Beyond Facebook: How social games terrify traditional game maker. Facebook is truly shaking up the traditional video game market and the responses from the industry range from panic to visions of a new kind of gaming paradise for the world. Jesse Schell, a game design professor at Carnegie Mellon University, generated a lot of chuckles this morning with his observations about that in his talk “Beyond Facebook” at the Dice Summit in Las Vegas. At the conference aimed at the hardcore game developers, Schell said that traditional game developers were completely taken by surprise by the success of games such as FarmVille on Facebook in the past year. It is truly stunning to note that, at 79 million monthly active users, there are more FarmVille users than Twitter users. “All I’ve heard this year is Facebook, Facebook, Facebook,” he began. Schell, a longtime game designer who also runs the Schell Games studio with 60 game developers, said he was terrified when, on “WTF?”
For achievement points in everything they do. Natal, coming this fall. PopCap Social Gaming Research results | Ubisoft Social Gaming Bl. How to make a video go viral. Earlier this year I was asked to give advice to one of our clients who wanted to make a ‘viral video’. At first I was a little bit overwhelmed by this request, as my initial view was that something only goes viral if the content is top notch. As Media Guerilla states, “If there’s any real “strategic” part of making a video viral these days, it’s the making of the frigg’n video, it’s the creation of the content”. And yet, many video’s (and posts) do go viral with content that if I dare to say so myself is weak. Even if Media Guerilla has a point, maybe there is something else to it. Fact: The video we created did go viral and hit the #1 most viewed slot in our chosen category on YouTube. Part 1: Content, Content, Content.
Surprisingly it’s often the last thing that is considered. Part 2: Outreach Below is a copy of the email I sent to the team giving them advice on what to do (nb. RULE 1 – be honest and transparent about who you are at all times. Like this: Like Loading... 10 Essential Rules for Brands in Social Media. Tim Tavernier's Blog - Casual Gamers Are Actually More Critical. 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. First up some clarification. Yes, the title and summary scream "ooh ooh look at me, look at me" and promises nothing more then some immature ranting. But in fact...it's a trap!! It's a trap because I will be challenging some (hypocrite) ways that people think, they don't have to be right or correct, it's just the fun of challenging them.
Reason nr. 1 The Casual Gamer is Smarter: He/She craves functional innovation far more. This industry, and its reporters, pride itself as one of the most innovative sectors in the world and in a certain extent this is true but there are different kinds of innovations. Yes, the Great Secret behind luring these elusive "Casual" Gamers is actually *shocker* innovating in a functional way. Reason nr. 2 The Casual Gamer is Smarter: He/She doesn't Fall For Hype. Raph’s Website » What core gamers should know about social games. The culture clash between social games and core gamers was on full display at GDC.
I have been called a traitor to the cause of core gamers, even. At the awards show, when a Zynga rep claimed the social games award for Farmville and did a little bit of recruiting from the stage, he was not only booed, but someone shouted out, “But you don’t make games!” This is a common sentiment out there in the usual gamer haunts. I have many many thoughts on all this — and I have been posting some of them in various places when discussions arise. Yes, Farmville is a game. It just requires fairly little skill compared to games for “advanced” gamers. But by any reasonable definition of game, it fits perfectly. You have to make choices (they are strategic choices rather than real-time, but so what? It may seem elementary to those who can juggle complicated business sims, but think of it as the training wheels version for novices to that genre, and you won’t be far off.
Yes, social games truly are social. Heyzap Makes Facebook Games Embeddable On The Web. San Francisco-based startup Heyzap announced the launch of its new platform allowing developers to port their social games outside of Facebook and into other websites without losing social graph, "viral loops" and monetization features. Publishers and developers that work with Heyzap will see their games pushed out to the 150,000 site on its network, which include media portals, social networks, game portals, and more. Users will also be able to embed social games from Heyzap partners into their own websites with a simple code, similar to how Youtube users embed video. The platform works with Facebook Connect APIs so that games embedded on other sites can still post to users's stream, send virtual gifts, and invite friends.
Heyzap says its API suite allows developers to package Flash titles in a single SWF without any Javascript usage. Studios can also use Heyzap's iFrame solution for both Flash and non-Flash games. Survey: Average Social Gamer In U.S., Europe Is Under 30. A new survey from GamesIndustry.com and research firm TNS found that the average age of social gamers in the U.S. is 29, while in the UK, Germany and France the average social gamer is 27.
