We believe that mobile interconnected gaming is one of the biggest opportunities in the history of mankind — Bill Barhydt, CEO Sennari
Whatever you accuse Barhydt of, it can’t be lack of confidence in his companies chosen business model…Sennari gave a demo of its PrizePlay platform at CTIA, and explained why it thought it was a great idea.
Basically, the company took a look at the top 10 games in the UK (presumably over a period of time rather than just the example of May that was shown) and found three common factors:
- 9/10 games are simple, addictive games
- 10/10 games have a cousin or history in the PC world
- 10/10 games work well on the small screen
Sennari defines a connected game as “a game that uses the internet or cellular network”. However Sennari doesn’t think there’ll be many people playing a mobile game at any one time and so are focussing on person to machine rather than person to person…The idea being that a person can have fun even if there are no other people playing the game. Anyway, the whole point of the interconnected game platform of Sennari is that it offers prizes to people who play the game, as a way to build loyalty — and since there is a group of games that use the same platform a community is created.
This is actually based on “coin operated skill games” in arcade format which are apparently very popular in Britain. For example, “Who wants to be a millionaire?” was originally one of these games, and it converts naturally to mobiles. So the idea is that people buy tokens which they can spend on all these games and they win prizes (both digital content and physical goods posted to the user) based on how well they do. Interestingly, Bill emphasised a number of times that this was legal in the US, although in a few states they’re nervous and so want to get confirmation from the authorities that they won’t get into trouble if they offer it. However, in Louisiana its right out — too much like gambling.
The benefit for the industry? Sennari claims these games have 5-10x the revenue potential of existing games, although you’ll have to ask them for the calculations. “This is the first ever mobile games crafted for huge ARPU and loyalty potential” said Bill. “If I can put a gaming model in place that is hitting the billing system for $10-15 per month that will significantly impact the bottom line of the player.” He points out this is less than people pay for ‘party poker’. According to Bill people will want to play because the games bring immediacy and instant gratification in terms of prizes as well as game play, so they’re going to pay a bit more.
Finally, he claims churn will be reduced because the tokens will only work with the games within the system, so people will use games outside the system less and less.
A lot of these claims are fairly extravagent, but that doesn’t mean the idea won’t work. It depends on whether consumers take up the service, which I suspect will depend a lot on the cost of the tokens and how much it costs to play the game…Someone pointed out that a similar move to set up a prize-for-game system on the web died horribly, however Barhydt stuck by his idea that sticking to the three characteristics of a successful game he outlined above will ensure the success of his system.
I questioned Barhydt about the prices of tokens via e-mail, and he responded: “Token prices are set in conjunction with each distribution partner (usually the carrier) and will probably be in the $.50 range. We believe that this price is optimal in order to: 1. Encourage repeated game play; and 2. Create compelling prizing opportunities. If the tokens are too expensive we discourage repeated game play. If the tokens are too cheap we can’t afford to create compelling prizing opportunities.”
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