Inside Social Games

Candy Crush Saga also on top of this week’s fastest-growing Facebook games by DAU

Mike Thompson• May 16th, 2012

King.com’s Candy Crush Saga continues its chart-topping performance this week, taking the No. 1 spot on our list of fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users with a 22 percent gain of 400,000 DAU.

Peak Game’s English-language bubble shooter Lost Bubble takes the No. 2 spot with 400,000 DAU for a 500 percent increase. Zynga Slingo also gained 400,000 DAU for an 11 percent gain, allowing it to take the No. 3 position. EA’s The Sims Social appears in the No. 4 spot with its first serious gain since late April, up 11 percent with 300,000 DAU. Cookapps’s Buggle swelled by 50 percent with 260,000 DAU, securing it the No. 5 spot.

Five more games on the list show gains greater than 25 percent. King.com’s Pyramid Solitaire Saga is already picking up speed, increasing by 210,000 DAU for a 55 percent gain. Disney Playdom’s Armies of Magic shows a 100 percent gain with 80,000 DAU, while Corazon Games’s Spanish-language La Vecindad de “El Chavo” (“The neighborhood of “El Chavo”") grew by 40,000 DAU for a 36 percent gain. Plumbee’s Mirrorball Slots is up by 40,000 DAU for a 27 percent increase. Finally, Sulake’s Habbo Hotel España shows a 30,000 DAU gain, up by 25 percent.

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Candy Crush Saga	2,200,000	+400,000	+ 22%
2.	Lost Bubble	480,000	+400,000	+ 500%
3.	Zynga Slingo	4,200,000	+400,000	+ 11%
4.	The Sims Social	3,000,000	+300,000	+ 11%
5.	Buggle	780,000	+260,000	+ 50%
6.	Pyramid Solitaire Saga	590,000	+210,000	+ 55%
7.	Marvel: Avengers Alliance	1,600,000	+100,000	+ 7%
8.	Top Eleven	1,400,000	+100,000	+ 8%
9.	المزرعة السعيدة	2,600,000	+100,000	+ 4%
10.	Armies of Magic	160,000	+80,000	+ 100%
11.	Flower Shop	120,000	+40,000	+ 50%
12.	La Vecindad de “El Chavo”	150,000	+40,000	+ 36%
13.	Mirrorball Slots	190,000	+40,000	+ 27%
14.	德州撲克(中文版)	280,000	+40,000	+ 17%
15.	Habbo Hotel España	100,000	+30,000	+ 25%
16.	Happy Pets	190,000	+30,000	+ 16%
17.	HotShot	280,000	+30,000	+ 12%
18.	Mall World	480,000	+30,000	+ 7%
19.	PetVille	150,000	+30,000	+ 20%
20.	مدينة الأهرامات	500,000	+30,000	+ 6%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

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KartRider Dash leads the pack in synchronous multiplayer racing on Facebook

Pete Davison• May 16th, 2012

Action, Arcade, Featured, Reviews, Social Games, Sports

KartRider Dash is a new Facebook release from Nexon: a kart-racing title heavily inspired by the Mario Kart series. The game allows up to eight players to race against one another simultaneously online in a variety of cartoony environments.

KartRider Dash initially puts players through a series of tutorials introducing the game’s basic controls and explaining how to set up and join games. Players may either race with random opponents via the “Quick Start” mode, or with friends via “Buddy” mode. Participating in races costs fuel, which regenerates over time or may be purchased from the in-game store with soft currency. Players may also purchase unlimited fuel for either a single day or a full week if they are intending on dedicating themselves to their racing. When playing in Buddy mode, only the player who created the game session expends fuel on each race; in Quick Start mode, all racers expend fuel with each new race.

Gameplay once the race begins is very similar to the well-established conventions of the kart-racing genre set by titles like Mario Kart. At the start line, carefully timing the first press of the accelerator allows for a big speed boost. As racers proceed around the track, items may be collected to hinder other players, and a “drift” button allows players to deliberately skid around corners. The use of items and drifting can be challenging, so the game allows players to practice both of these techniques without having to expend fuel at any time.

Besides the standard racing mode where items may be used, KartRider Dash also includes a play style called “Speed Mode.” Here, there are no items on the track, but players may earn boosts by drifting around corners without colliding with the sides. Doing so fills a meter in the corner of the screen, and when this is full a boost item is awarded. This mode is ideal for players who enjoy racing but find themselves frustrated with the “full-contact” nature of the “Items” mode.

