It’s well known that casual games are popular among mainstream Web users. However, when you’re a publisher maintaining a community, you want to go beyond engaging each user separately and increase total engagement in bulk by connecting users with each other. Enter multi-player casual games.
Israeli startup Come2Play, which we’ve described as the Ning of social gaming networks, has provided this part of the equation since its founding in mid-2007. It’s now keeping up with the zeitgeist by adding a virtual economy in a box that could prove compelling to community sites.
Is there actual money being made? Indeed there is. Come2Play’s CEO, Alon Barzilay tells me that every 1000 users who visit Come2Play’s token store (via any of its games) generates $45 in revenue, split 50%/50% between publishers and Come2Play, and that is after developers get their 30% share off the top. This mind you is beyond the ad-rev share that extends across the same entities.
On the face of it this sounds very much like HeyZap’s recently launched payment platform. There are some key differences however, beginning with the fact that HeyZap focuses on single player games and only a fraction of its 12,000+ games are payment-enabled.
Come2Play’s game catalog is only 35 games deep, but all are multi-player and payment-enabled. The games can be embedded individually or as a channel/portal that includes social features such as game rooms, chat and leaderboards—features that are not available in HeyZap’s single player games.
The games encourage users to buy tokens ($1=1000 tokens)—via Paypal, Social Gold, Zong, credit cards or CPA offers—by allowing users to challenge one another with the winner taking the token bounty. Players can also use tokens to redeem rewards, such as game badges. Come2Play maintains a wallet-like account for the user which can be used in any game on its network, at any publisher site.
Come2Play built its virtual economy platform themselves and has gone ahead and integrated it into its open source multi-player API it released a year ago. Developers wishing to distribute their games through Come2Play’s network will need to integrate with this API, and the token monetization will come included. Since the monetization comes as a sort of wrapper around the game, developers won’t need to make any in-game code changes.
when playing on there everyone seems to be from india – be amazed if they’re doing those numbers. (also betting on the outcomes of games is a bit suspect imho)
Nowadays casual games are more popular among mainstream web users. The game catalog is quite interesting and they are multi-player and payment-enabled. The important social features are the games can be embedded individually or as a channel/portal. The only lacking feature is Come2Play’s network have to be integrated with the API,then only we can engage the gaming portal easily.
We shall wait and watch how does this network enables us a multiuser gaming platform?
love
Heyzap supports multiplayer games and has a 70% rev share for the developers.
Only 30% for developers? OUCH
Agreed – that split is too low to compete with HeyZap and GamerSafe.
Big fan of the multiplayer betting – makes playing actually fun.
The % cut for publishers is to encourage them to give the best placement for Come2Play’s games on their site. Ultimately driving traffic and revenue for individual game developers.
Gamersafe and HeyZap are great solutions but it’s comparing apples and oranges. Come2Play is a platform that allows for the development and distribution of multiplayer games – as opposed to just distribution.
Developers can earn from 3 revenue sources with Come2Play: virtual currency, selling game sponsorships and through in-game advertising.
The Come2Play product for publishers is a full social gaming solution. It includes game rooms, chat, leaderboards, , etc. It’s a product built around multiplayer games and it’s all out-of-the-box. This gives a long shelf life to games in premium locations on publishers’ sites. This generates high revenues for developers over a longer period of time.
Comparing percentages is the wrong way to look at this – what a developer should compare is the check at the end of the month.
Both Heyzap and gamersafe also allow for sponsorship and ads to be placed on their virtual currency games, and Heyzap also provides distribution.
How good are the games though? Most decent games are a couple of hundred megabytes at least. So I can play scrabble with a few people?
I think it is a elegant model.
For me as a publisher, there isn’t a lot of incentives to put the game channel on my prime spot without good rewards.
Having a revenue cut with the publisher will beef up the distribution quite a bit.
Hopefully gamers will gain more in the long run and continue to hack out nice addicting games.