The Player Number Growth in Social Browser Games

The steeply growing amount of players of social games on Facebook motivate to analyze the influencing factor, which lead to these successes. This research delivers a model, which qualitatively describes the causes and effects for this developme nt and shows how to simulate a development prognosis. The model uses the methods of System Dynamics and considers the influence of the game design, advertising and supporting processes toward s motivation and satisfaction of players. The spreading features of popular browser games focus on viral marketing within Facebook. Players for example report their successes via pin board en try to their friends. Likewise especially rare item s are distributed, if players react to pin board entr ies of their friends. Lastly the donation of in-gam e items helps the players to motivate their friends t o take part in the game. With the potentially high number of players social networks are perfect for t he verification respectively falsification of compl ex dynamic models. Therefore a prototype of an ideal g ame is in development to be integrated into Facebook and to deliver further knowledge.