Playfish, the two-year-old UK-based social gaming company says it's already turning a substantial profit, despite offering its games for free on social networks such as Facebook.
To understand the impressive trajectory of the London-based social gaming company Playfish, it's useful to meet the Mayor of something called Pet Society.
Games like Pet Society, Restaurant City and Who Has the Biggest Brain - are available for free on social networks such as Facebook and Bebo, rather than being sold through a box in a store.
"So last month, we had over 60 million people per month playing our titles and out of that 13 million played yesterday. So you have an enormous community playing together on social networks," says Kristian Segerstrale, co-founder and CEO, Playfish.
Segerstrale says the idea for this company was sparked when the social network facebook opened up its platform to creations from outside developers in 2007.
"One of the things that was clear two years ago was that there was this tectonic shift in computer games anyway from being physical products to being digital services, but it was really the launch of the Facebook platform that allowed for the first time ever companies to create online games with access to real-world friends."
And while the US$50 billion a year video games market has not proved as recession proof as many had predicted, social gaming has been thriving through the downturn.
"What social gaming allows us to do as an industry is to grow the aggregate size of the industry by getting more people involved, by getting those people who are not so interested in slaying the monsters on their 42 inch plasma but are really interested in playing with their friends and family involved," says Segerstrale.
And it's that kind of real world engagement that helped Playfish to sell over 4 million digital flowers via Pet Society this past Valentine's Day. The key to selling digital goods, he says, is fulfilling a real world social need.
Reuters