playdom刚刚卷入了与迪士尼之间超过6亿美元的并购传闻。

playdom是目前社交游戏领域的标杆之一，它是facebook的第三大游戏开发商，是myspace的第一大游戏开发商。

John Pleasants是playdom的首席执行官，在这之前他说EA电子艺界的首席运营官。在与迪士尼的并购传闻之际，John Pleasants接受了venturebeat的专访，谈社交游戏为什么在不久的将来会被其他形式所消解。

John Pleasants

在这之前playdom几乎每月都执行一次并购，John Pleasants认为并购是市场的相当重要的战略，而有些并购则完全是冲着该领域的主要人才去的，而不是游戏开发商本身。

在谈到目前的游戏市场方面，John Pleasants表示全球游戏工业的市场行情高达500亿美元，在掌机游戏销售下滑的趋势下，在线游戏出现了30%的强势增长，在五年以内超过一半的游戏都会集中在在线领域。

而在社交游戏领域同样存在着资源集中的问题。18个月之前facebook最佳的25款游戏由14个公司把持，而现在不过区区5家了。facebook每天都有250款新游戏推出，这对于新的小型开发者来讲都是相当困难的。

在市场价值方面，尽管离zynga相距甚远，但是playdom有可能超过电子艺界在社交游戏领域的产值。

尽管如此社交游戏依然存在着诸多的障碍，比如你需要高质量的游戏，而这时十分困难的，开发者很难把握消费者的喜好热点究竟处在什么位置。社交游戏正在以快速的方式进入1.0、2.0、3.0、4.0的时代，更高的质量要求，更高的产品价值，更具有深度的游戏内涵，越来越像网页化发展。未来的趋势是：游戏免费化和社交化。

playdom

John Pleasants is in the spotlight as chief executive of Playdom, the third-largest social game publisher on Facebook and the No. 1 game publisher on MySpace. The company has had hit games from Mobsters to Social City, and it has more than 41 million users on Facebook. He has been acquiring about one game development studio per month. Before joining Playdom last year, he was chief operating officer of Electronic Arts. At the time, many saw that move as a validation of the social game market, which has only grown further. We did the interview on Tuesday, before news broke on Thursday night that Disney might be in negotiations to buy Playdom for more than $600 million. That development is quite interesting, given that Playdom has been the acquirer so far, buying a company a month. Playdom has raised $76 million to date.

*VB: This industry is changing so fast. You are on a fast acquisition pace. You’re in a rush, doing an acquisition every month. Why the hurry?*

*JP:* Acquisitions are part of our strategy to grow. Most of our acquisitions have been for people and talent. Some have been for products or systems. More of our growth in people has come organically than through acquisitions. We do the deals because we think there are assets that are undervalued. If they were in our system, we could leverage them to create more studios or more publishing capabilities in this fast-growing market.

*VB: This industry is at its ground floor. What does it remind you of?*

*JP:* I can answer that in two ways. On the high level, it feels to me like the start of iTunes, the beginning of the Nintendo Wii, and early days of web-based email. They were really big and transformational to how people enjoy music, play console games, and use email. This industry is so interesting for what it is doing to traditional games. It is re-democratizing it. All games are social. We used to play peekaboo. Or tag. Or hide-and-seek. There were always more than one person. Video games became single-player activities. It was you against the computer. With social networks, we are reacquainting people with the idea of doing social games. It is transformational from a human gut level, but it’s also going back to the beginning.

*VB: What’s driving this?*

*JP:* The three things that are driving this are the combination of social and gaming. Also, the introduction of the live service. These are changed everyday. And everything we make is free-to-play. Those three tent poles are changing everything in interactive entertainment. Social gaming is going to die. That is, the term will become meaningless as all games will become social. They will be on Facebook and MySpace and on phones and online and everywhere else.

