Video Games

Alternative payment methods enable developers to monetize significantly larger portions of their user base, according to a study released Wednesday.

Fifty-three percent of social gamers surveyed for the study, overseen by ComScore and Offerpal Media, said they are enthusiastic about alternative, or indirect, payment methods as a way to earn virtual currency for free, rather than having to pay for it directly.

These alternative forms of payment take many forms, including filling out a survey, watching a video, shopping at online retailers, or signing up for a subscription in order to get points for the games they play on leading … Read more

For as far back as we've been discussing social networks, there have been question marks around the best ways to monetize users. To date, advertising has been the primary strategy, with virtual goods starting to pull in some serious revenues.

But the challenge with advertising is that users tend to ignore ads that are not highly targeted. Even precisely targeted ads are largely ignored, which is why you see more and more of them taking up screen real estate. This has also led to more sites adopting a "freemium" content model.

And targeting is even more of a challenge when users are mobile, but mobility also introduces a whole new way to interact with and monetize users.

One of the more interesting companies in the location-based services (LBS) space is Foursquare. Surely, you've seen some message in your Twitter stream telling you that your friend is at some location or is the mayor of whatever, or has unlocked a badge.

And while Foursquare has nowhere near the user base of Facebook or Twitter, the users are very valuable as they promote the places they go and things they do simply by mentioning them in their communication stream.

According to The New York Times, Foursquare plans to distribute a new analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks that will give business owners access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments. This means that businesses can more effectively target users with specific offers and ads.

But what it really provides is a way for Foursquare and other location-aware services to make money.

Going back to 2001, I remember talking about location-based services while working at OmniSky, a way-too-early provider of hardware and software that turned handheld devices like the Palm V into mobile devices. We even acquired an Israeli company called NomadIQ to deliver location-based content.

Ten years later we're just starting to see location-based offers roll out in the U.S.--better late than never?

Many of the early international LBS were very basic social networks (primarily dating) and the demand for such services in the U.S. simply wasn't there, partially because of social mores and also partially because mobile devices have evolved fairly dramatically. … Read more

A few months back, I searched high and low for a few decent Mac games in preparation for a series of long flights and found myself looking at titles that were long surpassed by their PC brethren. Titles for the Mac are a dismal representation of what's going on in gaming.

But it looks as if that's about to change.

Doug Lombardi, Valve's VP of developer marketing, confirmed to MacNewsNetwork that the company is planning to port some of its most popular games to the Mac. And while details remain thin, most in the gaming community view … Read more

In the early 1980s, each arcade video game kept a list of that game's top players. Three decades later, thanks to a prestigious college-prep service, we now have a list of the top academic players in video game design.

The Princeton Review recently surveyed 50 game design programs at U.S. colleges in order to handpick the eight top schools to attend if you're interested in game development. It based its selections on a variety of criteria including: curriculum quality, school staff and infrastructure, scholarships and financial aid, and career opportunities.

The top eight undergraduate game design programs: … Read more

I few months back I wrote about Ohai!, a relatively new social gaming company founded with the goals of making social gaming more fun and accessible.

One of the things that has struck me in the past is whether or not game companies should build directly on Facebook (or other sites) or go stand-alone. Fortunately, Ohai CEO Susan Wu spent a great deal of time thinking about that very topic and posted her thoughts in a recent blog post.

Ohai! is supporting both on-Facebook and off-Facebook experiences for their first MMO, City of Eternals. And as you can see below, they look a bit different.

According to Wu, when people play the game embedded through Facebook, their usage pattern tends to be bite sized: five- to six-minute sessions about eight to 10 times a day. When people play directly at the City of Eternals site, they'll play for 20-plus-minute sessions two to three times a day.

And the experience is a bit different, as gameplay on the direct site is more immersive than in Facebook. The stand-alone site has a theoretically better playing experience, since it's full-screen, which can also lead to different types of behavioral patterns in the game.

Data so far suggests that on-site players may be more likely to partake in longer missions, and more interested in joining groups and performing group activities. Players may also be more likely to participate in exploratory vs. discrete goal-oriented behaviors, such as completing specific missions. … Read more

The U.S. market for virtual goods will reach $1.6 billion in 2010, with social gaming contributing $835 million of that, according to a new report released Tuesday by research firm Inside Network. Virtual good sales were expected to clear $1 billion in 2009, a substantial increase year-over-year.

International sales of virtual goods have outpaced the U.S. rather dramatically, as witnessed by the explosive growth in South Korea and China, which had 2009 sales estimates of $3.5 billion to $4 billion with the market expected to reach $5.5 billion by 2012.

"Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming&… Read more

Virtual currency has been one of the more confusing areas of gaming and social networking, with different sites, games and even countries treating currency and goods differently.

South Korea has decided that virtual currency is the equivalent of real-world money bringing to light some very real ramifications for users not just in Korea but in other countries as well.

The ruling allowing "cyber money" is the first in Korea and was based on the acquittal of two gamers indicted on charges of illegally making money by selling goods earned in the game Lineage.

In-game or in-site currency has … Read more

In Forrester's recent report on the changing face of application development, the research firm rightly proselytized that enterprise developers need to become "passionate about user experience" and inject design practices into application development early on.

It's a strange phenomenon that applications on consumer sites are so much more attractive and usable than those we see in the enterprise. Even popular enterprise online-only applications like Salesforce.com leave a lot to be desired in terms of user interface design. People have become so familiar with Facebook (even with its quirks) and other consumer online services that they … Read more

In the last year, consumers spent more money on video games in Britain than on films, including both trips to movie theaters and films on DVD, new figures compiled for U.K.'s Daily Telegraph indicate.

In the 12 months leading up to the end of September, 1.73 billion British pounds (about $2.8 billion) were spent on video games, according to data-monitoring company GFK Chart-Track. The U.K. Film Council said 1 billion British pounds ($1.6 billion) were spent at the British box office during the same period, with an additional 198 million British pounds ($320 million) … Read more