I will definetely attend again given the opportunity.

This being said, I also wanted to share here the presentation I gave there. You will find it familiar as I have been speaking on the topic quite a lot for the past 12 Months, but numbers have been refreshed, so it might still be worth a read for some of you.

Towards a more bespoke customer relationship in online games?

Online games companies are all about e-business, and yet the level of CRM initiatives is still surprisingly low. Most MMO newsletters I receive are not customized for me, but they could easily use my character’s data in interesting ways to motivate me. They could show me what my friends have accomplished in-game, point me to wiki articles with tailored tips about how to conquer areas where my character keeps dying, and even tempt me to buy the last piece of a matching cosmetic outfit set I have already bought.

To be fair, a few of them did: I remember an Age of Conan newsletter using my character’s level, name and class to address me and highlight what I could do in-game in the area where I logged off, Aeria Games sent me a nice “get back in-game with a free XP stone” Shaiya promotion after I hadn’t logged in in a while, and most subscription games now have veteran rewards of some kind. However, these efforts are still fairly rare, and are still far from realising the potential of the ton of available data that these companies have amassed about customers.

It is possible to combine game and business data and detect retention issues even before they appear. For instance, welcome emails to new players can include particular things to do in-game just after they register (or at day +3, day+7, etc), outline solutions to issues that players frequently encounter at those stages, contact players with offers when they start logging in less, or make use of “social CRM” to keep them incentivised if their friends stop playing (perhaps by suggesting group incentives, or directing them to a “people you may know” friends-of-friends feature). Virtual worlds seem more familiar with these techniques than online games; for instance Gaia Online and IMVU immediately point towards things to do in-world in their post-registration emails (probably addressing a churn issue from new registrants not knowing what to do), and Habbo includes a “forgotten your password?” box in the “we miss you” email they send to people who haven’t logged in for a while. Interestingly, certain types of account data that is easy to use is almost never used to incentivise players. I didn’t find many games who would send me a birthday gift for my real-life birthday, give me a special party hat or an emote that I could use only that day and that would tell people in game it’s my birthday.

That’s a wasted opportunity.

Many games also don’t seem to employ a lot of CRM techniques in order to increase monetization, but there’s obviously a lot to be done, especially for micro-payment games which are shops as well as games. Very few suggestions for item shops based on previous purchases, on “customers who bought this also bought…”, on items tried in the shop and not purchased, or social CRM initiatives like friends’ wishlists and suggestions based on friends’ behaviours exist, as far as I know (although most Facebook games allow you to share purchases, achievements and events to your friends).

Another field of CRM that has potential for games is customer tiering, in which, for instance, the best customers in a luxury clothes shop are sent personalized birthday cards, invitations to fashion shows and private sales offers — or even classic airline tiering, with miles and private lounges. This is especially relevant for micro-payment games, where a small number of customers spend a lot. So far, I’m not aware of any game operators that offer a ‘red carpet’ program for these special customers, or of very many loyalty schemes rewarding players for their purchases. Admittedly, these would need to be done tactfully in order to avoid the implication that the game is biased towards big spenders, but there are a lot of outside-game or cosmetic things that can be done to thank and nurture important customers.

It’s quite possible that the lack of CRM initiatives is largely due to inadequate data capture and storage legacy systems than a lack of belief in the usefulness of the techniques. However, in an increasingly competitive environment, it’s only going to become more essential for companies to focus on maximizing retention and monetization, as the acquisition optimization tricks are becoming increasingly mastered by everyone in the marketplace.

If you have good examples of clever CRM use by online games, please tell us so in the comments!

