作者：Scott Sinclair

由于社交网络Facebook的人气上涨，社交游戏这个基于网页平台且鼓励玩家与好友互动的行业发展也因此水涨船高。据尼尔森调查显示，体验在线游戏已成为美国网民第二大活动。社交游戏巨头Zynga目前身价也超过大牌视频游戏公司EA，仅次于动视暴雪。这一切迹象均表明，社交游戏已成为长为规模堪与视频游戏匹敌的行业。

曾有市场调查报告预测，2011年市场营销人员将向社交游戏投入1.92亿美元的广告费用，社交游戏今年的市场规模将超过10亿美元。这不禁让人回顾最先试水这一领域的市场营销人员所取得的成就，例如他们在社交游戏广告营销活动中创造的品牌粘性，从“虚拟商品”中获得的收益等情况。

Car Town--CR-Z(from fairleague.com)

社交游戏的定义

根据维基百科的解释，社交游戏是指在网页平台运行，以社交互动方式而非个人单独体验的游戏。乍一看会有不少人认为，这种游戏形式其实并无多少新意，它与90年代玩家在线体验的《毁灭战士》这种第一人称射击游戏，以及微软Xbox 360和索尼Playstation 3等传统游戏平台的在线游戏差别不大。

话虽如此，但Facebook与实体游戏硬件平台的区别在于，它为在线游戏提供了数以千万的社交游戏玩家，让他们摆脱单人模式的游戏体验，仅需符合拥有Facebook帐号和网页浏览器这种最低配置的要求，就可以同时获得丰富的社交体验和游戏乐趣。

社交游戏市场营销典型案例

据路透社报道，30%的Facebook用户都在玩《FarmVille》、《Mafia Wars》、《CityVille》和《Car Town》等休闲游戏，这一领域的虚拟商品市场规模已达16亿美元。这也正是富有先见之明的市场营销人员最为看中的一点。

假如你是一个Facebook用户，很可能每天都会看到好友发布他们正在玩《FarmVille》的贴子。去年麦当劳就通过在《FarmVille》中植入限时24小时的在线番茄和芥茉田地与玩家进行互动，同时还向玩家提供一次性的“数字”饮料和一个可飞越玩家农场的麦当劳热汽球作为奖励——这为24小时市场营销活动续上了令人难忘的一笔。

本田汽车也曾以社交游戏《Car Town》作为桥梁，推广其在美国市场销售的本田CR-Z Hybrid小跑车。在为期两个月的活动中，这种可点击的汽车广告图一直显示在游戏中的广告牌中，而这些广告牌也恰好立在玩家的虚拟车库附近，玩家每次重新访问游戏时都能看到这个广告牌。

最近丰田汽车也开始采取行动，与《Car Town》展开类似合作，让普锐斯新车型在该游戏中与在现实生活中的底律特汽车展同时亮相。丰田汽车让玩家投票选择最适合描述普锐斯特点的词语，并为他们提供一件带有丰田汽车标志的虚拟T恤作为回报。

微软也曾为其搜索引擎Bing打造声势而在《FarmVille》中进行市场推广，并因此成功在Bing的Facebook粉丝页面中吸引了40万名用户。Bing推广活动为玩家提供游戏虚拟货币奖励，让玩家使用Facebook粉丝页面分享《FarmVille》游戏小贴士，并将流量导向其搜索引擎，在不到四个小时中，就成功让一个导向Bing搜索的贴子收获了585条评论和2万个点击量。

成功社交游戏必备要素

在我看来，成功社交游戏一般都有两个突出的共性：

1.粘性——让玩家频频重访游戏非常关键；

2.病毒式推广——让现有玩家不断邀请朋友参与，同时又可让游戏开发商摆脱“发布垃圾信息”的嫌疑。

这两点恰好满足了广告活动的“两个必须”要求，为广告主采取行动奠定了基础。以下是我认为成功的社交游戏市场营销活动的三个必要考虑因素：

1.谨慎选择游戏类型

我认为如果要让广告推广获得成功，就得确保用户会为之所吸引，并持续关注广告活动的情况，实现这一点的前提就是，让广告内容契合游戏主题。本田和丰田都选择在《Car Town》这款汽车游戏中展开营销活动，这是一个明智之举，达到了品牌与游戏相得益彰的效果。

2.为玩家提供有价值的奖励

提供奖励是获得用户忠诚的一个重要手段，奖励他们一个可留下美好回忆的礼物，有助于延续市场营销活动的有效性。但要注意的是，不能只关注奖励物品的美观和展示品牌Logo，而应该为他们提供具有妙用，对游戏进程有所帮助的虚拟商品。

3.奖励方式过于困难或简单都不是上策

如果将奖励设置得过于困难，玩家就会失去参与活动的积极性，但如果让奖励变得唾手可得，玩家就会产生“天底下真有免费的午餐？”这种困惑之感。可以考虑设置让玩家投票选择最喜爱的产品，或收割与品牌有关的庄稼等此类需要一定游戏经验，但又没有太多技术要求的任务。

随着营销人员对广告推广创新意识的不断增强，未来还会有更多社交游戏品牌营销案例大量出现。但这种营销活动并非一蹴而就的任务，它绝非设置一个Facebook页面或Twitter帐号这种简单的操作，而是一个社交媒介战略的重要一环。

我认为当前的社交游戏营销活动还只是一个开端，今后还将出现虚拟世界与现实世界高度融合的下一代营销方式。社交游戏公司SCVNGR已通过为玩家的虚拟任务提供现实奖励的方式挖掘这种创意，相信虚拟世界（我们在Facebook上的生活）与真实世界的交汇，必将为培养用户对品牌的长期忠实意识发挥重要作用。

游戏邦注：原文发稿于2011年3月4日，所述内容以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Social Gaming – to play or not to play?

