Inside Social Games

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While there are many more developers of Facebook games that are growing in popularity, two companies - Zynga Game Network (Zynga) and Social Gaming Network (SGN) - are taking a broader approach. Instead of just building games, they’re building “game networks” across Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and more in an attempt to become the largest game distribution channel in the social networking world.

That means SGN and Zynga are building their own “platforms within a platform” that enable developers access to 1) enhanced services like game feeds and analytics, and 2) promotional opportunities to reach the network’s large gaming audiences, like the game bar.

Zynga and SGN have both launched their own developer tools and APIs and are working feverishly to build out their networks with the best games and developer services. Already, both have acquired smaller game developers and signed up many more.

And the competition is fierce. Recently, SGN announced the acquisition of several independent game developers (Suleman Ali and Jamal Ashraf of Esgut, Zach Allia of Free Gifts, and Adam Gries and Wayne Mak of Nicknames), while Zynga has been quietly acquiring top developers and adding them to its ranks as well. Top game developers have multiple options on the table.

For those choosing to remain independent, joining a network still has its benefits. Both Zynga and SGN have been aggressively courting game developers into their corner.

And some developers are switching allegiances. For example, Chad Boyda of Launch 10 Labs, developers of The Dot Game, recently moved from Zynga over to SGN. According to Chad,

We switched to SGN near the end of March. We found that despite getting tons of clicks on the Zynga bar, our growth had actually gone flat. While this can be attributed to many factors, we found the most significant one being our users’ experience with the large Zynga bar. Our hypothesis is that our users were confused by the large Zynga bar featured at the top of our game. We decided to try SGN because of its simple approach and smaller footprint.

How will the battle for game developers shake out? Stay tuned. At the same time, Zynga and SGN continue to develop their own games in order to best understand the needs of the developer community - playing the combined role of developer and distributor.

Texas HoldEm Poker is the flagship game by Zynga Game Network, and it’s little wonder this game is successful. The combination of simple flash animation, any easy interface, a vibrant community, and an already-addictive game make Texas HoldEm an unsurprising hit.

Developers should pay attention to the plethora of options that Texas HoldEm provides the player. The digital chips used for placing bets can be bought using real cash, won in the game, or earned in a number of ways. Players can earn chips by signing up for an offer at one of the many Zynga partners or installing another application that has integrated support for Texas HoldEm. If that isn’t your thing, inviting your friends is another quick way to get chips and perpetuate the game. Once inside, you and your friends can set up a private table.

Texas HoldEm has a distinct advantage over other games by because so many people are already familiar with the game (and often play it with people they don’t know). But Zynga smartly invested in some decent Flash animation and a few bells and whistles to make the experience more than just a card game. In order to prevent the game from stalling due to indecision or idleness, each player is given a timer to call, raise, or fold. This helps prevent a game’s arrest at the hands of someone who left their desktop to go make a sandwich.

You can play anyone in the world - not just your friends - just simply click “play” and you’re at the table with several other players from all over the world. There is a ranking system that is kept up to date so players know how they stand in the larger million plus community. One can also achieve a star status that corresponds to an ability level (Shark, Playa, Poker Pro, etc). During the game, a side-scrolling text window shows the last few moves of the table and a chat window allows players to communicate with one another. There are also digital “drinks” players can pass each other to further lend to the atmosphere. Each player can add their own icon (your poker face, if you will) to enhance the interactive experience.

Beyond the game itself, the supporting features are quite staggering. In addition to the ranking system, there are player profiles, leader boards, an active forum, and a help tab for players who are new to the game. I had to refresh my memory on some of the rules and the help tab was largely informative, though it skips on some of the more obtuse rules.

Overall, Texas HoldEm is the definitive poker app on Facebook. The developers do everything in their power to make the game as interactive and personal as possible. The game is able to survive not only because of partnerships and not only because of its invites = chips economy, but because the game is just really, really fun.

Developer’s rating: 9/10

Gameplay: 9/10

Likelihood you’ll be caught at work playing this game: 9/10

Social Gaming Summit, one of the first conferences focused on social games, is happening Friday, June 13 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco.  A top-flight roster of speakers has already been lined up by organizer Charles Hudson.

Inside Social Games and Inside Facebook readers can get a 10% discount on general admission tickets by using the code “INSIDEFACEBOOK” at checkout. Early bird ticket sales (which aren’t discounted but are $100 cheaper than general admission tickets) are on sale through May 1st.

