Social Games at once - a section of the market (October 2009) and the emergence of new megastars
“Incredible! We don't have anything tagged with social games. ”
And Social Games are! and yet not many in Russia know what it is, I will tell you, how it will all end.
Acquaintance of the Russian-speaking part of the Internet with the Social Games began in the localized version of facebook from the dismal game Happy Farmer, which in essence was a localized version of Happy Harvest from the company ELEX. Happy Harvest now occupies an honorable 138 place in the rating of games for facebook, without becoming anything remarkable there ... If it had not received VKontakte a second life.
')
Historically, it turned out that everything that was bad in the West was bought and reprimed in Russia, but I’m not here to read morality ... The next attempt was much more successful. The restaurateur - the Russified version of the very well-known Play City Restaurant City game from PlayFish quickly made the players stop planting virtual radishes.
Official advertising Restaurant City from the company PlayFish
In Russian localization Restorer
Separately, it should be noted that the names of those who engaged in localization are not known. Original brands of manufacturers, for unknown reasons, hiding. In Yandex, no information on this was found.
Some Russian-speaking journalists sounded the alarm ... They say “The Restorer” is a very dangerous application that leads to the monstrous spending of time that a player could have spent for more constructive purposes. It only makes me smile. Why?
Many skeptics claim that in the genre of Social Games, there is nothing new - they are all the same good old casual games (ooo, another term - details of nugli), only transferred to the social networking APIs. To this you can answer that in essence there is nothing new in all the activities of humanity, however, like my article, it is based on dozens of other sources (which I forgot). But in 3D shooters and in MORPG, too, there was nothing new. However, they ruled the world and there are such definitions.
The game features the following innovations:
This model of gameplay uses a “viral mechanism” (word of mouth) for a very fast self-copying into the value system of all people who tend to play similar games.
In Facebook, the popularity of the application has not been measured by the number of installations for a long time. Instead, capitalists count the number of players: daily, weekly, monthly. And this bill is not for tens of thousands, but for millions!
So in Restaurant City more than 5 million players play daily and this number is still growing! Approximately 0.7 million weekly. But this is only number 8 in the top 10 of the most popular facebook games. And the Playfish company is just a pitiful number 2 on the Social Games market. So who is really a star? Who is the whole press enthusiastically writing about? So, ladies and gentlemen, meet - mega monster.
The company's history began a little less than 3 years ago, when 7 partners led by Mark Pinkas (Mark Pincus), an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, previously known startups support.com and tribe.net (later sold to Cisco Systems) bought in July 2007 the building of an old potato chip factory that would house a company that employed 27 people. The company Pinkas named after his bulldog - Zynga . "Other great social games" - their website says
Who gave the dough?
Many since Bing Gordon (one of those people who created Electronic Arts in 1982). Investors dropped $ 29 million. At first, Zynga did boring and little interesting games like poker and sea battle. It cannot be said that they were the first to start making such games, but their games were different because they could be played with friends, and hundreds of thousands of users were interested in it.
The Forbes article of October 29, 2009 states that the company now employs 530 people (including those working under contract). Having experience in developing the most popular applications in the world, what are they developing there? These monsters! Meet the Farmville game (an advanced version of Farmer). 60 million people play it every month (for comparison, World Of Warcraft plays 11.5 million, and Vkontakte has only 47 million registrations and these numbers change very quickly). But Zynga would not have become the darling of the press if it had not been for riveting hits. The Farmville path was long and arduous. The game slowly gained momentum from July 2009 until it became number 1 to the current moment (ie, these sixty million players in three months). But on October 4, 2009 Zynga will release a new game Café World - an improved version of the famous game Restaurant City. For a month, the game installed about 27 million people. The game took the 2nd position in the list of the most popular facebook games. With Mafia Wars in its collection - the third most popular game of facebook and about 30 more games in total, Zynga rules the worlds of more than 50 million players daily.
Official Zynga Advertising
The most popular facebook game - FarmVille
And how much does it bring them dough ???
According to a source close to the company. In 2009, Zynga revenues exceeded $ 100,000,000 and this is a very “conservative estimate." For 3 years, not bad, is not it? I don’t know about you, but I’m already looking forward to the company's IPO, which is scheduled for 2010, and this can be trusted. Although there are skeptics who claim that Zynga spends too much money on salaries and advertising its applications in MySpace (this is why Mobsters rule there, a clone of their Mafia Wars game. It's a shame not to take the market in time). As well as the bulk of their income (which is not actually advertised) comes from the sale of chips in poker, which is rather doubtful, since Do they follow the rule of paying 10% of profits on winnings?
Now the entire social games market in the west is estimated at $ 300 million, Russia accounts for 10 million. So, for a couple of millionaires in this country soon will be more.
While the company Playfish is preparing to sell Electronic Arts for $ 400 million. The new company CrowdStar is entering the market. Their first game Happy Aquarium (BETA) was launched on October 12, 2009. And for 1 day it was established by 10.5 million people. Within a month, the game confidently entered the TOP 5 and will soon force out the annoying Mafia Wars. And CrowdStar was queued up right after Playfish (yes, see for yourself, they don’t even have a website).
So right now, we are observing how the market section of a new kind of games is going!
That's not all. The Secret Service has just informed me that CrowdStar is developing a new hit. Social Causes application that allows you and your friends to have fun creating charity games and earn money to help protect the ecology of our Planet! Type of fees for WWF. Want to play?
And Social Games are! and yet not many in Russia know what it is, I will tell you, how it will all end.
Social Games in Russia today
Acquaintance of the Russian-speaking part of the Internet with the Social Games began in the localized version of facebook from the dismal game Happy Farmer, which in essence was a localized version of Happy Harvest from the company ELEX. Happy Harvest now occupies an honorable 138 place in the rating of games for facebook, without becoming anything remarkable there ... If it had not received VKontakte a second life.
