Next Wednesday at 4:00 pm, I will be speaking at Casual Connect about “Winning the War: How to Build a Great Social Gaming Company.” I wanted to post a preview of that presentation (I will post the actual presentation after the show) and highlight some key points.
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If anyone is interested in meeting with me or someone else from the FiveOneNine team at Casual Connect in Seattle later this month, just send me an email at lloyd dot melnick at fiveoneninegames dot com. Thanks and see you in Seattle.
Friday offered some more great sessions on consumers’ decision making that are relevant to the social games industry. For those who did not see my post on Friday, I spent last week at the Behavioral Decision Research in Management Conference (BDRM) in Boulder. My major takeways on Friday were as follows:
I want to share some thoughts from the first day of the Behavioral Decision Research in Management Conference (BDRM). There were several interesting presentations that have relevance for the social game space.
The big news this week in the tech world is Microsoft’s unveiling of its Surface line of tablets. For those who missed it, Microsoft had a major press event on Monday in which where it unveiled the 10-inch Surface tablets. The first tablet will launch this fall with an ARM-based processor and featuring Windows RT. It will be followed, about 90 days later, with a third-generation Intel Core processor running Windows 8. I am not the person to be reviewing new gadgets so if you are looking for more details on the Surface, please just Google Microsoft Surface and you will have great options.
It seems that now is a good time to declare officially that Google+ is not an option for social game companies. The news that PopCap and Wooga are pulling their games from the platform is the final nail in the coffin. Given that they are not only stopping new development for Google + but have actually decided to sunset their existing titles on the platform shows it is not a viable business.
Social game company executives should be looking at Airtime and thinking about ways it could be used to leverage their businesses. To make a long story short, Airtime is a video chat service (Airtime article in Bloomberg Businessweek) started by Napster co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning (you may know Parker also as the billionaire former President of Facebook).
Facebook’s decision to explore the 13-and-under market may present more opportunities for social game companies than the potential legalization of online gambling, but it is not generating nearly as much buzz. I think it is inevitable that Facebook finds a way to allow children under 13 to legitimately use the Facebook service. As the Economist pointed out, a recent study found that 5.6 million US children under 13 were already using Facebook (and undoubtedly millions more throughout the world). If Facebook does not address this issue, not only are they missing out on a business opportunity, they are leaving themselves open to litigation.
I recently read an article on pricing in the Harvard Business Review, “Pricing to Create Shared Value,” that has direct implications on monetization strategy in the social gaming space. It is so counter to the current strategy of so many social game companies, I am sure many of you will either disregard it or just think I am wrong. Before you do, keep in mind the underlying article was written by star professors from Harvard Business School (John T. Gourville) and the London School of Business (Marco Bertini), based on years of research, so maybe the 20-something monetization whiz in the Bay Area does not know it all.
I read a great interview on CNN.com with Rovio’s VP Bus Dev, Ville Heijari. Rather than repeat the interview, I strongly recommend you read it yourself.
My big takeaways from it were:
Overall, I found the article a very useful insight into one of the key players in the mobile game space.
The Business of Social Games and Casino 