Social Gaming Analytics to improve Social Game Monetization
The social games industry launched precisely half a decade ago is today a $2 billion industry with over hundreds of millions of players worldwide. Social gaming is so popular that a whopping 81 million people play each day while 49 million people play multiple times a day. People play social games for a variety of reasons such as social interaction, stress buster, mental stimulation, relaxation, competitive spirit, fun & excitement and so on.
The monopoly enjoyed by video games in the gaming industry started to decline with the popularity of social networks such as Facebook. Of the different social networking sites, Facebook enjoys the largest share of the market with 61 percent of users. Moreover, with social games firmly establishing itself as a legitimate revenue opportunity, video games started losing ground and it is expected to withdraw completely from the global gaming scene by 2014.
The greatest source of revenue for social gaming comes from advertisements. Since 2009, there has been 60% increase in advertisements. If statistics are to be believed, then social gamers spend around $42.70 billion on virtual items. As more players enter the social gaming scene, it is highly necessary to do social gaming analytics to understand player opinions, expectations, and perceptions.
According to Quantic Dream founder and Heavy Rain’s creator David Cage, “This (games) industry will die if it doesn’t try more to be innovative and to come up with new ideas and to talk a bit more.” In his opinion, game developers must offer deeper experiences and he is right because if every game has the same plot, players would start getting bored. Innovation is all about getting new ideas but sometimes it is a bit difficult to bring in new ideas. Understanding social gaming metrics is the only way to solve this problem. For that, social gaming and social commerce companies must regularly observe and analyze social activity (viral invites, gifting, wall posts etc.), understand what the players actually prefer, and then update their applications by adapting their games and content based on the preferences. This way, social gaming companies can improve social game monetization further.
With the help of industry leaders adept in providing social analytics tools, companies can make smarter decisions pertaining to social gaming very rapidly. The following are some of the advantages of seeking help from social media analytics solution providers.
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Provides real-time social gaming analytics with almost no effort
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Provides gaming-specific actionable insights that help to quickly increase engagement, broaden reach, improve retention, and increase revenues
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Enables lean teams to quickly impact goals with little effort
Also read about : facebook analytics