This counters a recent study from Bejeweled maker PopCap that said the average social gamer is a 43-year-old female. "Their conclusion was based on a survey among only 18-plus year olds," said Peter Warman, managing director of Newzoo/Gamesindustry.com. He added, "It is therefore not at all surprising that their average age is extraordinarily high; it is clearly not a representative number. Data from kids and teens is vital and should always be taken into account. " GamesIndustry.com's report surveyed 13,000 respondents ages eight and up. TNS and GamesIndustry.com also found that at least 29 percent of of people in the U.S. who play games on social networks are under 20. Only 8 percent of social gamers in the U.S. are over 50 years of age, while in Europe it's 4 percent.
Features - First Five Minutes: How Tutorials Make or Break Your. [In this in-depth Gamasutra feature, Digital Chocolate (Safari Kingdom, Nanotowns) lead social designer Aki Jarvinen discusses the complexities of attracting social gamers with little patience -- and still teaching them to play your game both effectively and appealingly.] As the freemium business model is becoming de facto standard in social games, the key design features factoring into acquiring and retaining players are shifting. Developers can no longer trust that their players will make the effort of learning the ropes of their game through a set of challenges, just because they have spent tens of dollars to get the game at their hands. Because players of social games do not fork out money to have the chance to try out a game, their time is of precious quantity. Therefore developers need to catch and hold their attention both through viral spread and gameplay itself.
This of course is not entirely new, as we are familiar with tutorials from a variety of games. Analysis: Communication, confusion, and community managers UPDAT. Features - Listening Is Your First Step: An Online Game Marketin. Now let's look at the seven steps I go through to actually do an online marketing audit for a client. As I said before, this isn't a strict science. The key at the end of this process is to turn your data into information that leads to genuine insight for your game company. You may not always like what you find out, but you have a great opportunity to turn that insight into information that will help make your company better.
Step 1. Establish how far back in time you're going to look. Step 2. You'll be surprised at how many orphaned profiles are out there for a company. Step 3. Knowing when they started using different profiles will give you an idea of the larger opportunities, and if there is a clean leader in your space. Step 4. The beauty of Social Mention is that you can try and break down information to just blogs, microblogs, forums, video, events, and comments. Try to see if the company is connecting with consumers who are talking about them. Step 5. Do you see trends? Step 6. New generation of location games catches on. Location-based social networks Foursquare and Gowalla, which launched the craze of “checking in” at locations such as restaurants or stores in exchange for points, are often described as games.
But they’re fairly simple examples as far as games go. Checking in at a bar with Gowalla (or Loopt, or Foursquare, or Brightkite) is done in a matter of seconds. But new location-based games are emerging that hope to command much more of a player’s attention. Booyah‘s MyTown, for example, has over 2 million active users, and the population grows by more than 100,000 players per week. Most users of the Monopoly-style game spend on average more than an hour on the app a day. Then there’s Parallel Kingdom (pictured) for the iPhone and Android platforms, designed by a company called PerBlue in Madison, Wisc. Now Parallel Kingdom is more lenient in the way actual location is featured in the game. “We also found that people in general don’t go to that many locations in their lives on a daily basis. Les métiers du social media marketing. Si nous devions établir un classement des buzz words du moment, « community manager » serait celui qui viendrait en tête de liste. Je pense qu’il n’est pas faux de dire que nous lisons tout et n’importe quoi sur les community managers en ce moment.
Métier en vogue, je m’interroge néanmoins sur les contours de cette fonction et surtout sur la façon dont il est perçu par les annonceurs. Community Manager = Webmaster 2.0 Loin de moi l’idée de jouer les vieux balourds, mais ce que je lis ces derniers temps me fait penser à ce que je lisais il y a 10 ans au sujet des webmasters : Un homme à tout faire qui devait à la fois maintenir le code HTML, optimiser la base de données, faire l’administration du système, faire évoluer la charte graphique… Bref, un poste fourre-tout qui recouvre en fait plusieurs responsabilité et surtout des compétences très diverses.