Between races, players may spend soft and hard currency in the in-game shop. Here, players may purchase visual upgrades such as new kart bodies, new characters and the ability to dye their character and kart; performance upgrades to their kart’s engine; and items which allow them to “auto-block” specific items. Certain items are level-locked, requiring players to have played the game a certain amount before being able to purchase them. This means that beginning players must learn to avoid and deal with offensive items rather than immediately purchasing the “auto-block” options, giving the game a good sense of pace and challenge.

KartRider Dash’s online play is simple and smooth. Clicking the Quick Start option matches players with opponents in a matter of seconds, and Buddy mode makes it simple to play alongside friends — assuming they are all online and in the game in the first place. Coordination must be done outside the game, however — there is no means to send a Facebook request to friends and invite them to join a Buddy mode room. It would be a good idea for Nexon to implement a feature along these lines, as it would likely make playing with friends a lot easier rather than having to coordinate via Facebook chat, email or other communication methods.

The game’s Unity-powered visuals perform well and seem to work fine on most browsers at this time — there were some issues with Google Chrome upon launch, but these seem to have been resolved. A little more worthy of concern are the lighting glitches evident on the cel-shaded characters — backgrounds are fine — that appeared when tested on an AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512MB-equipped Mac running OS X Lion. These glitches don’t spoil the gameplay at all, but the flickering is a little distracting.

KartRider Dash will hopefully encourage more developers to work on synchronous multiplayer titles for Facebook, as the social network is a good fit for titles like this with its built-in friends list and communication features. Nexon’s title proves that it’s possible to make simultaneous online multiplayer simple and user-friendly for players to engage in, and it would be encouraging to see growth in this relatively under-explored aspect of social gaming.

As a new title, KartRider Dash is not yet listed on our traffic tracking service AppData. Check back shortly for a full breakdown of usage statistics including MAU, DAU and retention trends.

Play

A fun kart racer, and an excellent, trouble-free implementation of synchronous online multiplayer gameplay.

Candy Crush Saga holds the lead on the fastest growing Facebook games by MAU

Mike Thompson• May 16th, 2012

AppData, facebook, Social Games

King.com’s Candy Crush Saga is continuing its impressive winning streak, topping this week’s list of fastest growing Facebook games by monthly active users with a 23 percent gain of 1.4 million MAU.

Two bubble shooters appear in the top five positions on this week’s chart. Peak Games’s new English-language title Lost Bubble debuts on our list in the No. 2 spot, thanks to its gain of 810,000 MAU for an impressive 675 percent increase. Cookapps’s Buggle is in the No. 3 spot with 800,000 MAU for a 57 percent increase.

Disney Playdom’s Marvel: Avengers Alliance is still riding the record-breaking wave of the film The Avengers. The game is in the No. 4 spot with a 700,000 MAU increase, up by 12 percent. GameHouse’s Mystic Ice Blast rounds out the top five games this week with a 500,000 MAU bump, giving it a 36 percent gain.

Only two games on this week’s chart had a gain greater than 25 percent. Disney Playdom’s Armies of Magic took in 400,000 MAU this week for a 22 percent gain, while A&E Television Network’s Top Shot: The Game increased by 180,000 MAU for a 26 percent gain.

Editor’s Note: Due to a delay in Facebook’s updates, this week’s monthly active user list is running today instead of on Monday.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Candy Crush Saga	7,400,000	+1,400,000	+ 23%
2.	Lost Bubble	930,000	+810,000	+ 675%
3.	Buggle	2,200,000	+800,000	+ 57%
4.	Marvel: Avengers Alliance	8,300,000	+700,000	+ 12%
5.	Mystic Ice Blast	1,900,000	+500,000	+ 36%
6.	Armies of Magic	1,300,000	+410,000	+ 46%
7.	Disney Animal Kingdom	2,200,000	+400,000	+ 22%
8.	Astro Garden	2,100,000	+200,000	+ 11%
9.	Superball	2,300,000	+200,000	+ 10%
10.	Township	1,600,000	+200,000	+ 14%
11.	Top Shot: The Game	860,000	+180,000	+ 26%
12.	Mirrorball Slots	1,100,000	+160,000	+ 17%
13.	Zombie Island	630,000	+130,000	+ 26%
14.	Angry Words (Apalabrados)	1,100,000	+100,000	+ 10%
15.	Bubble Speed	2,200,000	+100,000	+ 5%
16.	Lucky Slots – Free Slot Machines	2,800,000	+100,000	+ 4%
17.	Pool Live Tour	9,900,000	+100,000	+ 1%
18.	SlotSpot Casino – Slots, Blackjack & Video Poker	1,300,000	+100,000	+ 8%
19.	Social Empires	6,100,000	+100,000	+ 2%
20.	Stick Run	4,800,000	+100,000	+ 2%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the fastest-growing games by daily active users later today and top emerging apps on Friday.

