Social Gaming – An Industry Very Much On The Rise
One area of social media that gets ignored by many is gaming but with more people playing Farmville than were on Twitter until recently it is a huge medium that could be targeted by brands and business. With that in mind we talked to Dylan Collins about the sector as a whole. Dylan is the CEO of Jolt Online Gaming, a leading online games publisher focused on North America and the UK. Prior to launching Jolt, Collins was CEO of DemonWare, the leading online games technology company, which powered multiplayer gaming for some of the biggest companies in the world including Ubisoft, Sega, Activision and THQ. DemonWare was acquired by Activision Blizzard.
1.Where are you seeing social media and general community interaction around games?
I think that the integration of social interaction has become a standard part of virtually every online game at this stage. Facebook games obviously are built with all the FB functions from design but even standalone browser games are now replicating those same features as standard policy. I’m talking specifically about sharing/broadcasting elements like Achievements/Trophies, Level-ups, wins/defeats etc.
It’s really no longer enough to design a game in the conventional sense, to be successful in this space you have to specifically design the interaction that happens with it. And even then it will only be your first iteration. Online games are continuous, live services. Game and gameplay design are an iterative process now with constant measurement and tweaking.
2.What do you make of social gaming companies and games like Farmville and Mafia wars?
Firstly, I think Zynga are an incredible company. When you see what they’ve created in such a short space of time, it’s simply remarkable. If anything I think they’re possibly underrated right now. The sheer scale of the analysis engine that has now been developed based around Facebook gamers is pretty intimidating. They know their gamers better than any other publisher in the world and have largely defined the social gaming space *and* the actual process of developing these games.
I’m intrigued as to where they go next. From watching their acquisitions and partnership deals, it feels as if they’re in transition to their next stage of growth. They have huge opportunities in Europe.
3.Are you seeing brands targeting gaming communities at all?
Absolutely. We’re working with several of them! Broadly they fall into two categories: 1) FMCG-style brands who are looking to engage through a social game and 2) gaming brands (e.g. console) who are looking to expand in this space to provide an additional channel for the core players to engage with the brand when they’re physically away from the console.
It’s a highly effective approach. This is a space which is still fragmented with few major dominating brands but growing demand. It will continue like this for some time so it provides a great opportunity for brands from either category to enter and do very well.
4.What are you working on at the moment?
Now that we’re part of GameStop, it’s very much about integrating with their retail model and growing an online company which leverages their significant retail distribution. This means developing games that focus on their customers, as well as technology that lets us bring our gaming partners into the channel. We’re working on titles across browser, Facebook and iPhone.
Also, we’re having a lot of fun with FarmVillain:
5.Do you see gaming becoming even more social and where do you see it in 5 years time?
Gaming was always a pretty social activity-I think what you’re seeing now is just another manifestation of it combined with a huge widening of the market. Clearly social/browser gaming has become a category and this is probably a permanent thing. However, console gaming remains (and will remain) the biggest category by dollar value for several years to come.
I think you’re probably going to see the online game space consolidate further so in five years there will be a small handful of very large players (much like the console space today). I think you’re going to continue to see significant innovation from smaller developers though and as long as the distribution channels remain open, there will always be the possibility that a game can become an immediate success.
6.What do you think of Facebook as a platform for gaming?
I think any platform which is able to deliver a huge volume of relevant users is extremely valuable. I joined GameStop for this reason and I believe in Facebook for the same reason.
7.Do you think the iPad will rival other gaming platforms in years to come?
You know, since I picked up my iPad a few weeks ago I’ve gone from not really playing any games on it to using it almost exclusively for games. Which really surprised me. I think it’s going to be a huge gaming platform and it’s totally different to the iPhone in terms of the gaming behavior i.e. I’ll play an iPhone game for 3-5 minutes while waiting for a taxi but I’ll play an iPad game for maybe half an hour, simply because I use it when sitting on my couch. The scope for persistent browser games and indeed MMOs on the iPad is simply monstrous.
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