If you want to meet over there, please feel free to drop me a line through the contact page: http://www.icopartners.com/contact.php

1. Facebook will be even more important

2009 has been a huge explosion for “social games” , seeing more than 70 M monthly active users for Farmville, the sale of Playfish to Electronic Arts, and a general “gold rush” for this new platform which growth has seemed unstoppable in 2009. Now Facebook has 350+ million active users,  a number that makes console installed bases pale in comparison. Connecting to users’ real life social graph offers a lot of advantages, starting with super cheap acquisition costs and unmatched growth possibilities. Social gaming is likely to expand a lot outside of Facebook in 2010, as the platform is pushing the Connect network, and recent policy changes might prompt developers to also have a standalone web version of their game in order to retain more control over them and promote them outside of Facebook too (like Pet Society or Farmville did). The addition of a dashboard for games is also validating the social network as a primordial gaming platform. A part of Facebook growth in Asian countries is actually tied to the games, as some users register primarily to play.

2. But as the platform matures, market conditions will change.

Facebook’s growth has probably peaked in the US and some EU countries, although there is still plenty of growth margin in some of them like Germany and in numerous other countries. Combined with the new set of rules limiting aggressive viral practices, this should make it difficult for Facebook games to repeat the mass success of FarmVille or Mafia Wars. As the platform matures and competition intensifies, should see retention and monetization gain in importance,  and  small and middle-sized developers trying to find sustainable competitive advantages (eg non easily clonable games). That could open the way for  more niche games with high monetization,  such as Challenge Games’ WarStorm. On the casual front, we should see more adaptations on Facebook of casual game favourite genres (time management, hidden object…) and more MMO-lites integrating such gameplays.  The dashboard for games is likely to see Facebook play a bigger role in game discovery and recommendation (”kingmaker”). This, in conjunction with the limitations on aggressive viral tactics, could make users acquisition costs more expensive as developers have to resort more to advertising and competition for the “virtual retail space” of the dashboard, making it more similar to other digital distribution spaces (casual games portals, XBLA, App Store, etc) - while of course remaining more social. It remains to be seen if this will translate in developers acquiring some “neo-publishing” skills to adapt to these environments, or if a new breed of companies offering  these services will appear (as it might start to be the case on AppStore). Extremely high monthly active users numbers could also become reserved to the most wealthy companies, as the need for cash to market the games intensifies.

3.  Android game market will grow, is unlikely to challenge iPhone just yet

Up until now, Android app market has been significantly smaller than the iPhone’s. Estimates for 2009 locate Android game market around $1.7 million, when iPhone game sales are thought to have been around $250 million for the mid-2008 to mid 2009 period. Mobile game publisher Gameloft has recently announced stopping developing Android games as their revenues were about $15k/quarter, or about 400 times less their iPhones sales. Main culprits are thought to be the fragmentation of formats in Android platforms (some handsets have keyboards, others don’t, different screen sizes, etc), a limitation in app storage for most of Android-based handsets (which is adverse to sophisticated apps like games) , and a difficulty of monetizing the app-downloading audience on Android. The fragmentation issue, which is the biggest obstacle, might be less of a problem if a handful of Android phones become very popular in 2010 (the Nexus One is thought to sell 5-6 million units in 2010) or if some standards making the gaming experience more similar across devices are adopted (for example, by HTC, the leading manufacturer). As Android is an open platform, custom app stores will also be possible, although yet again critical mass will be the main problem. Still, there will be some growth on the platform, which recently grew 53% month-on-month. Also, the openness will allow developers to instantly propose a 100% service model from start on the platform, as is only starting to be possible now with the iPhone. Another advantage is the possibility of offering Flash games, as it is unlikely that Flash gets approved on iPhone anytime soon. This could allow developers to release cross platform games web/Android.

4.  Towards service model games on iPhone?

Apple has only towards the end of 2009 allowed in-app payments inside of free apps. This, combined with push notifications (at the moment too power-hungry, but that might get improved in a new version of the handset?), should allow for evolving, service-based games. There are already some instances of free to play apps with “micropayment” on the iPhone. What is still missing would be allowing currency selling or Apple credits that would allow real micro-payments, along with an auto-patch function. Could that make the App Store less product-based, as it is now, with a very “digital retail-like environment”, and more service-based, with more opportunities for developers for persistent environments?

