Casual Games Get Nickelodeon Sponsored Award Show

I’m not one of those gamers who hates the casual game market, in fact I think its the lifeblood of gaming these days – my kids for example are for more likely to be found playing mini-games on AddictingGames.com or Gaia or any of the billion casual flash game portals than they are to fire up their favorite console games. The casual game industry has insinuated itself into the hearts and minds of every generation from toddler to elder and quite a lot of gaming is happening in browsers these days.

Well, it seems Nickelodeon, the children’s network that hosts such moments of TV gold as iCarly and Drake and Josh, has decided the time has come to produce yet another video-game award show – AddictingGames Showdown.

On July 27th at 8:00 Eastern Time they will offer a web centric special highlighting a number of web and casual games. The show is touted to be a live convergence event featuring one of the cast of the aforementioned iCarly show – Jerry Trainor. Trainor will host the event and present the insightful categotries, many o f which are obviously designed to reflect the young audiences’ sense of fun over technical art. The sneaked categories include gems like “Best Performance by a Monkey” and “Most Courageous Stick Figure Stunt”.

Personally I’m not sure we need yet another gaming oriented awards show, let alone one witht he Nickelodeon flair but it is interesting to see the network segregating casual games away from the traditional console offerings that dominate most gaming events. Also how valid would an “award show” be in any other industry if it was say the “Paramount Pictures Academy Award”?

AddictingGames.com  has a vested interest in attracting new players not to the casual market as a whole.. so I’ll be surprised if this is anything more than a coordinated marketing event for the website and Nickelodeon.