Mochi means much to game creators

Along with the consumer and the advertiser, there's one more often forgotten beneficiary to this business model: the developer. Game makers can now create casual titles using Flash and generate revenue for very little overhead. It's also a great way to get a start in the gaming industry for those needing their first break.

"I was just at a conference recently, and John Riccitiello, the CEO of EA, said that the cost to make games is going up, as much as $50 million in some cases," commented Hsu. "That's stifling because it removes the possibility for creativity. I've seen some amazing things come out from developers using only Flash, like Flow, Zoo Keeper, Alien Hominid. We've seen an interesting transition in the industry, and with the low overhead of Flash development, it allows [developers] to do a lot more. Take Bloons for instance. [It's a] simple little Flash puzzle game, but just last month, it got about 7.7 million impressions and it was played on 26,000 different sites. That's why advertisers are so interested in the content; it spreads around because it's so engaging. It's friends calling friends and putting it in their MySpace page. It's all consumer driven and that's what advertisers want. With our platform, we're able to deliver games to consumers, with advertisers benefiting all the way.

"For a lot of [casual developers], it's a part time gig. They might have another job, but Flash gives them the time and hope to [create games]. One guy did so well we presented him to one of our advertisers and he's made four or five games for them and created his own firm. We're going to see more growth and opportunities open for these guys going forward and it really makes us happy to see this happen."

Mochi mochi!

Mochi has positioned itself quite well to be an important player in the casual gaming industry. And let there be no doubt, casual games are booming with hundreds of millions of dollars being invested and more sure to follow. With MochiAds, it looks like not only a win for consumers and advertisers, but for the small developers as well.

"Casual games started with consoles, but eventually the bureaucracy stamped much of that out, and then we saw the indie developer market in direct downloads, but it started to consolidate," mused Hsu. "If you want to make a direct downloadable game, you have to go through Pop-Cap or someone else. But Flash is still an open market; people don't have to download the game file and install it. This is the next revolution in casual games and people are empowering themselves to distribute the content. This is the evolution of TV, right? The web is slowly evolving into that casual market. People are reluctant to fork over more money for content, but there's an interesting trend: people are spending more money on micro-transactions. How that carries over to online games is only just being revealed."

"We've been growing 30% month over month for a year now and we've been distributing games with Rockview. That relationship is more established than MyGame.com, and these syndication deals are phenomenal; they love getting a new feed of fresh, free games. They get content and people coming back to their site, the developers get greater distribution and reach and advertisers get whole new audiences. We get to see the system evolve and ultimately, the advertisers and the game developers are going to benefit the most," he concluded.