GDC 2013: Trends in Free-to-Play

In the past, at GDC, there has always been a review about the social games space, however, this year, they have changed this session to “The Year in Free-to-Play Games”. A major part of this change is due to the fact social games have been increasingly moving towards the mobile market. 

The presentation started off with a quick recap of what has happened in this space since 2009: 

• FB Gaming 2009: Infant stage; the games are still very simple, and not very engaging yet. 
• FB Gaming 2010: Tween stage; the games are now full of energy and full of promise, but we don’t know exactly where they are going yet 
• FB Gaming 2011: Adolescent Stage; the games are getting better, but still a bit awkward.
• FB Gaming 2012: Youth: the games are now slightly quirky, animated, and trying too hard to be liked, while being a bit cheesy at times 
• FB Gaming 2013: Donald Trump: the games have matured, are cash cows, and may be a bit past their prime 

 If this represents social gaming in 2013, I am very afraid of what it will look like in 2014

Following are some of the trends highlighted.

Platform Diving

Hmm… when you line them up like this, it almost looks like FiOS. I smell a conspiracy…

One of the top trends discovered in 2013 was the migration from Facebook to other platforms such as iOS and Android.  While looking at the revenues for games from 2010 – 2013, on the social media side, the market has grown from $1.3B in 2010 to a $2.8B market by 2013. However, on the mobile side, it is growing much more rapidly, starting at $1.8B in 2010, with $5.5B expected by 2013. 

Looking at the Facebook games market, the top 13 games are primarily dominated by Zynga.com, which takes up 6 of the top spots in 2012, in terms of its DAU (Daily Active Users). On the mobile side, however, Zynga is not as prevalent and on the top 13 mobile games, there are only a handful of incumbents from the social media side. 

The conclusion basically results in the fact that right now, the Facebook games market is fairly saturated, and mobile still has a window of opportunity for possibly another year or two. For developers looking for a way in, this is probably the last call before it starts to reach saturation. For Facebook, the game market solidified very quickly. It’s still to be determined whether this will happen in the mobile market. 

Super-Duper SuperCell

According to the presenter, this is a company that is super focused on pushing out quality games, at the expense of speed. This philosophy of producing games goes completely against the rest of the industry that is trying to push out as many games as quickly as possible. 

While many of SuperCell games will look familiar on the surface, when we dive deeper into the mechanics of the actual gameplay, it is there that we will discover that the SuperCell games are much more compelling. Using “Clash of Clans” on iOS as an example, on the surface, in terms of the game mechanics, it looks a lot like the FB game, “Backyard Monsters”. However, when you dive in deeper to the game, the players get more involved into the game with more intuitive controls of the game, including the ability to swipe in different ways to engage the players. 

Another title from SuperCell, “Payday”, seems an awful lot like Farmville, however, again, with the different swipes, it creates an entirely different game experience, and instead of just planting vegetables that just take different lengths of time to grow, the game expands to several other layers of playability. 

What SuperCell has done with its games has been to make incremental improvements, so that as the games move along, users learn new mechanics of the game at a gradual pace, and the game continues to improve. 

The company’s philosophy of releasing quality games resonates well with the investors, as it was able to successfully raise a $10M Series A round. Maybe there really is something to releasing a quality game over pushing out crap every few months! Who’d have thunk?   

King for a Day Month Year

King.com started off as an independent skill-based games for cash site competing with WorldWinner.com. The company later released games such as Bubble Witch Saga and Candy Crush Saga, which has propelled it to new heights, and as of February 2013, the Candy Crush Saga game is the first game since 2009 that a non-Zynga game held the #1 position in terms of DAU. What helped propel the company was its mobile versions of games such as Bubble Witch and Candy Crush, which also connect back to the Facebook version. 

The takeaways from King.com’s journey would be to 1) never give up — the company failed 3 times before things started to take hold; 2) The FB audience is very casual — the players are looking to play in small increments, so King’s challenge was to get players engaged quickly in order to keep them in the game; and 3) innovate within a formula — the games all follow a similar formula, and by making small increments within the game, King was able to make things right a little at a time. 

Chipping In

The presenter highlighted the #1 iOS game, “Big Fish Casino” as an excellent example of a highly social casino game. Even in games such as the slot machine, it includes a way to invite friends to chat together with while playing.  Along with the messaging system, it also includes a leveling system which helps keep players engaged, and coming back to play more. 

Some of the pluses for getting into this market include: 

1. reduction in design risk — for the developers, designing the games is pretty straightforward. There is no need to var the game, since people know what to expect from a casino game. 
2. reduction in learning curves — most users should be able to get up and running in no time since the games all use a commonly accepted standard set of rules 
3. well understood monetization model — these kinds of games have been around for a long time, and there’s really no need to re-invent the wheel here 
4. can become its own ecosystem — looking at Big Fish Casino, it is its own ecosystem. It has the messaging system in place, the game system, and can expand from there. 

