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Ask HN: Where do I find metrics about the social gaming industry?

by AmitinLA on 9/9/10, 2:14 AM with 1 comments

I've been doing some research into the business of social gaming and have collected some "data" from Google but since the industry is both relatively new and mostly private, it's hard to find actual, believable numbers. Are there any numbers you guys believe when it comes to ARPUs, CTRs, market sizes, etc? Are the numbers on the Inside Network blogs to be believed[1]? If you've got first-hand experience and think they're bull, by what delta?

More than that, in the last few days of research in the industry, it seems that the industry is heavily slanted towards games about resource optimization, since that tends to yield more money in the form of virtual loot than offer walls, etc. Do any of you think virtual loot will work in other forms of gameplay? It seems that more and more of the loot being sold has a primary purpose (to speed up/change gameplay) rather than something to display for vanity purposes.

Thanks; can't wait to hear what you all think.

[1] http://www.insidenetwork.com

  • by benologist on 9/9/10, 2:45 AM

    You have to take it with a grain of salt - social games can and do make tremendous amounts of money but for every one that does a lot of others don't make squat.

    Distributed Flash games also leverage microtransactions with varying degrees of success using platforms like http://www.gamersafe.com/ and http://wwww.mochimedia.com/, Mochi has a bunch of writeups at http://www.mochiland.com/. Andy Moore http://andymoore.ca/ and Chris Gregorio http://kaitol.com/ have both been very frank about their numbers although neither has implemented microtransactions yet.

    A Russian developer called Badim has a long-running series of posts about his experiences leveraging microtransactions from various providers in this form of gaming: http://blog.elite-games.net/blog4.php

    In terms of market size the numbers are enormous anywhere you look - I track games on and off Facebook, with and without microtransactions, that have 10s of millions of views.

    The real key is very simple but ridiculously hard - you have to make a game that people want to play. The people making serious cash off social gaming are ultimately doing it because people really want to play the shit out of their games, and most games of any type or characteristic simply do not enjoy that status.