')
Historically, it turned out that everything that was bad in the West was bought and reprimed in Russia, but I’m not here to read morality ... The next attempt was much more successful. The restaurateur - the Russified version of the very well-known Play City Restaurant City game from PlayFish quickly made the players stop planting virtual radishes.
Official advertising Restaurant City from the company PlayFish
In Russian localization Restorer
Separately, it should be noted that the names of those who engaged in localization are not known. Original brands of manufacturers, for unknown reasons, hiding. In Yandex, no information on this was found.
Some Russian-speaking journalists sounded the alarm ... They say “The Restorer” is a very dangerous application that leads to the monstrous spending of time that a player could have spent for more constructive purposes. It only makes me smile. Why?
A little bit about the gameplay
Many skeptics claim that in the genre of Social Games, there is nothing new - they are all the same good old casual games (ooo, another term - details of nugli), only transferred to the social networking APIs. To this you can answer that in essence there is nothing new in all the activities of humanity, however, like my article, it is based on dozens of other sources (which I forgot). But in 3D shooters and in MORPG, too, there was nothing new. However, they ruled the world and there are such definitions.
The game features the following innovations:
- The player plays this game with friends, therefore, the more his friends install this game, the more the player gets a bonus
- The game is trying with all its might to CONFIRM a player to invite their friends to play, offering unique time-limited UNIQUE gifts (I’m not saying about banal resource bonuses)
- Modern Social Games can send a notification to the player about the need to continue the game.
- About their gaming achievements, the player sends notifications to friends and makes entries in the tape
- The player is forced to regularly enter the game (at a strictly specified time interval) to collect the resource, otherwise he will suffer a loss
- For all additional options you must pay a small reward to the developer.
This model of gameplay uses a “viral mechanism” (word of mouth) for a very fast self-copying into the value system of all people who tend to play similar games.
Social Games in the World (scale of the phenomenon)
In Facebook, the popularity of the application has not been measured by the number of installations for a long time. Instead, capitalists count the number of players: daily, weekly, monthly. And this bill is not for tens of thousands, but for millions!
So in Restaurant City more than 5 million players play daily and this number is still growing! Approximately 0.7 million weekly. But this is only number 8 in the top 10 of the most popular facebook games. And the Playfish company is just a pitiful number 2 on the Social Games market. So who is really a star? Who is the whole press enthusiastically writing about? So, ladies and gentlemen, meet - mega monster.
The company's history began a little less than 3 years ago, when 7 partners led by Mark Pinkas (Mark Pincus), an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, previously known startups support.com and tribe.net (later sold to Cisco Systems) bought in July 2007 the building of an old potato chip factory that would house a company that employed 27 people. The company Pinkas named after his bulldog - Zynga . "Other great social games" - their website says
Who gave the dough?
Many since Bing Gordon (one of those people who created Electronic Arts in 1982). Investors dropped $ 29 million. At first, Zynga did boring and little interesting games like poker and sea battle. It cannot be said that they were the first to start making such games, but their games were different because they could be played with friends, and hundreds of thousands of users were interested in it.
The Forbes article of October 29, 2009 states that the company now employs 530 people (including those working under contract). Having experience in developing the most popular applications in the world, what are they developing there? These monsters! Meet the Farmville game (an advanced version of Farmer). 60 million people play it every month (for comparison, World Of Warcraft plays 11.5 million, and Vkontakte has only 47 million registrations and these numbers change very quickly). But Zynga would not have become the darling of the press if it had not been for riveting hits. The Farmville path was long and arduous. The game slowly gained momentum from July 2009 until it became number 1 to the current moment (ie, these sixty million players in three months). But on October 4, 2009 Zynga will release a new game Café World - an improved version of the famous game Restaurant City. For a month, the game installed about 27 million people. The game took the 2nd position in the list of the most popular facebook games. With Mafia Wars in its collection - the third most popular game of facebook and about 30 more games in total, Zynga rules the worlds of more than 50 million players daily.
Official Zynga Advertising
The most popular facebook game - FarmVille
And how much does it bring them dough ???
According to a source close to the company. In 2009, Zynga revenues exceeded $ 100,000,000 and this is a very “conservative estimate." For 3 years, not bad, is not it? I don’t know about you, but I’m already looking forward to the company's IPO, which is scheduled for 2010, and this can be trusted. Although there are skeptics who claim that Zynga spends too much money on salaries and advertising its applications in MySpace (this is why Mobsters rule there, a clone of their Mafia Wars game. It's a shame not to take the market in time). As well as the bulk of their income (which is not actually advertised) comes from the sale of chips in poker, which is rather doubtful, since Do they follow the rule of paying 10% of profits on winnings?
Now the entire social games market in the west is estimated at $ 300 million, Russia accounts for 10 million. So, for a couple of millionaires in this country soon will be more.
Epilogue: guys, I will be the third
While the company Playfish is preparing to sell Electronic Arts for $ 400 million. The new company CrowdStar is entering the market. Their first game Happy Aquarium (BETA) was launched on October 12, 2009. And for 1 day it was established by 10.5 million people. Within a month, the game confidently entered the TOP 5 and will soon force out the annoying Mafia Wars. And CrowdStar was queued up right after Playfish (yes, see for yourself, they don’t even have a website).
So right now, we are observing how the market section of a new kind of games is going!
That's not all. The Secret Service has just informed me that CrowdStar is developing a new hit. Social Causes application that allows you and your friends to have fun creating charity games and earn money to help protect the ecology of our Planet! Type of fees for WWF. Want to play?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/74183/
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