Social games and virtual goods forum

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Feature 4 hours, 19 minutes ago Update: All Apple Arcade games available now. Feature Jan 12th, Update: 10 biggest video game acquisitions of all time. Feature Dec 31st, The challenges of designing nonlinear PvP. Popular Stories. Latest User Comments. PGBiz on Facebook. It added the friction of players being compelled to visit a retailer or order online and wait for the good, the cost of production, the large expense of retail distribution, the logistics of physical returns and potential manufacturing problems.

Yet this strategy created one of the biggest successes in the video game space this holiday season. One variant is toys with a web component, such as Webkinz. This is a different business model than Skylanders, which is effectively the same as in-app purchases, but shows how physical goods can co-exist with the digital world.

Physical virtual goods could also be used to revive monetization techniques that are proven but not permissible with pure virtual goods, such as Kompu Gacha. Kompu Gacha is a monetization mechanic in social games that heavily incentivizes the practice of paying a small amount of money to get an item at random, and helped grow GREE and DeNA into billion-dollar companies.

Social game companies could sell at retail sets of virtual goods with a physical toy representation in packaging that left the consumer blind to the content and thus replicate the mechanic that proved so lucrative. Given that it is a physical good and really no different than the sale of baseball cards, etc.

Game companies have seen the micro-transaction monetization universe in a very narrow way, copying what the early companies have done and focusing on tactical optimization rather than creatively building their monetization strategies. By having a different perspective than companies in the F2P world, the team at Activision behind Skylanders could take the best from in-app purchases and present it in a new and much more profitable way.

Hopefully, Skylanders will serve as the inspiration for new strategies that take monetization to the next level. View all posts by Lloyd Melnick. Click here to read more about how we use cookies.

James G. To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:. Social gaming Social gaming is a rapidly growing field featuring 'gambling-like' games, but not for real money. Please see full alert below for more information. Download PDF. Send Report.