The social games sector has seen tremendous growth over the last year, and companies like Zynga and Playfish are leading the charge. Things can change in a hurry in a sector that's so new and fast-paced, however. Speaking to GI.biz, Playfish founder and CEO Kristian Segerstrale noted that more consolidation is likely to occur this year. He remarked that it's becoming a tough field to enter now because it's maturing so quickly.
"I actually think that the social gaming space, as it's defined today, is becoming increasingly difficult. Because in many ways [...] it is already a relatively established market, there are defined brands. I think that this year you'll see more consolidation. I wouldn't set up a company to create another farm game on Facebook. But, by definition, if you're an entrepreneur you're setting up to win in the next 3-5 years, you don't try to set up a company to win in an established category today, you try to create the category of tomorrow," he commented.
Sergerstrale explained that social gaming really is just becoming an extension of the overall games ecosystem; it's just another platform that companies should target.
"I think people look at something like social games, and they've been looking at it for the past year and thinking this is something entirely new, entirely different which will defy gravity and be a different kind of game environment. This year I think will show them that this will be the natural extension of the games market where a couple of things matter – scale matters, access to franchises matters. The overall gaming market becoming multi-platform means that you have to have multi-platform capability in order to really be able to reach the kind of scale you need to reach in the market," he said.
"I think you'll actually see this year that the kind of thinking around the industry will be much more how it fits into the broader games industry and does similar things to the broader games industry like access to franchises, like multi-platform publishing muscle and marketing spend will all be important."