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KartRider Dash gives Nexon a new shot at Facebook

Mike Thompson• May 15th, 2012

facebook, Social Games

Nexon’s popular online racing franchise KartRider has finally crossed the Facebook starting line with KartRider Dash, which launches in open beta today.

KartRider Dash puts players in the driver’s seat of a go-kart racing against computer-controlled components and live players on a 3D map. Gameplay is based on the original KartRider game, which allows players to acquire power-ups on the track which are then used to sabotage others. As of press time the Unity-engine KartRider Dash seems to be having problems running on Google Chrome, but we had no issues running it in Firefox.

The game’s main strength is that its races are synchronous, something other racing games on Facebook don’t currently offer. Cie Games’ Car Town is currently the leading title in the genre and it only features asynchronous racing. There are two race modes in KartRider Dash: Quick, which randomly matches players with other opponents, and Buddy, which allows players to join or create private rooms and race exclusively with their friends. Each time a race is entered, a piece of fuel is used up. The game monetizes through virtual goods like extra fuel, costumes and Kart equipment but the option to buy hard currency isn’t turned on yet.

KartRider is the second time Nexon has tried to bring one of its most popular franchises to Facebook. The company’s first attempt was MapleStory Adventures, which peaked last Fall with 473,000 daily active users and 3.2 million monthly active users, but is now down to 40,000 DAU and 320,000 MAU.

Nexon’s other Facebook efforts, developed by other studios, have fared even worse. Zombie Misfits launched in October 2011, and quickly climbing up to 20,000 DAU and 150,000 MAU before traffic quickly bled away to the game’s current 2,000 DAU and 30,000 MAU. Wonder Cruise launched in December 2011 and still hasn’t taken caught on with Facebook players — the game’s traffic currently floats at 1,000 DAU and 20,000 MAU.

Overall Nexon has 340,000 MAU and 140,000 DAU on Facebook according to AppData. Outside of Facebook, Nexon currently has 82.8 million MAU. As Nexon’s EVP of Social Games Aron Koh told us in February, Facebook has a steep learning curve, but he believes the company “can do better than what we’re doing now.”

Nexon’s mobile game KartRider Rush proved an enormous hit for the company; in its most recent earnings call Nexon revealed the game has been downloaded over 8.2 million times since it’s launch on iOS and Android last year.

Bubble Safari takes players on a bubble-popping jungle adventure

Pete Davison• May 15th, 2012

facebook, Featured, Puzzle, Reviews, Social Games

The bubble-popping genre is an immensely popular offshoot of puzzle and match-3 games, and now Zynga has entered the fray with its own offering Bubble Safari. As is often the case with Zynga, the company has taken already well-established game mechanics and put its own brand of polish atop them to create a title likely to enjoy considerable success on Facebook.

Bubble Safari’s basic mechanics are identical to similar titles such as King.com’s Bubble Witch Saga, CookApps’ Buggle and numerous other titles. Taking control of a mouse-controlled cannon at the bottom of the screen, players fire colored bubbles at a predefined arrangement above them. Should the player’s fired bubble cause three or more bubbles of the same color to be touching, they will all pop. Any bubbles which are no longer attached to the top of the level once this happens will fall — in Bubble Safari’s case, they turn into fruit and fall into one of three pots at the base of the screen, scoring points in the process. The various bubble-popping games use different victory mechanics to determine when a level is complete — in the case of Bubble Safari, players must clear ten bubbles from the top row of the level.

Bubble Safari adds a number of mechanics on top of these basics. Firstly, continually popping groups of bubbles causes hummingbirds to appear, who offer score multipliers if they are present in sufficient quantities. Firing a bubble and not causing a “pop” causes one of the hummingbirds to depart, however, so the player is encouraged to find the best “routes” through the various bubble arrangements.

Secondly, if the player causes bubbles to fall after three successive shots, they enter “On Fire” mode, which allows them to fire three special exploding shots that clear the bubble they hit and those around them.

Thirdly, popping bubbles causes a meter in the corner of the screen to rise, offering a free “bonus bubble” determined by random chance when it fills. These vary from “paint bubbles,” which change the color of a large swathe of bubbles, to “lightning bubbles,” which clear out a line directly to the top of the level.

