

Monetizing Facebook Games: 'You're A Frickin' Media Company' - dmoney67
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/monetizing-facebook-games-youre-a-frickin-media-company/

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alizaki
Wrong. Social games are not regular media. What is a media company? Media
companies deal in information - it could be the news, analysis, up-to-the-
second stock information or celebrity photographs. Media companies battle
comodotization and charge through ads or subscriptions of some sort. Game
(traditional) companies are like studios. You build something (you think)
people want, market it and boom, you make money. Once someone buys your
box/downloads your game on Steam, you're only concerned with how long they
play (i.e. amount of fun they have) in the context of the sequel. As with
movies and music, there are indie surprises (exceptions which prove the rule).

Social games companies (and many of the apps) only gets paid when people
actually play their games (I'm simplifying this, because a lot of other
factors add in, e.g. geography. But it's more of less true.). This is why they
measure revenue by DAU (daily active users). You can bring this engagement
around by analytics, behavioral science (social compulsion) or by making a
damn good game, any which way you want. But you're in the business of making
consumable experience which leave the user wanting more eventually. So social
games have more in common with the drug trade than media companies/traditional
games.

