Cool with casual games

BOTHELL — Jill has fond childhood memories of her grandparents’ cakes and pastries, which they parlayed into a successful bakery over the years. The business even helped pay her way through culinary school.

So when she returned to town to find the bakery closed and the property bought up by a big-box retailer, Jill vowed to make her family’s business thrive again.

To do so, however, she needs to get good at baking cakes. Lots and lots of cakes, baked fast.

That’s the jumping-off point for the game Cake Mania, in which Jill is a character and which has propelled Sandlot Games, a Bothell startup, into the top ranks of the casual gaming industry during the past few years.

Casual games are different than the high-profile, shoot-‘em-up games such as “Halo 3.” Instead of catering to the hard-core gaming audience of 18- to 34-year-old males, casual games are those played by just about everyone else, usually with less frequency.

If you’ve ever passed time with a game of Tetris or solitaire on the computer, or if you occasionally played Pac-Man a couple of decades back, you’re a casual gamer.

“They’re different than what’s considered hard-core games,” said Daniel Bernstein, founder and chief executive officer of Sandlot Games. “The audience is usually older and predominantly female.”

But really, many casual games are designed for play by anyone.

“They’re very accessible,” added Bernstein, 36. “There’s a huge audience out there for these types of games.”

How huge? Cake Mania was the casual gaming sector’s top-selling game last year, racking up more than 50 million downloads to date. Each month, about 200 million people play casual games online, according to the Seattle-based Casual Games Association.

Casual gaming also represents the fastest-growing portion of the video game industry, attracting the attention of big-name companies such as Microsoft, Real Networks and AOL.

“It’s certainly a growing sector. It’s still a small slice, but it’s growing bigger by the day,” said James Brightman, editor of GameDaily BIZ, which is owned by AOL. “It really is getting a lot of attention.”

A big part of that has been the proliferation of Web sites that offer an array of casual games. But Brightman also credits Nintendo’s Wii game console, which has offered more casual game options than Sony’s PlayStation 3 or Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Many of the simple games take advantage of the Wii’s motion-sensing controller.

Bernstein said the increasing number of simple games on mobile devices also is boosting the casual gaming sector. Several Sandlot titles are available in versions for mobile and handheld devices.

Russian-born and trained as a pianist and composer, Bernstein didn’t always dream of creating video games. After moving with his family to the United States when he was 9, Bernstein became “Americanized” in suburban Chicago just as the first video game craze of the early 1980s came about.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science, he studied music composition and earned his master’s degree in that field from the University of Virginia. When he didn’t get accepted into the program of his choice for a doctorate degree in music, Bernstein began working for a Virginia video game developer in 1994, composing the game’s music.

Two years later, he came to Seattle to work for video game developer Monolith, again as a music composer. The more games he worked on, the more he learned. Because of his fluent Russian, he eventually began acquiring rights to Russian-developed games for Monolith, which steeped him in the business side of the industry.

After a short stint with a dot-com startup around 2000, Bernstein ended up at Wild Tangent, one of the biggest names in the casual gaming business.

But several things convinced him to go out on his own. He said a defining moment came in the late 1990s, when he was working on violent games such as Blood and Blood 2. He decided he didn’t want that to be what he worked on as he got older and raised a family.

Finally in 2002, it was time to follow his yearning. Sandlot Games was born.

“We actually started in my house, in a spare bedroom,” he said. He and a couple of other guys in his Mill Creek-area home developed a few games published by Wild Tangent. Within two years, four or five people were jammed into the bedroom office.

“We decided it was time to move out,” he said.

After first settling in downtown Bothell, the company’s been in Canyon Park for about a year. Bernstein says the privately held company is profitable, and he’s proud the firm has been smart about its growth, never requiring a major layoff in its five years.

Only half of the company’s work force is in Bothell, however. The other half is located near Bernstein’s birthplace — St. Petersburg, Russia. He set up the office there two years ago.

“I chose there partially because that’s where I found the team I needed, but mostly because it’s my hometown,” he said.

That team, as well as other contract employees around the globe, work on different aspects of the games. With instant online communication, it works well, Bernstein said.

The expansion of gaming online also helps games companies such as Sandlot get quick attention from casual gamers. Millions can try out a game for free online before deciding whether to buy it.

If a game is well-liked, as Cake Mania has been, some of the millions of people who download the game for free will then purchase it. While Sandlot won’t give exact figures, it’s estimated the first Cake Mania has sold several million copies.

After that success, Sandlot hopes its sequel is as well received. So far, Bernstein said, the reviews have been positive. Jennifer Schommer, who reviews casual games on her Casual Gamer Chick Web site, is among those who enjoyed playing the new game.

“Cake Mania 2 has the same basic trait as other time management games, but they add a nice mix of customers that keep the game interesting,” Schommer said via e-mail.

She added the game also has a few options to add to its replay appeal, and it doesn’t become too difficult too fast.

“Some time management games get hard really fast and this becomes frustrating,” she said. “I like games that progress gradually and Cake Mania 2 does just that.”

With the increasing popularity of casual games and the widening variety of devices that people are playing games on, Sandlot seems destined to keep growing. Bernstein, who still composes music for his company’s games, said he hopes the company can keep making money and developing engaging new games.

Considering the hits the company’s already had, there’s no reason to think that can’t continue, said Jessica Tam, managing director of the Casual Games Association.

“When you look at their prominence in this space, they’re doing very well,” she said.

Check out reporter Eric Fetters’ technology blog at heraldnet.com/techblog.

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