20: WGE MAG
Putting the social into social gaming
By Jim Mott & Mike Eagan of Pomegranate Labs
is a profitable market and social games are tapping into something that the key industry players have harnessed very successfully.
S
Whilst it is common knowledge that the big names like Zynga and Blizzard have plenty of tricks up their sleeves based on psychological hooks that help them to get players onboard with their games, we at Pomegranate thought it was worthwhile digging a little deeper into social games to see what really makes them tick.
Six months ago we undertook a study to see if we could unravel some of the components of the more successful social games to leverage them for
ocial gaming is big business, last year the social gaming industry was valued at $1 billion with 100 million players. Needless to say this
good game design. What we found is definitely applicable to the market, but we feel it also has some application for the industry as a whole, mainly because the backbone of what we found speaks to pretty much every game out there. It boils down to one simple fact, community interaction is what drives engagement.
That may sound like common sense but it sits at the cornerstone of our research, that one of the key factors of success for any game is to have the critical mass of an active community sitting behind it. That the more people who are playing a game and sharing their experience with other players, the more enjoyment and engagement each individual player will have.
There is no hard math behind when critical mass occurs, but what we do know is that those games who have reached it are the ones whose communities offer something to everyone, not just to an elite cadre of hardcore players but to the full spectrum of playing styles and experience levels.
A thriving community is one where those who wish to trade have plenty of people to trade with, those who wish to strategise have people with whom to share strategies, those who wish to compete have people to win against and those who wish to create have people to show off their creations to.
Getting this kind of mix right speaks to good game design as much as it does to community dynamics. If
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54