Here are all the details:

The Social Gaming Summit is a one day conference focused on the intersection of casual gaming, immersive worlds, and social networking. Games are becoming one of the most popular activities within social networks and game developers continue to spend increasing amounts of energy figuring out how to leverage and apply the growth in social networking to the games they are developing. The conference will bring together leaders in the social networking and gaming spaces to share insights into the convergence of these worlds.

What: Social Gaming Summit
Where: UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA
When: Friday, June 13th 2008
Register Here: http://socialgamingsummit.eventbrite.com/

Confirmed speakers already include the following:

* Dave Williams, Shockwave and AddictingGames
* Craig Sherman, Gaia Online
* Jim Greer, Kongregate
* Siqi Chen, Serious Business (Friends for Sale)
* Erik Bethke, Go Pets
* Daniel James, Three Rings
* Amy Jo Kim, ShuffleBrain
* Nicole Lazarro, XEODesign
* Matt Mihaly, Sparkplay Media
* Shervin Pishevar, Social Gaming Network
* Mark Pincus, Zynga
* Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners
* Mike Sego, (fluff)Friends
* Kyra Reppen, Neopets
* Ted Rheingold, Dogster
* Matt Palmer, Stardoll

The Social Gaming Summit will focus on a number of important themes in this emerging market:

* Monetization and Business Models for Social Games
* Casual MMOs and Immersive Worlds
* Asynchronous Games on Social Networks
* Building Communities and Social Interaction In and Around Games
* What Makes Games Fun?
* User Generated Games in Social Networks

Jetman is a side-scrolling flash game developed by Simeon Dorsey, adapted from The Helicopter Game by David McCandless and Leandro Berreto. Jetman is a top addictive flash animation game and is easily one of the most popular games on Facebook.

At first look, it’s hard to understand the addictive qualities of Jetman. The rules are simple: you fly a little man with a rocket pack through a blue cave and try to have him avoid little rectangular obstacles. This isn’t -forgive the term- “rocket science.” The graphics aren’t impressive, reminding me of Atari or early Gameboy. Yet, perhaps it is because of these simple, dated qualities the game is so popular.

Old games kept you playing for hours because they were hard as heck. Jetman is similarly difficult. You’re given a little score indication for how long you can survive. My top scores are always in the triple digits, but everyone has friends with scores in the five, maybe six digits, meaning they had to spend a great deal of time on this game.

Simply, the game has become popular mostly because it’s a simple adaptation of a popular type of game - a side-scrolling maneuvering game. Paperboy, the notorious level on Battletoads, and numerous other games incorporated this difficult play-style, and gamers keep coming back for more pain.

The game wisely doesn’t require players to invite friends to play; simply adding the application leads to instantly being part of the game. The game seemingly breaks many rules for developers because it doesn’t require invites as part of the gameplay.

Jetman has endured because people like the gameplay and want to share their love with their friends… and possibly prove their better at it than they are.

The game has evolved to keep with the times as well. Players can customize their little jetman by buying new models. These models cost credits, and in order to gain credits you either need to invite friends or beat your friends in a head to head format called “arena challenges.” The characters range from the classically cute (bananas, santas, ninjas, etc) to the topical (presidential candidates). If topping your friends’ high score isn’t incentive enough to keep playing, earning the high priced presidential candidates may keep you inviting friends and challenging them.

The game’s cultish following has even lead the developers to create some real-world accessories for the game. There is a “Jetman Gear” section to purchase t-shirts with the iconic characters on the game. Like T-shirts that have the iconic Zelda hearts emblazoned on their front, these shirts exploit a “nostalgic cool” element of today’s American culture that is particularly popular with high school and college age students.

The biggest knock I found outside the game itself was the poorly integrated forum. The forum tab links to the SGN Gaming Hub application, which is another Facebook application that lets you keep tabs on numerous Facebook game scores (from other games part of the Social Gaming Network) and chat with friends. However, in order to access it, you need to sign up and leave the Jetman page.

Gameplay: 7/10

Addictiveness: 9/10

Difficulty: 10/10

Speed Racing is a car racing game developed by John Hwang’s TripMonger (now part of Zynga) that has all of the tell-tale signs of a viral game. The game’s economy is based purely on driving new sign-ups for the game - in order to obtain parts to win races, you need to gain points; the only way to gain points is to invite friends and have them join. Like many of the viral games out there, the only way to succeed is to help perpetuate the game. But while other games like Vampires and Pirates seem to perpetuate themselves without offering much gameplay, Speed Racing has a little bit more to offer.

