2004 Web and Downloadable Games White Paper 

IGDA Online Games SIG 

incremental revenue? To set a context, this paper classifies these models into  Primary Business Models  

and  Secondary Business Models  and defines each as follows: 

a) 

Primary Business Model 

Those business models which currently successful companies today pursue as their core set of 

products or services, and that without that core business the company could not exist. 

b) 

Secondary Business Model 

Those businesses in which companies are involved, but are either dependent upon the primary 

business model for success, or that represent a relatively small, non cannibalistic, and incremental 

source of revenue that can be obtained with minimum resource investment. 

Some game developers may object to the  secondary  classification of some of these models, but it is 

not meant to minimize the importance of these approaches. It simply draws a line between those 

models that seem stable on their own, vs. those models that require augmentation to stabilize them. 

Shockwave's GameBlast Subscription Service 

Written by Scott Roesch, VP Marketing, AtomShockwave Corp. 

GameBlast  (www.gameblast.com)  is  a  premium  games  service  of  Shockwave.com,  providing 

subscribers with a higher quality, more convenient playing experience. Elements of this improved 

game experience include: 

Unlimited  access  to  premium  games  with  exclusive  features  including  full screen  play, 

bonus levels, and extra difficulty settings 

No annoying ads 

New releases every month at no additional charge 

Discounts on other purchases 

The service initially launched in November 2002 and has grown steadily since. 

The GameBlast strategy grew from our efforts marketing single game titles as digital downloads 

to Shockwave.com consumers. In 2001, Shockwave.com made the transition from a free online 

entertainment site to a tiered experience, in which paying customers had access to more content. 

We learned at that time that consumers will pay for the right game, packaged and presented in 

the right way.  

We foresaw that a recurring billing strategy would ultimately be essential: Rather than relying on 

user relationships with specific content titles, we could build user loyalty in a broader sense. While 

users  might  not  feel  strongly  enough  about  each  new  title  to  buy  it,  we  believed  that  could 

generate  loyalty  to  an  aggregation  service  that  provided access to a large selection of content. 

This approach seemed more valuable for our purposes, and also provided greater value to the 

consumer. 

GameBlast was initially designed to allow us to test a subscription service without cannibalizing 

our  successful  digital download  business.  As  a  result,  we  defined  GameBlast  as  an  online 

experience. We launched with 32 game titles from a broad range of genres, and duplicated basic 

Shockwave.com community functionality such as high scores and content reviews.  

Initial  response  was  positive,  but  not  overwhelming.  We  met  our  initial  expectations.  Certain 

categories  of  game  enthusiasts  were  extremely  pleased  with  GameBlast;  others  were  not. 

Subscriber numbers continued to grow month over month.  

Page 24 of 93