How The Game Industry Is Evolving From Gaming 1.0 to Gaming 2.0 [Part 3 of 6]

Welcome to part 3 of our 6 part series about the evolution of Gaming 1.0 to Gaming 2.0 and beyond. In today’s entry, we try to understand social and casual game engagement from a user’s perspective. Social games players’ behavior differs from hardcore gamers in the sense that they play in short play sessions, visiting their favorite games a bunch of times a day for 5-10 minutes at a time. This is partly due to the time restrictions these users face as well as the focus on frequent session compulsions loops game designers embed in their games. Read more after the jump.

Shorter Play Time For The Masses

Console gaming today features compelling game play, with long narratives and missions that can easily mean hours of gaming when a console player sits down to play. Although this works for the adventure kindred, time starved consumers nowadays simply lack the conviction to participate in such a model of long sessions, opting instead for snack gaming.

Designing Compulsion Loops

Examples can be seen in social games where limits are inherently built into the games, limiting game play with energy. Users performing a set of tasks usually requires energy that runs out within a few minutes on average. Users can feel gratified after using this or can purchase more energy if they feel they need it. These compulsion loops allowing users to level up are intricately fabricated, sometimes coupled with a meta game which we’ll discuss next.

Use Meta-Game Concepts To Retain Players

A meta-game concept can be understood by looking at the ultimate goal of the player. Many social games nowadays provide tasks and activities for players to perform, leading to gained experience and money, but the meta-game goal is what keeps the players coming back. The meta-game goal of CafeWorld, for example, is to have the coolest and most profitable Cafe around. All the tasks of cooking and re-decorating your cafe are mini-games intertwined with this meta-game goal which keeps players returning without the need for newsfeed spam. The purpose of a meta-game is to encourage users to gain levels, collect items, invite their friends and return often to purchase virtual currency over and over again.

Research On Social Gaming Demographics

A survey by PopCap games in February focused on US and UK-based social gamers’ (approx. 100 million in population) behavior on Facebook and MySpace. According to the research, 24% of respondents said they play social games regularly and that the average social gamer was a 43 year old woman, (for US the avg. age is 48 compared with 38 years for UK). Only 6% of all social games were age 21 or younger. Of the 5,000 survey respondents, two thirds of which are US-based, about 22% play social games atlas once a week.

What’s interesting is that about 95% of social gamers were found to play multiple times per week, with two-thirds playing atlas once a day. 61% of social gamers reported their avg. social gaming session lasts over half an hour and only 1 in 10 played for 3 hours or more on average. 53% of these gamers play for fun and excitement and 45% for stress relief. We know from past studies that those who are likely to spend are already quite engaged. What about the super whales, aka big spenders, on social games? Let’s take a closer look.

Create Whales In Your Games

Super whales are a rare breed, roughly 2% of the social gaming audience, often spending large chunks of money on virtual goods and currencies. According to study of 2,000 people by Inside Network as reported on Venturebeat, about 61.8% of Facebook players play social games several times a day, with each game session only minutes long. 55.5% of these surveyed users played with friends and often spent only in one game. Those who spend over $25 a month are considered whales and are the primary source of income for social game publishers.

The paradigm has shifted for content creators who need to fundamentally redefine their strategy. With the emergence of the Games-as-a-Service model, game developers have to constantly evolve the application, giving something new and exciting for players to look forward to every time they return. This is especially important now as Facebook returns to helping developers engage in their audience who now have a demand for more engaging and quality content that games like Frontierville are providing.

Check out the rest of the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.