Amazon Developing Games

There's more than one way to attract an audience.

Amazon sells books, and now it publishes books... Amazon sells games, and now it's developing games. Amazon had posted a job listing for a senior game designer back in May, and they've now filled the slot with Jonathan Tweet, who I worked with back at Wizards of the Coast. Jonathan has designed a number of things, including working on the 3rd Edition of D&D; you can see a list of his credits here.

Apparently Jonathan is heading up a social game design unit, so it appears Amazon is intent on making some money selling its own games for Android and other platforms. They've certainly got enough money to throw at the problem, and they've hired a good designer. The question is really how big are Amazon's ambitions here? How seriously are they going to invest, or is this just dabbling? Should Zynga be looking over their shoulder?

I don't know how serious Amazon is, but for now it doesn't sound like a huge effort. But it's amazing how fast social games can scale up... just ask Zynga. The impact of social games on tablets and smartphones as not yet been massive, but if you can cross those streams and get some synergy, the upside potential looks pretty high. And one thing's for sure: Amazon has the resources to make a major push into pretty much any area they feel warrants the effort. I suspect Amazon is watching closely to see how well their initial effort does, and to see if they should make a full-court press.

So no pressure, Jonathan, no pressure. Have some fun and build a good game, and let me know when the beta opens up, OK?

TeePee: A Social Game Finder

With so many games these days, it's getting harder and harder to find the ones you might like. Of course, businesses are springing up to help with this. TeePee is a startup designed to help find social games. It's built a discovery engine to help analyze your likes and dislikes to suggest games that might fit your tastes better. TechCrunch calls it a Pandora for games, which is a pretty good description.

They plan to expand beyond Facebook games into mobile and other games, too. Developers are asked to register with them to get your games into the listings. I have no idea if this service will take off, but any game developer should be spreading the word about their game by any means they can these days. Signing up for services like this, where the only cost (so far) is a little bit of your time, seems like a worthwhile effort.

There's no magic formula for making your game a hit; if someone offers to sell you one, back away slowly with your hand on your wallet. About the only things you should count on is make a great game, and market the hell out of it, and you'll improve your chances of success. So when you see something like TeePee, go ahead and give it a whirl.

Social Games Adding Gambling

The fast-moving world of social gaming is heading to some interesting places. First off, a survey done by looking at Facebook ratings shows that users feel the games are becoming higher in quality. Or, perhaps, more adept at delivering what the users want, which is not necessarily the same thing. The survey looked at 5 games with at least a thousand ratings from users, and found that the ratings are generally rising, from 3.82 to as much as 4.5 or so. It's not clear what this can mean for developers, though it's certainly something you can tout in your marketing. There does seem to be a correlation between higher ratings from users and games that grow faster and have larger user bases.

While social games may be getting better, they are also changing their nature. One of the interesting new trends is adding gambling. Yes, games of skill tucked into social games, or just explicit games of skill, where you can wager your virtual dollars and hope to bring in more virtual dollars or prizes. The games, of course, always win... not only through a house edge, but from the fact that the user is spending more time on their site. And, of course, spending more virtual dollars.

The more explicit use of gambling is in the game shows, like Wheel of Fortune. The Game Show Network is at the forefront of this trend. It's yet another way to make money from games that are free to play, though of course you have to worry about fraud, and cheating, and a host of other issues which are not simple to solve. Which is why this technology is being offered as back-end support to social game companies, which you can expect to start signing up for as the revenue possibilities become clear.

The whole thing points up the absurdity of trying to ban Internet gambling. Not only is it difficult to control Internet access for your whole country (look at the effort the Chinese put into the Great Firewall, and that's still pretty porous), but even defining gambling gets much trickier in an age of virtual currency. Why not simply tax it and let it grow? Yes, gambling addiction (like other addictions) can ruin lives, but that's why you take some of the revenues and put it into treatment programs and education.

Anyway, the take-home message is that social gaming is evolving rapidly, monetization options are increasing, and this category will continue to grow faster than traditional gaming. Marketers take note.