How Much Money Is Spent On The Game, Users Of Social Networks

Browser Game manages computer genius dearly: he decided to become president of Russia and the virtual spent on the presidential campaign this impressive sum.

The history of the largest virtual world game - World of WarCraft: Sword superpowers son of a wealthy Muscovite purchased for 10 thousand dollars. In this way, many gamers and earn prosizhivaya day at the computer to get the artifact "honest" way, and then sell it to rich impatient player. Particularly active this business mastered in China, where human time is not so expensive. And it is time - the main product in the virtual games.

Game developers have caught the trend, and specially created virtual weapon and a virtual real estate that can not be purchased without having to pay for it is not real money. Little by little, become a virtual game of this industry. Industry, which has already earned, even in Russia.

Foreign experience

Was recently published report Digital Goods Report 2010, compiled by members of the marketing agency VGMarket and development company solutions for the monetization of social networking PlaySpan. It says that about 64% of virtual games make at least one purchase per month. About 9% of the players makes them every day. In total, the study was interviewed 2,221 respondents aged 13-64 years. The survey was conducted in the U.S. and showed that the average American spends on online games 23.7 hours per week. Some have brought this figure up to 50 hours, that is, play more than work.

But a true oasis for the development of online games have become social networks - since Facebook opened up its code to developers in 2007. Average user games in Facebook now spends on them about 50 dollars a year.

Events in this market develop now rapidly: Google, according to some sources, has invested $ 200 million in the largest developer of online games Zynga, Disney bought the company Playdom for $ 763 million (or even earlier - the largest children's online game Club Penguin - for $ 700 million) and the world's largest game publisher Electronic Arts has invested 275 million in the second-largest developer of social games - Playfish.

Yahoo has already signed an agreement with Zynga that will enjoy their gaming services. Only in the first half of 2010, this developer has received proceeds of $ 350 million and in 2011 expects to receive 1 billion revenue. Incidentally, this is exactly Zynga made "farm" of the game the most money in the direction of modern social networks, although they have come up in China.

Most of the average user spends on the game in Facebook ($ 50 per year), less - to turn-MMO (40), the same amount - small fans to buy "casual games".

For comparison: the average player of traditional PC-gaming spending on them only $ 37 a year, and a fan of consoles and even less - $ 20. Women spend more: $ 55 on average, compared with 30 - for men.

In the world of online games played by some 200 million people, and this number is growing rapidly. In total, these people spend to participate in them in 2009 about $ 3 billion

Main, winning in the market model of monetization of social games - shareware. That means you can play them for free but to gain additional opportunities to accelerate processes, etc. - is paying real money.

Most often, the real money is spent on virtual currency, for which buys weapons, ammunition or pigs for the farm - a perfectly normal and sometimes necessary thing.

Russian Virtual

The Russian market of online gaming has grown and is growing without regard to the crisis: an increase in 2009 was 70% compared to 2008. The main directions of growth in the gaming industry: games for social networks and client-side game. Growth gradually slows down browser-based games.

Daily Russian army of gamers in the opinion of experts broke the bar in 4 million.

The fact that the business of selling virtual goods in games in earnest and will work in Russia has proved a Russian company i-Jet Media, the success of which "Chaskor" already written. The company has adapted the Chinese game to Russia, and released "Happy Farmer" to graze on open spaces facebook. In the first year of real revenues of $ 20 million, half goes to the very social network, the rest is divided with a Russian publisher kitayvskim partner.

The fact that the market is large, and growing, evidenced by a fresh scandal: social networks "My World" and "Classmates" refused to cooperate with the game developer Game Insight. The reason - use in games Game Insight software code that is copied from the products Mail.Ru. We are talking about the games "secret society" and "Miracle Farm." Program codes are identical to those used in games, once purchased, the company Mail.ru Astrum. "Classmates" opposed in solidarity. "This decision does not affect our further cooperation with other developers: we are ready to support and promote fair created applications, and hope for a counter-understanding on your part," - said in a statement. Why steal the code - if it actually took place - it is easy to guess: the market is developing rapidly, and soon it will have little room for new entrants, but because everyone is trying to catch as quickly as possible.

On average, real money games in the Russian social networks pay about 10% of active players. "Average ticket" from one such player, which is oriented company i-Jet Media, as reported by "Chaskoru" her partner, Alex Kostarev: "about 100 rubles. And we no longer need. "

The producer company Playnatic Entertainment Ruslan Shelekhov "average check on a player who pays (eg - about a tenth of the total) - depends on the type of game. In the client gaming - Russian player spends an average of $ 50 and sotssetevyh - about $ 6.

Half a billion pounds

Incidentally, the British newspaper The Sun earlier this year conducted a similar study. It is estimated that to non-existent virtual goods inhabitants UK alone spent 500 million pounds a year - is an order of magnitude greater than in Russia. Moreover, the British took into account not only the money from the games, but also from the sale of ordinary "gifts" in social networks. The average purchase is 20 pounds.

A simple example: Playdom - portal, engaging in such online trading, sold pictures of pink Volkswagen Beetle car for a total of 123 thousand pounds just for the day of the day. Only for the purchase of weapons for World of WarCraft only Brits are spending 2 million pounds each month. Among the users of games from Zynga has 56 million people who were doing them a virtual shopping. And that's good - the material needs of people worried about running out.