Activision Blizzard is joining the likes of Gree and DeNA by creating its own mobile social gaming platform, Activate, which will be used in all of the publisher's mobile titles starting next month.
The first games to integrate Activate will be two upcoming iOS editions of the company's phenomenally popular Skylanders franchise, Skylanders: Lost Islands and Skylanders: Battlegrounds. It intends to drop Activate into its previously released games and all titles going forward, according to Inside Mobile Apps.
It's unclear yet whether Activision will allow releases it's not publishing to use Activate, but it would be competing against existing platforms like Gree's self-titled network, DeNA's Mobage, and even Apple's Game Center if it decided to take that route.
And Activision isn't the only major console game publisher to create a mobile social network -- Electronic Arts already offers its Origin platform in the mobile games it's published, and has already picked up over 9 million registered mobile users. Ubisoft also has an Origin-like platform, though it's PC-only so far.
The Activate platform enables developers to offer friends lists, leaderboards, achievements, invites, and cloud storage features so players can access their saved progress on multiple devices. It will allow people to login with their Facebook accounts, and users will need to register for an account in order to use the online modes in Activate-supported games.
Be it large or small enterprises, revolving a business around a community rather than only a product is a big win for all. With user to user interaction at the core you are on your merry way to 'infinite content'/evergreen à la Facebook or EVE Online. With such wealth of strong IP's, Activision is in a great position to build a engaging SNS. As publishers are sidestepping the old platform providers what I would like to see is less focus on monetizing and retention loops (mind you, they are important) and more genuine efforts to build creative communities, like Lego Cuusoo, MineCraft, Autodesk's instructables and Linden Lab's Patterns and Creatorverse. Between Activision/Blizzard's WOW and Diablo 3's auction house, UbiSoft/Nadeo's Mania-series to EA's Create and Sims/SimCity I'd say they all have what it takes. Competition is always good. I'm very happy to see Activate come and rumble with Steam, Google Play, Amazon's GameCircle, GREE, Mobage, Origin, Uplay and Game Center. The more the merrier.
Social Mobile platforms are starting to smell like old school hardware platforms. Each with its own set of standards and requirements if you decide to launch your game on one of them. Could this lead to more segmentation as developers await the "clear winner" the same way they did on the console end of things? Will consumers be confused when they encounter platform experiences that are so different from one another?
