Attendees at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle last week were
envious of how the social game companies have stolen a march on the old
guard casual game companies.
It’s clear that social game companies operate differently than
traditional casual game companies, and no company illustrates this
better than Playfish. Playfish has learned that games on social
networks are completely different from games on portals. They’re an
ongoing service, not a finished product that you ship and forget about,
says Playfish co-founder and chief operating officer Sebastien
deHalleux (right). They’re constantly revised by a team that sticks
with the game long after it makes its debut.
The San Francisco company was founded in the fall of 2007 by a team
of veterans who worked at Glu Mobile. They came up with original titles
on Facebook that found huge audiences.
Now, more than 37 million people are playing eight Playfish games on
Facebook. There are about eight million daily active users. That’s a
huge reach for a company that hasn’t even hit its two-year anniversary.
The astounding part of the company’s track record is that all eight of its games have hit the top 20 on Facebook, which now has well over 14,000 games available.
It explains why Playfish has raised $21 million. The company has 200 employees and is profitable, says deHalleux.
On Facebook, it’s easy to upgrade a game with the latest fixes and
improvements. The metrics on player behavior are available for the game
developers to study and learn from. It’s easy, for instance, to find
the point in a game where players are dropping out. The developers fix
the problem and then work on the next place where players drop out.
And while marketing muscle could drive audiences to portals and sell
lots of games, the users take control of distribution themselves on
social networks. They do so by recommending games to their friends.
Viral distribution becomes the No. 1 way that games are discovered.
It’s so powerful that Playfish doesn’t spend any money on marketing.
Not only do the developers have to create a great game. They have to
find a great way to get it noticed through viral distribution.
Companies need both the DNA of great game developers and the DNA of
great web app makers to be able to create great social games, deHalleux
says.
This new kind of social game became a sensation on Facebook this
year because the business model came together. Facebook has grown to
more than 250 million members. Every time a member looks at a Facebook
page, it generates an ad that in turn generates revenue for Facebook.
Hence, Facebook itself doesn’t have to take a big cut from the
developers on its platform. Its ranking system and viral discovery
means that the best games can rise to the top, so Facebook doesn’t
worry that there are too many apps on its site. That allows it to
accommodate lots of games.
Gareth Davis, program manager for games at Facebook, says casual
game companies have to take advantage of the unique characteristics of
the platform. They won’t succeed, he says, if they simply port their
catalog of games from the web. Davis says Playfish is a great example
of exploiting the uniqueness of the Facebook platform. It handles the
virality by word-of-mouth among friends, and it monetizes through
models such as virtual goods.
And while there are too many games, too many game makers, and too
many publishers in this age of game abundance, the one constant is that
an innovative game will stand above the pack. That’s what Playfish has
figured out.
Monetization and virality will set the platforms apartFacebook is thriving in part because it embraced the virtual goods models, where third-party companies such as PlaySpan
supply the currency system so that goods in the game can be
inventoried, tracked, exchanged, sold or cashed in. As this model
kicked into high gear this year, it replaced the pure ad-driven models
of the web or the try-before-you-buy model of casual downloadable
games. On Facebook, virtual goods could generate $500 million in
revenues this year, according to estimates in our past stories.
“Virtual goods is a hot space,” said Andrew Schneider, president of
Live Gamer, which just yesterday announced it was acquiring virtual
goods provider N-Cash of South Korea.
The game companies that are making money from virtual goods have
figured out how to keep users hooked, in much the same way nightclubs
make money by creating the impression of scarcity and exclusivity,
Chang says. If nightclubs hang a velvet rope outside and hire a
bouncer, people start lining up. Inside, the nightclubs charge you more
if you want table service with a bottle of wine. And if you want to get
into the VIP area, you have to pay more. That’s how the motivation and
monetization works in virtual goods transactions as well.
While Facebook has this system in place, Apple just started offering
it with the iPhone 3.0 software. Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga,
wants Apple to move faster toward mimicking the monetization options on
Facebook, with better virtual goods and other sorts of models as well.
Shervin Pishevar, chief executive of Social Gaming Network, notes
that the iPhone platform is young and it has been evolving in the right
direction. While Facebook has institutionalized social recommendations
into its platform, Pishevar believes the iPhone has similar
characteristics, where games spread because friends tell each other
about the coolest apps they download. Over time, he is confident the
fast-growing iPhone can be as important as Facebook.
There are other monetization schemes in place such as special offers from companies such as Super Rewards, Offerpal
, Peanut
Labs and others. But virtual goods, which had its origins in the Korean
online game industry, is finally coming into its own in the U.S. with
social games.
Trying to adaptCasual game companies aren’t simply letting social game companies
take their customers without a fight. Mochi Media drew a big crowd to
its party and saw good response as it unveiled its virtual goods
platform for Flash-based web games.
Jameson Hsu, founder of Mochi Media, said he hopes the new platform
will help casual game makers monetize their Flash games more easily and
give them a reason to keep making them. Mochi Media doesn’t want the
ecosystem for casual games to fall apart. While late, it’s a good
defensive measure.
PopCap Games is probably one of the best casual game development and
publishing companies anywhere. The Seattle-based company got started in
2000 and, as we mentioned, kicked off the Casual Game 1.0 era with the
launch of Bejeweled. PopCap has now grown to more than 230 employees
and still focuses on producing the highest-quality casual games. It is
moving slowly but deliberately into the next-generation social games.
David Roberts, (right) chief executive of PopCap Games, is worried
about the huge number of free games hitting the market. And when new
games come out, the company can’t charge $19.99 under the
try-before-you-buy model, at least not for as long as in the past.
But his team hasn’t changed its focus from doing five to 10
high-quality games each year. The company can be criticized for riding
the Bejeweled bandwagon for too long. It sells a version of Bejeweled
every 10 seconds now. But it has come up with other hits such as
Bookworm, Peggle, and now most recently Plants vs. Zombies. Roberts
thinks that cross-audience games with cross-platform approaches are the
future.
Plants
vs. Zombies was the work of four people who for the most part labored
for three years to create the game. Modeled after a typical Tower
Defense game, you have to plant your plants in a way that they can
defend your house against invading zombies. Since its debut, the game
has been one of the fastest selling and best-reviewed games in PopCap’s
history. The company believes the game has sold more than any iPhone
game this year, in terms of revenues. It sells under the “try before
you buy” downloadable game model, at an average of $15 each. Roberts
thinks the game appeals across audiences since it’s fun for both
hardcore and casual gamers.
por FILIP_FB Qua Dez 05, 2012 11:20 am
Casual Games 3.0