Pour résumer je me permettrai de paraphraser Cédric : Le community manager est un mouton à cinq pattes qui n’existe pas. Facebook va-t-il révolutionner le web ? Jeudi dernier a eu lieu la grande conférence annuelle des développeurs Facebook. L’occasion pour Mark Zuckerberg de faire le point sur l’évolution de sa plateforme sociale et de dévoiler ses ambitions pour les prochains mois (à mettre en parallèle avec les annonces récentes de Twitter : Les nouvelles ambitions de Facebook et Twitter).
Le moins que l’on puisse dire c’est que les annonces ont été spectaculaires et que l’ambition affichée par Facebook est à la hauteur des géants du web. Peut-on en déduire que Facebook a rejoint les Google, Yahoo! , Amazon dans la cour des Grands du Web ? Oui, en quelque sorte. À l’ouest, rien de nouveau Commençons par décortiquer les annonces faites : La liste est dense et je vous laisse le soin d’étudier les détails sur le très bon billet de R/WW Fr : Le nouveau Facebook, un guide complet pour les éditeurs, les annonceurs, les utilisateurs et la concurrence.
Oui, ces annonces ont fait sensation. Des lacunes toujours pas comblées Viabilité / Pérennité. Super Whales: Top Social Game Spenders Pay More than $10,000 Api. By now, most people in the social gaming industry have heard about “whales”, those players who spend massively on virtual goods and gifts in games like Mafia Wars or Happy Aquarium.
Whales have become a significant source of revenue for social game companies, especially in light of the tiny numbers of users, well under 10 percent for almost all social games, who ever pay anything at all. Payments platform Social Gold has spent a lot of time this year talking about whales, which it has defined as users spending over $1,000. That measurement seems to pose a new question: if $1,000 is the baseline for becoming a whale, how much do the biggest spenders — the pod leaders, if you will — spend? We checked in with the company to find out. And, well, let’s just say that there are some social gamers out there who really like their games. Listed above, you can see the top five individual spenders within Social Gold’s network.
So what’s coming for the future? S JUNE 2010 Trend Briefing covering "MASS MINGLING" June - July 2010 | Long gone are the days when 'online' was synonymous with social isolation and loneliness. In fact, we're now witnessing the exact opposite: technology is driving people to connect and meet up en masse with others, in the 'real world'. It makes for an interesting, easily-digested trend, begging to be turned into new services for your customers.
Earlier this year, we touched upon the MASS MINGLING trend in our ‘10 trends for 2010’ briefing, but this phenomenon now warrants its own, full briefing: As predicted by digital gurus more than a decade ago, hundreds of millions of people are now living large parts of their lives online (and lovin’ it!). However, this has not turned entire generations into homebound, anti-social zombies (another popular forecast).
MASS MINGLING | Thanks to the online revolution, hundreds of millions are now actively searching for, finding, connecting/signaling, and staying in touch with likeminded souls in the virtual world. Some numbers: Apple and Google Tied in Social App Use on Mobile Devices. In recently gathered data from comScore, we see that Google and Apple are neck and neck — with Google showing the slightest of leads — in the percentage of users who access social media applications from their mobile devices. Ever since the advent of the smartphone and native mobile applications, using and enjoying social sites from a mobile device has been increasingly common and increasingly important to users.
We look forward eagerly to new and better ways to access our Twitter and Facebook accounts while on the go. comScore's stats show that 64.9% of Android OS smartphone users are accessing social networking sites from their mobile devices. This number dwindles slightly to 64.3% for iPhone users — a nearly negligible difference. These two leaders are trailed by RIM, whose BlackBerry users are as likely to access social services as not. Overall, 52% of smartphone owners are using their devices to access their social media accounts, while only 11% of feature phone users are doing so.
10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics. This series is supported by Ben & Jerry's Joe, Ben & Jerry's new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here. Infographics help communicate information in a digestible manner as they creatively present data in an understandable and engaging format. With social media growing at an ever increasing pace, there is now a wealth of data about how people interacting with one another on the web.
Naturally, infographics have proven an excellent aid in expressing high volumes of social web information in a clear, visually appealing manner. Here are 10 infographics that prove as beautiful as they are interesting. 1. This is a global map of social web involvement which illustrates that hundreds of millions of web users are creating and sharing content every month. Interestingly, it reveals that despite the Twitter hype, microblogging is still not a mass social activity and is nowhere near the size and scale of blogging. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.