Month: March 2022

As of April 2021, the global gaming value exceeded $300 Billion. While a substantial chunk of it is due to the rapid adoption in the recent pandemic and the availability of a plethora of mobile games, gaming is no more a child’s play. A sustainable, long-term monetization strategy can’t just be an afterthought but an essential building block for gaming, media, and entertainment businesses.

It’s 2022, and we are entering a new dimension with bleeding-edge innovations across industry verticals. The line between gaming, the media and entertainment is getting thinner by the day. Seamlessly integrated experiences may have sounded fancy a couple of years back, but now it’s a bare essential. 

We’re about to enter the next generation of seamless connected-tech experiences, thanks to Metaverse. It’s time for content-based enterprises, from small indie studios to large AAA studios and OTT platforms, to reconsider their monetization strategy.

The Current State of Monetization 

Monetization in games, media, and entertainment has evolved over the decades.

Games were sold as finished products in cartridges and then on physical discs. They used to be one-and-done products for which the customer got the most for their spend. 

With the shift towards digital game stores like Steam, Epic, GOG, and others, the monetization landscape saw a transformational shift.

For once, studios and publishers saved a lot of money since they didn’t have to print, package, and transport the physical game copies. They could also rely on fixing game bugs and patching them via Over-The-Air updates post-release, and then there’s Downloadable Content.

All these had a budget constraint and limited the possibilities for smaller players.

However, the paradigm shift in monetization came with mobile games. They brought in a shock and awe effect by leveraging the freemium models and using in-app purchases, in-game ads, and paid games to bypass the ads and paywalls compared to free games.

In media and entertainment, the advent of streaming platforms saw a similar dynamic, and the typical commercials saw a shift. Traditional media houses were left behind with a significant gap as OTTs ruled the roost.

But now, we are about to witness another shift that will affect the current monetization strategies of the gaming, media, and entertainment industries.

The New Era of The Internet is Changing Everything

We have too many digital game stores and streaming platforms, and the users are starting to feel the pinch. Subscription fatigue is starting to set in, making monetization challenging for businesses.

On top of that, we’re on the verge of a new version of the internet, one where entertainment will be an intertwined concept tag-teamed with gaming. Metaverse will be at the helm, and digital transactions and monetization methods will witness a rapid transformation. Saurabh Tandon, President & Board Member at Affine, recently shared his thoughts on this.

We now have blockchains in the mix, which can change the whole economy of monetization for both creators and businesses. Like it or not, the metaverse might very well become a crucial player in the world economy.

Physical and Virtual Lives will Bridge for a Unified Experience

XR (Extended Reality), an amalgamation of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and mixed reality technologies, will pave the way for our future entertainment content requirements.

So, what does this mean for businesses? Big Tech giants rule with an iron fist, and content moderation is a grey area in the current climate.

“With the next generation of the internet, we are looking at decentralization and a leap of technology,” said Christopher Lafayette, Founder and CEO at Gatherverse, when he recently spoke at a virtual summit.

Advertising has already changed since its inception, and today it’s focused on content creators and consumers.

With content creators and influencers, advertising has taken center stage and helps ads find takers among the form of consumers with their large subscriber base.

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are now trending and are set to be a digital form of payment, letting users buy and trade digital assets. With users creating communities for such “digital marketplace,” the playing field for monetization is in dire need of an update and can’t rely on traditional practices.

What is the Future of Monetization?

The future of monetization with web 3.0 may be questionable, but the majority of web3.0’s focus is on decentralization. User is at the core; and will be the driving force, be it content, ads, or monetization. Adaption is the need of the hour for businesses.

Sure, the traditional payment methods will remain. But businesses have to acknowledge the fact that blockchain will be thrown into the mix and change the dynamic of the digital economy. Rafael Brown, CEO & Co-Founder at Symbol Zero, who was a speaker in a recent tech symposium, said, “PC and Mobile gaming have established a monetization economy. As technology changes with time, we need to revisit our assumptions. The need of the hour for blockchain technology is to create sustainable monetization.”

The tech summit brought together more than 20 world leaders from Gaming, Media & Entertainment to participate and unravel the direction we as humans powered by tech are headed with web 3.0. With discussions on monetization, metaverse, subscription fatigue, OTT platforms, and many more interesting topics, the virtual event was a hit around the globe. 

Watch the enticing session recording here. 

