Trip Hawkins, aside from being the founder of Electronic Arts, is a pretty smart dude, so when he talks about the things he believes in, people tend to listen.
That was certainly the case today at the Engage Expo in Santa Clara, where he spoke on the “big issues” in social games and virtual goods, including a practical assessment of what Facebook, Google and Apple are trying to do.
His best advice for game developers? Insist on distributing your games as broadly and across as many different channels as possible.
“I believe [gaming] must be interoperable across all media, all platforms, all devices, because people want simplicity” he said, later adding that the future of gaming will be “less about performance and more about agility across platforms.”
Trip predicted that Facebook will soon have over 1 billion users, that Apple will have more than 500 million iPhone and iPad users, and that despite such growth Google might just overtake Apple with its Android platform.
No single channel can “own” social games, he argued, and it is in the best interest of everybody involved – platforms, game developers and, most importantly, gamers – for the games not to be “bottled up and controlled” by any one party. He pointed to other examples, like IM, texting and even roads, as social structures that once were contained within silos and now are interoperable.
He urged the roomful of game developers to band together in voicing their desire for such interoperability, and predicted that if social gaming is allowed to grow unfettered, the global virtual goods market could easily reach $100 billion or more.
Trip’s latest company, Digital Chocolate, is a very close partner of Offerpal’s, and we couldn’t agree with his comments more.
In fact, we recently launched our SocialKast product, which allows developers like Digital Chocolate to send notifications and viral messages across multiple platforms including Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, MySpace and others, for the exact reason of helping them achieve the mass and broad distribution Trip was talking about. (What’s more, SocialKast is platform agnostic, so developers on any platform can use it.) And our industry-leading PPI distribution on both the iOS and Android platforms helps developers get their mobile applications up to scale very quickly yet also cost-effectively.
Can the industry really reach $100 billion? We don’t see why not, especially if continues to grow, as it is now, across all types of media, platforms and devices.
But don’t take our word for it. Take it from someone much smarter than us.
Austin is a pretty hip place, and if you’re going to the GDC Online conference taking place there next week, expect to see some pretty hip parties. But perhaps none more so than our get-together on Wednesday night at Six Lounge, a unique bar located in the heart of Austin’s Warehouse District that locals say is one of the best in town.
