Update: PopCap Bails On Google+

[The Wooster]

Update: PopCap Bails On Google+

Despite the generous revenue share, EA is stepping away from Google's troubled social network.

You've heard of Google+, right? It's kind of like Facebook, only ... uh. Despite some severely heavy pimpage from its parent company, Google+ simply hasn't caught on with the duck-faced social community. A survey from earlier this year showed that Google+ users spend an average of four minutes a month on the service while Facebook users average around eight hours. It seems unlikely that Google+ will ever catch up, especially now that game producers are starting to abandon ship.

Both EA's latest adopted child, PopCap, and kiddie-game developer, Wooga, have announced that they're ditching the platform in order to focus their creative energies elsewhere. Wooga has already pulled Monster World from the service, while Bubble Island and Diamond Dash are going to be taken behind the shed on July 1st. PopCap will be removing Bejeweled Blitz next Monday.

The irony here, is that by weakening Facebook's competitors, developers are acting against their own best interests. Facebook's immense popularity and unchallenged position in the social gaming market means it can get away with taking a hefty chunk out of game revenue. Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of any revenue generated on its service while Google+ takes only 5 percent. Though EA seems to believe that a 70% cut of something is worth more than a 95% cut of nothing.

Source: The Register [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/15/google_plus_gamesdevs_okthxbye/]

Update: The decision was made by the Bejewleled team, rather than PopCap or EA, according to Franchise director, Giordano Contestabile.

"Our decision to pull Bejeweled Biltz from Google+ had nothing to do with EA scaling back on anything," he told IndieSocialGames [http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2012/06/14/popcap-shutting-down-bejeweled-blitz-on-google/]/. "On the contrary, Bejeweled Blitz has doubled revenue over the last 6 months and we've seen steady revenue growth since the EA acquisition. The Bejeweled team (not the greater PopCap, and certainly not EA) chose to scale back the Google+ offerings because, like most game teams, we want to spend our resources improving games to have the biggest impact on the most customers. Shifting some of our resources from Google+ onto higher-impact efforts was a pretty straightforward decision."

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[RaNDM G]

I'm sorry. Can someone tell me what "Google+" is?

 

[Evil Smurf]

I use google plus, I got an invite

 

[weirdee]

I'm sorry. Can someone tell me what "Google+" is?

It's like Facebook, except less exploitative, and less people.

Well, rather, no people.

Facebook pretty much hogs the market.

 

[Seanchaidh]

The irony here, is that by weaking Facebook's competitors, developers are acting against their own best interests. Facebook's immense popularity and unchallenged position in the social gaming market means it can get away with taking a hefty chunk out of game revenue. Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of any revenue generated on its service while Google+ takes only 5 percent. Though EA seems to believe that a 70% cut of something is worth more than a 95% cut of nothing.

A fine example of a collective action problem. Developers as a whole are acting against their best interests by, individually, acting in their own interests. It (apparently) makes no profit to develop for Google+, so developers develop for Facebook because that's where the money is. While, yes, this does strengthen Facebook's position and allows them to take an enormous cut, who wants to be the patsy who loses money developing for Google+? Such would be quite a generous service to all the other developers, but ultimately self-defeating.

Really, if Google+ is serious about competing with Facebook, it should maybe pay developers to stay. Otherwise it will just be "Facebook, without all the people or features!"

 

[sniddy_v1legacy]

The problem is simple

People don't want to have multiple social network sites...really why do I want to update my status in two places.

As such you pick one - do I pick the one everyones on already and using or do I do something else...

I'd say facebooks reached critical mass, where it's too big to topple with similar rivals....if you want to break the stranglehold then you need to be TOO much better that you can't be ignore.

What did google+ do that facebook couldn't didn't or already did better?

Anyone know - me neither I wasn't interested in it....now if something launched that was advertised with something awesome, something I wanted....that I had to have....then I would go with it....

Can't see it anytime soon

 

[BrotherRool]

The irony here, is that by weaking Facebook's competitors, developers are acting against their own best interests. Facebook's immense popularity and unchallenged position in the social gaming market means it can get away with taking a hefty chunk out of game revenue. Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of any revenue generated on its service while Google+ takes only 5 percent. Though EA seems to believe that a 70% cut of something is worth more than a 95% cut of nothing.

A fine example of a collective action problem. Developers as a whole are acting against their best interests by, individually, acting in their own interests. It (apparently) makes no profit to develop for Google+, so developers develop for Facebook because that's where the money is. While, yes, this does strengthen Facebook's position and allows them to take an enormous cut, who wants to be the patsy who loses money developing for Google+? Such would be quite a generous service to all the other developers, but ultimately self-defeating.

