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- I have to disagree here - the main issue is response rates or brand recall rates. Advertising is just not effective when you are trying to get someone's attention when they are focused on...
- It is not beyond hope to imagine that with appropriate technology we can get beyond this fear that agencies have of getting associated with the wrong content. Particularly if we can better...
- Every ad sales agency I speak to says the same thing: advertisers will pay premium rates on the web, but not to be associated with User-Generated Content (UGC). The limitation that social networks...
- I'm sure they would disagree, but at the same time I would expect their plans to have enough slack to cope with that scenario.
- With games companies like Zynga and Playfish make revenues estimated between $50 million and $100 million purely on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, it seems inevitable that Facebook will...
The Equity Kicker
Nic Brisbourne’s view from London on venture capital and exploiting change in technology and media
According to the New York Times Mattel and Hasbro who between them own the global rights to Scrabble have released their own version of Scrabble for Facebook, or rather got Gamehouse, a division of Real Networks to do it for them.
On top of Scrabulous’s 600,000 plays per day this ... Continue reading »
On top of Scrabulous’s 600,000 plays per day this ... Continue reading »
1 year ago
Brands have always been important in video games. When forced to make a selection between a number of titles in a similar category in retail (digital or physical), consumers tend to choose something they recognize and trust. Brands have also helped by providing more marketing channels for the game launch and sometimes even allowed publishers to get away with second rate products and still be financially successful. Ownership of brands has also played a key role in entrenching the market shares of the big publishers of video games.
But this all could be quite different for social games.
For our first title "Who Has The Biggest Brain?" - currently the #6 Facebook game with 250,000+ daily unique players - 90%+ of distribution is viral. That means that the vast majority of our new players don't choose the game from a catalogue - a friend sends it to them. So assuming you trust your friend it's not clear whether you need a brand or any further marketing help in order to distribute your title. After all your friend either decides to invite you to play or not, and you either trust that invitation or not. So it's unclear as to what difference it makes if the product is "branded" - only whether it's fun enough to invite your friend to play.
The great thing about the official Scrabble launch is that we'll have two direct comparables on facebook. This should provide some clues as to the kind of companies are likely be successful in the social games market in the future. I will follow this with interest...