Spil Games On Social Games For Local Euro Social Nets

Dutch casual games developer Spil Games has spent the last year entering the social game market. Spil Games has published only four small games for Facebook, but the Dutch developer’s real emphasis is on reaching the European market. That means publishing games on smaller, local social networks like Hyves in the Netherlands and VZ Netwerken in Germany. Spil Games employs 300 employees worldwide, across studios located in the Netherlands, Shanghai, and Nuremberg. Spil Games also maintains sales offices in London and Hamburg.

To date, most of Spil Games’s revenue has been ad-driven, though the company is working to change that. By the end of 2011, Spil Games Corporate Communications Officer Gregory Kukolj thinks that “end user monetization” — microtransactions — will make up a much larger portion of the company’s revenue. Spil Games began building a true social layer into its platform in 2009, then gained over 11 million new registered users since the social games began rolling out in April 2010.

Spil Games offers three targeted social and casual gaming platforms of its own, each one available in over 19 languages and designed to appeal to specific demographics like teens (Agame) , girls (GirlsgoGames), and families (Gamesgames). Spil Games many of its social games across all three platforms in addition to social networks. Across all platforms, Spil Games reaches over 130 million unique visitors each month. Spil Games says its platforms rank in the top 60 most-visited Websites in the world, according to ComScore.

The most popular games are similar to what’s popular on Facebook, including a farming game called Happy Harvest and a virtual pet game called Pet Party. Spil Games also reaches out to third party developers, offering to help them tap into Spil’s APIs. Spil Games shares microtransaction revenue with third-party social developers, though Kukolj couldn’t disclose the percentages involved. Third-party developers creating casual game content monetize through a different arrangement that involves licensing agreements.

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