Facebook too has decided to bite its share of the apple by permitting social games such as ‘Candy Crush Saga’ and ‘Bubble Burst’ to be launched on its platform as it receives 30 per cent of the revenue generated by such games.īigtime developers that publish games on Facebook have developed a business model called ‘Freemium’ which offers the gamer a free entry into a game but later demands the gamer to pay in periods to ensure continued association along with virtual goods and advanced components. Free to play game sites such as Miniclip and Zapak depend hugely on this revenue model for their income. Online advertising functions on the concept of CPM (Cost per Mille) which enables the host to charge a calculated price for every thousand views of the page while displaying the advertisement. Advertisements appearing as web banners, pop ups or floating ads on the websites contribute largely to the profits made by the social games.
Likewise, Steam is a multiplayer online platform for PC which also distributes games developed by smaller independent developers to larger software houses, besides acting as an online market to download games. Console gamers have a massive online community of their own which can be accessed through PSN or XBox Live which costs Rs. With interminable story lines and an estimated one billion gamers worldwide, online gaming provides a potential monetary gold mine for game developers, game sites and social networking sites. It has also been approximated that female gamers account for 45 per cent of the gaming fraternity while another research finding by the statistical blog site in 2012, wiped clean all preconceived notions about gaming by stating that 58 per cent of the global social gamers is above the age of 40. Online gaming, in particular, is becoming the stage that gamers are taking to as a survey by the NPD Group in 2010 reported that the average weekly online gaming time was eight hours with a projected increase of 10 per cent every year.
Gaming is no longer the solitary activity that it once was as this generation of gamers prefers competing against another human mind, rather than a CPU. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.” A couple of centuries later, this propensity of man has established an industry that rakes in about a 100 billion dollars every year. In the early 19th century, the English essayist and critic Charles Lamb quoted, “Man is a gaming animal.