With the social gaming landscape still shifting, Stewart Darkin looks at the latest developments.
As topics go, social gaming must rank as one of the hottest of 2012. It’s high on every event agenda and has quickly become a touchstone for anyone wishing to reference the i-gaming zeitgeist. But just what is going on?
Facebook continues to be social gaming’s shop window and with the network now boasting user numbers in excess of one billion, the potential market for games developers is dazzlingly seductive. But, with the average age of Facebook users still falling and the focus of games on the platform being on interaction, where’s the money? So-called microtransactions may offer the bigger providers a feasible margin but, by and large, Facebook users have been inclined to play, not pay. The social gaming and online gambling sectors have, until very recently, been mutually exclusive. There has been a clear distinction between betting online and playing games for fun with friends i.e. social gaming. Driven by irresistible market forces, the two have perhaps inevitably begun to converge. Given the sheer numbers willing to play social games, predominantly on Facebook, the prospect of ‘monetisation’ has proven to be a tantalising one.
But the great revolution in social media, from Facebook and Bebo to Twitter, Instagram and beyond, has been fuelled by an appetite for human interaction. Monetising the desire to be with your ‘friends’, in a market predicated on free access, is a tough hand to play. So far, there have been few winners.
Facebook’s willingness to accommodate third-party developers, coupled with the popularity of early games such as Farmville and Mob Wars, initially attracted a huge range of social games. Many simply imitated the most successful, a number were of poor quality and others were little more than annoying. Rather clunkily, many ‘free’ games would only give away a certain amount of content before shutting out non-paying players. That didn’t work either. ‘Unlike’.
This article can be read in full in the December issue of iNTERGAMINGi.
