Social Gaming Market Reaches Its Final Stage... and It’s Not Looking Pretty.
By Alex St. John. When Facebook recognized that early social media games were getting a free ride on their network, they shut down the free viral channels these games relied on for audience, started charging market prices for advertising, and demanded a cut of all commerce transactions (see Facebook Credits http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10460201-36.html). This changed the economics of social games dramatically. Reaching a large audience easily and for free ceased to be a benefit of developing social media games. In the downloadable casual game business, game developers get a 25%-35% share of the revenue their games generate online when published via channels other than their own. With Facebook charging a 30% premium for Credits and taking an additional cut on advertising, it’s likely that the cost of marketing a social media game is converging on what it costs in the mature downloadable casual game business. more... http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/17/social-gaming-hi5/ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