5. Hardware changes : mobility

2009 has been the year of the netbook (+103% shipments y-o-y worldwide according to DisplaySearch ). The same institute predicts more moderate growth for netbooks in 2010, at only +19%. Still, with the expected Apple tablet computer and many competitors that  are all the rage at CES this week, we should see further convergence between laptops/netbooks/tablets/smartphones. With it may come the long announced reign of mobile web, which could impact gaming more than we have seen so far with mobile games, as we might be able to see games totally designed for nomadic use and real-world interaction (via geolocation, augmented reality, etc). Again, that could open the door for nice cross platform apps and mobile extensions of PC or web-based games

6. Hardware changes : consoles decline and transformation

So far, console manufacturers’ answers to digital distribution and now to complete digital replacement (Onlive, Gaikai,  etc, which might well become a reality in 2010 if the technical side follows, and connected TVs) has been rather limited and patchy. Even recent initiatives, like Xbox Live Twitter and Facebook integration, has been reserved to paying subscribers, showing that once again Microsoft got the business implication backwards (namely, Microsoft should incentivize people to share Xbox related content on social networks, not try to make people pay for it). The recently announced Game Room should be available to non-subcribers, though, but it could take advantage of the Facebook/Twitter interaction for them too. PlayStation Home so far has 10M registered players, but in last July it was stated that only 25-35% logged in more than once . Total revenue was at that time $1M/month. If the service has found a niche community of active players, that could be a quite good ARPU. It remains to be seen if the service can be a profitable platform for free to play multiplayer games such as the recently launched SodiumOne. Nintendo’s digital distribution offering is still limited, and Wii’s connectivity ratio is lagging behind rivals (35-45% of the Wii installed base is estimated to be connected, as opposed to around 60% of Xbox 360s, hence the Wii Ambassador promotion at the end of the year.). Generally, console and package game sales have been tough in 2009 : just in the UK, home consoles hardware unit sales have been down 25% and software -12% . As the recession amplified the latent shift to online models, it is going to be very tough for incumbents to adapt quickly enough. EA seems to go in a good direction with Playfish acquisition, but is likely to have to undergo a real shift of culture and priorities, and 2010 looks again like a painful transition year. The future looks even bleaker to all of the traditional video game publishers that are moving slower than EA, not even speaking of retailers and distributors. Consoles are unlikely to die completely in 2010, as price cuts and motion control novelty can slow the decline, but unless manufacturers really make drastic changes (becoming cloud-based online services ?), it’s difficult to be very optimistic for the console business outside of the “family and party entertainment” niche (music games, Mario Kart,WiiFit, PES/FIFA, fighting games, etc).

7. MMORPGs : free, browser-based, and more diversity in genres

There has been relatively few pay to play MMORPG releases in 2009. Darkfall Online launched in February as a very niche product. Champions Online launched in September to a wider audience, but still relatively confidential. Aion, launched later in September, seems the only P2P game to have achieved relatively large scale success last year. It remains to be seen how good its traditional formula with hardcore/grind elements will be at retaining its whole audience long-term. In 2010, there will be some interesting P2P MMOs : Tera, Final Fantasy XIV, APB, Star Trek Online, DC Universe, maybe betas for Star Wars Old Republic, Guild Wars 2 and Blade and Soul, without forgetting the Cataclysm expansion (although no official date is announced, so it might well happen only in 2011). Still, it’s becoming more difficult to imagine new games starting development now following the same business model and “walled garden” design (client-based, with very few interactions with the rest of the web and social networks).

On the Free to Play front, at the contrary, the year has been rich in successes: Runes of Magic’s formula of polished F2P WOW-style MMO reached 2.5 M registered players, SOE’s Free Realms quickly reached 5 M registered. Earth Eternal (in Open Beta) and Allods Online (in Closed Beta), along with Runes of Magic, are raising the bar in terms of quality expectations for Free to Play MMOs. Browser-based MMOs, such as previously mentioned Earth Eternal, but also Artix’s AQ Worlds (which launched in late 2008, and scored 11 M registered players in a year), or Gpotato’s  Canaan, scheduled for early 2010 release, are likely to grow provided they have the sufficient quality, and can be accessible and connected enough to the social web. Existent browser games leaders such as Bigpoint have been announcing more sophisticated games  (such as PoisonVille), while splitting portals in “hardcore” and “casual” channels  .  It will be more difficult for new entrants on the market entering with lower quality or non-original games, or licensing games already out for a while  in Korea, as we have seen recently with the closure of serveral services in Europe.

