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8 key elements that make social gaming successful by
Martin Koppel
August 31st, 2010 |

A week has passed from Gamescom in Cologne- the event where industry key players introduce their new stuff and make partnership deal for the future. And yes a place where youngsters are basically killing each other to play some cool demo game.
Like in every year cool console games and almost real-life PC games got a lot of attention, but this year social gaming got an extra attention. Why? Mostly since it’s growing like bamboo. FarmVille has over 82.4m uses, FishVille got 0.87m users within two days after launch.
But it’s not only Zynga, the entire industry has been rocketing for the last few years. Social gaming market in EU and US together was $490m in 2009 and it is expected to almost double in 2010 and reach $840m. Is it all due to phenomenon of Facebook? Actually not, since these numbers are like candy money compared to Asia where the market hit $7b in 2009.
In general it is all due to the social effects in games, no matter is it in Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, QQ, Odnaklassniki or somewhere else. Because when a game is built on top of an existing platform, it has the opportunity to connect a user with their entire network of friends.
But what are actually the key elements that make social gaming successful?
1. Everyone who has internet can be potential players
2. It’s mostly free to play
3. Social network provides a great infrastructure for advertising and the game to go viral
4. It creates competition between friends
5. It’s interactive
6. It enables co-operation
7. Regularly scheduled tournaments/offers keep people playing
8. It gives people an opportunities to win prizes


It is hottest topic in the web biz world. No matter it’s on TC, Virtual Goods News, Venture Beat or even BBC, people everywhere are talking about the vitality of the virtual goods market in Asia. Many people are stunned by the fact that the biggest market of virtual goods is actually not in USA but in Asia. In a matter of fact, the VG in Asia is actually a $5 billion market in 2008, which is 25 times bigger than the States.











