Casual Social Games Plummet While Social Casino Holds Its Own

Casual social gaming numbers are plummeting as players grow bored, according to one data researcher. 

Casual games on the internet are declining as players switch to mobile, or just drift away to other leisure activities, according to Joost van Dreunen, managing director of New York City-based SuperData Research.  

“It’s not going away; we’re still talking 200m people,” he said. “But players are saying, where’s the new content? The social game audience is a little exhausted.” 

US free-to-play social game revenue dropped 6.6 percent in March over the same month a year ago to $476.6m (£312.6m), which followed a 0.4 percent drop in February, according to SuperData. 

In March, player numbers dropped by 10m to fall below 200m monthly active users for the first time in a year. 

But player numbers are holding up for social casino games, although revenues were off, van Dreunen said. 

“You don’t play social casino on a whim,” he said. “They tend to be more loyal.” 

SuperData does not break out social casino numbers on a monthly basis, but last year it estimated the size of the worldwide market at $1.7bn. 

The only good news about the casual game segment was that revenue per player rose, which suggests that it is the less-committed players who are falling away, van Dreunen said. 

The trend shows how casual games can have fleeting loyalty, as games collect millions of users, but the players may have loose allegiances and may not be interested in spending money

“The market is very crowded; it makes for a poor market for a publisher, and a confusing market for a player,” he said. 

Free-to-play games are initially free, but operators are seeking to convince users to buy extra time, virtual chips or weapons. 

Earlier this week, Electronic Arts said it was retiring SimCity Social, The Sims Social and Pet Society on June 14, after player counts fell off. 

SimCity Social peaked in August 2012 with 15.3m monthly active users, but had fallen to 1.6m recently, according to Inside Social Games. 

The development means most of Playfish’s games have either shut or are scheduled to. EA paid $300m for Playfish in 2009. 

In February, Zynga said it was shutting recently launched games including CityVille 2, The Friend Game and Party Place. 

Arooga, a social games company based in Portsmouth, England, is abandoning casual games for social gambling, after finding them far more lucrative.

The two-year-old company spent about £250,000 developing Robin Hood Adventures, chief executive Karl Jeffery told GamblingCompliance. 

Then, as an experiment, it debuted Arooga Slots, which had been knocked together fairly quickly by a couple of programmers, he said. 

“It started on a per-user basis, making revenue 10 times Robin Hood’s, at the cost of one twentieth of Robin Hood,” Jeffery said. “That set off a light in my head.” 

Now Arooga is phasing out Robin Hood, introduced only last August, and is focusing on its new slot-machine games, Camelot — King Arthur’s Quest, Midnight — a Vampire Saga, and Lovecats, he said.