In terms of genres, “casual” (arcade, sport, racing) client-based games have all been struggling and aren’t likely to take off in 2010. PC favourites genres have had more success, namely FPS (Battlefield Heroes, Combat Arms, Soldier Front have a sustainable, if modest, audience, although a Pay to Play larger scale project like Crimecraft didn’t take off), and more recently, DOTA-inspired games (League of Legends,  Heroes of Newerth) seem to have found an efficient niche.  As competition intensifies, more games have been exploring different genres in the hope of differentiation. In 2009, crossovers have been attempted, for instance MMO/City Builder by Cities XL, which doesn’t seem to have attracted a large subscriber base for the MMO part, and Champions Online and Dragonica have been forwarding very action-based combat systems with more success (in very different genres).  This should be a further trend in the future, as generally we should see more games mixing more action-based gameplay with traditional MMORPG elements. CCP has announced Dust 514, a console shooter tied to EVE’s universe, Blizzard is rumoured to work on a shooter-MMO, and Star Ward Old Republic, Tera and Blade and Soul all seem to be vying for more action.

Regarding the provenance of foreign MMOs in the Western market, we are likely to see fewer Korean games and the start of an influx of Chinese games, from browser based games to AAA Unreal-based ones (directly operated like the infamous Evony, on proprietary portals such as Webmmo or Perfect World portal or via license deals like Castle of Heroes, the new Gpotato game) .

8. User Acquisition becomes a big issue again in the new gaming universe

As developers are turning into publishers and the new landscape emerges, the main problem for game operators is to acquire users for their services in a fragmented and competitive environment. Social games have been an opening through which it was possible to acquire a lot of users for very cheap and very fast. As the social graph spills out of social networks and extend to every game on the web, and as social networks restrict aggressive viral practices, reaching a critical mass for a service is likely to become tricky again, to the point that a lot of observers are thinking about the return of a new kind of publisher, with pockets deep enough to buy enough users from start. So far, free to play games browser and client games have been good at acquiring users via partnerships with media and community sites, and recourse to specialized ad networks (CPMStar,Ad2game, etc). Good cross promotion strategies have been using low CPA games as a “bait” to convert players to higher CPA, more profitable client games  - something Gameforge has done since Metin2. As we discussed earlier this year, 2010 will probably see a lot of activity as operators try to appropriate this crucial part of the  value chain, by buying media, ad networks (see the recent Shanda’s purchasing of Mochi Media), community sites, etc, and the strongest actors in the user acquisition and channelling business, including big mainstream Internet media companies, considering going further down the chain by starting their game development and operations divisions or making acquisitions in that space.

9. Deeper service integration and developer resources changes

It is increasingly business and operational excellence that will drive a developer’s sucess, and  there will be more integration of  marketing and community management at all customer touchpoints. As most game developers will have to become operators/publishers,  it is likely to make sense for a lot of them to hire a limited number of staff with expertise on publishing topics (marketing, customer support, billing, hosting, etc) and work with specialised service vendors for each of these topics. Of course, some of the biggest players will internalise those functions, but most will prefer to outsource this, keeping a few very experienced people internally to manage the relationship. Also, data- metrics capture and analysis is going to be a very important competitive advantage, so data capture systems and data analysts should be in high demand in 2010, and maybe more companies in that service field will emerge. By next year, we also expect that expertise on virtual goods design, marketing and sales will be pushed to the next level.

We would be happy to discuss reader’s opinions on what you think will be 2010’s big trends, so please don’t hesitate to comment!

Also, we at ICO Partners wish all our blog’s followers a great 2010, and hope we’ll have a thrilling 2010, full of great online games!