Speed Racing is a bit like playing dress up with paper dolls. You can dress up the dolls in a variety of costumes, but in the end you’ll still just have a boring piece of paper that doesn’t do anything. In a similar way, Speed Racing allows you to “pimp” your ride, but you’ll see your car actually race just as soon as your paper doll comes to life and does the Macarena.

Speed Racing invites players to customize their little 2-D cars with paint jobs, rims, and various accessories that will help performance. The game screen has several tabs that allow you to buy new upgrades, customize your car’s appearance, or race it. Since I figured that the point of the game was to race it, I chose to try that first.

The most irritating thing about Speed Racing is that there is no actual animation. The “Racing” element of the game is not displayed on screen; instead, you are informed through text if you win or lose based purely on the stats of your car. You can only race your friends, so if you have only one friend who installed the game, you’re stuck racing him/her until you invite more friends.

The “Pimp my Ride” and “Buy Upgrades” tabs are more promising for longer game play. The level of customization is deep, and gets deeper the more points you have (you can buy new cars, gadgets, etc). But you can only get those upgrades through invites, so if you haven’t done that, your paper doll is going to look pretty naked.

With so much of the game tied to invitations and so little focus on actual gameplay, the game gets a very low score on the experience side. Yet, the game is popular because people are competitive and like the idea of being able to customize their own digital car. Races can happen even when you’re not logged in, so you can find out that you’ve beaten your friends several times when you check back in on the car.

Similarly, being informed you’ve been challenged and lost several times will push you to invite more friends, spruce up your model, and keep playing. The developers astutely tap into a competitive gameplay element that is especially present with internet users, though again I wish they would give visual representation of the competitiveness.

The game could be improved vastly by allowing players to actually race their cars. Similarly, simply allowing players to race anyone (and not just friends) would increase playing time and the likelihood the game will not be deleted just as quickly as it was installed.

Developer’s Score: 6/10

Gameplay Score: 1/10

Viral Level: 9/10

Jeremy Liew, Managing Director at Lightspeed Venture Partners, has been thinking about social games for a long time. Recently, he moderated a panel at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco called Games 2.0 (slides here). During Web 2.0, I spoke with Jeremy about his vision for social gaming and how he characterizes the space.

Inside Social Games: Jeremy, you’ve been writing about social gaming for longer than most. What’s your vision for the growth of this space?

Jeremy Liew: I don’t have a vision really - that’s not my job. VCs are better critics than writers. I just want to do a decent job of recognizing great visions when I see them.

If you look at churn rates on social applications, most of them just do not have enough to keep users engaged. As a whole, games offer a meaningfully lower churn rate - meaningfully better retention - allowing the shape of that curve to be better.

The low cost of viral user acquisition, greater long term user retention, and interesting but not yet proven opportunity for digital goods monetization decouples you from the math that it takes to get revenues from high volume, low CPM page views, like we see in so many other applications.

Inside Social Games: So where are we in the evolution of social gaming?

Jeremy Liew: I think we’re pretty early in this. SGN and Zynga are delcaring victory, but a lot of innovation is yet to come.

It’s not an accident that the biggest games on Facebook are not owned by SGN or Zynga: Scrabulous and Friends For Sale have been growing independently.  They’ve been baking virality directly into the game mechanic, not layering it on top. They’re developing game mechanics that are native to social networking environment - not just using social networks as a distribution channel. This has only been going on for a few months, and so it’s clear to me that there’s still a lot more opportunity to optimize that.

There is big opportunity in the continuum of users from the casual (that don’t even realize it’s a game) to the hardcore (who are needed to make the digital goods opportunity work).  Social networks offer a new opportunity to move people up the curve.

Inside Social Games: How does developing games for social networks differ from traditional game development?

Jeremy Liew: It’s called Games 2.0, but it’s more like Games 8.0 or Games 9.0. If Web 2.0 is being driven by much lower development costs, then the same thing is true for games on social networks.  Instead of spending $30M for months of development and shipping jewel cases, now you have two guys coding for a weekend - several orders of magnitude lower.

In traditional game development, you’ve got to think the game mechanics all the way through before you ship. For example, you’ve got to map out the first 60 levels and then design the AI for the more significant bosses, etc. But now, you can develop games incrementally - launch fast, launch early, and iterate a lot.

