The Confluence of Social and Gaming
AUGUST 26th, 2020
The confluence of social and gaming is, I think, one of the most interesting trends happening in tech today. I've always been fascinated with the way mainstream tech traces its roots to video games. The first microprocessors in American households were in game consoles. The first apps that supported concurrent-users were LAN based video games. The first time a large population of users held a handheld computer that was more than a calculator, its was a gaming device. The list goes on, but the common theme is that big things have small beginnings and oftentimes they're seen as toys at their outset.
A similar pattern holds relative to the progression of MMOs into next gen social netoworks. In the late 90s / early 00's we saw the emergence of the first online MMOs- WoW, EVE Online, Second Life, Runescape, etc. These games represented the first time you could have multiple users around the world playing together on dedicated servers. DOOM and John Carmack may have laid the foundations for online multiplayer games, but it was the MMOs that made online multiplayer games social. Amazingly, those early MMOs that emphasized social features (building guilds, etc.) over gameplay features (quests, campaigns, etc.) still count their users in the millions today, 20-30 years later. So, even then there was a glimpse of what was to come.
In the 2010's we witnessed the emergence of a new generation of online MMOs in the form of games like Minecraft and Roblox. These new entratnts were even less focused on gameplay, quests, etc. and more focused on user creativity, socializing and community building. The popularity of this new breed of MMOs was driven by a new generation of young users (GenZ and late Millennials). I like to think of these apps as metaverse apps with training wheels. They recogized that the social aspects of early MMOs gave them staying power and leaned into those features even further. Their work added another rung to the ladder leading to today’s social gaming platforms and priming a new generation of users to expect more out of games and, more importantly, expect more out of social netoworks.
Which brings us to the present. We are witnessing, in real-time, kids that grew up playing Roblox and Minecraft shift to more grown-up takes on social gaming platforms. Traditional social apps don't meet the needs of these users, which can be see in platform demographic user data and generational customer satisfaction scores of traditional social platforms. These users are flocking to networks like Fotnite and VRChat, and also attending virtual events in platforms like WaveVR.
All of this begs the question, ‘where are we going?’ To answer that, I think it's helpful to use Clay Christensen's "disruptive technology" theory. The theory basically states that technologies tend to get better faster than users' needs increase. Technologies are often dismissed as toys when they first launch, because they undershoot the needs of early majority users along the tech adoption curve. But, those dismissing tech as toys often fail to anticipate how rapidly those toys will evolve due to the evolution of the “toy's” underlying and adjacent tech stack. So, networks like VRChat and Fortnite are widely considered games today, but technologies like chip and GPU processing speeds, higher fidelity game engines, smaller/lighter and better performing VR headsets, and network technology enabling live events with millions of virtual users is beginning to outpace the needs of gamers and starting to appeal to early majority users along the technology adoption curve.
It is fascinating to watch both the long arc of social gaming technology, from early MMOs to mass market consumer social tech playing out, as well as the implications of Christensen’s disruptive technology theory playing out in the here and now. I believe the foundations have been laid, and the progression to digital third-place applications is unstoppable. Combine this momentum with the fact that the users of these apps are the actual customers, not a product delivered to advertisers- meaning, monetization is largely driven by conscious user engagement with a core platform feature, rather than being driven by passive engagement with ads that are tertiary to why users are on the platform in the first place- and I believe social gaming has a very exciting 5-10 years ahead of it.
