Idle Games says you can't have a social game without real-time play

Simultaneously, they acknowledge that a "purely synchronous game" is a hard sell on social networks

Most social games only let players interact in an asynchronous way, meaning that players are never directly interacting in real-time. Jeffrey Hyman, the CCO of Idle Games, contends that true social games need a real-time option.

"Fundamentally I don't believe you can have a social game without at least offering up the ability to play in real-time with others," said Hyman. "At the same time, you're kidding yourself if you think a purely synchronous game will succeed on the social networks. One of our mantras about Idle Worship is that users should 'come for the asynchronous, but stay for the synchronous'. That nicely summarizes our mindset and approach in trying to marry these two different styles of play."

"While the synchronous feature is obvious to users, there is another technical innovation that's just as cool but less obvious … namely that Idle Worship features an 'unsharded' universe," he detailed. "While that term sounds as geeky as it actually is, what it means is that no matter what server a player is on, they are free to roam about the universe and play with anyone (regardless of what server they are on). The one (and maybe only) nice thing about having to build everything from scratch is that we weren't burdened with legacy code and were able to craft a gaming platform tailor made for the social networks."

Zynga: Social games are still not truly social

*Look at what Zynga is saying .....

The company's CCO believes there's plenty ahead for Zynga to tackle

Social games have taken the industry by storm in the past few years, and Zynga's been in the driver's seat. Interestingly, the term "social game" may be a misnomer of sorts, as Zynga's chief creative officer of external studios, Bob Bates, believes that today's social titles aren't so social.
In a new interview with GamesIndustry International, the veteran designer commented, "We're still in the infancy of understanding what's possible and what it really means for a game to be social. Right now we're viral, but true social, where you feel like you're actually playing with your friends, not 'I'm playing here, he's playing there' is still ahead."

He continued, "The sense of actually playing together, that's a real challenge, and I'd like to be in a position where I can attack that challenge. I don't feel like I know enough yet to pull that off; I'm still learning the space. Finding ways to do those kinds of things would be very, very cool."
It's true that the majority of social titles are largely asynchronous experiences, where players take turns making moves in games like Words With Friends or Draw Something, but synchronous or online multiplayer gameplay certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility for the social space. There are companies out there right now, like Idle Games, who are pushing for real-time gameplay in the social space.

"Fundamentally I don't believe you can have a social game without at least offering up the ability to play in real-time with others," Jeffrey Hyman, CCO of Idle Games said recently.
The challenge will be balancing synchronous and asynchronous so that a game can still be successful on social networks or smartphones. Often, asynchronous just works better for players.

Competiting for Entertainment Time

The battle is on now - a whole host of new platforms and technologies; from consoles, smartphones and tablets, to social games and browser titles, to cloud gaming are competing for entertainment time and dollars. The biggest change is that games have become much more social and mainstream.

The social factor in games has become much larger, and also what it would call the interstitial factor, which is that rather than people doing what you might call session-based gaming, where I'm going to go sit in my room and play Halo for an hour, I have the opportunity to pull out Angry Birds and play for two minutes while waiting in line at Starbucks. People now use games to fill the empty slots in their life, a bit more ubiquitously.

Over the last five years it really is about the diversification, not just of platform, but of the players, the demographics. Games really used to be something that were targeted to 16-year-old boys and guys. Now we have people of all generations, genders, walks of life, playing games, a lot of them on their cell phones, or on Facebook and now the iPads. The explosion in platforms has also driven a very healthy diversification of our players audience and brings about new audiences.

Gaming used to be something that maybe you spend a couple of hours in front of your Xbox or the PC. Now gaming is something that you can pull out of your pocket and play for two minutes here or there, or check into your Facebook thing, do something on FarmVille, whatever.

Zynga Buys Maker of “Words with Friends” for $200 Million

Zynga, maker of popular Facebook games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars, has added another sought-after game to its name --"Draw Something"-- in its acquisition of startup OMGPOP Wednesday for $ 180 million. OMGPOP has been shopping itself around over the last few weeks.

Draw Something was launched just six weeks ago, but it's already taken the Apple App Store and Google Play by storm with over 35 million downloads. Draw Something is an addictive, interactive mobile game, similar to Pictionary. In Draw Something, one user doodles while other users guess at what's being drawn.

OMGPOP started out as iminlikewithyou, a social network where users met and played games, and grew into its own site, OMGPOP.com, in 2009. Draw Something is by far OMGPOP's biggest game, and is available on iOS, Android, and Facebook. OMGPOP company history is another story itself.

*NOTE* As predicted Zynga will start acquisition to continue its growth and to move into the various new sectors and areas of games. Guess mid-sore and hard-core acquisition will soon come.

Facebook Untapped Opportunities for Games.

