游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

mashable消息:整个全球社交游戏商业圈越来越趋于火爆

发布时间:2010-08-20 13:34:22 Tags:,,

社交游戏产业现在处在一个有趣的时期,两个星期前迪斯尼收购了Playdom,上周Google 又收购了Slide,最大的社交游戏发行商中的两家从而成为了更大的公司的一部分。而上一次类似的收购发生在去年年底,艺电 (EA) 收购社交游戏公司Playfish。

playfish

playfish

作为一个类别来看,社交游戏的发展非常迅速,它成为了人们使用Facebook的主要动力之一,并且日益成为大众娱乐的核心组成部分。这种发展已经对其他娱乐形式构成了真正的威胁,并且促成了我们已经看到的那3起收购。

社交游戏公司收购中的3个因素

这些收购案显示了以下3个共同点。首先是强有力的管理。Playfish由克里斯蒂安·塞格斯特罗勒(Kristian Segerstrale)执掌,他是著名手机游戏发行商Glu Mobile的联合创始人。 Playdom的约翰·普莱森茨(John Pleasants)曾是艺电的首席运营官。Slide的首席执行官马克斯·莱文奇恩(Max Levchin)则是PayPal的联合创始人。因此在这3起收购案中,被收购方领导层的经验都不仅仅限于社交游戏,他们在其他领域中也有成功的经历。

第二是营收规模。在收购发生时,3家社交游戏公司中每一家每月都可产生数百万美元的营收。一起收购案要对像Google、迪斯尼和艺电这样的行业巨头产生有效的影响,收购对象需要显示出能够在未来几年内推动数亿美元年营收额的发展潜力。

第三是可重复能力。游戏业遵循一种“热门产品驱动模式”(hit-driven)。开发出一款热门游戏虽然很有价值,但如果拥有一个可以重复产生更多热门游戏的游戏工厂,就会更有价值。对任何一款游戏而言,它能否成为大热门是不确定的,因此可重复性事关公司瞄准目标进行多次尝试的能力。一家公司拥有越多的游戏开发工作室,在同一段时间内,它可以尝试的次数就越多。被收购的这3家公司都拥数百名社交游戏开发人员,并拥有多款营收状况良好的游戏。

然而,能够进行多次尝试还不够,可重复性还需要其他推动力,比如帮助一款游戏找到大量玩家的能力。如果社交游戏拥有大量“安装基础型”(installed base)游戏玩家,或能够通过高度货币化来获得付费用户,它就有能力做到这一点。而这3家社交公司在被收购时都或多或少地拥有这些能力。

社交游戏公司对不同类型买家的价值

这 3起收购案也有不同之处,其中之一是每个买家都来自不同的类别:艺电是传统的游戏发行商,迪斯尼是传统媒体公司,Google是互联网巨头。这可能会提供一些线索,让我们了解其他哪些公司可能对社交游戏领域感兴趣。未来的潜在收购者可能是来自游戏领域的Ubisoft和Activision,也可能是来自传媒业的维亚康姆(Viacom)、哥伦比亚广播公司(CBS)、Comcast/ NBC和新闻集团,也可能是互联网公司如AOL、IAC、微软和雅虎。

此外,由于免费游戏在亚洲的成功,大量亚洲公司,比如中国的盛大和腾讯,日本的Mixi和DeNA,以及韩国的SK Telecom和Nexon,都可能会为了开发美国市场而收购美国社交游戏开发商。

下一个被收购的公司

虽然很多大公司都有可能收购社交游戏开发商,但目前仍然保持独立的、营收规模足以吸引收购者(每月超过100万美元)的美国社交游戏商只有4家: Rockyou ,Crowdstar,Watercooler和Zynga。

Zynga 是社交游戏业界巨头,根据业界人士估计,它每月的营收超过6000万美元。Zynga支持多个可以开发高品质游戏的大型工作室,有大笔营销预算和无与伦比的交叉促销方式进行游戏推广。其每月2亿的活跃用户,是最强大竞争对手的4倍。这让Zynga在推出新游戏数天之内就可以吸引到上百万的用户(它最近推出的两款游戏Frontierville 和 Treasure Isle就是证明),这是目前其他任何社交游戏公司都无法与之匹敌的。

软银(Softbank)对Zynga的投资估计在40亿美元这个级别内,因此对潜在买家而言,Zynga可能是太大了。虽然许多公司可能希望拥有Zynga,但Zynga更有可能走上上市之路。

另一方面,在未来的12至18个月中,买家可能会对其他3家公司展现出浓厚的兴趣。这类似一个“抢椅子”游戏,买家比椅子多,最后会有很多潜在买家发现自己没有地方坐。

小型社交游戏开发商

还有大量的小型社交游戏开发商,他们每家至少拥有一款月营收超过10万美元的游戏。这些开发商包括Booyah、 Casual Collective、 50 cubes、 LOLapps、 Meteor Games、 Metrogames、Slashkey 和 ZipZapPlay。其中有些是新晋公司,在过去几个月表现突出,而另一些较老的公司仍在继续从早前成功的游戏中获利。

如果我们相信,社交游戏公司的价值在于管理、营收规模和可重复性,那么我们也许会在这个级别中看到更多的公司合并。虽然这些小公司可能不够大,不足以在一个大买家的公司中发挥核心作用,但在4大独立游戏开发商继续增大规模和可重复性时,这些小公司具有战略上的价值。

此外,将这些小型开发商加总,就可以创造(独立于月营收超过100万美元的开发商的)新“规模化”和可重复性的核心要素:多个工作室的结构,交叉促销的规模,以及生存能力与货币化方面的诀窍。

展望未来

这个行业因其动态性令人振奋,而在未来的12个月,这一点并不会改变。因此我们很可能会继续看到出现新的社交游戏开发商,同时也有可能出现进一步的公司合并:来自3个不同行业的巨头购买大型独立社交游戏商,大型独立社交公司收购小型独立社交游戏开发商,而较小的开发商合并扩大规模。

These are interesting times in the social gaming industry. Two weeks ago Disney acquired Playdom, and last week Google acquired Slide. Just like that, two of the largest social game publishers have become part of larger companies. This activity all comes on the heels of EA’s acquisition of Playfish late last year.

