Game Developer Conference 2008 kickstarted this morning at the Moscone center in San Francisco, US and the sheer scale and size of the event is overwhelming. Last year the conference boasted of around 16,000+ delegates and this year too the numbers will scale as much or more.
One is spoilt for choice with a wide variety of interesting sessions on concurrently, what with the event boasting of separate and fully dedicated summits on casual games, serious games, outsourcing, virtual worlds, mobile games, education and independent Games. And then there‘s tracks on Business, Audio, Game Design, Production, Programming, Vision and Visual Arts; and then there‘s the tutorials and the Keynotes; and then there‘s the exhibition and expo, the game career summit and the daily networking events and receptions… phew! Besides that, it seems as if all of the worlds gaming ecosystem folks are here at the GDC, and they all are gung ho and get set to being drenched with gaming oozing out of their pores and flowing in their veins!
This morning at the Worlds in Motion Summit (Virtual Worlds and Interactive online spaces) Reuben Steiger CEO Millions of Us, and Erik Bethke Founder and CEO GoPets.com, in their respective sessions stressed upon the amalgamation of Social Networks and Virtual Worlds. While Reuben whose company has worked on projects for 2nd Life amongst others gave examples of entertainment content converging in online worlds, Erik spoke about heeding the lessons of Bartle in socially driven spaces and also emphasised on the importance of goals and transactions in virtual worlds and social networks alike.
Millions of Us Reuben‘s point of view as he shared in his session was that, “Games fundamentally have rules, have goals, have competition and are fun…. Virtual worlds usually have no goals, no rules and the fundamental reasons why people throng to virtual worlds is the openness and the lack of rules and they have a different definition of fun”
He pointed out that the Virtual Worlds space was at an inflection point of growth. “We all know how big 2nd Life is, but that is currently around just 1 to 1.5% of the entire marketsize and the scope for growth is immense.” Citing the example of Webkinz, he pointed out that the kids market within the online world was the most active and perhaps the only segment which already boasted of healthy transactional revenues in the virtual worlds space.
“Webkinz has fundamentally altered the perceived and virtual value of the product they sell by linking it to a virtual world” he pointed out. He then gave some case study examples like WWE & Gaia.com and 2nd Life & Gossip Girl which showed the relation between entertainment content and their convergence with virtual worlds to phenomenally increase awareness and audience involvement.
He also spoke about how several successful movies that boasted of iconic characters have made more money through licensing and games than the actual box office gross. “Several movie characters have launched great game franchises,” he pointed out, adding, “however, the trend is all set to reverse with several popular characters from games and online worlds now set to launch their own feature films.”
Trends to watch out for according to Reuben include
– The complete avatarization of social networks
– The blurring of lines between social networks and virtual worlds
– The increase of television content tie ins for virtual worlds
In the next presentation that followed Reuben, Erik from Go Pets.com asserted that with a lot of fuss and focus these days on UI, what was more important was the quest or the goal interface. “The core experience matters more than the UI” he began, “Look at World of Warcraft which is the most successful game in its genre globally. The UI of WOW is by no means simple, it is rather complex, but what makes the game click amongst many factors is the quest of the game.”
Erik next gave an example from the online world, demonstrating the registration pagescreen of Linkedin.com he pointed out how, the meter that informs users about the %points in terms of profile completeness drove him to engage in all aspects of what the site offered till his profile barometer gave a reading of 100% complete.
Describing his site GoPets.com which is a tremendously successful portal, Erik shared, “Go Pets is a hybrid experience and when we began developing, we did so as a casual social experience with tons of social networking features and then it grew into a virtual world”
Sharing some data and statistics, Erik pointed out that it was very important to mine data and to look all times at what consumers are doing with your online game or worlds. He shared a statistic that Go pets had an ARPU of US$20 per month from the US and Japan from active consumers that engaged in transactions and that quite some income was being driven by consumers who bought fruit trees (of course virtual) by the 100s and then made a lot of sales of their fruits at the virtual markets.
Consumers love jobs to do and transactions, and that‘s because they are so tangible and help them reach their goal of elevating their status.
“A good reason why MMOGs are so well taken is because they best replicate real world goal structures” shared Erik adding, “Good online games are engaging passtimes and great online games have robust market economies with people spending a significant amount of time, captial and intellectual creative inside these space living lives.”
“Games are an avenue for millions of people to express their personalities and qualities to their real potential” he said, concluding,” all great online games are virtual worlds.”