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It’s game time for streaming services: a growing number of streamers are betting on casual games as a way to keep viewers hooked when they’ve run out of things to watch.
Toronto-based Zone-ify added free casual games to its ad-supported streaming service in June. Last month, close to 70 casual games arrived on Happykids and Fawesome, two ad-supported streaming services run by streaming startup Future Today. And later this year, Netflix is expected to expand its own gaming efforts with what company executives have called party games — casual titles that could turn movie night into game night.
It’s not the first time that companies have tried to blur the lines between gaming and leanback entertainment. But while prior efforts were largely focused on turning streaming devices into would-be game consoles, this new push focuses much more on casual gaming. Think Connect 4, not Counterstrike.
Casual games have been a huge hit on mobile, where breakout hits like Candy Crush and Wordle, the uber-popular word game the New York Times acquired in 2022, have turned hundreds of millions of people who would never describe themselves as gamers into habitual players. Can the same happen in the living room? And what does it take for streaming services to have their Worlde moment and launch a title that gets tens of millions of people to play every day?
For this week’s edition of Lowpass, I chatted with Zone-ify’s chief content officer John Orlando and Volley CEO Max Child to find out. I also spent a little too much time playing casual games on my TV …
From Angry Birds to Bandersnatch
When I first heard about streamers adding casual games, I thought: here we go again.
Over the years, there have been many attempts to turn streaming into more than just passive entertainment. Roku, for instance, struck a partnership in 2011 to bring Angry Birds to its platform. At the time, Roku even released a limited-edition Angry Birds-themed streaming device.
Amazon released its first Fire TV device with an optional game controller in 2014. And when Nvidia entered the streaming device market with the Nvidia Shield in 2015, it initially didn’t even include a remote control in the box, with the company betting that the device would appeal to gamers first and foremost.
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