10 predictions for social games in the next three years. Presented at the BrowserGameForum 2011 in Frankfurt on Nov 18th 2011.

1. Future of social
games
BrowserGamesForum 2011
Kappuru

2. Jmaz Photo

3. MRBill

4. Lies
Damn lies
Statistics
Predictions
Xurble

5. Cross promo
150 million MAU
#rebelalliance
Social games
2008-2010
#failed
Console racing games
2004-2008
#flatout Stevendepolo

6. !"#$%&'(%)*+''
,$&&')%-*'
%'&".'"/''
money
AMagill

7. Global SNS Gaming Market
10 (US$ in Billions)
$9.0B
9
Advertising
8
7 24% CAGR
6
5
4
$3.8B
Virtual goods
3
2
“Facebook is roughly half of this”
1
0
0122' 0120' 0123' 0124' 0125'
Source: Lazard Capital Markets

8. l go upa lot
ARPU wil
Sh4rp_i Kevin Dooley

9. ARPU comparison
Adjusted for per capita income
Source: Lazard Capital Markets and company reports

10. Zhent_
But it will get very expensive

11. 5'
465'
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9:;'
365'
9:9'
User 3'
065'
acquisition 0'
265'
2'
165'
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Social media advertising 4x in <5 years
! huge increase in competition & prices
Content
Yes, a symphony orchestra soundtrack
Soon: 3D? Cloud Gaming?

12. A 24% CAGR market will
Competition attract late entrants
Mobile & Social convergence
“Pay to play”
Developer & operations talent is
scarce and fought over
Operations Metrics, predictives, other
operative systems are
complex & expensive

13. pa rtners
?
Publishing becomes typical

14. The cycle
A new platform is born ! Indies run wild ! “HOT HOT HOT!”
Platform becomes successful
Everybody wants in, VCs throw in tons of money
Costs go up, skills become more specialized, success isn’t easy
Winners emerge, market consolidates
VCs bow out (“market’s done”)
Costs are up, distribution is hard, money is scarce
! Publishers enter the market
But it is hard to publish a live game. Expect plenty of failures on the way
Guille

15. Self-publishers
will band together

16. Economies of
Scale
Cross promote
Retain users
Favorable terms
Pick one:
Succeed together
Go solo, sink alone?
Work for hire
Exit the market
Robert Nilsson

17. Interest Social
meets
graph graph
Shaniber

19. Mobage, Gree, Xbox Live on top of Facebook?
Avatars vs. real identity?

20. Real Social?
Anirudh Kouhl

21. ?
This could go either way
YES! NO!
• Higher ARPU • Much harder to create
• More engaging • Mini-MMOs worth the
• Better retention investment?
• PvP makes for great • Do users on Facebook
monetization really care?
• Opportunity for browser • Real people are messy
game makers? • Does a soccer mom
tolerate being griefed?

22. Wider variety

23. The drivers of variety
More HC More casual
• Tech: Flash 3D, game • Core FB audience looks for
streaming bite sized diversions
• Mid-core makes more money • Are social games getting a bit
too complex for the core FB
• “Get away from Zynga” audience?
• Audience appetite for mid- • “Just copy Nintendo”
core, 200M players Where’s Brain Training?
• Lots of overlap between • “Just copy Big Fish”
console & social gamers ! look at Gardens of Time
Lucy Nieto

24. Social, mobile,
Mobile social…
It’s all the same

25. Identical audience, games, monetization
HTML5 + WebGL everywhere
Multi-screen games/IP
Facebook wins app discovery
game for mobile
Google+ embedded into Android (already)
Need to play in social & mobile
to be a true winner
Lucy Nieto

26. Battle of the
giants
Zynga vs. Nexon
vs. Gree vs. DeNA
vs. late entrants

27. Mobile SNS
gaming gaming
Console
Online
gaming

28. Bring your popcorn,
it’s going to be epic
Public companies with
$ billions in war chests
Grudge match between
DeNA & Gree
Zynga: “win mobile
at any cost”
Core publishers can’t
ignore stagnant revenue
vs. >20% CAGR
ScypaxPictures

29. Awesome
time to be
in games!
Kristina Alexanderson

30. jussi@applifier.com
@jussil
Kristina Alexanderson