I just posted my 100 win in Scrabble which I play frequently on my mobile phone. It was a fun game as always, but what made it particularly noteworthy was the fact that I was playing with a friend who is halfway around the world in India. Like many of you, I remain in touch with several of my friends using Facebook which has been instrumental in renewing old connections and long lost friendships. With over one billion users, Facebook has become the predominant way in which many people keep in touch with friends, acquaintances and coworkers. Facebook has had one other remarkable effect; it has turbo charged a trend that was already gaining much momentum over the last decade: social gameplay. This is the third, and in my opinion, the most important secular force that is driving the massive growth in videogaming.
Usually when you hear the term “social gaming” you think of it meaning just games on Facebook, but that’s not the case. Now, you can connect with your friends and play with or against them on every gaming platform. Games like Madden, FIFA and Need for Speed all feature co-op and challenge modes. At EA, nearly every game that is under development is being built to enable rich experiences in social connected play.
Videogames which were originally built predominantly for single user play have rapidly evolved over the last several years to incorporate many capabilities that enable co-op play and gaming with friends. There have always been specific games that enabled multi-user online play in the past, but the recent ubiquity of compute and graphic power in so many new devices, the associated pervasiveness of broadband connectivity and the large global footprint for gaming has been profoundly impacted by the ability to engage in social play. We now have algorithms that enable logical matchmaking inside games, multithreaded game engines, sophisticated rendering systems and web services that power secure connections enabling chat and other real time interactions. These have been key technologies driving the growth. To embrace these trends, companies have to rethink the fundamental design of the core software and invest in underlying platform technologies. The technical challenges are non-trivial to enable synchronous and asynchronous online connected experiences and bridge diverse social networks across all device types. It does take a concerted effort in every part of the organization to make this happen. But the results are well worth it.
The impact has been dramatic. Not only is gaming more fun and immersive, the consumer engagement in these connected social play modes is much deeper than in other modes. We are starting to see the impact of social connectivity on the frequency of play, session lengths and the most important factor of all, which is consumer satisfaction. Playing a game with friends or like-minded community adds a whole new level of immersiveness in the experience that a single user mode against the pre-programmed AI logic of a machine can’t substitute.
Every software product or service can benefit from the same secular trends that are catalyzing the video game industry. Transitioning products that in the past were limited to local networks or single-user mode, can benefit tremendously by the addition of social and community features. Whether it is something as simple as an “Ask the Community” feature that have shown up in products like Turbo Tax or user-generated content that powers the stickiness of sites like Amazon and Yelp. Every organization that builds software should be asking itself the fundamental questions of how they can serve their consumers better by embracing technology enhancements, globalization and social functions.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these three trends I’ve covered and hear your favorite game to play against your friends.
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