A friend asked my opinion on the 5 key factors for the success of a casual games web site. This is what I said, out of the top of my head:
1. Plug into an existing user base. It won’t be easy to start a brand new service with zero credibility and no eye-ball capital. So you better partner with the facebooks, yahoos, netflixes or googles out there.
2. All online. Use Flash and DHML, don’t even bother trying to install a client application.
3. Multiplayer. The games themselves must be multiplayer, and ideally coop. Make public score boards, profiles, contact lists and other social features part of the games.
4. Free. Start with a fully free service, move to freemium quickly. Make it worth the extra $3/month, don’t rely on advertising.
5. APIs. Allow for integration with Facebook, Blogger, Wordpress.com, Twitter, Flickr, etc. Start with the single sign-on, then build ways to publish the high scores, play times, screenshots, challenges and relationship to those services. Also, make and easy to use SDK so it’ll be easy for others to do the work for you.
DISCLAIMER: This stuff is really off of the top of my head. Maybe if I give it some thought, those five points will change.
Post a Comment