Scott Sinclair, an Associate  Consultant in our UK Marketing, Sales and Service practice explores the rapid growth of social gaming and the opportunities it presents in advertising

The incredible rise in popularity of social networking site Facebook, has fuelled the rapid growth of another industry – social gaming a web-based form of playing games with friends. According to Nielsen, online gaming became the second-most popular activity among US web surfers. Zynga, the market leader in social gaming, was valued at $5.51 billion whilst gaming magnate Electronic Arts is worth $5.22 billion – clearly signalling the incredible growth of social gaming compared to the traditional video games.

With reports suggesting that marketers are expected to spend $192 million to advertise on social networking games in 2011 and the social gaming industry expected to pass $1 billion this year, I’ve decided to take a look at some of the pioneers and early adopters and draw some conclusions as to how marketers can successfully use social gaming as part of their wider social media strategy. For example as part of an advertising campaign, to provide a platform for ongoing brand engagement, or exploit the sale of ‘virtual’ goods as an additional revenue stream.

So, what is Social Gaming?

Wikipedia describes social games as typically web-based games that can be played as a form of social interaction, as opposed to playing games in solitude. At first glance, this appears to be nothing new given that DOOM, a first person shooter game, was one of the most popular online games during the 1990s, and traditional gaming platforms like the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3 have had incredible success through online gaming.

However, rather than physical hardware acting as the platform, Facebook has provided these online games with the social platform to engage millions of social gamers, who are playing games like Farmville, Cityville and Fifa’s football stars. As such, gaming is changing from an individual experience, to a social experience that has minimal requirements – a facebook account and an internet browser.

So who are the early adopters? And what have they done?

With Reuters reporting that 30% of facebook users are playing casual games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cityville and Car Town powering a $1.6 billion annual market for “virtual goods”– it’s no wonder there are some early adopters.

If you are a facebook user, you’ve probably seen wall posts from friends playing Farmville, which according to its makers Zynga, has nearly 58 million active users. Last year, McDonalds restaurants offered Farmville players the chance to tend its online tomato and mustard-seed fields for 24 hours. In return for participating, players received a one-off “digital” drink that gave players enhanced skills and a McDonalds branded hot air balloon to float above their own farm – leaving a lasting legacy of participation in the 24 hour campaign.

Car giant Honda, used social game Car Town, a social game where users buy and customise cars to go on virtual road trips, to promote the launch of its Honda CR-Z sport hybrid coupe in the US. During a two-month promotion, clickable adverts featuring images of the car appeared throughout the in-game billboards. Significantly, these billboards are stationed right next to every player’s garage, where every user begins a new session.

More recently, Toyota partnered with Car Town to debut the new line of Prius model at the same time as it was making its real life debut at the Detroit motor show. Toyata engaged game players by asking them to vote on a term to describe the plural of Prius, and in return players received a virtual t-shirt with their name on it.

Microsoft also used Farmville to generate a buzz about its search engine Bing, and gained over 400,000 facebook fans on the Bing fan page. The Bing promotion rewarded users with virtual currency for becoming a fan. Microsoft now use the facebook fan page to share Farmville tips and drive traffic to its search engine, with one post linking through to a Bing search receiving 585 comments and 20,000 click throughs in under four hours.

So what makes a successful social game?

In my opinion, there are two stand-out features that make a social game successful:

Stickiness – making users frequently return to play is the key, and;

Viral promotion – getting existing players to continually invite their friends to come and play means the game creators don’t appear to be spamming
Given that social games have managed to overcome two of the advertising ‘must haves’, it seems like a logical step for advertisers. However, with very few case studies around, I’ve drawn up my top three considerations to ensure a successful advertising campaign through social gaming:

1. Give careful consideration to the choice of game

I believe in order to make your advert successful, the game has to ensure your audience will be captivated and continually come back to play to see the advert, but you must ensure the advert is congruent with the theme of the game. Honda and Toyota both chose to advertise in a car game as it fits nicely with their brand

2. Leave your players with a reward that has value

Rewarding your customers is one of the most popular ways to ensure loyalty, by gifting users with a lasting memory of their experience and participation, you can ensure your social campaign will live on. However it isn’t enough to just look pretty and have your logo displayed, In-game items have to reward the player with special attributes that will help them progress further

3. It has to be simple, but not too simple

Make earning your reward too difficult and you risk players not bothering, but make it too simple and players will wonder why it’s too good to be true. Simple tasks like voting for a favourite definition, or harvesting one of your crops are great simple tasks that require some experience of the game, but don’t require lots of skill.

As advertisers increasingly look for innovative ways to promote, increase awareness and drive engagement with their brand, it’s likely more will experiment with social gaming. However, social gaming is not something that should be done on a whim, like setting up a facebook page or a twitter account, it’s something that should form part of an overall social media strategy.

In my opinion social gaming is just at the beginning and the next ‘iteration’ will be the bridging of the virtual world with the real world. Social gaming company SCVNGR is already tapping into this idea by offering ‘players’ the opportunity to ‘play a virtual game’ but earn ‘real world’ prizes. I believe this is the first step in bridging the gap between the virtual world (the life we have in facebook) and the real world and offers the opportunity to develop genuine customer loyalty over sustained period of time.

What are your experiences with social games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars and Car Town? What do you think is next for social gaming and advertisers? Will  more advertisers in social games will drive the crowds away? Or will this bring the virtual world closer to the real world?（source:capgemini）