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Playfish's De Halleux: Social Game Users Are Never 'Low Quality', Just The Experience
by Staff, Christian Nutt [PC, Console/PC]
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August 24, 2009
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Low-quality users in the world of Facebook gaming? "Bullshit," says Playfish COO Sebastien de Halleux (Pet Society). Such a perception simply comes from developers failing to meet social gaming users' needs, he tells Gamasutra -- and if the users are "low-quality...that's your own damned fault."
De Halleux is also co-founder of the London-headquartered social gaming company, which runs games such as Who Has The Biggest Brain? across multiple social networks, including Facebook.
Success in the highly-competitive social network gaming space depends heavily on user numbers, and many developers and publishers aim to acquire high user volumes rapidly. At the recent Social Gaming Summit, however, Offerpal Media's Anu Shukla said the "quality" of users racked up so quickly tends to be low..
"So, here's something where you're touching a very sensitive topic," said De Halleux, responding to the comment in today's Gamasutra feature interview. "What does 'the quality of a user being low' mean?"
Shukla's comment addressed the business standpoint, suggesting that legions of early adopters spells lower conversion rates, less engagement and poor monetization. "That's bullshit," De Halleux stated. "I mean, how can you tell your users, 'you are a low quality user'? I mean, think about that! That's horrible to say, right?"
"Every person inherently is someone that has needs," he continued. "If they're 'low quality,' that's your own damned fault! You have not touched that person with something that has meaning to them, right? There is no such thing as a 'low quality user,' there is just a low quality experience."
"And if you monetize badly at a certain rate, then you have a low value proposition for some users, not a low-quality user. And that's point number one," he added.
Further, the commonly-employed tactic to drive userbases quickly is what De Halleux calls "spamming technique" -- and it's "normal" not to expect those users to yield the same kind of ROI as those who've elected to join the game based on its design and appeal. "Quality aside: we, A, believe that users shouldn't be spammed; B, that you should not push games to them, and so you should make it hard to invite users," he said.
Playfish places an invite button within easy reach of users of all its games, and informs them about how having friends join would enhance their experience, and then leaves it strictly optional.
"If it's strangers that you need to add to your game, so to speak, you click that button repeatedly," he said. "If it's your best friend, you can spam him once, twice, you know, and that third time he's going to ignore you, right? And you're going to lose some real life social capital, too. So, that's why it's been quite powerful."
"Maybe our traffic is, using those terms, "higher quality," because they are more engaged. Because 18 months on, over 50 percent of our players are still playing on a monthly basis, maybe -- but I hate those terms. The failure can only be yours, not your users'. That's an unfair point."
The full interview with Playfish's de Halleux is now available on Gamasutra, including lots more specifics on the rise of social network gaming and how to create a 'sticky', fun environment for those playing games on Facebook and elsewhere.
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Anu here. I can see why you call this a “sensitive topic” for Playfish, and your company should be commended for its approach to growth and user acquisition. Very few social gaming publishers have grown so fast by finding such “high quality” users.
It’s funny that this article pits our comments against one another, because in reality I think that we’re essentially saying the same thing. I agree with you 100% that it’s up to the game developers to engage their users and properly motivate them to play their games. And if some users don’t play very often or in extreme cases install an app only to uninstall it shortly afterward, then you’re right – that is the developers “own damned fault.” The simple point that I made during the Social Gaming Summit -- and it seems like my quote may have been taken a bit out of context here -- was that some users are more engaged, more active, and therefore more monetizable, while other users are not. Surely you experience this in your own games, as all developers do. Sometimes this is a function of the game mechanics or game design and therefore within the control of the developers; other times this is a function of the user themselves and their interest (or lack thereof) in the type of game being offered, in which case there is little a developer can do to win them over.
Also, the context of my comments was that we were talking about the extreme growth of social games and how so many developers have used invites as a mechanic to find new users. As you point out, it is true that you can acquire more “high quality” users by letting players organically invite those friends who they feel would be genuinely interested in a game. But, it is also possible to attract a higher volume of users by incentivizing players to invite larger amounts of their friends, and hope that your game is fun and interesting enough that at least a portion of those invited friends end up sticking around. However, it’s inevitable that some of those invited users will be what you would consider “low quality” users because they only installed the game at a friend’s recommendation and it turns out they aren’t all that interested in the game, while other users will end up checking out the game and getting hooked on it. This is the approach that many other developers have chosen, oftentimes to excellent results.
That is what I meant by a user being “high quality” vs. “low quality.” It had nothing to do with the user personally or as a player of the game, but with how engaged they are and how likely they are to generate a certain RPU. That is a matter of fact that all developers must deal with, including Playfish, and, taken that way, I’d hope you wouldn’t think that it’s such a “horrible” thing to say.
Thanks,
Anu