The second annual Social Gaming Summit was held yesterday in San Francisco, and it turned out to be a remarkable event. Organizers Charles Hudson, David Sachs and Jeremy Liew brought their show to the Hotel Nikko this year, and the new venue proved to perfectly hold the larger-than-expected crowd of at least 500 in a cozy and elegant environment conducive to networking. Top executives from just about every significant social network, online game, virtual world and application company were present, and, to hear Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat tell it, the event represented the social gaming industry flexing its muscle and “lay[ing] out a map of the turf it will conquer.”
So what did we learn from the event?
1. Social gaming companies are growing
Not that we didn’t already know this. But just about every company there talked about a high growth curve every which way you look at it: users, revenues, employees, you name it. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says his company is up to 300 employees and growing — the company even took out an ad in the program guide to announce they are hiring. (Offerpal is too, by the way!) Judging by the number of recruiters there yesterday, other people are hiring as well. And just like last year, the VC’s were also there in full force, looking for the next big opportunity. All good signs for the industry.
2. It’s not the size of your audience, it’s the quality
A lot, though not all, of the speakers agreed that they’d rather focus on getting the right users rather than necessarily a large number of users. As Anu (shown above with GirlsInTech’s Adrianna Gascoigne, who called Anu the “the one person that really knocked my socks off during the conference”) said during her panel, “When conducting an install campaign you need a sustained effort to buy not just any old traffic but the right audience, one that will monetize effectively and deliver an ROI.” Sebastien de Halleux of Playfish echoed this sentiment by sharing how his company, rather than spending too much money to attract new users, focuses on making the games really, really fun to play and assuming that success will stem from there.
3. Mobile platforms are hot
The iPhone in particular, but Android, Blackberry and others won’t be far behind. Seems like a host of new mobile gaming companies, including our partners at Tapjoy, have sprung onto the scene, and most of the companies who’ve had success on platforms like Facebook or MySpace are at least dabbling in developing iPhone games. Some are even betting all their chips on the iPhone. It will be interesting to see how the iPhone matures as a platform.
4.Developers have lots of choices
Don’t get me wrong — Facebook and MySpace still rule the platform worlds — but there are plenty of other companies providing viable options for application developers. Bebo, hi5, and Tagged in particular each come to mind. In fact, lots of gaming companies, like Sparkplay Media, Aeria Games and Outspark, to name a few, have been very successful without any platform whatsoever, unless you consider the open Web a platform. And standalone virtual world sites like IMVU and Gaia Online have also done very well all on their own.
5. Social games need to be, well, social
The reason social gaming is growing so quickly is that players simply have more fun playing games with their friends than they do alone. I believe it was new Playdom CEO John Pleasants, recently hired from his COO post at EA, who spoke about how social games tap into a hightened sense of emotions — pride, confrontation, jubilance — that traditional games cannot equal. Therefore the best and most profitable new games focus on the social aspect of it and build meaningful player interactions into the game mechanics.
We learned way more than these five lessons at the Summit yesterday, and we’re sure others did as well. Thanks to the event organizers and all of the attendees for making it an exciting and buzzworthy day. What was your experience? Please leave a comment below or shoot us a note to let us know.
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