14 DAY TRIAL // Oberon Media, well known as being one of the more successful casual game publishers, has announced that it would be moving its online presence to iplay.com, as part of renaming its publishing division I-play, uniting the publishing operations under the brand of a mobile games publisher it acquired.
Oberon describes the new site as being both a game portal, where you can get the latest casual games and play them online, and as a community portal where people who enjoy the same games can connect and share experiences.
Oberon Games was recently targeted by THQ in a deal regarding the publishing rights to the company's already well established casual games catalog. THQ has signed a partnership which is aimed at bringing games like Cake Mania 2 or Women's Murder Club: Death in Scarlet to a variety of platforms. All production work will be handled by Oberon, while THQ will take care of all the activities related to distribution and marketing.
Don Ryan, who is the senior vice president of publishing at Oberon Media, has made some comments regarding the shift to the I-play brand to Gamasutra. He says, "I think the community element is critical in a lot of these casual games, even if it's a single player game. Having the ability to give some kind of reward, like Achievements, or badges or tokens to share within an outer game experience".
Also, he thinks that diversity and aiming for simple, yet engaging gameplay is the key to creating a fast growing casual games market. He thinks that Oberon is "As a company, we're trying to position ourselves to weave in some of that innovation, and also to help put together unified experiences across the different screens. We want to really start thinking about user experiences first, and how they want to connect to each other before we worry about the device to deliver that experience. That's what we're excited about, and what we see as the evolution of casual games going forward".