San Francisco Chronicle: Social networking sites are new opportunities for gaming industry

Introduction: The "San Francisco Chronicle" online version of the Sunday article said that the rapid development of social games will become the game industry in the future a big development opportunities, some traditional game giants have also entered the field. The economic crisis has had a serious impact on the video gaming industry, but one area where growth has been almost unaffected is social gaming.　　Every day, tens of millions of of users play games on their social networks, and the Mafia Wars (Mafia Wars), Farm (Farm Town) and eating (restaurant city) are among the more famous games. Social gaming is still small, with less than $500 million trillion in output today. But because of the popularity of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, the 2-year-old game has exploded and attracted a large number of mainstream players who are often unwilling to buy or download games.　　This makes social gaming the fastest growing category in the game market. First, however, you need to define the next social game. This kind of game originates from the casual game, the casual game usually is the single person game, and needs to pay to download.　　Social gaming is about sharing happiness with friends through existing platforms such as social networks and iphones. Social games may not necessarily include real-time competition or real-time interactive elements, and many of the games are asynchronous, which means that the player can schedule games on their own and can log in from different locations.　　But because social games are linked to existing relationships, this kind of game emphasizes friendship, competition and pride in games. In addition, social games are open to players free of charge, which is always popular, not to mention the recession. Game developers make money by advertising, marketing campaigns, and selling virtual products and game currencies. This has proved to be a successful model for some of the biggest social gaming companies.　　Most of these companies are located in the San Francisco district. Fast-acting as the largest social-gaming start-up, Zynga, based in San Francisco, has been profitable for only 2 months since its inception in July 2007.　　The company's chief executive, Mark Ping Cass, said that Zynga's revenue this year would be $100 million trillion, conservatively estimated. Zynga currently has a daily average of 19 million users and a monthly active user of 65 million, which is more popular than the traditional game portal Yahoo game. Pincus says One-third of the 1 billion Internet users in the Western world will be social gamers. Therefore, social games will receive unprecedented mainstream attention. "When you have low resistance, low commitment and real social connections, bringing those three together will be a huge market," he said. "Playfish, also a social gaming company based in San Francisco, is about 40 million a monthly user, COO Sebastian De-Halliuks (Sebastien de Halleux believes that the key to interacting with friends is to provide a barrier-free approach.　　He said that in terms of value, social gaming cannot compete with games or computers, but social gaming has its advantages: it is simple in structure and dependent on the already fascinating social network, so the games are easy to attract and addictive. In many cases, Halliuks says, users don't even see themselves as gamers. "Users may spend 30 minutes a day playing social games, but they say they just spend some time with their friends," he said. "New business models are emerging social gaming companies that are bringing a debate on new business models to the entire gaming industry," he said.　　While social games attract a large number of players via a free strategy, but only through a small number of players, companies such as Zynga and Playfish are still profitable. Playdom, the biggest gaming developer in Mountain View, Calif., Shawn Fini, vice president of business development, said that in addition to the free value-added model (Freemium), social gaming can also rely on "gaming as a service" (　　Games-as-a-service) "Model to make money. Mr Fini says a standard model for "game-as-service" is that the game initially publishes only 5% of the content, which is then updated weekly and even daily to enhance the gaming experience and integrate user feedback. "Such games are evolving and there is no end to them," Mr Fini said.　　"It's the combination of social, free value-added and game-service elements that make social game leaders think it's hard for traditional gaming companies to grow quickly in this area," he said. But now some game giants are starting to dabble in social gaming. EA launched the Scrabble game a year ago on Facebook (Scrabble), and PopCap Games launched the Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook This June, Ubisoft (Ubisoft)　　Also last month launched the Facebook social game "Ticktock". Tim Chang, the venture capital fund Norwest Venture Partners partner, argues that there are many things that can be learned between social game developers and traditional game distributors.　　Social game vendors can learn from traditional game makers how to improve the quality of the game, while traditional game makers should learn how to integrate social functions and new business models into their own games. Tim often says the social gaming industry is in the early stages of development and faces many difficulties, including reliance on social networking platforms. Social networks are likely to change their policies towards application developers, and their heat may be lost. He believed that, as the societyThe development of game making is relatively easy, so it will face the risk of similarity and lack of innovation. But Tim often believes that the prospect of social gaming is bright because it is a user's birthright to entertain with friends. He said: "Users like games, and today, Facebook and other platforms have perfected these mechanisms, so everyone can participate in the game." (PEI)