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Kristian Segerstrale
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1 year ago
in Facebook’s platform issues: Less developer activity, slower app growth on VentureBeat
Interesting data. Although I think the impact of it on developers will depend a lot on what kind of applications they make.
Over time there is an incentive for social networks to support the kind of applications which help them achieve their goals (distribution, retention, time spent on the site, monetization etc), over applications that "game the system" and reduce user satisfaction through excessive spam or otherwise.
As a games company creating high production value games for social networks, we at Playfish actually see stricter moderation of the platform as a good thing. It will help reduce noise for consumers and get them to focus on the applications they enjoy using. Other video game platforms are far more restrictive about publishing for their system, so in comparison things are still pretty good even on Facebook.
We also haven't really seen an impact on our own numbers from the recent changes. We just launched a title "Word Challenge" last week and reached 100,000 players in less than a week. Our "Who Has The Biggest Brain?" is still going strong at over 2.5 million players.
So the platform is maturing. But that's not necessarily a reason to abandon it, but rather to think harder how to add value to it.
Facebook's approach to building its platform has been very thoughtful to date and this just seems the next natural step in its evolution.
Over time there is an incentive for social networks to support the kind of applications which help them achieve their goals (distribution, retention, time spent on the site, monetization etc), over applications that "game the system" and reduce user satisfaction through excessive spam or otherwise.
As a games company creating high production value games for social networks, we at Playfish actually see stricter moderation of the platform as a good thing. It will help reduce noise for consumers and get them to focus on the applications they enjoy using. Other video game platforms are far more restrictive about publishing for their system, so in comparison things are still pretty good even on Facebook.
We also haven't really seen an impact on our own numbers from the recent changes. We just launched a title "Word Challenge" last week and reached 100,000 players in less than a week. Our "Who Has The Biggest Brain?" is still going strong at over 2.5 million players.
So the platform is maturing. But that's not necessarily a reason to abandon it, but rather to think harder how to add value to it.
Facebook's approach to building its platform has been very thoughtful to date and this just seems the next natural step in its evolution.
1 year ago
in Mattel and Hasbro release their own Facebook Scrabble game on The Equity Kicker
From a social game publisher's perspective this is significant as it will provide a good data point on how important a brands are versus product design / quality on a social network.
Brands have always been important in video games. When forced to make a selection between a number of titles in a similar category in retail (digital or physical), consumers tend to choose something they recognize and trust. Brands have also helped by providing more marketing channels for the game launch and sometimes even allowed publishers to get away with second rate products and still be financially successful. Ownership of brands has also played a key role in entrenching the market shares of the big publishers of video games.
But this all could be quite different for social games.
For our first title "Who Has The Biggest Brain?" - currently the #6 Facebook game with 250,000+ daily unique players - 90%+ of distribution is viral. That means that the vast majority of our new players don't choose the game from a catalogue - a friend sends it to them. So assuming you trust your friend it's not clear whether you need a brand or any further marketing help in order to distribute your title. After all your friend either decides to invite you to play or not, and you either trust that invitation or not. So it's unclear as to what difference it makes if the product is "branded" - only whether it's fun enough to invite your friend to play.
The great thing about the official Scrabble launch is that we'll have two direct comparables on facebook. This should provide some clues as to the kind of companies are likely be successful in the social games market in the future. I will follow this with interest...
Brands have always been important in video games. When forced to make a selection between a number of titles in a similar category in retail (digital or physical), consumers tend to choose something they recognize and trust. Brands have also helped by providing more marketing channels for the game launch and sometimes even allowed publishers to get away with second rate products and still be financially successful. Ownership of brands has also played a key role in entrenching the market shares of the big publishers of video games.
But this all could be quite different for social games.
For our first title "Who Has The Biggest Brain?" - currently the #6 Facebook game with 250,000+ daily unique players - 90%+ of distribution is viral. That means that the vast majority of our new players don't choose the game from a catalogue - a friend sends it to them. So assuming you trust your friend it's not clear whether you need a brand or any further marketing help in order to distribute your title. After all your friend either decides to invite you to play or not, and you either trust that invitation or not. So it's unclear as to what difference it makes if the product is "branded" - only whether it's fun enough to invite your friend to play.
The great thing about the official Scrabble launch is that we'll have two direct comparables on facebook. This should provide some clues as to the kind of companies are likely be successful in the social games market in the future. I will follow this with interest...
1 year ago
in On widgets, social networks and the nature of existence on The Equity Kicker
Thanks for the great post. Let me add a little to it from the perspective of video games. After all, we are used to the idea of existing purely in the context of different platforms created by 3rd parties.
Socnets make great game platforms - perhaps the best there ever was. Despite the lack of screen real estate They have so many advantages over other game platforms that they are likely to have a significant impact on the games industry as a whole over the coming years. Here's why :
1. Knowing who your friends are allows for entirely new types of game design centered on the emotional want to play together and express yourself rather than escape the real world. This is very difficult to do on platforms who don't know who your friends are - be it a website, XBox360, DS or a Wii.
2. Having access to a vocal user community, tons of player data AND the ability to tweak the game at will allows you to make better games - even if a particular player wants to play alone. You can constantly learn from your users, perfect how your game is played and distributed and communicate with your players about changes. Something that most other platforms can only dream of.
3/ Monetisation of a game in the context of a socnet cuts out the retailer and allows for far more inventive and interesting business and distribution models than what is available on most other platforms.
Video games have always been dependent on 3rd party APIs and socnets are no different. If anything socnets are better in that they tend to be more open and have no first party game publishing interest to worry about compared to other platforms.
So games will for sure continue to exist on platforms outside of socnets. But socnets could well turn out to become the primary platforms for many of them - particularly at the casual end of the market.
This turned out more as a post than a comment - but there you go. :)
More on the subject here:
http://blog.playfish.com
Socnets make great game platforms - perhaps the best there ever was. Despite the lack of screen real estate They have so many advantages over other game platforms that they are likely to have a significant impact on the games industry as a whole over the coming years. Here's why :
1. Knowing who your friends are allows for entirely new types of game design centered on the emotional want to play together and express yourself rather than escape the real world. This is very difficult to do on platforms who don't know who your friends are - be it a website, XBox360, DS or a Wii.
2. Having access to a vocal user community, tons of player data AND the ability to tweak the game at will allows you to make better games - even if a particular player wants to play alone. You can constantly learn from your users, perfect how your game is played and distributed and communicate with your players about changes. Something that most other platforms can only dream of.
3/ Monetisation of a game in the context of a socnet cuts out the retailer and allows for far more inventive and interesting business and distribution models than what is available on most other platforms.
Video games have always been dependent on 3rd party APIs and socnets are no different. If anything socnets are better in that they tend to be more open and have no first party game publishing interest to worry about compared to other platforms.
So games will for sure continue to exist on platforms outside of socnets. But socnets could well turn out to become the primary platforms for many of them - particularly at the casual end of the market.
This turned out more as a post than a comment - but there you go. :)
More on the subject here:
http://blog.playfish.com