Really, if Google+ is serious about competing with Facebook, it should maybe pay developers to stay. Otherwise it will just be "Facebook, without all the people or features!"

I'd like to add a second part to the thing we've got going on here. Not only is 95% of nothing still worse than 70% of something, but also a corpse with accessories is still a corpse.

Developers weren't going to make people go to Google+. Maybe if Google+ had gone down a more Kongregate style route and paid developers to make good content and advertised as a place you could go for that rather than a straight up social network...


But the fundamental problem is that the value of a social network is that your friends are on it and nobodies on Google+. They'd have to be really really close numbers before people even care about which one functions more adequately. All the games in the world aren't going to change that.

They shouldn't have advertised it as a straight up social network, they should have given it some special feature, games, art, videos whatever, something that people would use even if they didn't want another social network (like everybody) and then when they come to your site to spend time on that and other people join up to to do that, suddenly people's friends are all connected and they'll begin to explore the social network part of the offerings. Maybe comments on the games they've played turn into general status updates...

I could see that working. But the thing is, Facebook beat BeeBo and MySpace because not everybody had signed up to those yet and MySpace and BeeBo were doing things and had reputations that actively hindered social networking. But Facebook knows what it's doing and as long as it doesn't screw up you can't just say 'Hey guys, I know you're all at a party but I've got this other party over here that would be really cool if everyone left this party and went to at the same time'

It's not going to work. One or two hipsters are going to leave the party, and then they'll get to the other one, stand around awkwardly in silence for a while and then slip off back

 

[Kross]

Google knows how to play the competitive free service game. This is their second failed social network (Although Brazilians somehow kept Orkut afloat I hear), a fancy friend grouping paradigm isn't enough innovation to give people a reason to switch and they should have known that out of the gate.

Oh well, at least Google has many other toys to fall back on.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Google knows how to play the competitive free service game. This is their second failed social network (Although Brazilians somehow kept Orkut afloat I hear), a fancy friend grouping paradigm isn't enough innovation to give people a reason to switch and they should have known that out of the gate.

Oh well, at least Google has many other toys to fall back on.

like all my information and yours. Google is skynet but I like it

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm kind of surprised here...you see, I didn't realize Google+ had actually launched yet. Silly me! I think I'll just continue to not use it.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm sorry. Can someone tell me what "Google+" is?

It's like Facebook, except less exploitative, and less people.

Well, naturally. Facebook was less exploitative when it had fewer people, as well.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm kind of surprised here...you see, I didn't realize Google+ had actually launched yet. Silly me! I think I'll just continue to not use it.

Last I knew, it was still doing the "invite only" thing, so I lost interest.

 

[Sexy Devil]

*deleted*

 

[mattaui]

G+ is the social network for people who don't really use social networks. There's a big part of their problem. I've got lots of friends who loathe Facebook (and I'm not a big fan, but I maintain a presence due to social obligations), and they all think G+ is great.

But how do we use G+? We post a cool article once or twice a week and participate in some very limited discussions in our already very niche-oriented and closely-curated circles. Games? Why would any of us want games on G+? Apparently no one does.

The mistake was for G+ to ever, ever try to say it was competing with Facebook. There should be room on the planet for more than one kind of social network.

 

[Eri]

The irony here, is that by weaking Facebook's competitors, developers are acting against their own best interests. Facebook's immense popularity and unchallenged position in the social gaming market means it can get away with taking a hefty chunk out of game revenue. Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of any revenue generated on its service while Google+ takes only 5 percent. Though EA seems to believe that a 70% cut of something is worth more than a 95% cut of nothing.

A fine example of a collective action problem. Developers as a whole are acting against their best interests by, individually, acting in their own interests. It (apparently) makes no profit to develop for Google+, so developers develop for Facebook because that's where the money is. While, yes, this does strengthen Facebook's position and allows them to take an enormous cut, who wants to be the patsy who loses money developing for Google+? Such would be quite a generous service to all the other developers, but ultimately self-defeating.

Really, if Google+ is serious about competing with Facebook, it should maybe pay developers to stay. Otherwise it will just be "Facebook, without all the people or features!"

This effect is actually called Tragedy of the commons, though you can't really "deplete" internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

 

[thiosk]

The fact that the duck faced social community has not caught on with google+ is exactly the reason why I have a google+ account and not a facebook account.

 

[Odin311]

I actually like google+ better than facebook. The problem is I can't get any of my friends to switch. They all ***** about facebook, but they have the same issue.

Unless you can get everyone to switch at the same time, the service will fail.

 

[=y]

Unless you can get everyone to switch at the same time, the service will fail.

That's going to require Facebook doing something so universally stupid that everyone switches.

OT: I'm curious as to how many people actually play games on plus.