Friday, December 3, 2010 at 11:46AM
- Era of franchises MAY be over. Why? All sales are dependent on distribution and retail. People trust brands so they will buy the newest product. Big name franchises don’t succeed on social network distributions. Product relationships have changed and product drives the social world. Franchises dominate the catalog-based world. Now, products are sold through social distribution
- We will all become services (from products). All revenue is post initial download/acquisition , 50-80% of development efforts are post-launch. Why does that matter? Company structures change as financial models change.
- Marketing by numbers: Game marketing to web marketing. Customer acquisition, retention, monetization all become numbers driven. Traditional game marketing skills are of limited use. So what? As marketing structures change you need to pay attention to the numbers.
- Game design changes: No longer player vs screen but player vs player. Design drives audience and monetization. Designs are tested and numbers driven. Designs for a service need to be multi-platform.
- Listen to your players: not every email, but listening to your customers will help you improve. Sometimes it will be more feedback than you can handle, so you must structure it well. Balance qualitative feedback with quantitative feedback (review #’s or “stars”). However we are all still learning – creating a hit is still very hard. Monetization is still being developed. Product quality is everything. Be prepared: social network policies and APIs evolve, traffic costs and customer support costs can be high.
Reader Comments