Hubertz: Social networks are not the only route to success
Casual games giant BigPoint has urged European studios to refrain from investing all hope in Facebook, days after the search engine giant revealed plans to open a European development division.
Bigpoint, which makes its fortune from browser games and the open web, says fellow European studios should “investigate multiple routes and platforms to give their game the best chance of success”.
“As Facebook themselves say, as a gaming platform they are only getting started,” said BigPoint CEO Heiko Hubertz (pictured).
“Although Facebook is a fantastic platform, at Bigpoint we believe that it should only be considered as one route to market,” he added.
On Wednesday Facebook announced it would establish a team dedicated to working with European games developers. The social games giant previously admitted it was too indebted to Zynga for revenues across its channel.
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Hubertz, whose company also partners with European studios, said he was nevertheless pleased to see Facebook further expanding in Europe.
“Facebook’s entry into Europe can only be viewed positively for the European games industry,” he added.
“However, we would counsel the industry to not become blinkered by this move by Facebook, and decide that Facebook is the only platform to develop for.”
I totally agree. Facebook is a great platform, but shrinking margins will force companies to look for other channels and platforms. At least anyone whose name doesn't start with a 'Z'.
Recently ran into a report on this that argued for the strength of non-Facebook platforms: http://bit.ly/w3vU41
The article is especially relavant to independent developers looking to expand their distribution footprint. We just launched, http://www.goplay.com a new social gaming portal that addresses this issue.
The concept is pretty straightforward: goplay doesn’t require users to have connected friends, so there are more players to play with. This enables users to level up faster and results in a better in-game experience. The "experience" is pretty good for the developer too: rev share is 90% for the life of the game. User discovery is also facilitated because we curate the content: less games + quality games = more players per game. We’re also using TV to promote. Crazy? A little bit, but we’ve tested and it works.
The goplay API resides off-site at http://www.gamestamper.com. Elements such as authenticating users, permissions, credits, and dialogs are all exposed by our GraphAPI and encapsulated by our SDKs. By invoking our SDK's (which have the same function signatures as FB's), you'll be calling our GraphAPI endpoints, and your code should not change at all.
We’ve got a solid roster of games in the integration cue but are always looking for more. If you are interested in publishing send an email to: iwannaplay @ goplay . com
Best,
George Zaloom
Founder & CEO
goplay.com
