EXTERNAL ANALYSIS: The case provides a partially completed Five Forces worksheet on the social network gaming industry. Your task is to interpret this sheet - that is, what do you conclude is the power of each force? (Strong, Weak, or Moderate) -

complete the statement for each force.

Threat of New Entrants is

Threat of Substitutes is

Bargaining Power of Buyers is

Bargaining Power of Suppliers is

Rivalry is

Womby: A Rising Leader of Online Social Games for Children

Womby is a relatively new player in the online, network-based social gaming industry. As the use of social media and mobile devices have both grown exponentially in recent years, the social gaming industry has also rapidly expanded. Social games on digital cloud platforms (browser-based and not requiring software download) allow players to enjoy a robust gaming experience almost anywhere, anytime. Gamers can also choose games and play styles that involve independent/solo play or that involve thousands of players, often scattered around the globe, interacting and co-creating game environments in real-time. With this highly interactive nature, many games exploit social networks of users as player commonly invite friends and family into their virtual gaming worlds thus creating a virtuous cycle of user population growth and user resilience to stay within the social game group.

As a game development and hosting company, Womby designs and launches online social games, hosts the games on an extensive cloud computing infrastructure under contract with AWS (Amazon Web Services), and continuously upgrades and enhances game play designs and experiences. The capacity from using AWS is important as it secure the processing bandwidth the allow for rapid increases in simultaneous users. To simplify operations, Womby develops only English-language games and they therefore only markets and distributes their games in English-speaking countries. Womby's legal department secures all the game titles and designs with necessary global trademarks and copyright protections. In fact, some aspects of Womby game designs are so unique they have been granted U.S. patents for specific in-game function coding.

The primary customers of the broad social gaming industry are older (40-50 years old) and mostly women who have above average disposable income. Womby, however, focuses on younger users aged 8-16. The broad industry has few regulations, except that there are increasing regulations related to online games and Internet content specifically targeting children. Even with these regulatory burdens, the founders of Womby understood that the use of digital devices and Internet media was rapidly increasing among toddlers and young children. In addition, new parents were increasingly fluent and comfortable with digital technologies, online games, and social media and were thus more apt to allow their young children to use online games and entertainment. To appeal to these target users (and their parents), Womby strives to offer games that: are free to download; easy to learn; involve many variations or levels to keep play 'fresh'; involve colorful and action-packed play environments; and often allow single or multi-player modes. Their games cover a wide variety of themes including building and operating farms, exploring mythical underwater civilizations, colonizing far-off planets, and completing word puzzles that enable towns or buildings to be developed. Womby is also developing a new series of exploration and adventure games designed to integrate challenges that develop math skills in pre-teens. To address parents' potential concerns, Womby's quality control team ensures the content avoids any biases or controversial content, aims for some level of educational quality, and offers a variety of parental control settings, too (for example, the setting of game-play time limits and denied access to certain games or game categories).

Keeping their IT capacity and processing abilities up to the industry standards is a major emphasis for Womby. If game play is slow or disrupted in any way at any time, use satisfaction falls dramatically. The AWS relationship is thus critical. More important, however, is the effective design, both graphics and functionality, of the games. Understanding children's mental capabilities and engagement with tasks, colors, characters, and environments is an important aspect of Womby's game development approach. Distinguishing the fun and quality of the firm's games, ensuring parents feel comfortable allowing game plan, and building enthusiasm about the unique games worlds and characters also requires a high level of marketing. To support the effectiveness of that marketing, Womby has a dedicated team that analyzes data on game play and users' experience to both target new users more effectively as well as to give input for game improvements and the development of new games. The firm distributes their games entirely through the Apple and Google (Android) app stores. Marketing focuses on reaching prospective users (and parents) through advertising and promotion on social media platforms and through encouraging players' social network sharing and friend introductions.

