The third era of gaming with Richard Garriott

ED. NOTE: I did this article in 2010 originally for work, but it never saw the light of day because there was no local angle. I have since updated it.

Richard Garriott, 25 March 2010, New York, NY. 

Richard Garriott is back in the game.

Garriott, a computer-game designer ("Ultima"), went from cyberspace to outer space as the sixth privately-funded space explorer. Now he's back on earth, but his head is still in (cyber)space.

For Garriott is one of the co-founders of Portalarium, a company making computer games for social networking sites such as Facebook.

"We're in the third era of gaming," Garriott said. "There's no installation, and you can play with your 'real' friends," those in your friends list.

What's new about Portalarium is its Web browser plug-in, the Portalarium Player, which allows games developed on a variety of engines and platforms - not just Adobe Flash or Oracle's Java - to run in social networks.

"We created the Portalarium Player to work with any engine developers want to use, licensed or proprietary," said Stephen Nichols, Portalarium's director of technology, in a prepared statement. "It will handle installation, patching and rendering all without suffering the performance hit you currently find on these networks."

In addition to running within social-networking sites, the Portalarium Player will also run on all major Internet browsers, on Macintosh computers, and on mobile devices such as the iPhone and Android phones.

Don't throw out your Xbox 360 or Wii or Playstation 3, but as of 2013 the personal computer was the system used most often (68 percent) for online gaming, reports the NPD Group, a leading consumer-market research-information provider.

That's the initial market for Portalarium - those used to play social-network games on their PCs - and that's how video games started, people playing on their Commodore 64 or Apple computers.

But even if one bought an Atari 2600 or ColecoVision gaming system, one was still by and large playing solo games - the first era of computer games, said Garriott.

Within the last 10 years online games made up 95 percent of all games, Garriott said. In this second era of gaming, one could play with other people, but one still had to by and large purchase the software to do so in a brick-and-mortar store.

Enter social networks and related computer games, such as the well-known Farmville, with its seemingly ubiquitous update messages on Facebook. Those types of games are not only big, but it's fast becoming big business.

"Those games are 10 times bigger than Worlds of Warcraft," Garriott said.

Garriott added that social-network games aren't being taking seriously because companies view their users as casual gamers. Yet, social-network gamers play an average of 40 hours a week, just like hardcore gamers, Garriott said.

Portalarium already has a poker game available, and will have a Farmville-type game, among other offerings. Those games are already popular, and those familiar with those games can easily learn how to play them, Garriott said.

"It's become clear that there are substantial opportunties for social game developers with virtual good revenue models, but the market is evolving rapidly," states Charles Hudson, vice president of business development for Serious Business and a  social-games developer on Facebook; and Justin Smith, the founder of Inside Network, which provides news and market research to Facebook and the social gaming ecosystem. The two co-authored a report, "Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2010."

And Facebook is a big part of that market. Not only has Facebook topped Google as the most-visited-site in the US on several occasions, but in August 2014 comScore, a market research firm, found that 20 percent of all time spent on smartphone and tablets is on Facebook.

However, it's not the only market. Publishing games on mobile platforms such as the iPhone or iPad will ensure Portalarium's future.

"People are switching slowly but surely to mobile platforms," said Joost van Dreunen, CEO of SuperData Research in April 2013. "This is something the industry is trying to figure out: Where their users are going to next."

Indeed, the NPD Group noted there was a 12 percent increase in online gaming in 2013 as compared to 2012, while PC gaming decreased 4 percent during the same time period.

"While many gamers prefer games in the physical format, the increased availability of digital content paired with a greater amount of connected devices has driven an increase in the number of consumers going online to access the content they want," said Liam Callahan, an NPD Group industry analyst.

Noted Garriott about online gaming's world of possibilities: "It's a new opportunity."