In terms of marketing - Web 1.0 was all about Super Bowl ads, now it’s about variablized CPM/CPC.  The same thing is true with games.

In terms of distribution - In Web 1.0, you had to negotiate a complex multi-million dollar deal with AOL. Now, you just build a web app. The same is true with games. Before, you used to have to negotiate to get shelf space with Best Buy. Now, there are social networks.

In terms of monetization - In Web 1.0, you needed big sales forces. Now you’ve got ad networks that variablize the cost of ad sales.  You had to pay $60 to play Halo 2, but free to play games with monetization through premium features, digital goods, and advertising reduce that barrier significantly.

All this makes me think that there will be new valuable companies created through this disruption. It’s not going to be EA and Take Two who are going to do it. If Web 2.0 is about the social web, then Games 2.0 is about social gaming.

Inside Social Games: Two of the early players in this space, Zynga and SGN, want to create distribution channels for other game developers. Do you think that kind of distribution will be important for developers launching their games?

Jeremy Liew: Mark Pincus [Zynga CEO] is on the record saying you can’t just rely on virality, you’ve got to support your efforts with marketing.  But the biggest games haven’t spent a dime on marketing (Lil Green Patch or Friends For Sale). So I don’t think you have to find more distribution channels, but there’s no shame in it.  There’s always going to be value for distribution - it’s hubris to expect things will only grow virally. Zynga and SGN are smart to help people get to a stage where they can grow virally.

Inside Social Games: So finally Jeremy, where are you turning your attention these days?

Jeremy Liew: Well, there are a bunch of guys importing free to play MMOGs from Asia. And if you believe that free to play with digital goods is the way this is going to go, like I do, then there’s a bunch of infrastructure challenges ahead.

What’s clear is that kids don’t have credit cards.  Gaia has kids just mail in gobs of cash, but that’s not a scalable solution. It’s an infrastructure problem - and it’s not just a problem on Facebook, it’s general to digital goods.

And tuning digital goods economies is actually a very non-obvious problem.  If you get it wrong in the beginning, you’re doomed, and you may not know it for 6 months.  This can only be learned through experience - you can’t hire someone who just knows how to do it.

Welcome to Inside Social Games, the world’s first blog dedicated to tracking social games.

First, a bit of history. Two years ago this week, I started Inside Facebook, the first blog dedicated to tracking Facebook (and one year later, the Facebook Platform). It was still considered pretty geeky to blog in 2006 - especially to start a blog entirely devoted to Facebook. But I had a hunch something big was changing, so I decided that the best way to challenge myself to learn was to force myself to publish. (That’s the idea behind PhD programs, right? But I never was one much for grad school…) Since then, it’s been a lot of fun staying on top of all the innovation, opportunities, and questions that have arisen surrounding Facebook, the Facebook Platform, and the social platformization of the web in general. It’s certainly been an exciting two years - hundreds of posts, lots of interviews, conference and speaking engagements, a small publication, and, of course, a startup.

So what are social games anyway - and why Inside Social Games now? Well, basically for the same reason. Just as I kept being surprised two years ago by the way my “non-geeky” friends were using Facebook, I’m finding myself repeatedly being surprised by the way those same people are playing new kinds of “social games” inside Facebook (and MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Hi5, and Orkut) now. Games that, despite their apparent simplicity or complexity, are being adopted in large numbers by people outside traditional console, PC, and online gaming demographics. Games on social networks are bringing together family and friends like games never before have - and we think that’s pretty darn cool.

Like Inside Facebook, I’m starting Inside Social Games as an experiment. An experiment into what “social gaming” really means and how social games may or may not be changing the way large numbers of people play and communicate. What the results will be, I’m not yet sure, but I’m excited to see what conversations emerge over the coming weeks and months, especially between the game design and SNAP crowds.

I’m proud to announce that I’ve been able to land Chris Holt (also of PC Gamer) to review current and new releases. Chris is a passionate writer (and all around great guy) and would love to receive tips on new games, so feel free to contact him at submit AT insidesocialgames DOT com to let him know what you’re up to.

We’re looking forward to tracking not only the games but also the people and companies behind them that are leading the charge into this new and exciting space. We believe some interesting new companies will be created as the worlds of gaming and social networks collide. It should be a fun ride. Please drop us a line any time!

Justin Smith

Editor, Inside Social Games

justin AT insidesocialgames DOT com