Affine combines the hyper-convergence of AI, data engineering & cloud with deep industry knowledge in manufacturing, gaming, CPG, and technology. Affine demonstrates thought leadership in all relevant knowledge vectors by investing in research through its highly acknowledged centers of excellence and strong academic relationships with reputable institutions.  

Reach out to us to put a robust and sustainable monetization strategy in place for your business!

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Indie games were once for a niche crowd that enjoyed the retro-styled game design and mission progression. Low-key passionate developers who made the quality-of-life mods for popular games, or some brave heart developer who would try to cook up a game with an archaic code and a sub-par computer, made indie games back then. Even if someone managed to make an indie game with the minimum resources, there would be no buzz around the game since no major studio entertained such games.

Today, the Indie game scene is thriving and mainstream, with a sizeable audience. A lot has evolved to an extent that the term “Indie games” has been redefined.

Games like Hollow Knight, Terraria, and Among Us weren’t just chartbusters; they made the Indie space a mainstream one with a solid audience and substantial foothold in the market. What further echoes the success of Indie games is the fact that their development requires a significantly lower budget compared to mainstream AAA, RPG, and Sports games. Their pricing is competitive, aimed at garnering more takers and relying on mass sales volumes. Raking high revenue with a low budget is a guaranteed blueprint for maximizing ROI. But with a limited budget, Indie developers have a set of daunting challenges developing and releasing games in the long run.

The Rise of Indie Games

Many factors have contributed to the rise of Indie games.

The unsung hero here is the digital download platforms powered by cloud backend that make game downloads easier and more economical while helping indie games foray into the average gamer’s library.

Unlike large studios, Indie developers fell short of the budget to churn out physical copies in copious amounts, restricting the reach and exposure of their games no matter how good.

With Steam, GOG, EPIC, and other digital storefronts backed by cloud infrastructure and data centers worldwide for local downloads, it is just a matter of uploading their games to the cloud and letting gamers across the world download them.

Digital platforms became mainstream, and indie developers didn’t have to worry about manufacturing expenses owing to making physical game copies eating into their profits.

Indie Marketing – A Challenge That Cloud Can Address

We see a regular churning out of tons of indie games. The segment is one of the most competitive. For successful indie titles like Celeste and Minecraft, hundreds of games go unnoticed.

Multiple factors are at play here.

Marketing is one key aspect where Indie studios lack the resources to reach a global audience. Like with large studios, volume-based marketing may be impossible for small studios, but effective data-based marketing is not only possible but imperative.

Efficient targeting is the lifeline of successful marketing. Bombarding social media platforms with ads without a proper marketing plan will not result in user acquisition or brand engagement. You must understand your target base before going all out on digital marketing.

Marketing and user acquisition in this day and age is an omnichannel affair. Video games have a global audience, and studios cannot afford to overlook this factor.

Improving the reach of games requires a well-crafted marketing plan that covers all grounds.

Analytics-based marketing is the core to ascertaining the audience base for game studios. The keyword here is data-collecting data at every avenue, and online touchpoints are vital to understanding customer behavior and patterns.

But it is also the first step toward the logical marvel of data-powered analytics

Data Collection, Analytics, and ROI (Return on Investment)

With the advent of digital marketing, the term “marketing” is thrown around like confetti, and small, less experienced businesses like indie game studios find it challenging as much is lost in translation.

Indie studios must focus on collecting vital data like game metrics to understand their players’ behavior and data from social media platforms that can help them tune their marketing campaigns for maximum efficiency.

Combining the accrued data with cloud analytics helps studios with ROI-based marketing, giving them a real-time view of what’s going on with their marketing activities instead of a “what went wrong?” meeting.

This way, real-time tweaks to the digital marketing efforts are made possible, and studios can focus on targeting prospective leads on particular social platforms rather than unnecessarily advertising on every platform and user.

Since indie studios have a limited marketing budget, effective ROI-based marketing is the ideal balance to help achieve brand recognition and user acquisition.

Game Analytics – A Must-have Solution for Indie Game Studios

We saw the advantages of cloud-based analytics solutions for marketing. Now, let us look at game analytics that can help indie studios tweak their games and release updates and patches that result in increased player engagement and game lifetime overall.

Game metrics can help studios offer users a dynamic gameplay experience.

Player fatigue, monotonous gameplay, and challenging levels play spoilsport in the long run and affect the gameplay duration of players. DLC and additional content can help here, but it involves resources like budget, development, and workforce.

With game analytics, studios can read real-time game metrics, analyze them, and improve gameplay so that players will put more hours into the game. All this comes without worrying about the additional development cost and human resources for DLC.

