继周二在台湾发布的三款相对普通的游戏之后，我们转回到美国审视另外三个与众不同的游戏应用程序。说它们与众不同，至少相对于我们以前看到过的游戏来说是没错的。

是什么使得这些游戏如此独特，自2009年的岁末和2010的年初，社交游戏的开发者们就发现他们需要研发出超越以农场和以鱼儿为主题的游戏。“亚瑟王宫殿”、“购物世界”和“夜总会都市”这三款游戏就是在这种更有创造意识的新环境下开发出来的。

social-games

这些游戏每一款都有经过人口统计分析的不同的市场目标。对游戏开发商来说，缩小目标人群的数量，集中精力针对某一群人进行广告和游戏的投放，可以有效地帮助他们在避免像Zynga一类大公司的广告压力同时吸引更多的目标消费者。

而且品牌塑造者和广告人也对人口统计学分析的内置目标受众感兴趣。例如，对“购物世界”的消费者的分析显示，该游戏的目标受众主要是年轻的注重商品品牌的女性。就像我们采访TrialPay 的CEO兼联合创始人Alex Rampell所理解的一样，性能广告的未来很可能会限制在社交游戏中，而品牌塑造则可能成为主流。

我们对这三款游戏的人口统计特征分析结果显示，三款游戏有着完全不同的性别形象。例如，游戏“亚瑟王宫殿”是三款游戏中唯一拥有大量男性玩家的游戏，对此，较为合理的解释的是该游戏是一款传统意义上对男性更有吸引力的幻想主题战略类游戏。

对大多数游戏来说，像“亚瑟王宫殿”这样专门针对男性玩家的做法是明智的。因为大部分的游戏开发商现在已经发现和男性不同，女性倾向于把她们游戏的时间更多的花在Facebook的小游戏上，而且为了夺取女性玩家的商业竞争异常的激烈。

游戏“亚瑟王宫殿”和其他屈指可数的少数战略类游戏不仅巧妙的避开了争夺女性玩家的激烈竞争，而且还获得了差不多5百万的用户。

那些能争取到女性用户的游戏需要有独特的视角，而“夜总会都市”将玩家设置成喧闹夜总会的经理就很好的做到这一点。这是一款能享受多个层次乐趣的游戏，不仅仅是因为游戏中的音乐都十分流行，而且里面的歌手容貌甚佳。

“购物世界”的主题相对来说就不那么罕见了，但是它的主题聚焦到了核心——谁不知道女性爱购物？随着我们对该游戏深入的理解，它与游戏“亚瑟王宫殿”的第二个明显不同是玩家的年龄层，“购物世界”的玩家年

龄比“亚瑟王宫殿”的大得多。尽管“亚瑟王宫殿”以男性为主，玩家的平均年龄却非常接近像FarmVille之类的女性游戏的平均年龄，都是中年玩家。

“夜总会都市”和“购物世界”更倾向于年轻的玩家，特别是后者。这并不奇怪，而且对这两款游戏来说还是一个非常聪明的市场定位。Facebook日益增长的国际用户的平均年龄就比多数的美国静态用户的低（当然，这个数据是仅对美国来说）。

随着时间的推移，我们希望看到更多像这三款游戏一样有针对性的游戏和应用程序推出。尽管用户是否接受在于他们自身，但游戏本身也可以帮助市场推销员找到他们的目标客户。(译者：唐统权)

Recent Facebook Apps in the United States Target Niche Audiences for Growth, Monetization

Following up on Tuesday’s post about the performance of three relatively standard games in Taiwan, we’re switching back to the United States with at look at three more apps — though this time they’re rather unusual, at least compared to some of the apps we’ve previously looked at.

What makes these games unusual is, in part, the fact that they’re all products of late 2009 and 2010. Since the turn of the year, social game developers have found that they need to go beyond farming and fish games. The three you see below — Kingdoms of Camelot, Mall World and Nightclub City — are products of this new, more creative environment.

Each game also has a measure of built-in demographic targeting. For the developers, narrowing the focus to particular groups of people has helped build larger audiences for games without the advertising weight of a large company like Zynga behind them.

This built-in targeting should also be interesting to brand marketers and advertisers, though. The demographics for Mall World, for instance, indicate that it could be a good channel for targeting young, brand-conscious women. As discussed in our earlier interview with Alex Rampell, CEO and co-founder of TrialPay, performance advertising’s next frontier will likely be within social games, and brands have an opportunity to lead.

Our demographic data for all three games show that each has a fairly different gender profile. Kingdoms of Camelot, for example, is the only one of the three that’s heavily male, an observation that makes sense given that Camelot is a strategy game with a fantasy theme, a genre that has traditionally appealed more to men.

Focusing on men is a clever move for games like Kingdoms of Camelot. Since most developers have by now realized that women spend more on Facebook games (a phenomenon we cover in depth in our Inside Virtual Goods reports), the competition is heaviest for that group.

Camelot, along with a small handful of other strategy games, neatly bypasses the fight for women, and has netted almost five million users as a result.

Games that do go after women need a unique angle. Nightclub City certainly creates that, by placing players in the shoes of a busy nightclub manager. This is an interesting game on many levels, not least because the music in the game is recognizable — popular artist Girl Talk, for instance, features prominently.

Mall World’s theme isn’t unique anymore. But it’s certainly laser-focused — who doesn’t know young women like malls? As we explore further, a second big difference between Kingdoms of Camelot and its two peers is revealed: a much older audience.     Although Camelot may be male-heavy, its average age is closer to female-dominated games like FarmVille, which often go for a middle-aged audience.

Nightclub City and Mall World, on the other hand, both trend young — especially the latter game. That’s no surprise, but it’s again a clever targeting move on the part of both games:

Facebook’s growing international audience is younger on average than the mostly-static United States userbase. (Note, however, that these stats are only for the US.)

Over time, expect to see more targeted games and applications like these three. Since the groups that access them are self-selecting, the games themselves should also help lead marketers to their desired audience.(source:inside social games)