Checking out Gree
Today I decided to explore Gree. My interest comes from several angles:
1) I keep hearing about how successful Gree is and about its new iOS Platform
2) I know I have potential clients who will want to evaluate Gree, and
3) Because I have an iOS game in development (of course I do!) and could use a cost effective user acquisition route
So for now, just high level.
What is Gree?
Gree is a Japanese mobile social company founded in 2004. According to Wikipedia, “The company name GREE comes from a hypothesis, Six De”gree”s of Separation postulated by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1967.” Gree is the largest social network in Japan and its primary focus is mobile games with virtual item economies. Overall, it offers many other social network services including photos, communities, diaries (which I assume are like posts). In Japan, Gree serves the purpose of both a social network like Facebook, and a social games provider, like Zynga for the mobile market. Gree’s is a public company on the Tokyo exchange with a market cap around $3.7 Billion US (290.6 B Yen) as of 7/31/2012.
Gree has been aggressively expanding into the US market over the last two years by acquiring mobile games social network and games services company Open Feint in Spring 2011, and game developer Funzio (Crime City, Modern War, Kingdom Age) in May of 2012. Prior to these acquisitions, Gree claimed credit for about 25 million users in its home market. In the press coverage surrounding the Open Feint acquisition, Gree CEO Naoki Aoyagi labeled the combined business as “the strongest global ecosystem of gaming networks ” with a “combined 100 million users.”
Here is a brief IGN video about Gree from the floor of E3:
Is discovery a user problem?
Clearly Gree is successful in the Japanese mobile market and has purchased significant audience, game IP, and revenue in Funzio and Open Feint in the West. Gree’s global expansion plans however, clearly require success on the iOS platform with their mobile social platform. In a Gamezebo interview from Casual Connect, Gree’s SVP of Product, Ethan Fassett argued that iOS has less of a discovery problem (i.e. – players unsatisfied with the current mechanisms for finding new games on their devices) and more a promotional problem (i.e. developers/publishers concerned with how their game can be noticed/found). In his words, “for the vast majority of the population, my friends, and people I know, they’re not freaking out about what game to play next. It’s not a search problem, because very few gamers are concerned with search.” In other words, it is more true that Games are trying to find Gamers vs. the opposite.
I would agree with that statement somewhat. From Gree’s perspective, certainly if you are trying to sign up developers/publishers to a new platform whose major benefit is promotion — this worldview is helpful. On balance however, I think we have both a discovery and a promotional problem. I think many gamers would like to find new games through tools more sophisticated than iOS rankings and thin layer of editorial — I also think players would like more objective information on games before committing to a download.
I will be checking into Gree personally as a small (individual) developer with an iOS game looking for daylight and reporting back my experience in the fall.