There are plug-n-play game analytics solutions that overcome the infrastructural challenges and initial setup costs. Even the maintenance is done on the service provider’s end so that studios can focus on improving the player gameplay experience, the true intent of these solutions rather than logistics.

Indie studios can avail such game analytics solutions on a Netflix-like subscription model from pioneers in the analytics industry, with impressive track records and pedigree working with industry giants.

Cloud Solutions for Indie Game Studios are Not Only Imminent, but Imperative

Even the Silicon Valley giants have acknowledged that the cloud is paving the way for gaming and have introduced multiple cloud-based gaming services.

In 2020, Google introduced a managed service program called Game Servers. Unlike Stadia, Game Servers isn’t a game streaming service but a backend cloud server infrastructure that helps game developers build and scale backend servers for their game titles. So, unlike the common misconception that the cloud in gaming only means streaming, the cloud also plays a vital role in acting as a backend infrastructure for all types of games.

With a considerable stake in gaming and its recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has revealed its new product, ID@Azure, which lets indie game developers develop their games from scratch for the cloud platform.

Large studios have already made this transition and are reaping its benefits, not only in terms of cost but also in the elimination of managing the backend infrastructure. Why spend time and resources on it, when many service providers like AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure, Google and others can take care of it while developers adapt to the subscription cost model and focus only on making quality games?

A German indie mobile game studio, Coldfire games, eliminated its backend management efforts due to adopting an efficient cloud infrastructure. It is the only time before other indie developers follow suit and adopt cloud infrastructure as a backend to their games.

Then we have the cloud gaming phenomenon, which is set to gain significant traction over the next few years, with players like Netflix getting into gaming and giants like Google and Nvidia having services in place. Just like streaming became mainstream, cloud gaming will set a benchmark in mainstream gaming, and developers need to adapt to this, providing games at a subscription model.

From marketing to game analytics and backend infrastructure, cloud solutions are highly beneficial to game studios, particularly Indie developers who don’t necessarily come equipped with the resources, team, and technical know-how for game marketing and analytics. But it can be challenging to choose the right ally for your game analytics requirements. Affine is a pioneer player in the AI analytics arena, working with large and indie gaming organizations to synthesize game analytics into efficient and effective business outcomes

.Get game analytics for your business

The passion for developing exceptional games is all an indie studio needs, for cloud-based solutions are plenty with simple implementation techniques and measurable ROI-based results that will assist them in every step.

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Gaming is one of the fastest evolving industries, with considerable technological advancements. We’ve come from retro arcade games to LAN parties and playing portable smart gadgets on the go.

In terms of graphics, we saw the evolution from pixel art to 2d, and then 3d models. While PC has always been able to do justice to the visually exquisite-looking titles, current-generation consoles have changed the dynamics of the graphics race. Ultra-realistic graphics with reflective surfaces and interactive environments give users an immersive gaming experience. All this before even dipping toes into Virtual Reality, which is yet to hit mainstream status.

The pandemic witnessed a sudden spike in the interest in gaming. People flocked to play games, which served as an interactive pastime compared to streaming shows and movies. The aftermath? The gaming industry raked in revenue of $156 billion as of September 2021, and the global video game market is forecasted to cross $200 billion as of 2023!

Cloud is the Backbone of the ‘Always Online’ Culture

The lack of proper infrastructure in the previous generation limited gaming options to local play, offline games, and LAN parties at best.

Massively Multiplayer Online games were a pipe dream back then. But with the turn of the millennium, things changed. 

Small data centers became multiple server farms with global CDN (Content Delivery Network) for maximum scalability.

Multiplayer games have gained significant traction over the years and are now a norm. Today we have a plethora of multiplayer online titles, with single-player games providing multiplayer options for players who want to explore beyond the original storyline.

Titles like Rainbow Six Siege made bank for Ubisoft with lifetime sales of over 1.1 billion as of 2021, with a player base of 70 million as of 2021.

The cloud infrastructure in place for a feat like this speaks for itself, which would have been impossible a decade back, simply owing to the lack of tech infrastructure.

Single-player games significantly depend on the cloud infrastructure thanks to the paradigm shift from DVDs to digital game stores like Steam, Epic Games, and GOG. Pre-loading games, cloud saves, day one updates, and DLCs are standard practices in the gaming industry now. The days of waiting in long lines for days before the next GTA release is a thumbnail in history. With millions of players downloading at a time across the globe, sustainable cloud infrastructure is at the heart of gaming infrastructure.

