Until now, we all knew about casual gaming and serious gaming, now we must also deal with social gaming, because nobody is supposed to ignore that 2010 was the year of its explosion. Recently Mark Pincus, Zynga's CEO, the company behind Farmville, Mafia Wars, Texas Hold'em Poker and so on, announced that nearly 320 million people had the opportunity to play a game developed by his company ! There are many actors in this segment and it's a safe bet that the competition will not stop anytime soon. To support my argument, I just remind you that Farmville was dethroned last week of its place of most used application in Facebook by «Phrases», the application developed by Take Off Monkey...
So far, brands didn't take time to really look at this phenomenon whose success may not slow down in a near future. Not all brands, must i correct, because I remember that Ben & Jerry's has had the excellent idea to sponsor a recent series of items in Farmville. Unfortunately, we must admit that this may be the only brand that has so far take a look seriously into Social Gaming. Now, it seems that big brands are beginning to take into account the magnitude of the phenomenon as this new project sponsored by Nike tend to prove ...
So far, brands didn't take time to really look at this phenomenon whose success may not slow down in a near future. Not all brands, must i correct, because I remember that Ben & Jerry's has had the excellent idea to sponsor a recent series of items in Farmville. Unfortunately, we must admit that this may be the only brand that has so far take a look seriously into Social Gaming. Now, it seems that big brands are beginning to take into account the magnitude of the phenomenon as this new project sponsored by Nike tend to prove ...
As you can see, "I Am Player" is an ambitious project that mixes several disciplines to offer players a new and unique experience. For now, Nike supports this project alone but I guess many brands will surely follow this example if this new kind of game prove its efficiency. Anyway, we are currently condemned to wait, because at the time I write this post, only several social profiles of the game (FB, Twitter and Youtube) have been established.
Anyway, something bothers me ! Indeed, if everyone starts to ramble about "Social Gaming", if every brands will with no doubts add that kind of tool to any of their strategic plans, what is really the social gain of these games developed by brands and positioned on social networks ? When does the brand favors interactions between users ? At what time these games are social ? Indeed, while it is undoubtedly the case for Farmville where you can go put some fertilizer on your neighbor's fields, if it is undoubtedly also the case for WOW (NDL: World of Warcraft) where you can create a guild with people from all over the planet, It is not the case for many brands because, as far as I remember, I haven't seen any game created by brands which is really social ! Feel free to contradict me in the comments if you have an example.
So I remain a bit puzzled about this new trend of the Social Gaming ! Indeed, it is not enough to put a game on facebook to make it social. Doing so is more coming from an opportunist thought than a profound reflection on the reasons why players use and adopt a game. While I am confident that the brands will be more likely to position themselves in Gaming (NDL: a real huge trend for several years now), I'm afraid that those who will engage in Social Gaming soon will do it more to surf over the trend while making buzz, as it was previously the case for 2nd Life, than to actually think about putting their product in a real social game in which users interact with each other but also with the product ! It's a shame, especially when we put this new trend in perspective with the rise of smartphones and tablets !
Anyway, something bothers me ! Indeed, if everyone starts to ramble about "Social Gaming", if every brands will with no doubts add that kind of tool to any of their strategic plans, what is really the social gain of these games developed by brands and positioned on social networks ? When does the brand favors interactions between users ? At what time these games are social ? Indeed, while it is undoubtedly the case for Farmville where you can go put some fertilizer on your neighbor's fields, if it is undoubtedly also the case for WOW (NDL: World of Warcraft) where you can create a guild with people from all over the planet, It is not the case for many brands because, as far as I remember, I haven't seen any game created by brands which is really social ! Feel free to contradict me in the comments if you have an example.
So I remain a bit puzzled about this new trend of the Social Gaming ! Indeed, it is not enough to put a game on facebook to make it social. Doing so is more coming from an opportunist thought than a profound reflection on the reasons why players use and adopt a game. While I am confident that the brands will be more likely to position themselves in Gaming (NDL: a real huge trend for several years now), I'm afraid that those who will engage in Social Gaming soon will do it more to surf over the trend while making buzz, as it was previously the case for 2nd Life, than to actually think about putting their product in a real social game in which users interact with each other but also with the product ! It's a shame, especially when we put this new trend in perspective with the rise of smartphones and tablets !
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