Casual Games Identity
September 25th, 2006, By Duncan Gough
There’s a huge need for single-sign-on services in web-apps. There are plenty of people who have tried to build them too – Microsoft with Passport, Six Apart with TypeKey, Google with Google Account, but none of them are interoperable and, to a large degree, it’s understandable. No single organisation wants to be a repository for your single-sign-on identity because it’ll be a massive focus of security and, although it might sounds like a great way to track and monitor web-habits, anyone taking on such a responsibility will have to publicly and noisily waive their intentions to do any kind of data-mining to get users signing up.
Casual Games, however, don’t have that security burden. There’s no danger of horder of script kiddies trying to bring down any casual games single-sign-on repository as it’ll be of little value and little embarassment. There’s no treasure trove in the way that a single-sign-on to your web mail, calendar and blog would reveal 99% of your digital identity.
A single sign on for Casual Games identity is an intriguing possibility. Just look at this article on gamers in Korea:
As dozens of online games debut every month, gamers have broader choices, and more and more people tend to simply get a taste of games as they flip television channels.
The ‘clip culture’ effect that spawned YouTube has spread to games, led every step of the way by the Item Model enabled online games that are free to play, but derive revenue from in-game purchases of virtual items. It makes sense that the kids who play these games will jump from one MMO to the next in a manner of gaming reminiscent of the 20 minute bursts seen in Casual Gamers. A single sign on, identity, avatar and stats for all of the games would be a smart way to direct more revenue from the growing trend of ‘freemium’ games. I can see it happening, and I can see it happening in Korea first.