Have you checked in to Playfish latest sensation ‘Hotel City’? It is taking the web by storm, as you can see from the screen shot above from ‘Inside Social Games’ insight into web traffic.
Congrats to the team at Playfish who are on fire with creativity at the moment, (and yes they are recruiting for the very best talent now…. www.jobs.ea.com).
There is a real buzz surrounding Social Gaming, not just about its tremendous growth and success to date but also about its bright future, rich with lots of unrealised potential….and this means shed loads of fun for games players across the world. The adrenaline is really flowing at Playfish as they unleash their creative talent and their employees do what they are best at….creating fun for all.
Social gaming has been spurred by the spread of social networking, faster Internet connections and powerful mobile devices, which mean that game makers are experimenting with a host of innovations that drastically improve online play. The internet itself has ballooned in growth from 16 million users to 1.8 billion users in the last 15 years, driven by lower barriers of entry. Facebook is by far the largest Social Network with 400m unique users, with 200m of them playing games on the platform.
So far Playfish have created 12 online games, with over 61 million loyal fans who play their games worldwide. But what gives them real heart and energy for the future is an appreciation that they are at the start of a journey, with so much more to achieve. Look at the growth of Social Networks, particularly Facebook. The statistics below in the previous blog story really underline the breathtaking potential to reach out to new gamers across the world.
Social gaming is fundamentally changing the way the games industry does business. Gaming is moving from being a product-driven industry to being a service-driven industry, with the significant change in economics that comes along with that. The internet is really driving major evolutions in how games are made and distributed: they’re changing from physical to digital, from products to services, from standalone experiences to social experiences, and from upfront payments to ongoing payments. That is a radical overhauling of the traditional business model.
Social gaming is also a change in the way people traditionally play games. Social games can be about things like cooperation and competition – arguably those are far more compelling reasons to play than the journey through some solitary quest a game designer has written, even if it’s written very well.
That core ability has created an entirely new discipline of game design, which takes game design out of the experience inside the game itself. Rather, designers now must ask themselves, “How do we create an experience where people will want to talk outside of the game about what’s going on in the game, and bring other people into the game?”
This means that Playfish is able to bring games to where people hang out, and not ask them to identify as gamers. It’s a huge difference to a barrier of adoption, as witnessed by 200 million uniques right now. This sense of reaching ‘friends,’ not ‘gamers,’ is critical. This leads to a sense of “social adoption” in games. Rather than finding games through specialist game stores or dedicated game portals, you find games through friends.
Playfish has real energy about the future……..we will certainly bring you the latest news direct from the fishes mouth!
So let’s learn more about latest sensation ‘Hotel City’. Even better, click on the link below and go play it…..
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