A Bit Lucky: Supply is Trailing Demand in Social Game Industry

Small social game developer A Bit Lucky is quickly becoming known as one of the more optimistic voices in the industry. Since launching their first game, Lucky Train, in late July, co-founders Frederic Descamps and Jordan Maynard have publicly stated their confidence in Facebook as a platform several times. "People say oh, there's too much competition, the market is too saturated," Descamps told us recently. "I think it's the opposite. Yeah, Zynga has brand recognition, and people say we have to break their chokehold. I say, what chokehold? I want Zynga to do even better. Others can still do well by innovating." Descamp's theory is that social gaming is becoming, if anything, less of a winner-take-all industry, with more options attracting more new users and more experienced users branching out to new options. He compares this to other industries. "In the entertainment industry, there are weeks that three good movies come out. Do people say, no, I can only see one movie? Blizzard has three games coming out," he says. "We did an informal survey: would you buy them all? Everyone ended up saying, yeah, I would." The theory has been borne out to some degree. An Inside Social Games analysis recently found that users were moving away from the biggest games into smaller titles; Lucky Train, for its part, has drawn in 1.6 million monthly active users, and continues to grow. "The supply is lagging behind the demand," says Descamps. Another thing that cencerns other developers is the cost of operating on Facebook. Again, Descamps seems unworried. "We released the core game with no wall posts. The only way to propagate the game was to invite your friends. It worked, and, and to this day we spend very little on advertising," he says. "People also say social gaming is going to be like other gaming. They're worried about the curse of studios -– running out of money, and being dependent on publishers," Descamps continues. "For now, you can go direct. That's changing, accessing users will require advertising. But I always ask, in which industries do you not need marketing? It's still way less than launching on a PC or console." For now, A Bit Lucky is continuing work on Lucky Train, which Descamps says is showing some interesting metrics. The average user session is 39 minutes, for example, far higher than the average, and there are spikes of activity on the weekends. Both stats run contrary to the theory that Facebook gamers only want short-session gameplay while at work or looking after children. One key challenge is improving retention. Lucky Train players show 35 percent month-over-month retention, which the company is happy with, but it's also working on a major addition: resource trading between players. The core mechanic of receiving and sending trains is suited perfectly to creating an in-game economy, in which players only have access to some resources and must trade for others. Long-term, Descamps says he's interested in "trans-gaming", a concept much like multi-platform gaming but using different versions of the game suited to each platform it's on, rather than having the same game on each platform. He's not alone; Ubisoft recently announced that it would be pursuing the same strategy, although in the opposite direction, creating specialized Facebook versions of its console games. One more thing that A Bit Lucky hasn't previously disclosed its its list of investors. The company's seed round of $2.6 million attracted over a dozen investors, including SV Angel, Founder Collective, Felicis Ventures, IGN CEO Mark Jung, and Google head of M&A David Lawee.

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A Bit Lucky: Supply is Trailing Demand in Social Game Industry

Chris Morrison

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Chris Morrison