Social networking raises stakes of the game business for Big Fish Games
By offering its My Game Space social networking site as a way for customers to interact with other online gamers and earn cash rewards, e-retailer Big Fish Games has attracted more than a half million new customers since September, Big Fish says.
Big Fish Games, No. 395 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, serves more than 500,000 customers daily at BigFishGames.com, where it offers more than 400 game titles. In the first five months since the launch of MyGameSpace.com, which was recently re-branded from the original MyBigFishGames.com, 220,000 Big Fish Games customers have used the social networking site and referred more than 600,000 new customers to Big Fish, the retailer says.
My Game Space helped to boost Big Fish Games’ 2006 revenue by 180% over 2005, following a 120% increase in 2005 over 2004, a spokeswoman says.
“Our social networking service is a first for the casual games industry and the response has frankly stunned us,” says founder and CEO Paul Thelen. “We’ve always known that our customers are our biggest advocates and we’re thrilled that the My Game Space service has successfully given them the tools to voice their opinions in what has historically been a solitary experience in a largely silent industry.”
My Game Space lets customers write and post online reviews of games, e-mail lists of their favorite games to friends directly from MyGameSpace.com, engage in online chat sessions with friends while playing games, and earn cash rewards for referring Big Fish Games to friends who purchase a game. Customers earn 25% of the purchase price (about $20 per game downloaded to a PC, or less if bought in volume) whenever a referral to a friend results in a sale. The original referring customer earns additional rewards if his or her friends go on to refer Big Fish to other friends who purchase games from Big Fish. The referral rewards apply to sales of downloaded games as well as to the subscription services Big Fish offers for games played over the Internet.
Big Fish mails a check to customers once their rewards total reaches $20.
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