At the last Women in Games International D-L-C-Drinks-Lectures-Community in Los Angeles on February 4th, 2010, the topic was Monetization in Gaming in the casual and social gaming arenas.

An impressive panel of guests talked about traffic being one way to create income in casual and social games, but virtual goods are an especially engaging and productive form of commerce. Players enjoy purchasing virtual goods because it’s a fun way to interact with the game world.

In order to improve quality in casual and social games, which in turn increases revenue, integration is the key. Transactions, advertisements, surveys, etc. need to be firmly integrated into gameplay. An interstitial is just going to be ignored, but if players can continue to play while buying, they will. Make monetization opportunities as seamless a possible—part of gameplay, preferably—to maximize player retention. Publishers also need to continue to put out high quality content, because these games have a short lifespan—customers can be lost if content doesn’t stay fresh.

Convenient payment methods need to be embraced by the industry—convenient for everyone, not just a certain segment. Some players may do best as subscribers, while others want to pre-pay. Internationally, this is even more true, as many players in foreign territories don’t have credit cards, but can afford to pre-pay for play and goods. It’ll serve the industry well to standardize online payments for games, allowing players to use one pre-paid card in many game worlds as well as transfer credits among games from the same publisher.

A surprising fact that came up during the discussion is non-paying users are an important part of the marketing scheme. Viral marketing is a huge factor in online gaming, and non-paying users generate income by referring others to a game.

The panel talked about good ways to play-balance casual/social games—not just for the fun versus difficult factor, but for free versus pay. How big of a divide should there be between free and pay gameplay? Of course, paid play better be superior to free play, but often, the line can be thin. Many pay players are highly involved with the game universe and the fun factor is important to them, therefore they’ll pay to play a better game.

After the discussion, the 75 or so attendees headed over to a restaurant for drinks and networking. Please see the Facebook event for pics! (Scroll down the page to “Photos.”)

http://www.facebook.com/belinda.vansickle#!/event.php?eid=259200612503&ref=mf

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