Playing with friends is encouraged. Certain level boundaries are friend-gated, and players also have the ability to bring up to four “friend bubbles” into a level with them. These allow the player to get out of a difficult situation by picking a specific color to fire next, but each of the friend bubbles may only be used once. Alongside these mechanics, the usual level leaderboards help encourage friendly competition. The game is a little pushy about adding friends — after every few levels, the usual “continue” button on the score summary screen is replaced by an “Invite Friends” button which may not be bypassed. Once the invite dialog appears, it may be simply cancelled, but this behavior may be a little too pushy for players who simply wish to play solo — that said, these players will eventually run afoul of the friend gates without other players, anyhow.

Bubble Safari is a well-presented game that is fun to play and is paced well enough that free players feel like they can have a satisfying experience, while paying players will be able to make faster progress. While the title is not particularly original in execution, it follows Zynga’s frequently-used pattern of adding a good degree of audio-visual polish and user-friendliness to the mix. Coupled with Zynga’s considerable talent for user acquisition and the popularity of the bubble shooter genre generally, this makes Bubble Safari likely to enjoy strong success on Facebook in the long term.

Bubble Safari currently has 2,000 monthly active users and 600 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

A solid take on the bubble-popping genre with that recognizable layer of Zynga polish.

Crowdstar moves further from Facebook, partners with Tencent and Gamevil for expansion into China and Korea

Mike Thompson• May 15th, 2012

Android, Mobile, Social Games

It Girl developer CrowdStar is bringing its games to China and Korea’s mobile markets, courtesy of new partnerships with Tencent and Gamevil.

Chinese games portal Tencent will release localized versions of Top Girl and Happy Peeps: Tower Town for iOS devices, while Gamevil will localize and distribute Top Girl Android to South Korea. Penetrating these markets can be difficult feat for social developers, particularly because Facebook isn’t legal in China and doesn’t have much penetration in South Korea. CrowdStar tells us the games will launch in China and South Korea sometime this summer.

Last month, CrowdStar revealed that it was shifting its focus to away from developing Facebook titles and instead working on mobile titles for smartphones, including an exclusive game for GREE’s upcoming mobile platform. CEO Peter Relan made a point of telling us the company wasn’t abandoning Facebook and would continue to support its existing games on the social network. That said, the studio isn’t developing any new titles for Facebook and recently raised $11.5 million to exclusively pursue mobile game development.

The popularity of both iOS and Android devices in these territories makes mobile games a much more reliable way to tap into the lucrative Asian gaming market. Top Girl seems like a logical choice for a first offering, since the iOS version reached as high as No. 8 on our top free iOS apps list in January and secured the No. 1 spot as the top grossing app in June 2011. Happy Peeps: Tower Town is a less-certain bet, since it launched in November 2011 and hasn’t appeared on any of our top app lists.

Nexon’s Q1 net income hits $154 million, up 60% year-on-year

Kathleen De Vere• May 14th, 2012

international, Mobile, PC, Social Games

Free-to-play game giant Nexon posted better than expected results in its Q1 2012 earnings report last week, reporting revenues of 30.3 billion yen ($379.5 million), up 46 percent year-on-year and 37 percent quarter-over-quarter. Net income climbed 60 percent year-on-year to 12.3 billion yen ($154 million).

Nexon credited its earnings to strong performance in China, where revenue increased 89 percent year-on-year to 15.1 billion yen ($189.1 million) and accounted for 49.8 percent of Nexon’s total revenue for the quarter. The company’s North American revenue was the only anomaly among the report, declining 19 percent year-on-year to 1.3 billion yen ($16.2 million). Nexon blamed the decline on a hacking attack and ongoing stability issues.

The company highlighted the strong performance of several new titles, including Cyphers, Mabinogi Heros and the mobile version of its classic Kartrider Franchise, Kartrider Rush. According to Nexon’s earnings report the free-to-play racing game has been downloaded more than 8.2 million times to date between iOS and Android.

Nexon’s monthly active users declined 3.9 percent year-on-year to 82.8 million, but were up 3.5 percent over the company’s Q4 2011 total of 80 million MAU. Nexon also reported 10.9 percent of users paid in Q1 2012, up from the 8.3 percent of paying users the company reported in Q1 2011. Average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) increased to 1,761 yen ($22.05) in Q1 2012, up from 1,427 yen ($17.87) ARPPU in the same period a year ago.

Based on its strong performance during the quarter, Nexon is raising its guidance for the 2012 fiscal year. The company is predicting full-year revenues of 108.3 billion yen ($1.35 billion) up 24 percent year-on-year. Net income is expected to hit 37.8 billion yen ($473.4 million) for the full fiscal year.