• Italy-based Gametribe portal, operated by Game Media Networks, subsidiary of Digital Bros, a retail videogame distribution company, will be closing down on December 31st. The portal had already lost or not renewed the license for Dekaron from developer GameHi since September. It also operated action online game Infinity, cel-shading MMO Dreams of Mirror Online (DOMO) and football session game Kicks Online.

• UK and Spain-based company Rourke Online has seen its portal Key2Play and game servers disconnected after failing to pay for the hosting at the end of November. They were operating F2P MMOs Priston Tale 2 and Ys Online. Ys Online’s service termination had already been announced.

• Germany-based Aeria Games, whose parent company is based in the US, has announced the closure of the French and German service for adult-themed cel-shading MMO Shin Megami Tensei Online : Imagine, on December 21st. Players can transfer their characters to the English servers.

• UK-based Codemasters Online has closed hardcore PvP MMO Archlord in early October after developer NHN Games did not renew the license. The service has  been transferred to Webzen portal.

• Finally, France and Ireland-based publisher GOA, subsidiary of France Telecom, has announced the closure of Action-RPG Warrior Epic on December 21st, is shutting down session-based Kart racing game Kart N Crazy and has cancelled their publishing of a European version of MMORTS Mytheon. The company is focusing on its remaining titles Warhammer Online, Pangya and League of Legends. It had previously closed session-based, turn-based arcade game Gunbound last May.

While the situation and reasoning for the closure is different for each of these companies and games, most of the time it comes down to a difficulty of reaching and maintaining critical mass on the European  services. One can reflect on the flooding of the market with a lot of very similar games making differentiation very hard, the lack of experience and competence of some of the actors, the fact that certain genres like session-based arcade games were not adapted for the European market, an inherent weakness of the third party licensing model with scarce access to development resources, making it extremely difficult to offer a good service to players (with frequent updates, tailored events, good hack/gold farming protection, etc), the poor quality of some of the games, or a combination of all of these factors, to explain these failures.

Does that mean that the European market for free-to-play games is completely saturated and starting to decline? I personally don’t think so, but new entrants must make sure they think about a few points before entering the market :

• Defining critical mass : before considering opening a new service, consider the critical mass this particular game would require.  An asynchronous 2-player game, or a niche game, may be sustainable on a small critical mass, not necessarily so if the game is based on large scale RvR battles. Evaluating the potential of the title for the market is important : so far, few session based arcade online games for PC have been successful in genres traditionally reserved for console (fighting, racing, sport…).

• Differentiation : on very saturated markets like English, German and Turkish languages, a new MMO has to bring a significant level of quality and differentiation to be taken seriously. A niche game like Atlantica Online, with a strong differentitaion, has been doing well on the English language, and launched a German version recently. The quality of the game and service can also be a strong differentiation factor. The last wave of F2P MMOs (Runes of Magic, Free Realms, Allods Online) is significantly raising the bar by being closer to Western players tastes and offering a much more polished experience than most of their competitors. Operators who focus on providing a good service experience to their users can also use it to be special.
• Looking for gaps in the market : Certain territories in Europe are currently underserved, as a lot of actors are focusing on the biggest languages. French, Spanish, Polish and Italian are quite big languages with a limited localised offering compared to English, German and increasingly Turkish. A player like Gameforge has historically been successful by taking market share in underserved territories.
• Leveraging social/viral acquisition as much as possible. Again, this is difficult to do for publishers who are licensing third party products not designed for this, but it can be an essential advantage as the boundary is still relatively clear between social games and MMOs. This situation is probably not going to last very long, but quick movers here can gain an advantage.

So far we’ve been aiming to publish one blog post per week, which seemed achievable in terms of effort and we hoped we could start building a readership that way. While we couldn’t always manage our weekly post during super-busy times, we were able to stick to it more often than not, and we’re really rather proud of that! While we can’t promise to blog any more frequently, we’re committed to keeping up the current pace. More or less.

One thing we’ve evolved out of is neutral post authoring. There are three of us now and the general ‘we’ doesn’t work too well anymore, so Diane, Jen and I will be writing in our own voices and signing our posts from now on. As well as making it clear who’s saying what, as an added bonus it will be obvious who’s pulling their weight around here and who is a slacker (*coughJENcough*). I’m just kidding. You know we don’t slack. (Well, maybe a tiny bit during the holiday season.)

