Social and analytics research agency Kontagent and the organisers of the annual EiG conferences, Clarion Gaming, have partnered in a new study of the social gaming phenomenon and its convergence with the online gambling industry.
It’s a timely exercise, given the massive publicity the trend has been receiving as growing numbers of companies move into the field.
The results of the research will be presented at the next EiG conference, scheduled for 16 to 18 October in Barcelona.
The rise of social casino-style gaming, which has surpassed farm games on Facebook and has been named the hottest gaming category of 2012, is being examined closely by the gambling sector and has already led to high-profile acquisitions of Doubledown by IGT, Playtika by Caesars and, more recently, Orneon by Bwin.party digital entertainment .
“Kontagent, with its expertise in the social gaming space and, in particular, with its insights into the social player analytics, is a perfect partner to help us provide a more in-depth and detailed analysis of how the two sectors collide from the players’ perspective,” says Ewa Bakun, Head of Content for EiG.
“Social casino gaming is a major category for us–our customers are using our analytics platform and services to understand what appeals to their players so they can build more lucrative games,” says Jeff Tseng, Kontagent CEO and Co-Founder.
“There is increasing demand for our services from both online and land-based casino operators, as well as social and mobile game developers who are interested in building casino-style games. [This project] will give a deeper understanding of the casino landscape to the entire industry.”
To start off the project, the two companies have launched a survey designed to collect views, expressed by both social game developers and gambling operators, on the convergence between the two sectors. The survey is available at: http://ktgt.co/social-casino-survey.