Social gaming, as a category, has grown incredibly quickly, becoming one of the dominant drivers of usage on FacebookFacebookFacebook, and an increasingly core component of people’s entertainment.

This growth represents a real threat to other forms of entertainment, and has precipitated the three deals that we have seen so far.
3 Factors in Social Gaming Viability and AcquisitionThe acquisitions show three commonalities. The first is strong management. Playfish is run by Kristian Segerstrale, a co-founder of Glu Mobile, a leading mobile game publisher. Playdom is run by John Pleasants, formerly COO of EA. And Slide’s CEO is Max Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal. In each case, the leadership brings real experience, not just in social gaming, but also from previous successes.

The second is revenue scale. Each company was generating millions in monthly revenue at the time of acquisition, with valuations on exit being driven higher for the companies with the highest revenue at time of exit. To move the needle for companies as big as GoogleGoogleGoogle, Disney and EA, an acquisition needs to show the potential to drive hundreds of millions in annual revenue within a few years.

The third is capacity for repeatability. Games are a hit-driven business. While it is valuable to have a hit game, it is much more valuable to have a game factory that can repeatably produce more successes. There is uncertainty about the chances of any given game being a hit, so part of repeatability is about a company’s ability to take many shots on goal. The more studios and game developers that a company has, the more shots on goal it can take at any given time. At time of exit, each company had hundreds of employees building games, and had multiple games at some level of revenue or usage scale.

However, the ability to take a lot of shots on goal is not enough. The other key driver of repeatability involves helping a game reliably find a scale audience. This can come from a large installed base of players, or from the ability to justify paid customer acquisition through high monetization. Each company had one or more of these abilities when they were acquired.

Social Games Have Value for Different Types of Companies

The three acquisitions also differ in some meaningful ways. Each acquirer comes from a different category. One is a traditional game publisher (EA), one a traditional media company (Disney), and one a large InternetInternetInternet company (Google). This gives us some clues about what other companies may have interest in the sector. Potential future acquisitions might come from companies like Ubisoft and Activision from the game side, Viacom, CBS, Comcast/NBC and Newscorp on the media side, and companies such as AOL, IAC, Microsoft and Yahoo!Yahoo!Yahoo! from the Internet side.

In addition, given the success of free to play games in Asia, there are a number of potential Chinese (Shanda, QQ), Japanese (Mixi, DeNA) and Korean (SK Telecom, Nexon) companies who could look to one of these social gaming companies to establish a market in the U.S.

Which Acquisition Will Be Next?

While there are many entities that might be in the market to buy a gaming company, there are only four still independent U.S.-based social game publishers that have the revenue scale (more than $1 million each month) to be attractive as a target; Rockyou, Crowdstar, Watercooler and of course Zynga.

Zynga is the industry powerhouse, and we’ve estimated in the past that they are doing more than $60 million a month in revenue. They benefit from the ability to support multiple large development studios building high quality games, and to launch those games with significant marketing budgets and unparalleled cross promotional reach. Their 200 million monthly active users is four times the size of their closest competitors. This allows Zynga to quickly hook millions of users on its new games within days of launch, as they have recently demonstrated with Frontierville and Treasure Isle. This is something that no other company is currently able to match.

But given estimates of Softbank’s investment in Zynga at a $4 billion valuation range, they may be too big an acquisition for many of the potential buyers. While many companies might wish to own them, they may be more likely to be on a track to go public themselves.

On the other hand, the other three companies may see a lot of interest over the next 12 to 18 months. In this game of musical chairs, there are far more players than there are chairs, and when the music stops, many of the potential acquirers may find themselves with no where to sit.

Smaller Players

There has also been a lot of activity at a smaller scale as well. Playdom and Zynga themselves have both been acquisitive, buying Acclaim, Challenge Games, Hive7, Lil Green Patch, Metaplace, MyMiniLife, Offbeat Creations, Serious Business, Three Melons, Trippert, Unoh, XPD Media and several others between them.

That still leaves a number of social game developers that have at least one game at scale and revenues greater than $100,000 per month, including Booyah, Casual Collective, 50 cubes, LOLapps, Meteor Games, Metrogames, Slashkey and ZipZapPlay. Some of these are newer entrants who have burst to prominence in the last few months, while others are older companies that are continuing to milk the success of an earlier game launch.

If we believe that value in social games is being attributed to management, revenue scale and repeatability, we may well see more consolidation at this level as well. Although these smaller companies may not be big enough to form the core of a social gaming group inside a big acquirer, they will be strategically valuable to the four bigger independent game developers who are continuing to build their scale and repeatability.

Furthermore, putting together some of these smaller players could create new “at scale” independent publishers with revenues greater than $1 million per month, and the core elements of repeatability, a multi-studio structure, cross promotional scale and know-how in virality and monetization.

The Future

This industry is exciting because of its dynamic nature, and I don’t expect that to change over the next 12 months. We will likely continue to see new game publishers burst onto the scene. At the same time, there will likely be further consolidation activity on three dimensions from giants buying the scale independent social game publishers, from the scale independent social game publishers buying smaller developers, and from some smaller developers coming together to create scale players.(source:mashable/tencent)


上一篇:

下一篇: