't looking for new gaming experiences in the retail section necessarily.