Max Tiilikainen
Life simulation game. What Makes Social Games Social? When people think about online social gaming, two broad categories of games immediately spring to mind: casual social games and hardcore MMOs.
Despite the criticisms leveled by traditional game designers at casual games for their Skinner Box-like appeals to our core psychic compulsions, these games have become wildly popular on Facebook and mobile devices. MMOs, while never as broadly appealing, enjoy multi-year runs and rabidly loyal user bases. Mobile Social Gamers: The New Mass-Market Powerhouse. Hardcore Gamers are so 2007 As the growth of iOS and Android mobile devices continues to explode, there is a tectonic shift in the landscape of video gaming, a medium that continues to reach the most powerful spenders in the economy.
Not only are these emerging platforms attracting droves of existing gamers, but also spawning a new and highly engaged audience: the mass-market mobile casual gamer. The era of marketing singularly to the 18 – 34 hardcore male gamer is officially over. Given the sheer size of the video game industry, this is a watershed moment. In January 2011, according to the NPD Group, 2010 worldwide video game revenue, excluding hardware, exceeded $15 billion. Below are two charts that demonstrate how age and gender demographics vary between the traditional gaming audience and mobile social gamers.
Reviewing the charts, it’s clear that mobile social gaming is attracting a much stronger female base, as well as a younger average user. The U.S. Mobile & Social Game Design - Tim Fields - pocketbok(9781466598683) Social Games for Smartphones; The Challenges and the Opportunities. Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast) In this talk Hong-Yee will begin in mid 2010 when IUGO decided to jump on the path of developing social games for Smartphones.
Hear about the studio’s early success with its partnership on Lil’ Pirates with Capcom, the aggressive move to pump out several social titles for 2011/2012, the proprietary tech behind it and why designing, developing and deploying social games for mobile is a whole new frontier. Hong-Yee will speak about the strategies that have kept IUGO competitive in the highly volatile mobile social space. Delivered at Casual Connect Asia, May 2012. EA's Playfish to Bring Pet Society, Restaurant City Brands to iOS - Inside Mobile Apps. One of the last few big social gaming companies yet to make a serious debut on mobile, EA’s Playfish is bringing Pet Society and Restaurant City to iOS later this summer.
Both are standalone games rather than companions to their Facebook parents, yet one comes with a much deeper Facebook integration than the other one. How January 2011’s Top 10 Facebook Games Are Doing in December 2011. Here’s a look at where AppData‘s top 10 games of January 2011 are now in December 2011, as the calendar year draws to a close.
A year is typically the better part of a social game’s life cycle for titles launched on Facebook after 2009. During those first 12 months, a game will grow rapidly in first three months, peak in overall traffic, then begin to shrink over the following six months. EA shuts down Sim City Social, The Sims Social and Pet Society June 14. Game developer and publisher Electronic Arts announced that on June 14 it will retire three of its Facebook games: Sim City Social, The Sims Social and Pet Society.
EA made the announcement on its website and explained that the games were being retired so it can “can reallocate development resources to other titles.” The announcement also encourages players to spend their existing balance of in-game currency as it will become invalid starting June 14. This is a dramatic but not at all surprising move for EA. Abhishek Buchvani's Blog - Social Games: Inside - Out. The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Over the past few years we’ve seen a tectonic shift in gaming away from traditional, hardcore titles in favor of more casual, social games. It’s no coincidence that this change has has occurred alongside the rise of Facebook and smartphones, as these platforms have thrown open the gates of gaming to entirely new demographics. Now as developers scramble to capitalize on these new markets the question becomes who are these new gamers, and what do they want to see? Demography. 2011_kabam_isg_social_games_research_results.pdf. Playnomics_Q3-report_Final-copy.pdf. The Social Network Game Boom. With over 200 million people registered on Facebook, the most popular social networking site, and millions, millions more on similar sites like MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5, social networking has become a part of daily life.
As quoted in the Financial Times, one CIO of a leading U.S. firm found that her young employees "communicate by Facebook and simply will not read their e-mail. " Worldwide, social activists are using social networking sites to organize protests. Meanwhile, others have found old classmates and friends using these sites. Those Facebook Games We Play and Why We Play Them. Millions of people around the world play one or more of what the gaming industry calls “casual” video games.
Unlike their alternative the “hard core” types of video games that involve targeting enemies, the casual video games present you with challenges in which you must make combinations of matching items or create a system to manage everything from farm animals to meals. Some games are virtual card or board games in which you compete against someone else in your friendship circle, or even a random stranger. Compared to what you hear about those hard core games such as Grant Theft Auto or Call of Duty, you feel pretty safe that by playing with these innocuous, if not downright cute, forays into fantasy, you’re probably pretty safe. You may also have heard about the cognitive benefits of video game playing. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Second Edition - Jesse Schell - Google Books.
General Video Games Statistics. Design Tools and other Methods. Geek feminism/ sexisme commu geek.