Zynga may look like the all-powerful, dominant game publisher on Facebook. But it’s not too late to get in on the action there’s room for more game companies on the social network. There are rough...ly 220 million monthly active users playing games on Facebook, out of its total of 800 million monthly active users. About 50 percent of the gamers return daily to the site. Zynga dominates the field with 266 million monthly active users. But there are 375 games with more than 100,000 monthly active users.

“It’s not a market where 10 apps get all of the users”
It makes sense that more types of games will succeed on Facebook in addition to Zynga’s city-building and farm-building games. Example cable TV now profitably supports more than 650 different TV channels.

The huge emphasis on Zynga’s games has obscured the fact that there are only two “hidden object” games on Facebook - Mystery Manor and Disney’s Gardens of Time. The market could support more than 50 or 100 games in this genre.

Others emerging category is casino games, hunting games. There are other “mid-core” games emerging with lightweight combat options that appeal to both hardcore and casual fans. These include Zynga’s Empires & Allies, Kixeye’s Battle Pirates, and Digital Chocolate’s Army Attack. Kabam has also pioneered the hardcore game category with strategy titles like Glory of Rome or Dragons of Atlantis.

There are few or no fishing games, Christian games, urban games, role-playing games, fighting games, romance games and there are only two first-person shooting games. The romance category itself is a $1.5 billion entertainment market.

9 Billion Virtual Goods Market

The market potential is here today ...
9 Billion virtual goods sold last year and a booming 1 Trillion global entertainment market space to tap.

Games as a Service

One of the main success factor of social games today is providing *Excellent 5 Star Service to the players. This is the era of *Games as a Service where successful social games companies are actually providing a service to their players instead of just the game.

This service includes constantly updating the game on weekly basis to ensure there’s sufficient contents for the players, fast response to customers service, managing the community effectively, promotions, offers, sales and even matching players to players ensuring a lively gaming experience. Understanding the players needs and fulfilling them are all part of *Games as a Service SOP.

MYTH - Can we produce continuous top hits games ?

In China there is a myth that almost every game studios had not been able to continuous to produce another hit games after the 1st successful hit. This had been true in many occasions and had been the major cause of concerns from VC’s and investors. Can your studio produce the next big hit ?

 
While we do not deny that in China and probably also worldwide faces the *Next Big Hit ( or 2^nd big hit game ) problem, the notion that studio’s can’t produce the next big hit is a myth in the new generation of socially connected gaming space.

Zynga, Digital Chocolate, Wooga and Kixeye had proven that there are certain so called *factory specifications formulas that can be applied to games that enables them to be the next big hit or hits in the new socially connected games space. Yes there was certain games within Zynga that didn’t make it but overall about 80% of their games launched became hits. At Wooga and Kixeye it was a 100% till date.

Once a game company or studio understands these so called *factory specifications formulas and have them applied to every of their games it thus increases it’s chance of success by a far mile against competitors.

GDC 2012 : PlayVoodoo Strategy Right on Target

From the various data and market info given by the various experts in the social games industry at GDC and several inside meetings with certain key managers at the current top social games company confirms that PlayVoodoo existing strategy and path is 100% right.

Social games is getting more hardcore and sophisticated. Zynga is also looking at the hardcore space for Facebook, have a team studying the space and companies like Kabam and Kixeye. Kixeye is moving up the ladder very fast and is rumoured to be making about $50 to 80 million.

GDC 2012: Facebook pays out $1.4 billion to developers

Facebook paid out $1.4 billion (£883.9 million) to app developers last year, according to the company's games product manager.

Speaking at GDC in San Francisco yesterday, Matt Wyndowe said the figure showed how serious Facebook was about its role as a gaming platform, with his team's regular meetings with Facebook's senior management further reinforcing the point.

"As early as 2010, we didn't have a dedicated game team," Wyndowe said, according to VentureBeat. "Now we have 40 full-time people on games. We meet weekly with Zuck [CEO Mark Zuckerberg] and [CTO] Bret Taylor.

"If you make a really high quality game, our job is to bring you massive distribution and make you a lot of money," Wyndowe said, after Kixeye chief executive Will Harbin showed off his company's latest Facebook project and said it was projecting nine-figure revenues in 2012. "Our job is to make sure people learn about your game and engage with it."

Wyndowe pointed to the emergence in 2011 of new genres of gaming on Facebook, such as hidden object games and RTSes. During the year, social gaming companies raised $1.1 billion in investment, with double that figure spent on acquisitions.

PlayVoodoo at GDC San Francisco

PlayVoodoo is at GDC San Francisco 2012.

The day one learnings showed that PlayVoodoo is definitely in the right space and path whether in the games development or publishing model. Private discussion with certain experts now in leading social games publishers strengthen our confidence that we are indeed playing the right game in the next generation games space to come.