So, Happy Birthday ICO Blog, with hopefully many more to come. We’d really love it if you could help us celebrate by sharing with us what you liked best in the blog this year, and what you’re looking forward to reading about here in 2010. Cheers!

http://www.game-connection.com/

In a few words, this a “speed dating ” event between different actors of the game industry. Historically, it has been very focused in match-making developers and publishers, but the last couple of years has seen different service providers joining the event as well, from localisation providers to advertising networks and billing solutions.

Don’t hesitate to ask us for a meeting through the system.

As more Asian and American eyes are turning to the European market (since market is less mature and the Chinese market is increasingly closed), Turkey is emerging as a rising star of the European region for online games. The country has the second biggest population of the region, and a majority of them are young (60% are under 35) and educated. According to a recent Comscore report, Turkey is the 3rd most engaged Internet audience in the world. The games websites category there has a 68% penetration, higher than in the UK. According to government statistics, 24% of Turks aged 16+ played network games with other people in 2008.

Early entrants like Joymax, K2 Networks or Gameforge have had a lot of success.  As the industry grew, companies like GameSultan or GGC rised from the country’s 20,000 cyber-cafe ecosystem to become local operators, handling distribution, payment systems, localization… At its peak, Knight Online is thought to have earned $1M/month from its Turkish operations. Metin2 is thought to have as many as 3 Million active Turkish users. The success of these games has encouraged actors already well implanted in Europe to localize and operate their games in Turkey. New entrants on the European market like Korean publisher NHN are preparing Turkish versions of their games in the very first served.

Browser based and social networks games are also growing a lot . There are more than 14M Turkish members on Facebook, Turkey is the 3^rd biggest country on the platform country on the platform. 53% of the Turkish Internet population is on Facebook, and games like Farmville have a very important community of Turkish players . The Flash games website oyunlar1 has more than 6.5M unique visitors. Virtual worlds are growing, as shows the success of Sanalika, which grew to 3M registered users in 6 months.

This huge growth does not come without challenges - some of them are common to many other online games markets, but some others are specifically Turkish. Due to the young age of Internet users and gamers there, there is a lack of mainstream gaming culture which makes difficult to reach new audiences.  The home broadband offering has download limitations, which prevent most users from playing from home as getting over the allowances is super expensive.  An academic study of 2009 has shown that 78% of Turkish Internet cafe gamers have a PC at home.

This reliance on cyber-cafes have given them a lot of power in the value chain and has made it difficult to distribute new games in the territory, giving a big advantage to already existing distributors.  As there are few players and the market is becoming increasingly competitive, the industry will have to become more professional. This should make some issues like e-pin smuggling and VAT evading less acute in the coming years.

There’s also the problem of how to increase the ARPU and how to better monetize besides the system of e-pin (codes sold by the cyber-cafes) - as the gaming population is still in majority under 24, it means opening more accessible means, like pre-paid cards and SMS payments.

The industry is also trying to improve relationships with the government, as recently 6,000 websites have been temporarily banned by the Turkish Internet Bureau, including Farmville, LastFM and MySpace.

The very specific demographics of gamers in Turkey, younger and more male than elsewhere, also leave plenty of room for growth outside of this segment, so maybe we’ll see more games targeted to kids, girls and adults in the future.

Also, there are more and more Turkish development teams with interesting projects, so maybe we won’t have to wait long before we see a Turkish success story overcoming the domestic boundaries, a la Ankama or a Travian Games?

A new edition of the conference should happen in 2010, Diane recommends it for anyone wanting to get more info on this fast-evolving market!

EDIT : Here is also the link to the GFK research on the Turkish market that was presented at the event

1. Plan a twitter strategy for your game. (See what we did there?) Twitter is just one tool in the toolbox for interacting with players, and in order to ensure that the time you spend there brings maximum value, you need to have a plan. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. Think about what you want to achieve, and establish some specific goals: for example, do you want to acquire 100 followers, get >25 followers to participate in a contest, or maybe get 50 followers to take up a trial? If you’re just starting out, one of your initial goals should be to establish your game’s ’starting reputation’ — that is, what twitter users have been saying about your game.

