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What To Do About Deceptive Offers In Social Gaming

The latest brouhaha in social gaming revolves around the industry use of “offers” to fuel consumer purchases of virtual goods.  Today’s social gaming offers are an evolved form of ye olde incentivized lead gen and co-reg.  Both of these Web marketing tactics have been around for many years and have a checkered but lucrative history.  The checkered bit coming, as it does for many ad formats, from black hat practitioners who push the limits of propriety and end up poisoning the well to some degree, pissing off consumers, and reducing the utility of the format.  As I noted this Spring, the writing has been on the wall for social game offers for quite awhile:

“The offer ecosystem that many social games rely on is on thin ice.  Incentivized lead-gen imploded once in the Web 1.0 days and the seeds for Implosion 2.0 are in the wind.  The offer providers are well aware of this however and are working heroically to ensure that their advertisers continue to see value by reducing rates on offers that become targets of abuse.  This dynamic writ large over time will result in erosion of payout rates to game operators.  Successful games will be those that have a strong direct payment strategy in addition to offers.”

How to combat black hat leadgen in social games has never been much of a secret. Dan Felter, Chairman of Online Lead Generation Association, put it pretty succinctly back in 2007 - “If you choke off the distribution, you choke off the problem,” he said.  Not so coincidentally, one of the most requested features from game developers when offers first came on the scene was the ability to remove specific offers they did not want put in front of their players.  This feature has since been added by many of the offer providers and likely enabled Zynga’s quick action over the past weekend wherein they purged the most deceptive offers from their games literally overnight.

While the recent policy changes from Facebook and MySpace are steps in the right direction, there is a definite enforcement problem.  My sense is that the major players in the social gaming community want to build an enduring industry and grok that it is not in their long-term best interest to scam their own players or the advertisers that underwrite the offers ecosystem - see below diagram from Gambit.  Ideally, all developers would take this to heart and weed their offer streams with equal diligence.  But, there will always be cases where the temptation to improve conversion to pay will win out over best intentions and good judgment.  Best to remove the temptation.

How to do that exactly is an interesting challenge.  Small game developers are unlikely to have the resources to devote to monitoring offers.  The social networks have stepped into the gap from a PR perspective by threatening developers but also do not want to take on the chore of actively policing the offer stream.  In my opinion, the offer providers are uniquely positioned to shoulder this burden.  To do so however, they will likely need a transparent structure that aligns their collective interests with that of the platform holders and consumers.  One way to do this might be a certification and enforcement process wherein an accredited third party (probably the social networks but maybe an industry org) would certify offer providers periodically.  The social networks could then require that app developers use a certified offer provider.  Complaints of black hat practices would be brought to the accredited third party and quickly adjudicated in the open.  Punishments could include fines, de-certification, etc.  Given the revenues involved and ease with which developers can switch offer providers, a new conservatism would likely be born as the losses from de-certification would be a powerful deterrent.  Developers could use offer providers without looking over their shoulders or worrying that they were somehow inadvertently abusing their players.  Just one idea.  There are others being put forward as well.  Personally though, I think it makes sense that the offer providers should own this issue as part of their value add.

As always, feedback and tweets are most welcome.

-Shanti

UPDATE 1, Nov. 8, 2009: Facebook shut down Zynga’s most recent game, Fishville, for failure to comply with its offer-related policy. Zynga has responded by removing offers from ALL its games.  A certification regime for offer providers is sounding better and better…

UPDATE 2, Nov. 25, 2009: Facebook has created safe/banned lists on its wiki from which developers can choose advertising and offer partners.  This is similar to the certification idea in the above post except that the adjudication process is not public.  Gambit for example is on the banned list and there is speculation as to why them versus larger players like Offerpal and SuperRewards.