Games Reality Check

John Say, Jouni, Bolei and Jimmy looking at PlayVoodoo next game based on a popular TV animation series in China. Getting the users experience right is crucial.

Playvoodoo Company Dinner

PlayVoodoo had our company Chinese New Year dinner at one of the best Japanese teppenyaki restaurant in town. This dinner was also to celebrate a long 3 million mark celebration achieved by the company team. We drank lots of FREE beers and had lots of good meat. Jouni gave his speech about the future of being with PlayVoodoo.

Will Social Games Erode the Hardcore Console Game Market?

A new study being released today is challenging the notion that all gamers on Facebook are housewives in their mid-40s.

Instead it finds that social games have begun to eat away at time and money spent on traditional games in the console market.

The report was commissioned by Kabam, the Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up that has ballooned to more than 400 employees after raising millions of dollars in venture capital.

Founded in 2006, Kabam has released some of the first hardcore titles for Facebook, including Kingdoms of Camelot and Glory of Rome. More recently, it released Edgeworld and has plans for a game based on the movie “The Godfather.” Essentially, it is in the company’s DNA to go after the traditional game companies, like Electronic Arts or Activision as opposed to going after casual games made by Zynga.

Maybe it is old news at this point that the console environment should be concerned about social gaming. After all, Zynga has managed to get 268 million monthly active users on the platform.

But the company has found some interesting data that supports its theory that all gamers — even the ones who enjoy the bloodiest or most complicated of story plots — will become so-called social gamers.

(But don’t worry, the data also backs up that for now the “casual” social game market is still dominated by females aged 30 and over.)

Even more to the point, it believes hardcore social gamers, who are defined as those who play action or role-playing games on Facebook, will end up the more lucrative portion of the market, even if they are outnumbered by the general population, because of their propensity to play more games and more often.

Some of its findings: 

·         41 percent of all Internet users in the U.S., or roughly 98 million poeple, are playing social games.

·         Hardcore social gamers, of which 82 percent play console games, tend to play a larger number of social games for a longer period of time than casual social gamers.

·         About 24 percent of hardcore social gamers report that they’ve decreased the amount of time they are playing on other platforms.

·         About 22 percent have decreased the amount of money they’ve spent.

·         78 percent of hardcore social gamers are playing two or more social games and 47 percent are playing three or more.

·         30 percent of hardcore gamers play social games for more than an hour per day.

The report was conducted by Information Solutions Group and was based on the results of an online survey completed by 1,412 people in April and May. To qualify, participants had to live in the U.S. and have played games on a computer, game console, mobile phone, handheld game player, tablet or social network in the past year.

Kabam Acquires Top LucasArts Game Makers to Help Build Hardcore Social Games

Kabam, known for developing hardcore social games such as The Godfather and Kingdoms of Camelot, has acquired a company with deep roots in the console game space. Fearless Studios was co-founded two years ago by notable game makers Haden Blackman and Cedrick Collomb. Blackman was the creator and senior executive producer of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and Collomb was formerly director of engineering at LucasArts. The two will immediately join Kabam, along with all members of the team from Marin, Calif.

Acquisitions in social gaming are common, especially as emerging companies try to gain scale. But it is not often that a social game company purchases a console game developer. In the case of Kabam, it matches with what that company is trying to achieve. It is the goal of the Redwood City, Calif., company to challenge the notion that all gamers on Facebook are housewives in their mid-40s. Instead, it wants to bring some of the high-end games found on consoles to social networks in order to attract more engaged players, who are willing to play — and pay — more. In a release, Kabam CEO Kevin Chou said the team at Fearless has the right game-design skills and technology set to help social games become higher fidelity. “Having the background and emerging technologies and proficiency in making the transition from 2D to 3D on consoles mesh perfectly with Kabam’s strategy,” Chou said.

In 2012-2013 we will see more top social games companies making mergers and acquisitions in the more sophisticate MMO games space.  

Zynga needs new revenue stream

Zynga's shares are way up this week based on speculation that Zynga could expand into online gambling after the U.S. opened the door to possible legalization. (Zynga) shares have been up 15% in the last week, in part, we believe, from speculation ZNGA may have an opportunity in online gambling if it is legalized in the US. This is a long-shot and highly speculative.

Based on Appdata, Daily Active Users (DAU) for Zynga’s games on Facebook in 4Q were down 6% to 51M from 54M in 3Q. This means ZNGA will need to convert an increasingly larger percentage of users into payers in order to grow. For context, Zynga has 200 million users. Only around 2.4 percent of those users are actually paying customers. So in order to earn more Zynga needs more users or a new revenue stream.

Online gambling can be one or acquire a MMO hard core games publisher which have a higher percentage of paying users convertion of between 6.8% to 7.8% and a higher ARPU.