GDC 09: How connected players are changing our game

I have been to several GDCs; however, this was the first year I attended the Mobile sessions of the conference. Being new to ngmoco:) I wanted an immersion into the world of Mobile. What became clear is that platform / device-based walls in the industry are quickly dissolving due to the convergence enabled by connectivity. 

Flash quiz:  do the following descriptions relate to Console, PC, Handheld or Mobile games?  Social, Viral, Downloadable, Multiplayer, Live, Virtual World, Leaderboards, Free to Play, In-game Currency, Micro-transactions, Community… 

In addition to building games for a device by taking advantage of unique hardware features, my observation is that game makers are also converging on common features to appeal to the connected player.  

And I’m not the only one…  One interesting session that I attended was led by Kristian Segerstrale of Playfish. I love Pet Society, btw. The topic: Five Lessons from Social Games that Matter to the Rest of the Games Industry. One assertion is that games will become services as digital distribution becomes prevalent.  As games migrate from product to service, the business of developing and publishing games will change, regardless of platform or device.  Here are a few examples of the changes that Kristian spoke about and what I know from my experience in the industry: 

— Revenue curves aren’t what they used to be.  The revenue stream morphs from having a spike with launch sell-in and a tail of catalog sales to a gradual buildup due to a lower barrier to entry (free or low initial price) to attract a greater volume of players from which a certain percentage will convert to paying customers over a longer time period.  The once straight forward revenue model of units sold times sales price becomes obsolete.  

— Secondly, the cost of development gets extended to fund ongoing content creation, live support and community management, which astonishingly could shift between 50%-80% of development effort post launch. What once was an upfront investment / cost management focus is now a longer view of operating margin.

— Marketing is not excluded from these fundamental business model shifts.  Offering connected experiences grants game makers the holy grail of direct access to their customers.  With online registration and play time, mass marketing converts to something more personal — targeted messages to the individual as we are now armed with specifics of age, gender, location, game affinity, who their friends are as well as play and spend patterns.  Customer acquisition, retention and monetization all become numbers driven challenges.  Data mining and metrics become critical business management tools to make real-time decisions that support customer demands and predict behavior patterns.  Correlating numbers and statistics becomes a superpower to be envied (and with great power comes great responsibility).  

— Lastly, as a business person I won’t get into game design; however, another important consideration is that games as a service offered to connected players will be multi-platform / device agnostic which adds a 3D view to the changes impacting our industry, how it is bringing us together and how connected players are changing our game.

- Christina