Facts rarely measure up to hype, and hype often results in disappointment and broken promises. It's a process we have seen time after time in the game industry with respect to supposedly game-changing trends and technologies. Sometimes, though, hype tapers down rather than crashes, and is replaced by results that, while still requiring an adjustment in public expectation and being subject to a more realistic growth curve, prove to be real enough to provoke a shift in how people play games.
This has clearly been the case with connected gaming platforms such as social networks and smartphones, which have been subject to an incredible amount of hype over the last few years. But once the dust settled, they've proven to be completely viable, capable of maintaining an upward trajectory in usage and, most importantly, to enable a proliferation of interesting, innovative and fun game experiences. While the next few years are surely going to bring their fair share of changes, successes and, inevitably, failures in this field, it's very clear that gaming on connected devices is going to dominate the landscape.
In my opinion, however, the fundamental way mass market connected platforms like Facebook and iOS have changed the industry is by attracting incredibly large new audiences of people to playing games.
How many gamers?
Facebook, the most widely adopted social gaming platform, currently has over eight hundred million users and it's on its way to reach the one billion mark. Of those users, about half play games regularly. On the mobile side, there are around three hundred million iOS users, and a similar number of Android devices have been activated so far. Jointly, mobile users on those platforms have downloaded more than thirty billion applications, of which the vast majority are games. And moving to Asia, QQ has nearly one billion users in China, with QQ Games being one of the most popular services on the platform, and three competing game-focused mobile social networks in Japan attract more than fifty million players monthly.
It's clear that we're looking at a massive increase in the number of people that enjoy playing games, even accounting for the fact that pre-existing core and casual gamers are undoubtedly active on those platforms. If we estimate the prior size of the total gaming audience to be between two and three hundred million users, a conservative estimate that accounts for duplications across different channels points to an overall size of at least five hundred million people. But I think that we're well on our way to a global population of one billion gamers.
Who are they?
Who are those gamers? An easier question to answer would probably be who they are not, as you can now find gamers in every location, demographic and platform. The army of office workers clicking away on Facebook games? They're gamers. The family members taking turns playing on their iPad while they wait to board a plane? They're gamers. The retirees that use the Internet to keep in touch with their grandkids, then relax playing Bejeweled? They're gamers. But, at the same time, it's important to remember that "traditional" gamers are also migrating to those new platforms, or at least adding them to their gaming diet, as proved by the success of iOS hits such as Infinity Blade or GTAIII. There are a billion gamers now, and they come in all shapes.
The other piece of good news is that, whether your game is targeting a broad casual crowd or a hardcore niche, it's much easier these days to get it in front of your audience even if you don't have the budget and resources to build a AAA game, and if you can't rely on a gigantic marketing budget. While the market is becoming increasingly competitive, it's absolutely possible to release a game and have it reach wide distribution through word of mouth and positive customer feedback, even (and especially) for niche and indie productions. There are nearly a billion gamers now, and they like to play all kinds of stuff.
What gamers can do for developers
Finally, it's possible to learn what makes your players tick and improve a game accordingly, both through explicit feedback from a community that's becoming increasingly empowered and vocal, and through quantitative insights provided by metrics and analytics system. If used well, this data can lead to dramatic improvements in usability and game balance, and can yield precious insights in terms of game design. There are a billion gamers now, and they can't wait to tell you what they think.
The influx of this massive new contingent of gamers is surely shaping the direction in which our industry is going, and undoubtedly in the short term effect we might be witnessing hype-induced market distortion, but I believe that growth will ultimately lead to diversification rather than to homogenisation, creating space for a wider variety of games across all genres, and opening up opportunities for every game development outfit, large and small.
There are a billion gamers out there: what are you waiting for?