Casual/Social FeaturesMore
January 2013
CEO Corner: Matt Haggerty – Founder and CEO of Swarm
Swarm’s Founder and CEO, Matt Haggerty sat down with GBR to discuss the company and its social gaming platform. With GREE’s announcement back in November that they were closing OpenFeint and all support of that platform, Haggerty believes the time is right to support the mobile game community. He sees great opportunity for Swarm’s easy to implement social features that include monetization, achievements, leaderboards, friend status, messaging and cloud data storage.
October 2012
Rovio vs Zynga: Disruption of the Farm
On November 8th Rovio will launch its latest game Angry Birds Star Wars. The timing could not be more perfect given yesterday’s announcement from Disney that it had acquired LucasFilms and all the rights to the Star Wars licenses for $4.05 billion.
October 2012
An Open letter to Mark Pincus
Dear Mark,
As my Facebook profile will tell you, I have not really played many of your games. This does not make you a bad game maker. I have followed your company though for a longtime and I have some thoughts.
May 2012
GBR TrendWatch: Facebook IPO Will Fund The Next Facebook
$104 Billion – Facebook’s valuation on the day of its IPO tops every other IPO in history and there is plenty of criticism that Facebook shares are overpriced. Yet there is no doubt that more than a dozen people will turn from paper billionaires into actual billionaires today and if history repeats itself, then there is reason to believe that the wealth of Facebook will spread and enable an renewed innovator ecosystem of considerable proportions. For developers, it will pay, literally, to pay close attention to this IPO, even if they do not own Facebook stock. (more…)
May 2012
Acquisitions & Investments: March and April Roundup
There has been a steady stream of financial activity since the beginning of 2012. In our new column, Acquisitions & Investments, we highlight the recent financial activity in the gaming industry.
April 2012
Billy’s Trend Watch: The Rise of Pay for Play
Freemium 2.0 – Publisher paid player rewards are a powerful incentive that will drive gamers to deeper participation in MMO economies, directly resulting in far stronger conversions and higher ARPU. (more…)
April 2012
Using Social Games to Motivate Consumers: The Link to Lasting Change
There is no denying that most people believe in supporting worthwhile causes, but when it comes to buzz words like organic, green and sustainability, consumers find it hard to imagine how they, as individuals, could even begin to make a difference. It is one thing for consumers to quietly approve of a good cause, but quite another for them to actually answer a call to action—a discrepancy that can be boiled down to one question. How do we, as social game developers, motivate the consumer?
April 2012
Facebook Credits: The Future of Game Profits
Gamification is at the core of much of what is going into business systems today. It is a concept of taking structures from successful game concepts like World of Warcraft and Farmville and applying them to tasks that people would rather not do. It is forming the basis of systems that require behavioral change to work. At the core of Gamification are reward structures based on games and at the core of rewards may be some form of currency like Facebook Credits that can be used to acquire something the user wants. (more…)
April 2012
Gaikai Beta-Launches Its Facebook App
Gaikai has beta-launched their cloud gaming service on Facebook. Starting with a few games for the North American and European markets, the company plans to eventually roll out full service that includes MMOs. The only requirements for streaming the games are Java and an ample broadband connection. Consumers will be able to play their games without even leaving Facebook — the implications are tremendous.
March 2012
Best Practices: Brand Integration in Social Gaming
Statistics, social media trends and good old-fashioned word of mouth can all agree on one thing: social gaming has absolutely exploded in the last two years. With the peak of social platforms like Facebook, online gaming has been transformed to a universal social experience that can be shared with family and friends.
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