If you have a Facebook account, you're probably familiar with games like Farmville, Mafia Wars or Texas Hold’em Poker. The world of social network gaming is seen as a comparatively gentle one. Players are more likely to be growing crops and cooking dinners than slaying monsters and killing bad guys. These games might seem like a good way to entertain with no entrance condition. However, anyone who is involved deeply into it will find that it’s only the surface of the iceberg. So what’s more?
1. What are Social Games?
Social Games = Casual Games (user engagement) + Social Networking (viral distribution)
Basic types of social games include:
• Multiplayer games that utilize the social graph as part of the game. (Parking Wars, PackRat,..)
• Games which mainly involves socializing or social activities like chatting, trading, or flirting. (Farm Ville, Pet Society, Friends For Sale…)
• Turn-based games that are played within a social context or with friends. (Texas Hold'em Poker, Scrabble,…)
• Competitive casual games with friends-only leaderboards. (Who Has the Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge,…)
2. Working Principles
Most of social games work on four basic principles:
• Simple gameplay, which does not require much tactical or strategical thought. Just simply click on something and get the reward, then make it to other higher rewards in similar steps
• Real-time based element, which require you to wait for sometime when starting a process and doing activities. It doesn’t take much time for each visit but requires you to come back everyday, or even several times per day.
• Microtransactions, which are the solution for the dilemma of real time elements. To advance faster, game players need to buy more clicks or more rewards per time unit. For those who don’t want to spend money, they can do something like signing-up or taking a survey with the game company’s commercial partners
• Network connections, which means using the power of social networks. Friends can help or recruit each other in a social game even if you aren't online at the same time.
So basically, the common rule is to get people hooked with easy rewards, then block them from gaining those rewards as fast as they want, make them pay you money directly or via another company, and encourage them to invite all their friends to participate. In fact all of these games can be played without spending any real money, and without signing up for shady offers to receive more in-game currency. But in-game earnings will never be enough to keep things interesting. That’s the story!
3. Top Games
4. Top Companies
Most of social-game companies have built their entire business model around relatively tiny micro-transactions. Because the games are free, what companies are trying to do is get as many people engaged in the game as possible. Then they try to maximise the number of those players that we can offer something interesting to - that they would be willing to pay money for. Furthermore, the companies also try to maintain players’ interest through constant updates.
Current big players include:
• Zynga - 700 employees and $200 mil revenues in 2009, the developer of Facebook.
• Playfish - 250 employees and $75 mil revenues in 2009
• Playdom - 300 employees and $50 mil revenues in 2009, the leader on MySpace
Even these companies have made huge revenue, their reputation is going down. Last year, Tech Crunch revealed a video featuring Zynga CEO Mark Pincus saying the company "did every horrible thing in the book" to make money off of player. It was a hit to the company and players at that time
5. Security and Social Risks
• To accumulate significant amounts of currency, players can either purchase some with their credit card or sign up for an account or do some surveys with a third-party service. But it found that these surveys contain risks with its request to get your mobile phone number and end up at subscription for an unknown service at a specific cost.
• Being targeted by hackers and viruses is another possibility of playing social games. Some bugs can destroy all of your game progress.
• Spamming friends by numerous updates, requests or invitations might cause inconveniences and may lead to losing some “real” friends
6. Future of Social Games
• The expansion of social networks in terms of size and popularity will bring social games to more users. Furthermore, social networks are widely seen as the new email and the new SMS diving rich, shared content that capitalizes on mass interaction
• The development of smartphone market, app market and social networking usage on smart phones will enhance the popularity of social games.
• Game companies are planning to build up their own social networks
• Current social game players are aged between 18 and 34 but the 40+ market and the “mass market” are also present and potential.
• The upcoming social games will be more targeted and diverse in categories in order to cope with the increasing competition.
• The second generation of social games will be more developed in terms of gameplay and graphics. With Flash 10's 3D capabilities, 3D games may be coming to social networking sites soon.
• More channels and methods of trading virtual goods will be established. More online platforms to support game players will become popular.