Gaming on Demand will be a Reckoning Force in the Future of Gaming

Gaming on-demand or gaming as a service is growing by the day and will shape the path of gaming as it did with content consumption via streaming. Steam link, Nvidia GameStream PS4 RemotePlay and many such services offer gaming to the end-user on reasonably fast internet. Gaming hardware bundled with free games and discounts still comes with the invisible baggage of limitations owing to short cycle yearly tech upgrades in the gaming industry, nullifying the economy factor in gaming. 

Developing games for multiple platforms is also an arduous, time-consuming task for game developers, which results in inconsistent gameplay experiences for the player. We’ve seen releases like Watchdogs, CyberPunk2077 looking graphically inferior in their release versions compared to the announcement versions. While many factors are at play here, the challenge to develop games for a previous generation platform alongside the next generation of consoles with high-end hardware causes compatibility issues in the game build and adds to the development cycle. Gamers also have to wait a long time since the release dates keep getting pushed to accommodate fixes to the build.

The high upfront cost for purchase and scarcity of vital hardware components like storage, RAM, and Graphic Cards create an opportunist and hobbyist culture in gaming. Thankfully, the advent of Gaming on-demand will address the issue. While it may take some time for global adoption, the end result not only provides every gamer the opportunity to high-speed gaming, game makers get access to the end-users without the hindrance or hardware barrier.

Cloud Gaming will be the Netflix of Games

While Netflix is testing waters and entering the gaming domain with mobile games, cloud gaming is an underlying phenomenon that will transform the industry and cement its position as the next chapter in gaming.

Stadia may have fallen short of wowing the gaming community, but there are perils to being an early adopter. For one, the number of mobile gamers in recent years has seen an alarming spike thanks to PvP games like PUBG and Fortnite captivating the masses and converting non-gamers into serious, habitual gamers.

This opens the doors for cross-platform play, which is currently a pipe dream with rare working examples, but all this will change with the cloud technology at the center stage.

With cloud gaming at the helm, the industry envisions a platform-agnostic gaming ecosystem powered by high-speed internet, primarily relying on robust cloud infrastructure for inclusive, sustainable and affordable gaming.

Currently, there is a global hardware draught from the pandemic’s disruption of manufacturing & supply chain, in addition to scalpers grabbing available stocks. This is a testament to how the dependency on hardware for gaming has reached a saturation point.

By eliminating the storage and graphical requirements that are a roadblock for many aspiring gamers, cloud gaming (gaming on demand) brings the biggest USP to the table for gamers, developers and studios. Gamers don’t have to break their bank going on a hardware shopping spree for next-gen graphics or order terabytes of high-performance Solid-State Drives for games that cross the 100GB mark. 

Developers don’t have to fret over the game’s performance fidelity across multiple platforms or downgrade the graphics so that players can achieve decent frame rates across different types of devices. There’ll also be a significant reduction in the development period, which could help release games as per the dates advertised!

Studios can increase their target audience from hardcore gamers to even new players since the hardware barrier is no longer an issue. A feasible subscription gaming model will onboard a significant number of new gamers, and studios are looking at a rise in their user base with an imminent increase in ROI and a sustainable business model.

Cloud gaming emphasizes safety which is vital in online gaming. Player information leaking on the internet is nothing new, and even the top-of-the-crop studios like Bethesda have had this misfortune with Fallout 76. Cloud-based gaming models have bulletproof online security, which reduces the chances of player databases getting breached by external attacks and information leaks across the web.

Conclusion

Spending for modern hardware every 2-3 years at inflated astronomical prices in the current economy is not practical for players. Not to mention the pile-up of hardware junk which is not sustainable for a green future. A subscription model, in the long run, is a better alternative.

For businesses, the cost advantage is obvious. Setting up new infrastructure that requires frequent upgrades is a messy and costly affair that entails enormous resource consumption. The big cloud players offer these services for a fraction of the cost with unlimited scalability options and an ‘only pay for what you use’ model. 

Cloud is not all hype. We’ve seen its role in streaming, and the technology has shaped up the OTT platforms today, providing access to quality content within the press of a button to users across the globe. The question is how long until it becomes mainstream in the gaming space. Sure, hardware-based gaming will not go extinct. But a shift towards cloud gaming is imminent. 

Cloud and gaming go hand in hand. If the present is anything to go by, the dependency on cloud is only going to go up with time. 

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