Game Developers Look Outside of Facebook, But Find Distribution Challenges (Part 2 of 3)

This is a guest blog post Brian Balfour, Co-Founder and VP BD and Marketing, of Viximo who helps social applications and games get distribution on social networks beyond Facebook. Part 1 of this series can be found here. In the two years since social gaming has taken hold, Facebook as a distribution platform has largely driven the success of the industry. But there is a huge, largely untapped opportunity for social games beyond the site, and although game developers are slowly beginning to tire of the challenges of distributing on Facebook and are thinking beyond it, it appears that they may not be fully aware of the size of this opportunity. Consider this: the world's top 100 worldwide social networks have a user base of approximately 1.9 billion monthly visitors (duplicated), and while Facebook holds the number one spot in this list with 471 million visitors, it only accounts for 25% of the worldwide audience. Seventy five percent of the world's social network visitors - around 1.4 billion users - remain largely unaddressed on the remaining top 99 social networks. (Source: Comscore 1/2010) Do social game developers know about this huge, lucrative market? Apparently not. Last month, we conducted a survey of the industry's top 85 social game developers, and when asked to estimate the size of the worldwide opportunity beyond Facebook, only 13% correctly estimated the opportunity as greater than 1 billion worldwide users. Although the opportunity is greater than most game developers think, it's clear that they have already recognized that there is a world beyond Facebook; of those surveyed, 64% said they have tried distribute their games on at least one non-Facebook social network. When going beyond Facebook, developers seek social networks that meet three key priorities: They must offer a large user base (62%); This audience must be sufficiently engaged with the site and therefore easily monetizable (59%); Developers should have access to viral channels and native notification systems to benefit from a low cost of user acquisition (42%). But developers face some hurdles when developing a non-Facebook distribution strategy. Firstly, there is the issue of a fragmented user base. Although the top 99 networks offer access to potentially 1.4 billion monthly users, each of them individually only makes up a small piece of the pie. On average, each of these 99 sites gets 14 million visitors each month (Source: Comcast 1/2010). That's 1% of the pie. If developers want to really make an impact in the world of non-Facebook social networking, then signing on one social network at a time will not give them the big bang they are hoping to create. Integration is another pain point. Even if developers gain access to a large number of users through multiple partnerships, they will still have to engage in tedious individual platform integrations, which are very costly and often slow down overall launch timelines. Beyond initial integration, different networks have different attributes that make ongoing management a problem. Some are closed platforms versus open platforms. Different networks have different viral channels and viral channel regulations. Some have required site wide currencies and payments. Certain networks require localization to be effective. All added up, when a developer evaluates an individual platform, the costs quickly become greater then the opportunity for that single social network. What developers really need to grease the wheels of the industry and make the non-Facebook distribution model take off is a simple, scalable solution that addresses these problems of fragmentation and integration. OpenSocial was supposed to be this solution but it has not taken off as it was intended. In our survey, we asked developers if OpenSocial had succeeded in "being an easy and efficient solution to developing social applications that run across multiple networks." 58% Disagreed with or were Undecided about this successful characterization of OpenSocial. Clearly the market is ripe for a simple, one-step solution to enable integration and distribution beyond Facebook. OpenSocial was meant to do this - why didn't it work? I'll be tackling just that question in Part 3 of this series.

Social Pro Daily

Game Developers Look Outside of Facebook, But Find Distribution Challenges (Part 2 of 3)

Neil Vidyarthi

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Neil Vidyarthi