Womby's CEO, Pat Carrolo, has never been afraid of making bold moves to grow and develop the firm's scale. For example, most social gaming firms use some variation of a 'freemium' business model in which it is free to register and play games. Revenue is then generated primarily by players' in-game purchases of game-play currency or items. Typically, only about 3% of all social game players are these "payers", thus achieving massive scale in the user base is critical. Most game firms also generate revenue through selling advertising, which can take many forms on the main website or within individual game environments. In the beginning, Womby planned to follow this same business model formula. When they launched their first three games in 2018, however, Womby realized that its younger audience didn't have the access or resources to engage as 'payers' as easily and that parents were reluctant to support in-game transactions. Pat therefore shifted gears and discontinued free access for its games and implemented a small monthly subscription (currently $1.99) with significant discount levels for multi-month advance payments (up to a 50% reduction for a two-year commitment). In addition, game designs were revised to offer an increased number of in-game advertising opportunities for sponsor firms. Based on the revenues from the new subscription fee model, as well as the increase in advertising revenues, Womby invested in the development of new proprietary design software enabling more rapid creation and release of more unique games featuring innovative, high-detail game customization features never seen in the industry before. In this way, they believe they can deliver greater incremental value to users and deliver value to motivate parents to support longer, multi-month subscriptions. With higher quality games and a larger portfolio of games all under one subscription, not only did Womby see increased subscriptions but also more long-term commitments. This stability in revenues and customer base has been important for attracting both private investors and bank loans to fund the firm's rapid growth.

In the face of increasing competition, Womby has launched initiatives to increase the cross-game play among active users and to incentivize players to invite members of their social networks into the games. This effort primarily focuses on those users aged 12-18 that are more active (independently) in social media. For example, they offer free tee shirts and other small collectibles as rewards for players who achieve defined levels of play in multiple Womby games or to those players who achieve defined numbers of invited and activated new players. They have also experimented with using waivers of monthly fees as another incentive.

With the rapid growth on social online gaming, the competition for good talent has also increased almost to a crisis point. Womby not only needs quality programmers and graphic designers but they also must attract and retain those who also are skilled at developing games specifically geared toward children. The increasing shift to digital technologies coupled with no increase in skilled developers and designers, however, has decreased the availability of skilled designers. Hiring and retaining quality design staff has thus been a challenge. To build and maintain a leading position in design and graphical innovations, Womby has instituted a stock-option incentive programs for most design and development engineers. With plans to go public in the next few years, such options have a great deal of value. Through the pandemic, the company converted almost entirely to a 'work-from-home' culture supported by a distributed IT infrastructure, and because workers productivity remained high and many preferred working from home, the company has chosen to transition almost all relevant staff to 'remote work' status. In these ways they aim to attract, motivate, and retain the best and brightest digital gaming design professionals.

FIVE FORCES INDICATOR SHEET Yes No THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS ants compete effectively without having to build scale? X W N shown a low level of loyalty to existing producers? X of entering and competing relatively low? X 4 Can new entrants easily get distribution and access to buyers? X 5 Are legal and regulatory barriers minimal or nonexistent? X ustry seem to be growing and attractive to new entrants? X THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES 7 Are substitutes readily available and affordable? X 8 Do substitutes offer a similar or superior cost/benefit solution? X 9 Can buyers easily switch to and learn to use substitutes? X 10 Have buyers shown a propensity to switch to substitutes? X BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS 11 Can buyers easily switch between producers? 12 Are there only a few large buyers? X 13 Is the demand weak such that it is a "buyer's market'? EC 14 Could buyers easily produce the goods themselves? X 15 Are purchases relatively large, infrequent, and important? 16 Are producers' goods pretty much the same (i.e. commodity-like)? X BARGAINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS 17 Are most suppliers' goods unique and differentiated? 18 Is it difficult or costly for producers to switch suppliers? 19 Are there a limited number of suppliers or is supply limited? X 20 Does the supply account for a major portion of producer costs? X 21 Would it be quite difficult for producers to make the goods themselves? X RIVALRY AMONG PRODUCERS 22 Are there a limited number of producers of about the same size? 23 Is customer demand declining or moving away from producers? 24 buyers to switch between producers? X 25 shown a low level of loyalty to existing producers? 26 Is it difficult for producers to adjust production if demand changes? X 27 Are producers' goods pretty much the same (L.e. commodity-like)