Online Social Games – Billion Dollar Industry

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A Sociable and Nice take on Online Social Games

Catching up on my (online) reading activities I came across a statistic about the most played games on Facebook. Are you ready?! Trust me, you’ll be surprised:

According to AppData (traffic tracking system) these are the top 10 most played Facebook Games:

And do focus on the “Daily Active Users”. That means that every day millions and millions of people go online to play these lame stupid repetitive (friends spamming requests) games that stimulate nothing but the accounts of the greedy few that are feeding on the addiction of these brainless zombies. (See the Internet Idiot for more into that)

I couldn’t stop thinking, How bored to these people can actually get?!

At least our previous games (most of it, of course) used to have a story line, a purpose, a quest, or at least a mind-numbing excessive use of explicit violence and sexuality. Something that the kid in us can really enjoy, right?! Now there’s a wave of bored and frustrated house wives that go online to water their plants or exchange recipes with their old high-school mates they never talked to in 20 years, and still don’t!

Some might wonder, so what’s they point?! Why do they make these games so addictive for these internet idiots out there?!  The answer is simple, for a huuuge load of money!  More than 200 million (different ) people spent time playing online social games in 2010, and the online social gaming industry generated a small revenue of  1 billion dollars.

As you might have seen in the top 10 most played Facebook Games 7 of them are made by Zynga, a 3 year old start-up  that made around $400 million profit on a $850 million revenues in 2010 with a number of 275 million active users monthly. That makes an almost unbelievable 47% profit margin.

And to put things in perspective Google had a profit margin of 29%, Apple had one of 28% and the main “supporter” Facebook had a profit margin of almost 30%. To cut things short.. a game about farming than even a brainless uneducated moron can play is worth millions!

Ah.. and guess who else what’s a cut?! :P

Starting with August 11, 2011, Google+ Games were released into the wild:

But don’t think this is a sudden move ;) It’s the next wave of the Google invasion!  (See Google Sociable and NOT Nice)

As usual it’s a lean, mean, strategic action as we are used to from our dear old taking over the world master of darkness! During the last year Google quietly invested from $100 million to $200 million into a social game developing company. And now the billion dollar question: Guess what’s the name of that company?!

It’s of course,  Zynga! (Can you see a pattern here?!)

And for an even more decisive blow Google+ Games developers will be paying a promotional 5% fee on revenues as opposed to the 30% that Facebook is charging!

So what we can only say is Yaaaaay to social gaming and to the brainless zombies!

Ah by the way, are there any online social games that you are playing?! :P