*VB: How do you look at the falling numbers for the console game sales? In June, sales fell even though the slimmer Xbox 360 launched. In May, sales fell from a year ago even though Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Red Dead Redemption launched. Does this mean there is a shift going on toward social games?*

*JP:* I don’t follow the numbers like I used to. As best I know, the global gaming business is about $50 billion. The console and handheld part is declining around 10 percent. Online is growing 30 percent and is now fully a third of the total pie. You can see within five years, more than half of the business will be online. The fastest growing part of online is social gaming.

*VB: That trend is irreversible because of the gut level change?*

*JP:* It’s irreversible. I believe that console games will be distributed digitally, starting this year. Boxed product will not need to exist anymore in five to ten years. At that point, a publisher will have a connection to an individual rather than to a retailer. Once publishers have that, there is no reason they couldn’t continuously modify the products or change the way they charge for it. It is unstoppable. The whole $50 billion is going to change.

*VB: It’s easy to see that GameStop, the big game retailer, will be disrupted as stores move online. Will the big game publishers also be disrupted?*

*JP:* I’m no expert on that. I think that the idea that there are entertainment-specific systems that sit in homes that enable you to do more things with entertainment software will probably still exist. So the consoles will still exist. I am a pretty big fan of Microsoft Kinect and that it will be successful.

*VB: So the traditional game companies can adapt to online?*

*JP:* I think so.

*VB: The pace of acquisitions is fast. Is it because Zynga is after the same companies?*

*JP:* Yes. It’s a hot market. A year ago, when I cam on board, we were 60 people. We were competing with companies like Zynga, which than had more than 600. We wanted more people, systems, and production capability. At the same time, there happened to be a lot of smaller shops that didn’t have the capital, marketing budgets, or publishing platforms that they needed. They were running into tough times. We leveraged our balance sheet, found the talent, and helped them get to a place where they are more successful.

*VB: Are those developers still plentiful? Is the price to buy them going up?*

*JP:* I don’t know. If you go back 18 months that were making the top 25 games on Facebook, there were 14 indie companies. Today, that number is five. There are 250,000 apps on Facebook. There are 250 games launching a day on Facebook. It is very difficult for small companies to break in. It’s near impossible and in that context, the deals are cheaper. We are at a scale now where we are comfortable. I don’t think you will see a continued pace of acquisitions.

*VB: I recall that Wild Tangent built its web game business and then decided it didn’t need internal game studios. Is that an option for you?*

*JP: *That is not part of our strategy. We want internally produced games. We do outsource work outside too. But we want internal studios.

*VB: The valuations in this market look interesting. There are reports that Zynga is worth $4 billion or $5 billion. ****Do you believe that and therefore extrapolate that for your own company?*

*JP:* I don’t know anything about Zynga’s numbers. Nor am I equipped to value their company or our company. I have heard the same things you have heard. I would not be surprised that is a sound set of math in the industry. They are the biggest and were one of the earliest and helped build social gaming. As the leader, I imagine they are a multibillion dollar company.

*VB: So it would not surprise you if their value or your own company’s value become’s bigger than Electronic Arts’ value? Do you want to go there?*

*JP: *We remain pleased with where we are. We are a small company and don’t even belong in the same sentence as EA right now. We love our growth prospects. I am sure EA is bullish on theirs now. We are just trying to execute.

*VB: There are a lot of obstacles in social gaming. How do you look at them?*

*JP:* You have to make good games. That’s hard. No one knows what a hit will be. It’s a hit driven business. You also have to have very sound distribution. You need an existing user base you can market to. You need relations with multiple social networks. It helps if you are in multiple countries. It’s a big world and that requires localization. It helps if you are on multiple devices,

like iPads and iPhones. You need the right payment systems. If there is another, I would say it is identifying and recruiting the right people in the right roles. There is a staffing challenge to try to stay current and successful.

