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Google Gaming and Leveling Up Your Life
Looks like Google is jumping hard into the gaming fray, and they apparently covertly invested $100+ million in Zynga, a social gaming company:
The investment was made by Google itself, not Google Ventures, say our sources, and it’s a highly strategic deal. Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see PayPal being replaced with Google Checkout as the primary payment option. Zynga is supposedly PayPal’s biggest single customer, and Google is always looking for ways to make Google Checkout relevant.
The Google move into gaming shouldn’t really surprise anyone, especially since Apple has already entrenched itself as a key player, but I’m not sure how many tech strategists understand why gaming is so huge.
Jesse Schell’s presentation is a good start in understanding the role gaming is now playing within social networks.
Look for gaming to become even more ubiquitous than it already is today, with a growing divide between casual gamers (the great majority) playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars and “serious” gamers (the committed minority) willing to invest hundreds of hours on an online role playing game like World of Warcraft.
Update: Speak of the devil, looks like there is a must-have iPhone app coming out that will help turn your life into a game — Epic Win. So, there we have it, what was once your mundane and tedious To-Do List now becomes your opportunity for adventure and treasure.
