Metrics are a force multiplier
– can’s replace a good game
– can’t replace creativity, art, design
– can’t replace qualitative metrics
Latest Updates: sgs09 RSS
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JeromeParadis
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JeromeParadis
We will see IPs such as (The Godfather, The Sopranos, etc.) enter the social gaming space.
James Currier said: Licensing agreements take a lot of time. You are better spending your money on beer! -
JeromeParadis
Question from a women from Atari? What about tweens and players under 13 years old?
You have to be really really careful. There are many legal requirements. -
JeromeParadis
What’s a good retention metric number?
For games, anything above 5% to 7% is very good.
Most don’t have an idea of what the ceiling can be.
Anu Shukla says good and well done RPGs get 30-40% of daily actives purchase virtual goods! -
JeromeParadis
A good question that opens up a discussion about spamminess versus customer acquisition aggressiveness. Playfish has done a very good just at balancing the act.
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JeromeParadis
Greg Tseng believes that Facebook and MySpace and destination Web sites are complementary.
He agrees that large platforms are stable enough. They are doing deals with developers. -
JeromeParadis
Do we need our own destination Web site when launching our game on Facebook and MySpace?
Anu Shukla: If you have a successful game on Facebook and Myspace, it might be a good idea to try to build a destination site to gain your own audience.
James Currier does not believe you need another site. You can make a lot of money on Facebook and MySpace. The platforms are solid enough. It’s hard and expensive to get players to register on another site. If you have your own Web site, older people that invest in companies, they tend to value external Web site (!): it’s something they can own! -
JeromeParadis
Do we need our own destination Web site when launching our game on Facebook and MySpace?
Anu Shukla: If you have a successful game on Facebook and Myspace, it might be a good idea to try to build a destination site to gain your own audience.
James Currier does not believe you need another site. You can make a lot of money on Facebook and MySpace. The platforms are solid enough. It’s hard and expensive to get players to register on another site. If you have your own Web site, older people that invest in companies, they tend to value external Web site (!): it’s something they can own! -
JeromeParadis
Very good advice from Anu Shukla from Offerpal Media.
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JeromeParadis
Anu Shukla saw some interesting Facebook Connect iPhone applications that will be coming out. It will be really interesting for our industry, specially with the new payments options on the iPhone.
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JeromeParadis
Some talk about Facebook Connect.
What’s the experience if you’re not on Facebook?
You should register on Facebook!
Good audience laugh! -
JeromeParadis
Alerts that work: new poker chips, new mafia jobs, etc.
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JeromeParadis
Off the top 25 games, only 3 companies are represented. Uninstall rates are high and retention is much harder.
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JeromeParadis
RockYou says retention on Facebook is easier. Users never uninstall applications. You have the opportunity to try to reengage them.
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JeromeParadis
Retention: how do you make users come back?
Different mechanics exists such as gifting. Use events and stack up game mechanics. Ex.: leveling system, awards, treasure chests that come up after an amount of time. You need to get reinforcements without getting players bored. -
JeromeParadis
Greg Tseng says: If one user generates more than one user, you get exponential growth.
There are a lot of other form of user acquisitions than virality.
Cross-promotion, SEO are other free examples.
If you can justify the spending, you can invest in other means. -
JeromeParadis
Anu Shukla: they see less and less applications that acquire users effectively that do not capitalize intelligently on viral effects.
US traffic, UK , Australia are highly monetizable.
Women, 34 to 50 in the US is the best audience you can get. -
JeromeParadis
Momentum is important in viral acquisition. They once had a hiccup of 6 hours and they lost a huge portion of users. It’s very delicate.
The kind of virality we see, will become less effective with time and you need to reinvent your viral path. -
JeromeParadis
James Currier says MySpace has always been less viral than Facebook. Their ability to succeed after 3 months of trial and error is base on capitalizing on repeat users.
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JeromeParadis
Jia Shen says Facebook’s Live stream and notifications have become a boon for social games and user engagement. Momentum of user acquisition is really important to get the ball rolling
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JeromeParadis
Next up at the social gaming summit:
Panel: Customer Acquisition and Retention for Social Games with:
– James Currier – Co-founder and CEO, WonderHill
– Jia Shen – CTO and Founder, RockYou
– Anu Shukla – Founder and CEO, Offerpal Media
– Greg Tseng, Co-Founder and CEO, Tagged
moderated by Sean Ryan – Loki Partners -
JeromeParadis
Erikka Arone thinks that if you execute well, there is a lot of place for different monetization options.
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JeromeParadis
Conventional wisdom says that you should try to have users buy more rapidly, but some game developers actually forbid their new users from purchasing in the first week of play. They prefer to get users engaged with the game before offering them items for payments.
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JeromeParadis
Renata Dionello believes in lowering the barrier to entry.
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JeromeParadis
Robert Goldberg from GMG Entertainment believes that prepaid cards can bring new users with less disposable income like teens. Teens want to be unlock from their parents. They created a printable PDF to print out and give to parents that says at which retailer they can buy the prepaid cards.
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JeromeParadis
How do you get users to pay in the first place?
You need the ability for users to play for free and engage them toward payment.
Surveys and free offers are a simple way for users to test out your premium offers. -
JeromeParadis
The proportion of players that are going to generate revenues are about 5%. This model is a freemium model. You have different kind of users. Some hard core spend up to 30000$ across 2 platforms.
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JeromeParadis
As soon you make it easier for users to pay through trusted brands, it’s additive to most monetization technologies.
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JeromeParadis
For social games, some have low fraud rates under 1%. Some people have 5% plus. If you have 1% or less, be happy.
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JeromeParadis
Erikka Arone from Zong: Credit cards are much easier to fraud from. Friendly frauds: look at velocity of payments from users. When implementing a payment solution, make sure to figure out your tracking and analyze true revenue against revenue that will have to be charged back.
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JeromeParadis
Game companies are becoming more and more intelligent in monitoring user acitivities.
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JeromeParadis
Talking about fraud management at a panel at the social gaming summit.
– Do not allow for user to cash out
– Do not allow or make it very hard to allow transfers between accounts
Check also for drastic changes in behavior:
– Many IPs accessing the same account
– Single IP accessing multiple accounts
– Pinpoint strange activities
