I just got back from Las Vegas, where I took part in the Independent MMO Game Developers Conference. One of the highlights for me was meeting Richard Bartle, whose research is the origin of the Bartle MMO Personality Analyzer we run over at gamerDNA.
On Sunday I gave a presentation on “Top Trends in Online Games.” Below is a Slideshare deck of what I presented:
Top Trends in Online Games
View more presentations from jradoff.
Top points:
- Online games are tribal; social elements are key. Games, including non-MMORPG products (such as games on Xbox Live Arcade) are becoming increasingly social.
- The combination of a strong social fabric, plus newer platforms (XBLA, iPhone, Web) are making some games a lot more capital efficient to develop. Capital efficiency comes from lower cost of customer acquisition (social elements) plus lower costs of development (the new platforms cost a fraction of typical PC-based AAA titles), which means it is fertile ground for independent developers.
- The market is becoming a lot more diverse, fueled by the fact that 97% of teenagers now play games.
- There’s an opportunity for game developers to shift from “shipping the box” to delivering long-term entertainment value (i.e., attention), which has more lucrative business models.
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Good to see my lecturer still doing the rounds, and doing well
His keynote is available, incidentally, in PDF format:
http://mud.co.uk/richard/IMGDC2009.pdf