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Designing For Monetization: How To Apply THE Key Metric In Social Gaming

The last several quarters have brought amazing new dynamics to the social gaming scene.  Companies are reportedly making more money and hit games are growing faster than even the most bullish pundits could have predicted a year ago.  Exciting times.  As part of my ongoing exploration of social gaming success factors, I took a crack at exploring how metrics are being applied to shape social game design.  Comments, feedback, razzing, and tweets to @sbergel are welcome.  Onward -

Social games are now almost universally based on the virtual goods model which was pioneered by free-to-play (F2P) game operators in Asia.  While all F2P profitability metrics discussions have traditionally boiled down to revenue measurements revolving around Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) per n grouping (cohort/entry vector/day/week/month/year/lifetime), almost never will companies actually release these figures.  As a proxy therefore, various usage metrics - peak concurrent users and total registrations being the most common - are often employed from the outside to gain insight into the fortunes of a given game.  Even these proxy numbers can be a bit murky however as they are self reported and usually released for PR/IR reasons.  In other words, you typically only hear the good stuff and are left to read tea leaves based on fragmented and/or incomplete data.

In the case of social games however, the social networks themselves publish usage metrics resulting in greater transparency across the ecosystem.  While the the actual metrics from each of the major networks are different, Myspace’s lifetime installs figures can be converted to Facebook’s Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU) with some elbow grease and educated guesswork.  DAU is the one to watch.  It has emerged as the key metric in determining the popularity and potential of a social game.  The most primary reason for this is that active players drive all downstream value in a F2P game be it on a social network or off.  Active players are the ones who invite friends (read: drive virality), consume content (read: drive in-game metrics), socialize the game (read: create community), and buy things in-game (read: drive monetization).  Additionally, by looking at DAU versus MAU over time, one can quickly get a sense of how well a game retains its users.  This is a heuristic hack but, it is useful in getting a rough benchmark of engagement rates.  More on that in a sec.

Given its importance, it should come as no surprise that social game developers are constantly and rapidly experimenting with new ways to increase DAU counts.  These range from unabashed operant conditioning hooks like daily point awards to viral gift invites and ever more creative feed story variants.  The hands-down new hotness in DAU stimulation however are core game mechanics built on endless feedback loops aimed at getting the player to recursively schedule follow-on play sessions.  MC Escher eat your heart out.

Getting back to the money however, it bears remembering that usage metrics are proxies.  A high DAU/MAU ratio is simply an indicator of potential.  It demonstrates that the game is compelling and can successfully drive engagement but it does not speak directly to sales or earnings.  Monetizing engagement is very much a function of game design and the perception of value that it creates among players.  There are no silver bullets or cookie-cutter solutions here - monetization is unique snowflake land.  While best practices are constantly being honed, they are not universally applicable across all game designs.  For example, functional items are sometimes said to drive higher conversion rates than cosmetic ones.  But, that dynamic is highly dependent on the game, its audience, and the social motivations it generates.  PvP game?  The best sales are indeed likely to be status-oriented and come from items that give players an advantage in beating the snot out of each other…and bragging about it afterward.  Virtual world?  The hot items could very well be more cosmetic in nature and yet serve the very real purpose of signaling identity to others.  Other factors potentially driving conversion to pay include the demographics of the audience, the depth of their commitment to the game, game economy balance, item merchandising, payment methods, and how well the game leverages social artifacts to activate key emotions like joy, guilt, nurturing, revenge, gratitude, pride, etc.

Moreover, allowing players to buy social or functional advantage can be tricky business.  This is particularly true in high DAU communities which are by definition extremely active and engaged - these players are invested in the game and therefore highly opinionated and emotional.  Introducing or tweaking the item sales structure in a well-balanced game and/or large community can result in anger and frustration in the player community if it upends their expectations or invalidates the investment they have made in the game.  Here be dragons.

While social games are indeed operated as a service and able to be constantly optimized and updated, there is a delicate balance to be struck between speed to initial launch, audience development, optimization, and monetization.  I would argue that games should contain at  least the seeds of a robust monetization scheme at launch which is capable of maturing as the game grows.  Ideally, the core thesis of which would have been validated with actual data from a series of A/B tests which enable insight into at least a notional Life Time Value and arbitrage point per player.  Only then does it really make sense to go for scale.  Otherwise, one risks being saddled with a rapidly growing cost structure, an untested revenue stream, and potential audience development time bomb.