Some of the minuses, on the other hand include: 

1. easy to replicate mechanics — the games are essentially the same all across the board. the barrier to entry, at least from a gameplay perspective, is relatively low. players don’t want to play Blackjack where the rules have been altered. 
2. players may resist new game variants 
3. premium on math skills — just a small bug could take down an entire business. If there is an error in the mathematics, it could yield catastrophic results such as paying the players too much, or taking too much from the players that they sue the company. 

Overall, the social casino games market is exciting, but it does have its pitfalls. The monetization model is a very well-studied business model, and is proven to be lucrative. Despite the market being fairly crowded already, these games usually are not gunning for the #1 position, yet are still profitable. Things will start to heat up even more, as more states start to legalize online gambling. So far, only New Jersey and Nevada have approved, but many other states are getting ready.  

I’m Crushing You While You’re Sleeping

The game, “Kingdom of Camelot”, exemplifies how a social game should be done. It has a very robust messaging system that includes a messenger, unique mailing lists for every clan/tribe/guild, and a thriving community, which is essential in attracting newbies to stay in the game.  

While the gameplay is similar to any other game in its genre, it’s the fact that the company has built top-notch tools for community building, that it has been able to keep players engaged, and has the coming back again and again. 

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sequel

Zynga has four different games that have spawned sequels to the original game: Mafia Wars, Farmville, Cityville, and Café World. Of the 4 sequels, “Mafia Wars 2” and “CityVille 2” are no longer running (though their originals still are) while “FarmVille 2” is still running strong, and “ChefVille” (sequel to CafeWorld) is also still running (though not as well as FarmVille 2).

FarmVille is a bit of an outlier since the original game was more akin to a cultural phenomenon in that it not only put Zynga on the map in terms of FB games, but it also blasted the door to social gaming wide open.

In fact, the idea of a sequel to a social game is a bit lost on most. For one thing, the mentality behind social games should be that they last forever. Players invest a lot of time (and money) to grow out their characters, farms, etc. that making a sequel does not really make sense since they would have to start over again. When a player leaves a social game, it’s never because they have “finished” the game, or reached some level of satisfaction in the game that they no longer need to keep playing. Instead, it’s due to the fact that they are sick of playing the game, sick of grinding, got bored, etc.

If anything is to be learned from sequels of social games, it is that developers should focus on fixing what is broken in the game, instead of just starting over from scratch and creating a sequel. Players invest a lot into these games, and asking them to start over again, and invest more into a sequel just makes them angry.

Here, There and Everywhere

If we look to King.com’s Candy Crush and Bubble Witch Saga games, we see the makings of a highly successful example of cross-platform gaming. If we look at the FB version, and compare it to the mobile versions, they are nearly identical, giving players the same experience all across the board. 

More importantly, King.com made it possible for players to be able to carry their progress over all of the different platforms. They give the players the ability to play wherever and whenever they want.  

The interface is also very engaging. First, similar to a Mario game, we see a map, with various points on it to determine levels. Players can choose to play any level that has already been unlocked. But this screen serves other purposes as well. Players can immediately determine their own levels, and understand how far they have come along, and most importantly, next to the points of the different levels, it shows the profile pics of their FB friends’ respective levels, thereby engaging players to continue returning to the game in order to pass up their friends. 

What also has helped King.com quite a bit is that every device has its own set of independent “lives”. So if a player is playing the game on FB, and uses up all his lives, instead of waiting 30 minutes to get the next life, the player can just switch on his mobile phone, and play a little more with the remaining lives on the mobile device.  

With this idea of playing game anywhere and at anytime, we are seeing that arcade style games with leveling systems start to take advantage of this feature, and also with the casino games. There are some games that go even more advanced by leaving the save states of the game at more detailed levels, such as at a certain save point in the game. For example, in a game such as “Words with Friends”, it will save the game board in the same state as when the player left the game on FB, and be able to continue playing the same game on a mobile device. 

Battle of the Card Battlers

Although they did not mention the upcoming Blizzard Games’ “Hearthstone”, card battle games have started to become popular in 2012. Right now, the games are fairly basic, as shown in an example where a player lined up his cards against an opponent, and then, there were no other graphics on the screen when he hit the “Fight” button, other than it saying that he is victorious. 

When it comes to Card Battle Games, it was mentioned that Japanese card game makers realized that while the battling system is important, when translating the games to mobile, they decided to focus on the most basic premise of collecting. This makes sense since humans tend to instinctively want to collect, organize, and complete sets. 

In fact, if we go beyond card battling games, these games are more about collecting, that maybe they should be called collecting games. For example, a car racing game (say, something like Gran Tourismo) could also focus on the collecting of different cars.  

Nobody Knows Anything

The presentation ended on a whimsical note, pointing out that the market is so fickle, we never truly know what will and will not work Past performance does not indicate future successes. 

2012 was yet another monumental year for social games. We saw the transition and blending of Facebook games with mobile games, a chink in Zynga’s armor, more ways to make social games social, and a multitude of other breakthroughs. With Zynga losing the top spot to King.com last month, 2013 has already started becoming another exciting year.