*VB: Will brands become more important to Playdom?*

*JP:* There are brands like Bourne Identity on the one side, and Facebook game brands like Restaurant City, Social City and FarmVille. (Social City was created by Jeff Tunnel, pictured with Pleasants). The point is that the brands will move in both directions. In the second half of this year, you will see major brands make a big push into our category. We have partnered with ESPN as one of the major brands that we will be coming to market with. You will also in the coming 18 months see brands come from social into traditional media. You will see TV shows, movies, or small webisodes spawning out of social games. It makes sense to leverage a brand that is loved by tens of millions of people. I’m more excited about that than brands coming to our space.
*
VB: So it’s not about the brands coming into social games to crush everybody who is already there?*

*JP: *It hasn’t happened to date and there is a reason. A brand alone is not enough. That’s like saying art is good enough to make a great game. It’s not. You need great art, game design, ubiquity across devices, game play and music. Brands help, but they do not make success a fait accompli.

*VB: You have done some very nimble moves. One was going from Facebook to MySpace, and then expanding back into Facebook. You have acquired all of these companies.*

*JP:* We still hustle. We don’t feel like we are winning the race. I don’t think any one company wins the race. I think a handful of companies will be in the front pick. There will be an A list and we want to be firmly in the pack. We could lead the pack, but that may be a ways off, given the size of our large competitor. We have got some very smart people, great founders, and we are very data centric in our DNA. We have business intelligence systems that help us monetize and run a game successfully. We have made some good acquisitions that have given us great talent. We have built some great games. We treat our users well. We are going international. We have made our mistakes along the way.

*VB: It looks like you need  to do a new game that accumulates all of the wisdom that has come from these acquisitions you have done. Zynga’s FrontierVille is made by a team led by Brian Reynolds.

That has been a success and you could describe it as their next-generation game. It came from acquisitions and talent hires. Is that what you want?*

*JP:* Exactly. We put out a game called Market Street today. That was internally produced. Last week we put out the Fanglies. That came from an acquisition. Verdonia came from an acquisition. Two of our last three came from acquisitions and they’re very good products.

*VB: Is there such a thing as a next-generation social game?*

*JP:* Yes. But I don’t know if there is a line in the sand. A year ago, the leading games were spreadsheet games, text-based role-playing games. They had 5 million daily active users. Now there are tens of millions of daily active users. We have isometric views of games with good graphics. There is synchronous game play. That is a lot of functionality that came in the last 12 months. I feel the bar moved in a material way, and that happens every 90 days. You may have social games 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 all in one year. Is there a bigger next generation? Yes. I think there will be brands, higher production values, higher quality upon release, greater game depth, complete integrated mobile tie-ins and not just ports of products, more demographic targeting, more genres, and a fleshing out of whether a game is asynchronous (one move at a time) or synchronous (everybody moves at the same time). You will also have a better sense of who your friends are and who your game friends are. In any game, you will play well in either an asynchronous or synchronous mode.

*VB: But we aren’t just going to follow the evolution of games on the PC or console, with better and better graphics?*

*JP: *That was the graphics chips versus microprocessor battle, for generation after generation. But our games can evolve in a different way. Our games need to become more social. If you want a big headline, the games of the past three years have been about virality. The games of the next three years will be about engagement and retention. The weighting will shift in terms of what is important.

*VB: Games will hold your attention for a longer time.*

*JP:* And that will lead to virality. Innovation is driving retention, and retention drives virality. So that is what you focus on.

*VB: But you are not turning casual gamers into hardcore gamers?*

*JP:* No. But everyone is marching down the path toward being a gamer a little bit. People who played downloadable games are playing things that are more intricate than Word Womp. People are spilling into games that are more complex. The games are becoming more accessible. The comfort zone for each gamer is growing.

*VB: So you are optimistic about the future?*

*JP:* I am extremely optimistic about the future. I am as bullish as ever. In the West, it will go from a $1 billion market to a $5 billion market in the next four or five years. It’s a very fast growing business. It all goes back to those three things: free to play, live service and social games. Those things are transformational and the tent poles are ripping into everything else.

*VB: That explains why you are in such a rush and you send four emails to your employees at once?*

*JP:* Maybe I do that after I’ve gotten off an airplane. We are in a race. There is a sense of urgency.