Justin Smith / Inside Social Games - Social Gaming Summit Talk Slides

Social Gaming SummitIndustry OverviewJune 23, 2009
Justin Smith
Editor, Inside Facebook
Editor, Inside Social Games
justin@insidesocialgames.com

What Are Social Games?
Casual games designed to be played with friends on online social platforms

Examples
Flirting, charity, virtual worlds, RPGs,
pets, trivia, sports, card, FPS

Platforms
Social networks
Mobile
Casual game portals
Web portals

Facebook
200M active users, 60M US
Powerful viral channels
Invitations, Notifications, News Feed
Relatively liberal appriach
Little monetization infrastructure/rules…
14,000+ games in 2 years

How Many Games?
1+ monthly player: 5,000 games
1,000+: 1,000 games
10,000+: 300 games
100,000+: 100 games
1,000,000+: 30 games
10,000,000+: 3 games

International Audience
70% of growth outside US

Audience Getting Older
56% of new users over 35

Gender/Age Breakdown

Facebook Connect
Identity
Social context
Sharing

Connect + Web
No more login

Connect + iPhone
Connecting games on mobile & social networks

Connect + Xbox

MySpace
125M active users, 60M US
Good viral channels
Relatively conservative approach
Many developers report better ARPUs
Virtual currency coming
> 1,000 games, don’t share active player metrics

Hi5
#1 in 30 countries (Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa)
Recently reorganized around game portal model
Launched virtual currency
400 games

Twitter
Early examples
Fast140
Tweet Quiz
RPGs
Spymaster
140 Mafia
Xbox
Sign in with Twitter…

Third Party Cross-Platform SDKs
Come2Play
J2Play
OpenFeint
Scoreloop
Gameyola

Casual/Flash Portals
Social features, but usually not connected to social networks
Cafe.com, Kongregate, Pogo, Bigpoint, AddictingGames

Web Portals
Contacts = friends?
iGoogle, My Yahoo

Monetization
User payments
Offers
Sponsored items
Ads

User Payments
Web
Social Gold, Spare Change
Facebook Credits, Hi5 Coins
Mobile
Zong
Boku

Offers
Offerpal, Super Rewards, Peanut Labs, AdParlor, Gambit, Sometrics

Sponsored Items
Advertiser pays for distribution

Monetization
ARPUs
Top: above $1.00-$2.00/month
Good FB: $0.30-$0.40
Good MS: $0.60-$0.70
Direct payments increasing share of revenues

Virtual Economies
Virtual economy optimization
Economic management
Retail reporting
Many new solutions
Payment challenges
Offers, credit cards, shopping carts, mobile
Geographic/age limitations
Many new solutions

Trends
Free to play games on social networks
Crowded monetization ecosystem, SNs getting involved
Optimizing for monetization earlier
New games bridging mobile and social
Continuous copycat/IP questions

News & Info
www.insidefacebook.com
www.insidesocialgames.com