据俄罗斯新闻社报道，在线游戏和社交游戏是俄罗斯游戏领域的两大主力军，自2008年以来，这个市场每年的产值都会增长2000万美元左右，在2010年达到了2.5亿美元，预计在未来数年仍将以20%至30%的增长率继续发展。

该国在线游戏活跃玩家约300万至500万人，其中多数为MMORPG和网页游戏用户。而在当地的Vkontakte和Odnoklassniki等社交网站中，社交游戏玩家数量约1000万至1500万人。但比起欧美在线游戏市场，这组数据其实是小巫见大巫。游戏邦获悉俄罗斯在线游戏市场落后于欧美同行，主要应归咎于当地网速偏慢，无限数据包资费标准过高，以及不发达的在线支付系统。但这些不利条件正逐渐改善，所以俄罗斯新闻社预计到2012年，当地在线游戏市场规模将增长至4亿美元。其他推动该市场发展的因素还包括社交网站用户、热门在线游戏数量的增长。

online gaming-primeworld

随着游戏用户的增长，游戏开发商和社交网站的收益也在节节攀升，但MMORPG游戏的利润远比社交游戏更可观。社交游戏用户的每月平均投入仅0.5美元，而MMORPG游戏用户的每月平均投入将近7美元。虽然社交网站对该平台游戏开发商抽成比例高达30%至50%，但仍有大量开发商愿意通过这种渠道运营游戏。

当地社交网站的最大优势在于用户基础——其用户总数约6000万人。据《莫斯科时报》报道，俄罗斯社交游戏开发商创建每款游戏所费成本约3万至5万美元。另外，他们在服务器和市场推广上的支出总共将近10万美元。以Vkontakte平台人气最旺的社交游戏《Slammer》为例，在该平台的2300万用户中，自去年11月中旬以来玩过该游戏的用户超过了550万人，平均有3%的用户曾付费购买游戏虚拟商品，由此可以推算出，这款游戏的总收益接近33万美元。

社交网站是这一市场的真正赢家，其用户规模庞大，而且仍在不断膨胀：约有2850万名年龄在12至54岁的俄罗斯人每月至少访问一次社交网站，其中有1790万人每天至少访问一次。游戏是这些用户最常访问的应用，这表明通过合适的推广渠道，一款社交游戏有可能快速吸引大量用户。正是因为这一点，当地社交游戏开发商的数量也在持续增长。据称俄罗斯社交网站仅靠社交游戏一项业务，每天就可进帐1万美元。

但由于游戏选择过多，用户口味也在不断变化，仅有少数几款社交游戏真正获得成功。不过比社交游戏市场竞争更激烈的是当地的MMORPG游戏，Mail.ru Group旗下的Astrum Online Entertainment公司独占了70%的MMORPG游戏市场份额，暴雪娱乐和Innova Group则掌握了另外20%的份额。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Online And Social Gaming Space In Russia

Online gaming and social gaming are the two biggest blocks of the gaming market in Russia. The market’s overall worth has been growing by roughly $20M a year since 2008, reaching $250M in 2010. The 20-30% growth is expected to continue in the following years, estimates RIA Novosti. Between 3-5M people actively play online games, mostly MMORPG client and browser-based games. Even more people – between 10-15M – play social games on local social networks like Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. Large as they might seem, those numbers pale in comparison to the number of online gamers in Europe or US. Russia is lagging behind due to its slowly developing Internet connections (especially in the regions), forbidding price of unlimited data plans and undeveloped online payment systems. At the same time, all of those are changing to the better which is why online gaming market is set to grow to $400M in 2012. Other facilitators of growth include social networks’ growing audience together with a growing number of successful online games.

As the number of users grow so do profits of game developers and social networks. However, MMORPG games seem to be more profitable than games on social networks.

Average monthly revenue per user in social games is a mere $0,50 while in massive multi-player online role-playing games that number is close to $7 a month. On top of that, developers of online games for social networks have to share between 30-50% of their profits with the said networks. Still there is a great number of game developers who prefer that path.

Social networks’ biggest advantage is the number of their users – an estimated 60M. It costs between $30,000-50,000 to develop a game for a social network in Russia, reports The Moscow Times. Almost as much is then spent on servers and advertising, which makes the overall cost close to $100,000. Take the most popular social game today on Vkontakte -  ‘Slammer’. Out of the social network’s 23M-strong audience, more than 5,5M users actively played the game since mid-November. An average of 3% of users pay for the online goods, which means that the overall profit of that particular game so far is close to $330,000.

Nevertheless, social networks are the real winners in that equation. Their audience is big and growing: 28,5M Russians between 12-54 years use social networks at least once a month, 17,9M use them at least once a day. Games are the most popular applications on social networks, which means that a substantially large audience can be quickly mobilized to play a well-promoted game. This makes it very attractive for game developers, whose number has also been growing. As a result, Russian social networks are said to be earning $10,000 a day just from the social games.

Due to the large selection and changing tastes, few social games become truly successful. But if you think that Russian social gaming market is tough you’d need to remember that the competition is even harder in the MMORPG segment of online games. 70% of the market is controlled by Astrum Online Entertainment (part of Mail.ru Group) and local game developing giants like Blizzard Entertainment and Innova Group control another 20% of the market. It’s not all fun and games in the Russian online gaming market!（source:arcticstartup）