The industry is well on its way to contribute $835 million to the $1.6 billion US virtual goods market this year. And even though many developers’ traffic has been wracked by Facebook’s changes to its communication channels, there are still opportunities for investment, as leading social app investors told us recently.
With the new iPhone being released in two weeks and the Android OS continuously getting better software and hardware, the battle between these two is more fierce than ever. Obviously when buying a phone of this type, doing as much research as possible in order to make sure you get the best phone for your money, for what YOU’RE going to use it for. So what phone should you spend your pennies on?Though this article provides (obviously biased) comparison between the two platforms there are two key areas that they fail to address which still give iPhone the advantage.
Risk and Loss Aversion — There are emotional and perceptual asymmetries between losses and gains. A loss is more painful than a commensurate gain is pleasurable: losing a $10 bill can be more irritating than finding one is joyful. Certainly CIOs must exercise due diligence regarding proposed cloud initiatives, but should also be aware that these asymmetries may cause some concerns to be overweighted relative to benefits such as total cost reduction and enhanced agility.
Flat-Rate Bias — One effect of loss aversion is that consumers often prefer flat-rate plans (PDF) even when pay-per-use would cost less. With flat rates or up-front capital expenditures, the charges are never in doubt. The cloud’s pay-per-use pricing for on-demand resources typically reduces total cost while enhancing scalability, but the pleasure of a dollar saved may not outweigh the fear of loss from auto-scaling gone awry. Flat-rate buckets, monitoring and reporting, and auto-scaling policy management with maximum capacity limits can help.
Need for Control and Autonomy — Author David Rock reports that people have a deep-seated need for control over their environment (PDF), or they may exhibit “learned helplessness” and shortened life spans (PDF). Owning a data center may provide a perception of greater control over assets, making dashboards, portals, transparent policies and fine-grained management essential for cloud providers. Autonomy —“I can do it myself!”— is an important driver for cloud computing. Developers can autonomously procure infrastructure resources, and platform services enable the democratization of IT.
Fear of Change — Rock also observes that people are often uncomfortable with uncertainty and therefore fear change. The cloud offers not just new technologies but new business and organizational models. Consequently, overcoming the inertia of the traditional owned asset model may require free trials, unalterable and explicit privacy policies, and/or multiyear price guarantees.
The Endowment Effect — People value goods that they already own more than they would pay to acquire them. Ariely showed that for the same hard-to-acquire Duke basketball tickets, students were willing to pay up to about $170, but weren’t willing to sell them for less than $2,400. Add in the choice-supportive bias, which rationalizes selected options and discounts unselected ones, and a stubborn fondness for existing IT technology and organization assets can be understood.
The Status Quo Bias and Escalation of Commitment — Moreover, we tend toprefer things the way they’ve always been, and invest additional amounts in past strategies which we have pursued. Again, this can lead to inertia slowing the adoption of new approaches.
Hyperbolic Discounts and Instant Gratification — People tend to discount future risks and benefits hyperbolically, that is, more steeply than accounting texts teach: a chocolate chip cookie is much more valuable now than in an hour. This is good for the cloud, which promises instant gratification via on-demand services. Moreover, the “pain” of payment is deferred, thus discounted.
The Zero-Price Effect -– Ariely argues that zero is special. People would rather receive a free $10 gift certificate (a $10 gain) than pay $7 for a $20 one ($13 gain). This also benefits the cloud, since up-front costs are typically eliminated.
Need for Status — Rock points out that humans and other social primates have exquisite, fine-grained status detectors. For cloud adoption, the status associated with managing a large IT organization with a substantial asset base needs to be replaced by the status accruing to being perceived as an innovator through the use of cloud services.
Paradox of Choice — Web commerce has enabled a shift from a few big hits to along tail of boundless choice. However, too many choices may cause paralysis by analysis, reducing sales. Fewer bundles, rather than unlimited configurability, may best boost service provider revenues.
Silicon Valley -- or Silicon Alley? To non-techies, that's the San Francisco Bay Area versus New York. If you're an internet startup company, it's a debate that's probably plagued you at some point.
