5 replies to this topic

[Audioboxer]

Quote

"If you look at what people successfully did on Facebook or the early days of mobile, a lot of it was about cheap user acquisition through the spammy virality that Facebook allowed for a while, or manipulations of the terms of service from Apple or Google on the mobile side. That's gone away,” said Greg Richardson, CEO of Rumble Entertainment. “Of the $50 billion that was spent worldwide last year on games, less than 10 percent was spent on casual content. These companies were really smart around analytics and monetization and very light in terms of product and content creation. I'm not sure any of those things are particularly sustainable. The future lies in going into the larger part of the market which is people that self-identify as gamers, and where the user acquisition and long-term value creation comes from making great games."

Whole article: http://www.gamesindu...rom-key-players

[+McKay]

Hurrr durrr but Angry Birds outsells Call of Duty Derrrp!

[Raa]

5 billion dollars is nothing to sniff at...

[Audioboxer]

Raa, on 16 December 2012 - 22:59, said:

5 billion dollars is nothing to sniff at...

Nope. Not at all.

But it has to be brought into the reality of the games industry and not be forced AS the reality. Look up, down, left, right, under your bed, and you'll find someone saying casuals run the industry and we shall suffer.

I keep hearing every so often about the trouble Zynga is getting into.

[-Razorfold]

The more important thing is, how much did it cost for those casual games to be made? Casual games (angry birds etc) are pretty simple, quick and easy to make. They don't require highly complex engines, millions of lines of code, voice actors etc.

If the total cost making them was something like $10 million but they brought in $5 billion, that's a massive profit margin. Larger games rarely have those kindoff margins.

[Growled]

So they are telling us what many of us already knew. Great. Gamers are the ones who play games, not casual users.