AdAge today asks “What’s saving the current crop of virtual games from becoming the next Second Life?”, with their answer being game dynamics. I am a huge believer in the power of creatively designed incentives and game-like compulsion loops, but I suspect enthusiasm for badges, levels and points have hit “fad” and “over-reliance” territory. Foursquare, for example, used gaming very …
Why do people buy virtual goods? (on motivations and compulsions)
Virtual goods have finally been legitimized as a revenue model, rather than a niche (even weird) activity ignored in favor of advertising. Now the concept is spreading beyond its game / virtual world roots, and we’re seeing large numbers of companies trying to figure out a “virtual goods” strategy. While I believe very strongly in virtual goods as an effective …
Virtual world and social game ARPUs
Justin Smith had an interesting slide deck at the Social Games Summit where he shared his estimates for monthly ARPUs (average revenue per user): “good Facebook” – $0.30 – $0.40 “good MySpace” – $0.60 – $0.70 Some games can do much better. The Facebook game Battlestations shared some data in late 2008 where they appeared to have around a $1.00 …