{"id":505,"date":"2010-07-12T04:34:14","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T04:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/?p=505"},"modified":"2010-07-26T04:29:44","modified_gmt":"2010-07-26T04:29:44","slug":"creating-sustainable-facebook-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/creating-sustainable-facebook-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Sustainable Facebook Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/frontierville.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Frontierville\" src=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/frontierville.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"163\" height=\"164\" \/><\/a>How much do you think it costs to play the average Facebook game if you pay to play?\u00a0 While at GDC this year I spoke with a number of Facebook game developers about the spending habits of the average Facebook gamer.\u00a0 They told me I would never believe how much money the average \u201csoccer mom\u201d gamer was spending, and they were right.\u00a0 After some quick research I found that a game like FrontierVille can cost up to $60\/hour.\u00a0 That is more than any other video game, ranging from arcades to subscription based MMO\u2019s.\u00a0 Are payments of this magnitude sustainable?\u00a0 Today I discuss how we can make sustainable games for Facebook and convert the new, huge, Facebook market into long-term gamers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The current landscape<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/reaching-the-casual-market-by-limiting-actions\/\">last blog post<\/a>\u00a0I was asked my thoughts on <a href=\"http:\/\/apps.facebook.com\/frontierville\">FrontierVille<\/a>.\u00a0 I fired it up and started playing.\u00a0 I immediately hit a snag as I needed energy to continue playing.\u00a0 Energy is used to perform most actions in the game.\u00a0 There are three options for acquiring energy:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Waiting \u2013 Energy replenishes over time<\/li>\n<li>Asking friends for energy \u2013 Spam your friends to request energy from them<\/li>\n<li>Spend real money to get more energy<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>None of these are very inviting to me.\u00a0 In fact, they all make me want to switch off the game and play something else.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to investigate how much it would cost if I chose the third option.\u00a0 I found that 7 points lasts me about one minute.\u00a0 This equates to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Smallest payment &#8211; $60\/hour ($1 = 7 points)<\/li>\n<li>Best value payment &#8211; $40\/hour ($199 = 2,100 points)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And that\u2019s just for energy alone!\u00a0 You can also buy other items in game which don\u2019t add to your energy reserves.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Problem<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This kind of cost is not sustainable long-term.\u00a0 People will either end up spamming their friends, paying ridiculous amounts of money or letting the game dictate when they can play.\u00a0 While current Facebook developers may be happy to cash in on this it is not going to last.\u00a0 There are two options for gamers from here.\u00a0 Facebook gamers will find better alternative Facebook games, or they will stop playing Facebook games entirely.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why Sustainability?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Game developers have the perfect opportunity to reach a massive audience with deep and meaningful gameplay.\u00a0 This audience also has an extremely large disposable income which can be tapped.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t take advantage of this, the droves of mainstream gamers entering the market will disappear as quickly as they arrived.\u00a0 Giving a deeper experience than these expensive, spam-driven games will help to capture and grow the audience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are a number of steps we can take to make Facebook games more sustainable.\u00a0 I\u2019m not suggesting we stop micro transactions and wall posts entirely; we just need to be more respectful with how we use them.<\/p>\n<p>Players should get a solid reward for their time and money investments.\u00a0 This expenditure should be treated more as an investment than just the cost of playing.\u00a0 Players should be encouraged to spend as much as they like, but should also be rewarded in valuable ways.\u00a0 By adding value to the gamers experience they are more inclined to continue paying as they see a direct correlation between enjoyment and money spent.\u00a0 Currently the only correlation is between game time and money spent.<\/p>\n<p>Wall posts and \u201cspam\u201d are a necessary evil of viral and social marketing.\u00a0 The current drop in numbers has shown that they are an ideal way of advertising the game (the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/29089\/Facebooks_Zuckerburg_App_Reengagement_Focus_Credits_Help_Level_Playing_Field.php\">limitation on spamming ability<\/a> of games directly relates to decline in number of players joining).\u00a0 This viral marketing should be done in interesting ways that add value to the player, rather than being superficial requests for or sharing of items.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than wall posts simply asking for things, or \u201csharing the good news\u201d developers need to look at the core gameplay mechanics of their game and have a thread of continuity to their posts.\u00a0 The main problem with existing games is the lack of deep and meaningful gameplay means there is little the gamer wants other than more of everything in the game.\u00a0 Game designers need to factor wall posts and the like into their game design at a foundational level if they want any meaningful effect on gameplay to be seen.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the right attitude and a good portion of respect for the player, we can turn this large audience into large revenue for the games industry.<\/p>\n<p>What are your thoughts on sustainable Facebook games?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much do you think it costs to play the average Facebook game if you pay to play?\u00a0 While at GDC this year I spoke with a number of Facebook game developers about the spending habits of the average Facebook gamer.\u00a0 They told me I would never believe how much money the average \u201csoccer mom\u201d <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/creating-sustainable-facebook-games\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[87,31,112,88],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-development","tag-facebook","tag-game-designer","tag-game-development","tag-zynga"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgEc5-89","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}