Ahem. Let me rephrase that last bit.  Only then does it make sense to go for scale if the priority is maximizing near-term revenue and retaining the player base.  There is of course a case to be made for building a traffic empire as fast as possible.  This is riskier but, with enough runway cash on hand, there are scenarios where designing for monetization might reasonably take a back seat to aggressively redlining a game’s DAU.  For, in the right hands, the traffic itself can have sizeable cross-promotional value.  To the degree it can be done successfully, shifting players from game to game is potentially cheaper than acquiring them from scratch on a per title basis.  At some point the eyeballs have to be converted to cash but, with a large enough portfolio of games, you do get more times at bat.  Still, this is a high wire act to be performed only by those with the financial resources for big bet trial and error.  Your mileage may vary.

-Shanti

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How To Succeed In The Coming Social Gaming Explosion

Despite the frenzy of excitement in response to the May 2007 launch of the Facebook platform, the early revenue story was not encouraging.  It took awhile for social game developers to figure out the non-trivial challenges in applying the virtual currency lessons of their free-to-play brethren to an entirely different space.  And the resulting revenues are now looking very nice indeed thank you very much.  Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, there is growing agreement on what the overall business model is, how it works, and how much money can be made from it.  Experimentation, innovation, and optimization are ongoing but the core value chain is operational at scale and a handful of notable success stories are driving the hype cycle.

When compared to the maturation rate of free to play gaming off the social networks, the speed at which social players have emerged and settled into natural roles is exceptional.  Over five years after the introduction of the first virtual currency games in the US, only now are publishers, analytics, payments, and secondary market players starting to gel into a functional ecosystem.  The difference of course is cheap distribution.  As bandit Willie Sutton quipped when asked why he robbed banks, “that’s where the money is”.  The social networks have been validated to be where the customers are.  To be fair, there are plenty of customers and money locked up in the walled gardens of the major online game and media portals.  They’re just not easily addressable by third party developers in a very profitable manner.

Despite the rough economy, venture investors continue to not only fund online gaming startups, a handful of funds are starting to focus on them exclusively.  With access to capital, the advent of a functional ecosystem, and scalable model, senior Web and video game talent has been streaming into social gaming.  In combination with the continued growth and standardization of the platforms themselves, the global recession has given most consumers a new found appreciation for stretching their entertainment dollar resulting in a near perfect storm for social gaming adoption.

The flip side of proving out the model however is that now everyone wants in.  Cloning is already commonplace and production values are rising quickly.  The number and types of titles will increase dramatically before year end.  Demographic focus is narrowing.  Additionally, the percent of Facebook users already using applications stands at 95% and the number of active users per app is on the decline.  New growth therefore will only come from adding new users to the platform, increasing the per user application attach rate, and/or taking user time away from something else.  In short, it is about to get very competitive.

Taken together, the emerging dynamics of the space necessitate a steep increase in operational sophistication.  Success in the coming social gaming explosion will be defined by the ability to adapt to these operational challenges.  They are:

Smarter virality requirements. As discussed in my last post, the platforms will protect the efficacy of the social graph at all costs.  It is their golden goose.  This means that “dumb virality” based on friendly spam will increasingly decrease in utility.  Successful companies will be those that can create and optimize viral loops based on a stronger correlation to user benefit - aka “smart virality”.

Rising costs. In addition to the higher production costs needed to underwrite the creation of competitive products, significant improvements and investments in support, infrastructure, and marketing will be required.

