Funny how all the commentary has moved to Twitter and is no longer found on blogs these days! 🙂 But here’s a few anyway [Edit: I keep adding them as I find them..]:
As promised in the talk itself, here are the slides for the talk I just gave on “Social Mechanics for Social Games” — an updated version of the talk I gave back at GDC Austin.
Social Mechanics for Social Games (PDF)
I am doing a revised, streamlined version of my Austin GDC talk on Social Mechanics, this time sprinkled through with more references specifically to social games. It’ll be at the Social and Online Gaming Summit, Monday at 3pm. Here is the event listing:
Social Mechanics for Social Games [SOGS Design]Speaker/s: Raph Koster (Playdom)
Day / Time / Location: Monday 3:00- 4:00 Room 134, North Hall
Track / Format: Social & Online Games Summit / Lecture
Description: Many have accused social games of not really being social. But they are underpinned by many classic social mechanics that drive interaction and community-building. Some of these have been proven to work in other genres such as MMOs and are beginning to filter into the social games market; others are easily visible and quite familiar in real life, but have yet to be seen in the design of social games. In this talk we will draw from both proven game design and from anthropology and sociology and explore the social potential of social games.
Takeaway: Learn about core human psychology driving social games, and walk away with a clear list of game mechanics that encourage social structures and human relationships, thereby driving retention.
Eligible Passes:Summits and Tutorials Pass, All Access Pass
I will endeavor not to take an hour and 15 minutes this time. 🙂
Justin Smith, Inside Social Games
Explosive growth. Graph shows doubling every year.
2009: 490m revenues
2010: 835m
Virtual goods in Asia 5bn in 2008, 7bn in 2009,
In the US, 1bn in 2009.
Three big players in US:
1. Zynga, 700-900 employees, a few 100m in revenue, growth 50-70%. 3x more DAU than #2.
2. Playfish, 250+ employees, 75m in revenue, purchased by EA in 11/09
3. Playdom, 300+ employees, 50m in revenue, #1 on MySpace
Other players:
Crowdstar, quick rise to #2 based on DAU
RockYou, largest ad network on FB
Slide, was #1 for a long time by MAU (SuperPoke, etc), but not with games. Shifted to virtual goods model.
Interesting trend: a lot of interest from abroad, esp China. Developers who have been successful elsewhere porting apps to FB. FB is blocked in China. Rekoo (Animal Paradise, Sunshine Ranch), Elex (Happy Harvest), Five Minutes (Happy Farm), wooga (Brain Buddies), and 6waves, which follows more of a publisher model.
