As you may imagine, getting your message out with your game can be much more complicated, risky, and expensive than just posting a video or sending an email blast.
The good news is that Facebook developers have created a blueprint for what works and what doesn’t work in the social networking environment. Considering they are worth literally billions of dollars, it’s worth paying attention to what’s already happening and the tools they are currently using.
How Games Work on Facebook
If you want to understand Facebook gaming, look no further than turn-based strategy games, in which you make a move and then you wait for your opponent to make a move. As of summer 2011, the most popular Facebook game, the turn-based CityVille, had more than 83 million unique users a month. Other turn-based games like FarmVille and Empires & Allies had equally impressive numbers.
Figure 13.3: Zynga has become a billion-dollar company with games like CityVille.
The move-then-wait system works extremely well for Facebook for a couple of reasons:
• You don’t have to worry about internet speed.
• You have a reason to come back every day.
Some games on Facebook have computer-controlled opponents, but the best ones have you competing against your friends. If you ask a friend to play, then you both will be visiting every day.
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Having someone visit your Facebook page to play a game every day is an ideal marketing situation. Instead of sending out emails, posting on Walls, or other methods to get people’s attention, visitors are coming to you unsolicited. And, unlike a News Feed, it is guaranteed that they will see whatever you’re highlighting on your page.
The Financial End of Games
The biggest difference between Facebook games and other types of video games is that all Facebook games are free. You can go to Facebook right now, search for and download any game, and start playing it immediately without touching your credit card.
These guys make serious money, though, using two different methods:
• In-game purchases
• Advertising
In-game purchases are virtual, but they can be a literal gold mine for game publishers. An example is in, say, FarmVille, where you can spend the next 30 days in Facebook working on a crop, or for just a few bucks, you can instantly have the crop ready for harvest. In-game purchases are traditionally very cheap, maxing out at around $10, which just makes it that much easier for the consumer to spend a bunch of money one dime at a time.
Advertising is a great money source as well. You have a captive audience visiting your web page every single day for several minutes, if not hours. Consider FarmVille’s estimated 83 million unique users. Even if they only played one minute of FarmVille a month, they’d log in 83 million minutes of ad time and, at minimum, just as many ad views.