• Service - Social games, like all Free To Play games before them, are largely monetized via an ongoing direct relationship with the player.  Customer service is a key component of retention in that equation and few companies are executing well in this area right now.
• Billing - Taking money from online customers can be maddeningly complex.  Free To Play game operators often support between 50-100 different payment options around the world.  Understanding the footprint, margin, and fraud profiles of each is important in employing them to maximum effect.  Until universal currencies emerge, social game companies will  need to invest in billing expertise to keep pace with different user payment profiles.
• Infrastructure - Given the viral nature of the platforms they are on, break out social games can drive massive amounts of traffic in short periods of time.  Being able to ride these traffic waves in a cost effective manner is essential.
• Marketing - Even smart virality is not sufficient on its own.  Advertising and other promotional tactics are definitely a required part of the mix for most titles.  Personnel and budgets are just the baseline cost in this regard.  Learning to market effectively in a highly social context is a constant and iterative process with fluctuating ROI.
• Fraud - Outwitting scammers in a service environment is a multidisciplinary effort cutting across game design, payment method expertise, community management, customer service, and billing business rules. Learning the ropes in this arena can be expensive - especially at scale.
• Analytics - Whether built in-house or licensed from a third party, insight into the player experience is pivotal in optimizing acquisition, retention, and monetization.

Greater competition. As alluded to above, the wash of talent and money into this rapidly changing space could drive competition toward a red ocean state.  It probably won’t happen this year but I would not be surprised to see a flavor of it by the end of 2010.  At which point title failure cases will multiply and a clearer line will likely begin to be drawn between developer and publisher roles.  Quality content will be still be king but, access to the customer will grow more hotly contested and come with a commensurate cost structure.

Downward pressure on CPA offers. The offer ecosystem that many social games rely on is on thin ice.  Incentivized lead-gen imploded once in the Web 1.0 days and the seeds for Implosion 2.0 are in the wind.  The offer providers are well aware of this however and are working heroically to ensure that their advertisers continue to see value by reducing rates on offers that become targets of abuse.  This dynamic writ large over time will result in erosion of payout rates to game operators.  Successful games will be those that have a strong direct payment strategy in addition to offers.

Metrics obsession.  Funnel optimization including conversion at each step of customer interaction from first touch all the way out to lifetime value is metrics-driven.  Obsession over this data set will be mandatory DNA for all companies in the space but especially those with publishing ambitions.

Talent war.  It may seem counter-intuitive to talk of a talent war when so many experienced people are out of work.  However, the skills that drive this niche are extremly specialized - Flash developers, metric geeks, social game designers, live team managers, virtual economy and item merchandising experts.  Understanding of and bench strength in most of these job classes is shallow in the industry.

Wild cards.  It is still a young category.  There are a number of moving tectonic plates that could go bump, causing untold effects.

• Platform taxes - The large Western social networks have kindly opened up for free over that past few years in order to build a developer community which would in turn help them grow their audience.  They are under no obligation to let the free ride continue indefinitely.  Running a social network can be expensive after all.  In Japan for example, Mixi recently launched their application platform with a 20% cut for themselves built in.  The platform holders are the corner stone of the value chain and it seems likely they will come for their taste eventually.
• Market capacity - The amazing growth of the past 24 months somewhat obscures the fact that somewhere out there is an upper limit for each and every title.  There are those that argue the first generation of social gaming product has already hit it and is now plateauing - perhaps even churning through massive numbers of users just to maintain current position.  How far you can go with a given title remains a bit of a question mark.  Revenue forecasting and SKU planning are complete WAGs in comparison to more mature markets.
• Platform stability - Social engineering is tricky business.  The platforms must carefully balance the needs of developers and users against their own agenda.  To date, this has resulted in a bit of a moving target for developers causing redesigns and missed deadlines.  To the degree this is business as usual, developers will need to allow for platform-driven slippage.  Console, handheld, and mobile game developers are used to dealing with 1st party platform holders who shift the firmament from time to time - Web folk perhaps less so.
• Identity systems - Extending their reach to cover more of the Web via identity systems would appear to be at the core of future growth strategies for the social networks.  It is is also a potential revenue stream.  How this will affect overall user growth on a per platform basis is up for debate.  Moreover, the ROI of off-platform efforts via the identity systems remain unproven and speculative. Watch this space.

It is my opinion that the next generation of successful social games will be those that understand the above landscape and craft strategies to meet it.

-Shanti

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