EducaTech

Social gaming companies like Zynga, Playfish, and Playdom are quickly taking over Facebook and MySpace; their games (ie Farmville, Mobsters) are far and away the most popular applications on these sites and Zynga has over 195 million monthly active users on Facebook alone. Despite the presence of scammy offers like mobile subscriptions that many unsuspecting users are apt to fall for, these types of games have been growing at an exponential rate and netting each of these companies massive amounts of money. The sheer number of people playing these games and the fact that EA recently acquired Playfish for $300-$400 million indicate that they will play an important role in the future of the video game industry, but how will they stack up against the current PC and platform game industry.

Right now, the core of the video game industry is hardcore PC and console gamers who spend an average of over 10 hours a week playing games, most of which are spent playing games online. As someone who falls into the category of hardcore game, I thought it would be interesting to compare my experiences with traditional PC and console games to my experiences playing social games on Facebook and MySpace. For the last several years, I have been playing video games almost exclusively online. The largest amount of time has been spent on the Halo series, but I have spent substantial amounts of time on Call of Duty, Starcraft, Counter-Strike, and World of Warcraft as well; and this is combined with playing other new games for short periods of time as they are released. As someone who plays all types of games from first person shooter to RTS and MMORPG, the biggest appeal for any game is the quality of its online gaming experience. Since social gaming is, by definition, a type of online gaming, I have been excited to see the types of games coming out. Not surprisingly, I have, in large part, been disappointed by the games released for Facebook and MySpace. Most are games that require very little skill, simply time in order to succeed and are based less on competing with others online and rather sharing or connecting with them. The thrill and difficulty of competition in online gaming is what keeps me excited and returning to a game for hours upon hours every week over months or years, social games lack this excitement factor that would keep me coming back.

Though I don’t think the types of games that are successful as social games will ever corner the hardcore gamer demographic, they are important nonetheless. These games lack the addictive and competitive nature that lure gamers in for weeks or months of their lives, but they do have great appeal to the casual gamer and social network user. Social games allow you to connect with friends in a new way, something social network users are often looking for, and provide a decent entertainment factor for brief periods. Social games are a fun quick break from work or something entertaining to do for a few minutes while your surfing the web. The fact that they are so simple and require only a small amount of attention and time isn’t a bad thing, rather it is an important factor in their success. Most people surfing the web have very short attention spans and tend to visit the same sites each day for a short period of time. By playing to these tendencies, social games open themselves up to an enormous market of people, nearly everyone on the internet. It is unlikely that these games, at least in their current state, will ever appeal to hardcore gamers and therefore won’t utilize the standard video game business plan of profiting from game purchases and subscriptions, but they will continue to appeal to the general internet using public and stand to make a lot of money through lead generation offers (hopefully only legitimate ones) and advertising revenue.