Misconceptions about online casual and social gaming
When I tell people that I work in the online gaming industry for Spil Games I come across many misconceptions. Online games have changed a lot over the past years, and many of the views that people have about these games are not correct anymore. I would like to give my view on some of these misconceptions, based on publicly available figures and internal facts and figures from Spil Games.
1. Gaming is a waste of time and is bad for kids
This is something I hear often but that I totally disagree with. I believe there is a creative and educational layer in many games. But of course it doesn"t mean that kids should play all the time. I have two kids myself and find that online games can be an addition to their development. It"s important that children also play outside and do sports. Next to that they can also play online games, but they should only play for short lengths of time. Research shows that kids of 3 years old should play maximum 10 minutes per day and 6 year olds should not be online more than 30 minutes per day. If children do that games can be very beneficial. They can learn a lot in games, for example learning to work together, but also getting more self confidence when you achieve something in a game.
2. Online casual gaming is addictive
Yes, gaming can be very addictive, but that"s especially so for hardcore games like World of Warcraft. Online casual games are a different ballgame. When people play games for 15 minutes per day on our sites, can you say that our games are addictive? The games on our platform are meant to be fun to play and should be relaxing. At least that"s what we hope and that"s what we are trying to achieve.
3. Only house wives and unemployed people play online social games
Everybody plays games, it has become a mainstream activity. Just look at the numbers of people playing a game like Cityville on Facebook (with tens of millions of monthly active users) or the many players on all game platforms across the web. That"s a lot more players than just unemployed people and house wives. Actually, a big target group playing on Spil Games" game platforms is young girls between 8 to 12 years old. We also see a lot of families playing together and more and more even grandparents that play games. Out of Spil Games" 130 million unique users per month there are certainly a lot of house wives and unemployed people, but it"s far from the majority of players.
4. Online social gaming = World of Warcraft
For several years the most played game in the world was World of Warcraft, a "hardcore" MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game). I personally love the game, that is still very profitable but that also takes a lot of time to play. Playing a MMORPG is a form of social gaming, but social gaming is much more than a multiplayer game: you can also play social games in a much shorter period of time, without swords and other weapons and in a less violent setting. We often define online casual gaming as "the perfect snack": it"s free fun and entertaining. People play most of our social games during their lunch break (between 12 and 2 pm), at the end of the work or study day (after 4 pm) and at night after 9 pm. People don"t play social games for hours like with World of Warcraft, the average time that girls play on our platforms is about 11 minutes per session. Very different from the hours of gameplay that many MMORPG players put in every day!
5. You can only play real games on consoles
There is nothing wrong with consoles, I have an Xbox 360 myself and I love to play games on it with my kids. But gaming is much more than console games: according to ComScore (Dec. 2010) 1.3 billion people are online out of which 510 million play online games. That"s a lot more than the number of consoles that are being sold, so most people never play games on consoles. The quality of online games has improved tremendously over the years, and many of the traditional console games are now available online as well. You don"t need consoles anymore for a great gaming experience.
6. Girls are no real gamers
In the games industry girls are often a "neglected" target group, it"s a misconception that boys play online games but that girls prefer to play with dolls. On Spil Games" social game platforms for girls (among others girlsgogames.com) we have 30 million unique visitors every month. They may be playing in a pink environment and many of their favorite games are about horses or about dressing up dolls. But if we look at our statistics we can see that they are very competitive and very engaged. They created millions of avatars and saved millions of their in-game creations on their personal profiles. And believe it or not, but girls love racing games as well.
7. People don"t want to pay for virtual items
I hear this argument a lot less since games with virtual goods like Farmville became popular, but some people still seem to think that only a few people actually pay in games. The world of virtual items is booming, we see a steady increase in the number of daily transactions in our games. And not only we see that, game developer Playfish announced that they have 90 million virtual goods transactions every single day in its games. That"s nine times the 10 million items for sale on eBay at any given time every day.
8. Online gaming is not the right choice for advertisers
Online gaming has become one of the biggest sources of entertainment in media over the past couple of years. Not only do a lot of people play games, but they are also highly engaged. Our research shows that 83% of our users are open to online advertising, and the more relevant the ads the better. Ads should not be intrusive, but should increase the gaming experience instead of disrupting it.
Mobile start-up Kiip just launched a HTML5 platform for advertisers for example, and managed to raise a big round by enhancing the user experience and by showing that advertisers also see the potential of relevant ads. There is a lot more possible than the "traditional" banners: think about branded games for example or sponsored items inside games. I think online gaming is one of the best choices out there for advertisers, especially if they are willing to try new ways of advertising.
9. Online games are only big in the Western world
Online games are big everywhere and are growing fastest outside the Western world, especially because you don"t need a fast broadband connection to play online games. As proof of this, China will likely be the biggest market for online games in 2014. In order to become big in non-Western countries you have to localize your sites: Spil Games has platforms in 19 different languages, many of these focusing on non-Western languages. But just translating is not enough, localizing is much more than that. In India we have for example more cricket games than in the USA. Online gaming is global and works in all cultures.
10. Mobile games can be best played through apps
Initially I believed apps would be the future of mobile games because of their superior user experience. However, if developers decide to make apps they have to make different apps for all kinds of phones. A long time there was no real alternative for native apps, especially because browser-based Flash games don"t run on the iPhone.
But then HTML5 started to grow and many game developers made their first games in that language. The big advantage is that HTML5 games run on every smartphone in a browser. No need for different versions of one game anymore. And because HTML5 engines are getting a lot better the games also improve a lot. Many HTML5 games are not as good as apps yet, but for more and more games (especially social games) you get the same quality in HTML5 as in an app. And these games even look like apps, even though you don"t need to download them and can just play them in your browser. We believe, just like the people at Facebook, that HTML5 is the future of mobile, not apps.（Source：businessinsider）
Quick Shopping
|