Learn How to Connect with the Core Social Gaming Demographic: Teens

Build something you'd use yourself is the worst advice anyone ever gave to developers. We're not normal. The average person does not know what an algorithm is (which is why Ask's marketing attack on Google, "The algorithm is not your friend" was a colossal moronic waste of money - I say this as an IAC shareholder). The average person has no opinion on Ruby vs. PhP. The average person reads celebrity blogs and watches reality TV shows. And sports.

I feel that a lot of people out here in Silicon Valley have no clue about the people who use their products, especially teenagers. I've hear one too many times from developers in their mid-twenties claiming that teenagers need to be protected from racy content. Which is retarded if you have any recollection of being a teenager. I mean, seriously, were you thinking about anything besides sex. Didn't you stay up late to watch Skinemax? Did you want to be protected from "racy" content?

And that's just teenage boys. The development community is overwhelming male. Most guys didn't understand teenage girls when they were in high school, and they understand them less now.

And yet, if you're developing on Facebook, your core audience is teenage girls (if you want a viral app, that is).

Teen girls are more willing to send invites. If your game connects with them, then you can have a serious (business) hit on your hands. Boys are more likely to install an app if they received an invite from a girl.

So get to know your users. For app developers, that's teens. Read Ypulse. Read Danah Boyd.

The Ypulse! conference is in San Fran next week focused on trends among teens. They have three sessions focused on teens and casual games.

Ypulse was nice enough to offer a 10% discount code for the conference. So go here and use "BRET" to get the discount.

Do it quick, online registration ends tomorrow.

Thoughts Inspired by the Social Gaming Summit

Things to Think about:

A whole generation of kids have been playing in virtual worlds are now entering the age (13) when they move into social networks. (Kyra Reppen - Neopets (core audience: 9-14).

My question: how does puberty (i.e. sexual awareness) change social play, particularly the values cherished and expressed by the userbase, and how does it affect social game design?

Kids up to the age of 13 want avatars as their pictures. Teenagers all want real profile pictures. Soccer Moms are mixed. (Dave Williams - Shockwave/Addicting Games)

I guess that answers my question why there isn't a successful avatar-based app on Facebook (though Yoville is seeing some nice growth). And it also suggests that building a fantasy based virtual world on the back of Facebook might not be the best idea. Perhaps, a virtual world where you pilot a 3D rendering of your profile picture would be better? The technology is out there (courtesy of an offshoot of Shervin Pishevar's old company, Freewebs.com!)

In Korea, MapleStory (a 2D MMO) is primarily played by elementary school kids, in the U.S., it's primarily played by teenagers. (Min Kim - Nexon).

So the demographic of players of a game is independent of game design? Is there an arbitrage opportunity here, taking game worlds built for kids and marketing them to different demographics, under different rubrics?

K2 networks (publisher of free-to-play MMOs) sees their usage spike on weekends, meanwhile most social games on Facebook have less usage on weekends.

Does this suggest more immersive games on Facebook will drive users to play on weekends instead of during the week? Or does it suggest that Facebook's audience primarily plays during the week and doesn't have the time for the more immersive experiences that SGN's CEO, Shervin Pishevar, suggested that the social games should move toward.

Answer: people are going to play during the week. Josh Williams of Alamofire said that he knows of at least one person being fired for playing Packrat at work, one year from now we'll be reading a trend piece in the NYtimes about how social games are destroying America's productivity.

As Promised: The Demographic Breakdown of the Top Three Game Developers on Facebook

Note 1: I spoke with Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN a few hours ago and he confirmed the numbers for SGN were correct.

Mark Pincus also contacted me to let me know that Zynga had 1.4 million daily active users. One million from the games on Zynga, and an additional 400,000 from the CLZ acquisition. The apps from the CLZ aren't games, so I don't count them, but 1 million DAU seems to put Zynga well ahead of other game developers in terms of reach.

Note 2: My demographic information does not include the 13-17 range. I suspect Developer Analytics can't collect it due to Facebook's privacy policy. Sorry about that, I recognize it's a very interesting demographic, especially for people moving onto the Myspace platform.

Note 3: Regarding overlapping users. According to Developer Analytics, none of these games have more than 20% overlapping users (even within their own network) with the exception of Vampires and Zombies (38% overlap) and Attack! and Triumph (also weirdly 38%). I find this very interesting and surprising, I expected a lot more overlap. I should probably look at the overlap question in a future post.

The Takeaway:

SGN games attract an overwhelmingly male audience. They tend to skew slightly younger as well, with the exception of Pirates which is only ~5% of their total audience. I believe this is due to their content: fighting (Fight Club), medieval strategy (WarBook), and car racing (StreetRace) are all genres that historically have skewed male. Jetman, well...I'll let someone else figure out Jetman.

Zynga also attracts many more men then women, with the exception of Scramble which is the only game among the top three developers dominated by women(63%). I think Zynga's male leaning can also be attributed to content, strategy games skew male. However, card games as a category tends to be more gender-balanced, though not necessarily when it comes to gambling type games like Poker and Blackjack. The age of Zynga players is spread more evenly among the three age segments, but with ~50% in the 22-25 age bracket.

Blake Commagere's Monsters games also have ~50% of their users in the 22-25 age bracket. They also have a fairly even male-female ratio. The outlier being Slayers with an only 23% female audience. I believe Slayers was the last Monsters app to be release with a tagline about slaying those annoying monsters. For the female audience, slaying isn't as fun as infecting? Somehow I think it comes down to the simple fact that infection is primarily a social activity, but slaying is a perceived as a violent activity. If anyone has thoughts on this please leave them in the comments.

Points to ponder:

• Word games appear to have the highest percentage of DAU: Zynga's Scramble (15%) and the Agarwalla's Scrabulous (24%). Both have large female audiences compared to other games. So are women overall more active gamers then men? I have some data gathered from the casual games and virtual worlds industries that answers that question, but it'll have to wait for a future post.
• Why are half of nearly all players of the games listed here in the 22-25 age bracket? Is that Facebook's largest demographic as well? Or is it due to factors that affect most 22-25 Facebookers, e.g. killing boredom at their first real job.

Again, special thanks to the guys over at Developer Analytics for making such a kick-ass product.

Top Ten Games on Facebook with Detailed Demographics

Note: DAU = Daily Active Users (which is the metric this list is based on)

Brief Analysis:
Despite all the recent posturings by Zynga and SGN, neither companies has more than one game in the top ten. That honor goes to Blake Commagere.

Most games, with one exception, have a significantly higher ratio of male players. Does this mean men play more games? Answer: No. It means that no one is making games that appeal to female players - I'll post on that in the future.

Interesting bits:

• Jetman has virtually no users over 26.
• Scrabulous (and Vampires!!!) has an equal male-female ratio.

Come back tomorrow, I'll be posting the demographic breakdown of all the top games from Zynga and SGN.

Special thanks to www.developeranalytics.com for providing the demographic info!