Loyalty cards — those little paper cards that promise a free sandwich or coffee after 10 purchases, but instead get lost or forgotten — are going mobile. And merchants are looking for ways to marry the concept to games that customers can play to earn more free items and, it is hoped, spend more money.We love this article. It fits in with our mantra that everything is a game. Loyalty programs have always had game-like properties a game, so it makes sense that these be structured around digital and real world play. Don't be surprised if you are playing games while in the check out line of your favorite grocery store sometime soon. In some ways what we're seeing is simply a defined rule set which allows measured competition for activities that have always been played like a game.
Google is working hard to be the best search engine on the go, and today is tweaking their algorithms to include applications in their mobile results. If you use an iPhone or Android device, for certain search terms Google will now offer you an application to download along with your regular search results.
| Name | DAU | Gain | Gain, % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  My Empire | 715,564 | +615,889 | +617.90 |
| 2. |  PetVille | 3,765,887 | +399,202 | +11.86 |
| 3. |  MindJolt Games | 2,819,402 | +336,994 | +13.58 |
| 4. |  Name Analyzer | 336,958 | +335,298 | +20,198.67 |
| 5. |  Café World | 6,099,510 | +252,493 | +4.32 |
| 6. |  Facebook | 18,502,708 | +243,808 | +1.34 |
| 7. |  Entrevista tus Amigos | 358,923 | +184,522 | +105.80 |
| 8. |  Frases Diarias | 1,019,638 | +149,403 | +17.17 |
| 9. |  Texas HoldEm Poker | 5,745,522 | +136,127 | +2.43 |
| 10. |  Causes | 1,202,757 | +134,357 | +12.58 |
| 11. |  Nightclub City | 708,738 | +120,629 | +20.51 |
| 12. |  Mall World | 538,288 | +102,572 | +23.54 |
| 13. |  Ranch Town | 194,202 | +95,946 | +97.65 |
| 14. |  phrases 4 fun | 126,651 | +91,633 | +261.67 |
| 15. |  Games | 487,339 | +89,417 | +22.47 |
| 16. |  Crazy Cow Music Quiz | 100,560 | +85,521 | +568.66 |
| 17. |  American Flag | 83,971 | +81,921 | +3,996.15 |
| 18. |  Good and Evil | 117,491 | +77,343 | +192.64 |
| 19. |  Wild Ones | 526,480 | +77,339 | +17.22 |
| 20. |  Baking Life | 211,049 | +74,963 | +55.09 |
Being as we are a sort of digital steward for many high-profile licensed properties and brands, we are often tasked to think of creative ways to involve sponsors and advertisers in games for fairly disparate brands. On the flip side, we can also find it somewhat difficult to explain this integration to our clients, convincing them that it will not dilute their brand. This has been a challenge we’ve faced for a while, so we developed a series of “tiers” of increasingly complex and involved sponsorship opportunities in games we develop.
Tier 1 is the application of traditional media placement and sponsorship within games. Interstitials, logos, banners, these are all to be placed within the property in ways analogous to traditional print, web, and on-air practices. These methods are inexpensive to include, easily swapped out or rotated, and readily understandable to less game-savvy clients.
Tier 2 is generally feature specific and involves an understanding of gameplay. Clients should be interested in a specific area of a property, as their exposure will be contextual and will be most effective if they understand the audience of a specific area of the game or of the demographics of recipients. For example, brands that would want to sponsor the “Choose Your Do” section of Jersey Shore Yourself might be those interested in promoting hair products.
Games that lend themselves to this sort of sponsorship are those that have:
a. Multiple points of entry/exit (iphone, web, FB)
b. Multiple “rooms” or components with some degree of segmentation
c. “meme”-style hooks (brands get more mileage by latching on to existing cultural phenomena than by trying to create them from scratch)
Tier 3 is similar to traditional co-branding. There is deep integration with the game, whether through rewards and incentives, or through product placement in-game (See Comedy Central Supermarket Death Race with Keystone placement).
The sponsor should be interested in seeing their product tied deeply with the property for which the game is an extension. The application of these methods is flexible (can do themed levels or an entire themed game) but the games should always remain mutually exclusive in terms of competitive brands (i.e. Natural Light and Miller Lite should not appear in the same game.)
This is the most time-consuming form of sponsorship, but it is also the most rewarding in terms of brand effect and exposure. It is difficult to swap out from sponsor to sponsor, as graphics and sometimes even game play have been customized for the product.
Posts
All Comments
