Is FarmVille changing everything? Games biz bigwigs speak out

To say the game industry is undergoing a transformation would be an understatement. The entire playing-games-on-one-system paradigm is rapidly shifting, as more people play games on multiple devices -- consoles, PCs, and increasingly the iPhone, iPad, or even the favorite medium of the Games.com - The Blog! crew, Facebook (along with other social networks). And, more people are starting to play games, period.

    ... Not only are there a lot of new customers showing up and becoming gamers for the first time, but we're seeing really big behavior changes by traditional gamers that used to just camp on one platform like the PlayStation and now they're using a diversity of media, and they're engaging with friends, so they're doing a lot of things that are more casual.

    Trip Hawkins, Digital Chocolate

In this new video series, Game Theory, video game industry bigwigs like Sims creator Will Wright and Fable creator Peter Molyneux talk about the tectonic shifts in the industry and, of course, social games come up more than once.

    "It's changing... and we can feel it. We're literally on the bow of the ship and the waves are crashing and the wind is in our face and we're like holy sh*t."

    Chris Taylor, Gas Powered Games

This pair of videos might be too 'inside baseball' for most of you, but if you dabble in gaming trends, this might be worth a few minutes of your time. I am still amazed at how much of an impact that FarmVille, Pet Society and others have had on the traditional video game console business. Social games might be classified as "casual," but there's nothing casual about the wake up call these non-traditional games are giving the traditional game industry.

Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty takes cue from social games in China

Call of Duty
And here we though the day would never come: The pinnacle of hardcore gaming, Call of Duty (CoD), has succumbed to the pressures and potential profits of Facebook games ... in China. VentureBeat reports that Activision Blizzard announced a new CoD game today, though the game will be a free-to-play affair for Chinese audiences only (at the moment). The company made the announcement in an earnings call today, and said that it will create a "best in class digital platform" to support the game.

"Today, Call of Duty is part of the cultural landscape," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, in the earnings call. But to succeed in foreign lands, the game will have to adapt to cultural landscapes as well. Free-to-play games supported by micro-transactions are what Chinese gamers expect these days, and Activision plans to deliver. Not to mention that the company also created a studio known as Beachhead to make an online community for CoD players worldwide. The platform has been in development for two years already, and Activision expects it to be ready in time for the expected fall release of the next CoD.

According to VentureBeat, details on the next CoD developed for Western audiences will surface in the coming weeks. And Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick promised that this next CoD will be the best experience that the company has ever made. If the company is aware of what resonates with Chinese gamers, surely it's considering the massive social games movement in the US. In fact, with EA already offering free-to-play versions of its Battlefield franchise, Kotick has at least mulled it over.

[Image Credit: G4TV]

Do you think CoD will adapt to a more social games-esque distribution model in the states as well? Would you be more interested in the franchise if it was presented like this?

Half of all U.S. social gamers own a game console, RockYou study says

As if we already didn't know: Some social gamers are more "hardcore" than we thought. But the next study released that attempts to drive this point home is courtesy of Zoo World creator RockYou and conducted by Interpret, a media research firm. Titled the "Social Gamer Thought Leadership Research Study," it finds that 50 percent of U.S. social gamers own a traditional gaming console.

The study, which polled over 2,00 social game fans living in the U.S. aged 18 and older with a 60-40 women to men split, also found that social gamers are more "sophisticated." To back up the claim, the study reports a quarter of social gamers prefer games with quests, and that 22 percent admit that score-sharing drives their urge to play more. Oh, and these players also spend quite a bit of time with the games.

Of the over 2,000 people polled, RockYou and Interpret found that the average social gamer spends an average of 9.5 hours playing out of the 13 average hours they spend on networks like Facebook. The average social game player, according to the study, has just over 16 real-life frieds playing these games with them and has made 20 new friends through social games. Of course, the study doesn't get into how deep said friendships are, but how could you?

The study also reports that 42 percent of social gamers would play a social game more, if offered real world rewards like coupons or gift cards. (But isn't the idea to get them to pay up?) It was just recently that Raptr discovered that a number of Zynga fans may be Halo and Grand Theft Auto fans, too. And before that, Kabam found in its own study that the hardcore crowd on Facebook is growing.

What should you take away from this influx of studies and reports? Regardless of whether you still dig tending to virtual crops or running a shanty town, many developers--even the "casual" ones--seem all but done with your farms and cities of yore.

What do you think of the numerous reports on the growing hardcore crowd in social games? How do you think this will change the industry in the long run? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment