An analysis of the opportunities, costs, risks, and realities of the social game space on Facebook. Gives an idea of what publishers and developers are really getting into when they attempt to develop social games for Facebook.
Developed by Bitfold Online Games
11. Player Base: 53 million US internet users played social games in 2010, 62 million are expected to play in 2011[1]
12. Opportunity for New Developers: The userbase of the top 5 social game developers shrunk significantly in 2010, while that of small & medium developers rose. [2]
13. International Markets: International social game markets are growing, with markets like Japan earning $1.2 billion USD in virtual goods revenue in 2010[3]
53. Many medium size developers gain most of their active users from their 2-3 most popular games, indicating that a well designed, well supported game is worth a lot.
54. Over 50% of the top 45 game developers have DAU counts of 750k or above. For the developers that have monetized their games well, this likely means many millions per year in revenue.
85. Run a closed beta or only spend a small initial amount on marketing to gauge whether the game will be a big failure or has possibility for success before spending a large amount of marketing dollars to .