Fast growing social games

What types of social games are hot right now? When you hear a word "social games", I am pretty sure you think of a game like "farmville" made by Zynga. However, social games that are growing fast right now are a lot different from what social games that you would think of. They are so called "Social Games On Smartphones"!

Recently, social games on smartphones are developed and serviced in several different countries and main source of those games are located in Japan. Companies such as GREE, Mobage, or DeNA grew so fast since smartphones came out. These companies are dedicated to design social games on smartphones and webs. Their games are basically very similar to one another but designed to have different interface and graphics. They usually collaborate with the entertainment source such as comics, console games, sports, etc. Their strategies to sell their games are interesting. The social games are free to play but when you actually play their games, you can pay to purchase in-game contents, which makes the players better off than the other players. The game is basically designed to compete with other players, so their market strategy is to sell in-game contents that will differentiate from other player. There are social game players who spend about $100-2000 per week or even per day for the type of social games. That is a lot for a person to spend on a game.

One thing about social game apps is that they are really easy to play. If you carry a smartphone,  you can play pretty much anywhere anytime. Social game apps on smartphones are slowly coming into the app markets and taking customers in. I thought this business model is pretty interesting, therefore I would write about it.

Thanks.