In a sign of the growing importance of the casual gaming sector, MTV Networks' Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group today announced (at the Casual Connect gaming conference in Seattle) that it will commit a whopping $100 million over the next two years for development, distribution and creation of casual gaming titles, sites and platforms.

"Across all of MTVN's online sites, gaming is an important original genre and we are committed to delivering fresh content to our audiences in all of our demos," explained Cyma Zarghami, President, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group. "Particularly in the kids' space, with more than 86% of kids 8 to 14 gaming online, we see great momentum for online casual gaming. This investment will not only benefit our audiences, but also our marketing and distribution partners."

The announcement is a sign of "MTV Networks' overall commitment to leading in the gaming space, including casual games, games media, console-based and handheld games." Of course, MTV has been making a bigger and bigger splash in the gaming arena lately with acquired properties such as Xfire, GameTrailers.com, and the company's purchase of Guitar Hero creator Harmonix, which is bringing out Rock Band later this year.

Although Nickelodeon will roll out the investment over the next couple years, the company said that the bulk of the plan will be realized in 2008-2009. Nickelodeon has a number of initiatives to spearhead its growth in casual gaming, including a focus on female teens, casual MMOs, increased support for Shockwave and AddictingGames, and more.

The company outlined its major initiatives as follows:

  • myNOGGIN: A subscription service where preschoolers can play educational games and parents can track their progress will launch this fall with Charter Communications, Cox Communications and Insight Communications. It will also become available directly to consumers online in the fall through a subscription model. myNOGGIN will be advertising free, and will build upon existing hit Nickelodeon Kids and Family brands for preschoolers and their parents, Nick Jr. and NOGGIN.
  • Nick.com/Nicktropolis Multiplayer Games/Tournaments: www.nick.com will expand upon its existing gaming franchise, New Game of the Week, giving it a multiplayer focus. The first new effort in this space is 3D Slimeball on Nick.com. In addition, multiplayer, cooperative gaming will become part of Nicktropolis (www.nicktropolis.com), complementing the safe chat, virtual economy, and item trading capabilities on the site.
  • Nick Gaming Club: Nickelodeon's first ever subscription offering, Nick Gaming Club will be a safe gaming environment featuring multiplayer games, 3D avatars and community features. It will include games based on Nickelodeon properties as well as others. The Nick Gaming Club will launch in first quarter 2008.
  • The-NGames.com: Launching in early 2008, The-NGames.com will become the first major casual gaming site to focus solely on teen girls. The-N.com, which previously focused on social games for teen girls with games like Slasher, Avatar Mall and others, will partner with AddictingGames to produce this new site.
  • AddictingGames and AddictingWorlds: AddictingGames' offerings will be expanded to include casual MMOGs with the introduction of AddictingWorlds, a way to introduce a variety of virtual worlds to the AddictingGames' audience. www.addictinggames.com already features a few virtual worlds on its site, having recently entered into a partnership with Habbo and with an existing partnership with sister site Neopets. In addition, increased emphasis will be placed on user-submitted games on the site including more prominent upload capabilities and game-making engines.
  • Shockwave: Shockwave will become the games destination for families. Increased focus this fall on www.shockwave.com will be on the creation of innovative applications which are both fun for the user and an opportunity for prominent integrated advertising. The first new application to launch is Jigsaw Video. In addition, Shockwave will be more closely linked with family-targeted brands within Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group, like Nick-at-Nite television, to give advertisers the ability to promote their messaging across multiple platforms. Shockwave will also increase its publishing of downloadable games with Carrie the Caregiver Episode 2: Preschool, scheduled to come out later this year.
  • NeoStudios: Neopets (www.neopets.com) will be transformed into Neostudios, which will focus on developing new virtual world gaming experiences online, while continuing to grow and evolve the existing ones. The first of these will launch at the end of 2008 with a goal to launch a new one every other year.