We are live blogging from the LA Games Conference. This session of the conference focuses on How to Win the Social Game – Harnessing the Power of Online Communities and Social Networks.

Panelists include:
Craig Alexander, Vice President, Product Development, Turbine
Ranah Edelin, Vice President, Electronic Arts
Mike Goslin, Vice President, Disney Online Studios
Scott VP Creative and User Experience, Gaia Online
Gabe Zichermann, CEO, rmbr.com
Moderator: Eric Goldberg, Managing Director, Crossover Technologies

Eric kicked things off by introducing the panel and asks them to describe their demographics.

Craig: We represent the oldest and most male demographic. Turbine has a number of medieval MMOGs such as Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings.

Ranah: Sims sold 100 million units last month. The Sims demographic is 60% female and predominantly under 30.

Mike: the primary focus is families and casual games. Ultimately, Disney would like to get the entire theme park audience.

Scott: Gaia demographic is teens with a skew towards girls.

Gabe: We are passionate about games and believe that every application can be made more fun using gaming techniques. The audience is everyone.

Eric: Asks about how social media relates to and promotes games.

Craig: We see social media changing the business a lot. Turbine has introduced a number of high barriers to getting started such as retail channels and big downloadables. By putting up a gaming portal with fee games people can be drawn into a relationship and ultimately up-sold to a subscription.

Ranah: The Sims 2 is the main platform for the core Sims game. There is an online community for Sims 2 which is focused on uploads and downloads of virtual items. It’s not monetized now. It’s treated as a bonus for the consumers. There is a lot of opportunity to grow that audience. EA wants to add to the experience in a controlled way and allow the audience to engage via other channels like YouTube etc.

Scott: Gaia started as a free site. It’s a platform for all these social aspects to be built. It’s designed for people to interact. Gaia has opportunities to monetize the audience by offering things that enhance the experience. Gaia is a hang out by nature with few rules, the opportunity to craft an identity and the forums with a million posts every day are the three social highlights that have made Gaia popular.

Mike: We want to cut down on the “griefers”, the guys who are obnoxious. We want to deliver a fun, friendly time in the space. It’s important that the feel comfortable in the space. As a result, there is a lot of effort to make the space safe.

Gabe: Facebook is the Napster of games. Not in the sense of piracy, but in the sense that socializing is the game. Socializing is the activity that people think is the most fun activity they can have. By stitching social game aspects on a community it’s turned Facebook into a tremendous success.

If you valued Pogo the same way you value Facebook it would be worth $4 billion. What’s going on: Other things are fun are not always games and by making socialization the game Facebook has created a lot of value.

Craig: Bringing lots of people together who have shared interest has great potential. We need more than just social, we need to give people experiences that they enjoy.

Gabe: Facebook is consuming an increasing amount of online time. Games are losing mindshare to Facebook.

Eric: What is the definition of a game to you?

Gabe: A game is whatever you think it is. As soon as you decide something is a game it can be a game. It’s the concept of funware. Game aspects can be built into any application that recognizes gaming interactions and fundamentals.

Scott: Game play is anything where we are challenged and have fun. You need some low barrier ways to participate. This needs to happen before you can get into deeper socializing.

Gabe: As soon as you put a leaderboard in place, it seems to cause a game like action. If you want to make something a game, a leaderboard is the place to start.

Gabe: Look at LinkedIn. There are people who have decided to make it a game by keeping track of how many connections they have. It’s the same dynamics of the hard core MMOG player

Eric: Is it possible that games will allow people to extract more money out of social media.

Ranah: It’s clear that Facebook monetization is low right now. The priority right now is to build an engaged audience. There are ways to monetize that audience once the audience is engaged. He describes an advertising campaign with Ford where they made downloadable virtual Fords that players could use in the game. It made Ford, Sims and the players happy.

Ranah: One word that hasn’t come up is communication. A communication platform like Facebook is really an important aspect of success. It’s needed to compliment the game techniques.

[tags]LA Games Conference 2008, social games[/tags]