The Rise of Phone Gaming – The Read (Issue 5/2012)

While it took US internet giant AOL nine years to hit one million users and social networking site Facebook nine months to achieve the same feat, it took mobile phone application Draw Something a mere nine days. The now ubiquitous Pictionary-type game app now rules the roost in cyberspace, having knocked the best-selling Angry Birds Space app from its perch.

That’s the addictive power of phone gaming. The team behind Draw Something took a traditional board game concept and adapted it to the iPhone era – an instant hit was born.

New York-based Omgpop released the app in February and its popularity rapidly snowballed, reaching a record 50 million downloads in just 50 days. Users all over the world cited its clever visuals and interesting contest dynamic as the main draw, while in Asia it is the game’s collaborative (as opposed to competitive) spirit that has led to more than 35 million downloads in the region.

Not to be outdone, the folks at Angry Birds tweeted their own statement that their Angry Birds Space app had achieved 10 million downloads in less than three days following the release of the sequel to the 2009 original in late March.

To many, it seems mind-boggling that such patently simple games are attracting millions of fans – and millions in revenue – in just a matter of days. The pattern was set by Words with Friends released by Texas-based video game developer Zynga with Friends in July 2009 (Angry Birds was released in December 2009). The multiplayer word game helped popularize social gaming via iPhone and Android by seizing upon a preexisting but untapped audience of word-loving fans. The game’s growth in Asia was phenomenal, accumulating an average of one million new fans every few months since its launch.

Zynga with Friends’s latest gaming app, Scramble with Friends, which is similar to the board game Boggle, has also enjoyed healthy numbers in Asia. In the months since its release in January 2012, it has seen a 20 percent rise of Asian players joining in the fun.

Internet company Effective Measure reports that there are currently more than 17 million gaming “addicts” in Southeast Asia, with Thailand and Vietnam leading the way. The company also found that gamers are not restricted to big cities, and that a large proportion hail from rural areas, providing the sustainability of the business model. Back in the ‘70s, makers of computer games needed a physical space such as an arcade to ply their wares. Now, anyone with a mobile device is a potential customer.

The money to be made by game developers is staggering. Zynga with Friends purchased the rights to Draw Something from its developer for a record US$200 million. However, this seems like small change compared to the company’s total estimated value of US$7 billion.

Asian companies have also joined the fray. Tokyo-based DeNa, the owner of social gaming platform Mobage, announced more than US$450 million in sales in the second quarter of its current fiscal year alone.

The already massive fan base of Draw Something, which is winning people over with its own twist of getting players to cooperate rather than compete, only looks set to expand. The game encourages constant form of communication, and players below the age of 30 are found to be responding to one another’s moves within an average of three minutes. In Asia, Internet savvy retirees are reacting at an astonishing rate of two moves per minute!

Recently, a video made by a Scramble with Friends player, showing him chalk up a record score of 2,700 within two minutes went viral on the Internet. This “expert” who is believed to be Asian, had a highest score of 3,700 (compared to the average worldwide score of 800). This video has opened up new channels for people to socialize, with adversaries sending one another initiations to videoed challenges, once again firing up the mobile gaming scene.