Social games face challenges: life cycle is only 6 months

When social games are popular with SNS, developers face the question of how to prolong the life cycle of a successful social game.

Social game design is generally relatively simple, users easy to get started, but on the other hand, also caused a low threshold, easy to form aesthetic fatigue.

According to Mouinan, a social game developer, the average life cycle of social games is only half a year, and good gaming companies continue to update the experience of the game, adding new gameplay and stimulation points to extend the game's lifecycle.

Ao Rongsheng COO Fan Shuhao also believes that the average life cycle of social games is around half a year, and that a less-than-good game may be less than 6 months. "2009 years, the average game to 6-12 months of life cycle is normal." But in the 2010 market environment, barely 6 months is good. In these 6 months, it may be only two or three months to make money. ”

Challenge: How to continue the game lifecycle

The social gaming company century was founded in December 2009 and currently has more than 30 teams. The development of Genesis 2012 in http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/1560.html ">facebook online, on the world's fastest rising components list." No matter in the user active degree, to the average user recharge amount, in the Chinese game is among the top.

But Mouinan, CEO of the century, admits that the company faces two big challenges: how to extend the life cycle of a successful game and how to better develop overseas markets.

Mouinan, in 2009, social gaming alone created 825 million of dollars in U.S. revenue for gaming companies. "But now the hottest game on Facebook is losing users. ”

He says users ' interest in old games is slowly diminishing, and the cost of acquiring new users on Facebook is already over 1 dollars, and the game's ARPU value is about 1 dollars. "So it's going to be more and more difficult for new social gaming companies to do it," he said. ”

In addition to prolonging the social gaming lifecycle, raising the ARPU value is also a concern.

"In social games, there is a" magic 10 "law--10% users bring in 80% of the revenue. Most top-up users spend 2-5 of dollars a month, while large spenders can spend far more than 100 dollars. Now a lot of game companies are studying how to get 2-5 of dollars of users to spend more. ”

There are also companies to put forward a micro-pay theory, the game with a lot of 1 of dollars below the props, hope that some users do not pay, can start spending from 1 cents, slowly improve.

Mouinan said that to continue the game life cycle, can increase the freshness, such as the extension of the story background, interface, new scene, City, honor, etc., to increase user interaction, such as the use of new methods of fighting, user communication channels, increase the game within the group and the sense of belonging, etc.

Social markets are expected to grow 10 times times over the next two years

"Because of the size of the social game market, the traditional game giants will be involved in the social gaming arena, the competition will intensify." "In the next 2 years, the social gaming industry in the world will grow more than 10 times times," Mouinan predicts. "But even if the competition is fierce, there is still a lot of room for development." ”

Century's team consists of the gaming industry and the community web site, with the main members starting to focus on social games since 2008.

Mouinan says the outlook for domestic social networking sites has been bullish. In his view, the downside is only some of the more closed social networking sites.

Sina Weibo users are more active

After the rise of the microblogging platform, century creators are also looking at this new platform. The company developed the "Genesis 2012" in early September, after the release of Sina Weibo, has so far nearly 20,000 users. Mouinan said Sina Weibo's users were more active than other platforms.

"Strictly speaking, Weibo should belong to the media, how to convert micro-blogging users into game users, but also to be verified by the market." Mouinan that Weibo and social networking sites are complementary, not a shock.

He predicts that, in the future, the combination of micro-blogging with the market will be the focus of development, should be location-based (positioning) of the social model application. such as the current very popular Foursquare class application, already and Weibo, social networking sites, mobile phones are combined.

Domestic platform more diversified than abroad

Mouinan said that the domestic social platform is more diversified than the foreign platform, the characteristics of each platform users are not the same, like the type of game is also different. Relatively insufficient is, the domestic part of the platform open is not strong. But some of the domestic platform will give developers some suggestions, data and promotional resources, etc., to give more support.

In the audit system, the domestic platform first to ensure the quality of the game, will access the platform. Foreign platform in the audit, the basic detection function integrity, relative to the domestic more open.

About century Creation: foreign users account for 50%

Century created in December 2009, the current team has more than 30 people, the main game including Genesis 2012, Night romance, crazy football, games posted in the roaming, Facebook, Lianzhong, 4399 platform.

As of now, the total number of games installed in the century has exceeded 3 million. Among them, the growth of foreign users is fast, currently close to 50% of total users.

According to the introduction, "Genesis 2012" in a very short period of time has been recovered the cost of investment. Companies continue to do new games and overseas market development, is still in the capital stage.

In the future, the company will focus on the Asia-Pacific market. Domestic competition will be more and more fierce, platform cost is high, hope to be able to absorb more player group abroad.

Century Chuang wants to also develop mobile game. More and more users are using smartphones to surf the web, and mobile terminals such as iphones, pads and Android are already in the company's plan.