The next step is to determine the mechanisms and timeline for measuring those goals. You don’t have to get too fancy here, either — all you really need for basic tracking is a spreadsheet, but you may find that you need additional help to trace certain types of activity back to your game or its website. Find out who can provide the relevant internal data for you, and rope them into your plans early. As your projects progress, think about how you’d like to present and share your results.

2. Design your approach thoughtfully. Your twitter output should support your goals without overstraining your resources. There’s no cookie-cutter model that will work for everyone, and it’s fine to change over time (in fact, it should!). One key consideration to bear in mind is consistency: regular activity brings the best results from twitter, but you won’t want to set precedents early on that are too difficult to maintain over the longer term. As you progress, effectiveness also becomes important: is your output a good match for your input? Are you responding to incoming information in the most appropriate way?

If you’re managing the primary twitter stream on behalf of your game (not a stream personal to you), it’s a good to identify and consider potential pitfalls with different approaches, like:

• Automatic content: Common where ‘we have to be on twitter’ without dedicated resources. The stream consists of RSS feed content from the official site and not much else. While this is a valid way of providing info to followers who prefer to receive your game news through twitter, your stream won’t be valuable to players who receive news directly from your site or from other sources. The potential to build further interest in your game and learn more about players is wasted.
• Diarizing: Often used in pre-launch phases and other times when the level of game news is low. Point-of-view commentary can be entertaining, but it’s also pretty narrow; most followers will expect a broader range of content from a game’s official stream.
• Dribbling: Tends to happen by default when there’s no Twitter strategy; otherwise it might indicate problems with workload balance. Activity in the stream is sporadic and unpredictable. Momentum and followers are lost during periods of inactivity.
• Flooding: Rare, and often event-based within lower-activity streams. Very frequent updates spam followers and provoke some of them to leave. (Fortunately, @replies are seen only by that person and mutual followers, so you can @reply to your heart’s content without spamming your entire followbase.)

3. Pick your tools and start tracking immediately. Once you’re tweeting in an official capacity, you’ll start to receive a range of input and enquiries. Keeping track of all that information can be a challenge, but it’s crucial to measuring progress against your goals. If you collect data from the very beginning, you have more time to practice working with small chunks of information; however, if your stream is already well-established be reassured that it’s never too late to start!

The tools you choose should be appropriate to your goals: you’ll certainly want the convenience of a dashboard application like TweetDeck or Seesmic, and there are plenty of monitoring options now, from Google Alerts to comprehensive platform tools like Radian6. There are lots of free tools available, so it’s quite possible to put together a suite to fit your needs without cost being an issue. We’ll go into this in more depth in a future post.

4. Evolve your activity in line with your resources. It’s easy to hold concurrent conversations with a small number of people; however, as your follower count increases your capacity for holding conversations doesn’t scale. If your goal is to build a large group of followers, it’s wise to think ahead about how you’ll need to change your approach to tweeting as your listener base grows. Bringing in others to help you becomes easier with tools such as cotweet, which allow several people to manage a single twitter account.

If you’re in a position to offer a variety of content via twitter, that’s the way to go. We like to see a mixed bag of information and goodies, including:

• emergency messaging (unscheduled outages and critical issues)
• game content updates
• events (in-game and irl)
• contests and competitions
• official and partner promotions
• photo and video links
• survey questions

5. Remember, you’re a follower too. Budget time to find and follow other streams that are interesting or useful to you and your players. Your follow pool is public and will be scrutinized, so choose wisely! Twitter has also just launched lists, which enable you to integrate up to 500 streams, so they’re useful for grouping together relevant tweets. We noticed that Jagex (@OfficialJagex), developer of RuneScape, uses twitter lists to collect fansites and clans associated with its games.

That’s all for now (whew) — we’ll follow up with more twitter tips and tactics later. Happy tweeting!