Originally a Korean company, Nexon raised $1.17 billion when it made its initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last year. The company’s market cap is currently $7.8 billion — higher than both EA’s ($4.77 billion) and Zynga’s ($5.86 billion). The free-to-play giant is the latest publicly traded Japanese game company to report record revenues, following bumper earnings reports from DeNA and GREE, both of which reported net sales in excess of $500 million for the most recent quarter.

Play cards the Egyptian way with Pyramid Solitaire Saga

Pete Davison• May 14th, 2012

Board, casual, facebook, Reviews, Social Games

King.com’s “Saga” series of games makes up some of the most consistently popular titles on Facebook, and between them they have covered a wide variety of puzzle genres so far. Pyramid Solitaire Saga is the latest addition to the collection, following the popular solitaire format seen in titles such as Subsoap’s Faerie Solitaire, Big Fish Games’ Fairway Solitaire and PopCap’s Solitaire Blitz.

Pyramid Solitaire Saga’s take on Solitaire involves a predefined arrangement of cards stacked in a Mahjong-style arrangement, with some or all of them face-up. Players must remove cards by playing a card from their deck that is one higher or lower than the card they are trying to remove, but may only play onto cards which are not partially or completely covered. If no cards can be played, the player draws cards from the deck one at a time until they can play.

The ultimate goal of each level is to remove all of the specially-marked “scarab” cards from the board while scoring enough points to get at least a one-star rating. Some levels also have additional objectives such as finishing the round with at least a certain number of cards remaining in the deck, or removing a chain of a certain number of cards without drawing. Failing to remove all the scarabs, attain a one-star rating or complete an objective causes the player to lose a life. They must then retry the level if they have lives available, or wait to recover if they do not. Players can also ask friends for additional lives or purchase a full set — they cannot, at this time, purchase lives that will take them over the upper limit.

As the game progresses, players gain access to various “charms” which make levels a little easier. Some of these must be crafted using gems that the player acquires through play, while others are permanent and must be unlocked using Facebook Credits. The functions of these charms vary from having additional cards in the draw deck at the start of play to being able to shuffle all visible cards on the screen.

It would be easy to dismiss Pyramid Solitaire Saga as a simple clone of Solitaire Blitz (which, in turn, some might accuse of being a clone of Faerie and Fairway Solitaires) but in practice the level-based structure gives the game a very different feel to the more frantic “time attack” gameplay of PopCap’s title. Players can take their time over levels rather than rushing to clear as many cards as possible as fast as they can. It also gives a sense of progression in gameplay beyond simply competing with friends, which is good for those players who prefer to concentrate on their own performance rather than how they shape up against their rivals.

Coupled with the pleasant (if unremarkable) graphics and sound along with King.com’s solid but unobtrusive monetization strategy, Pyramid Solitaire Saga looks set to be another strong title for the publisher. With 820,000 MAU and 380,000 DAU already, the game is off to a good start — it will be interesting to see if it matches its stablemates over the coming months.

Follow Pyramid Solitaire Saga’s progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

King.com’s skills at user acquisition will likely make this fun (if relatively unoriginal) solitaire title a big success.

Zynga picks up Wild Needle in $3.8 million talent deal

Kathleen De Vere• May 14th, 2012

Social Games

Zynga’s latest mobile acquisition appears to be an estimated $3.8 million deal for San Francisco-based mobile-social game company Wild Needle, according to TechCrunch.

Reportedly a talent deal, Wild Needle is the latest in a long series of relatively low priced mobile buys from Zynga. The company’s largest mobile acquisitions to date have been Draw Something maker OMGPOP for $180 million, and original Words With Friends creator Newtoy, which sold for $53.3 million in late 2010. The Wild Needle deal isn’t surprising, given recent statements from Zynga CEO Mark Pincus making it clear the company is actively on the lookout for acquisition prospects.

Although a Zynga spokesperson declined to comment on the purchase, the Wild Needle deal appears to have been finalized in late April or early May. Wild Needle shut down its first and only iOS game, casual commerce sim Shoptown Hero on April 25 and the LinkedIn profiles of some Wild Needle employees indicate they have been working at Zynga since May. The company’s official website, www.wildneedle.com has also been taken down. Before the acquisition Wild Needle had raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Playdom’s Rick Thompson and Shasta Ventures.

If the $3.8 million reports are accurate, the Wild Needle deal is right in line with Zynga’s typical acquisition spend. According to the company’s IPO filings, Zynga spent $40.6 million on acquisitions in the first nine months of 2011. Some of the mobile pickups among those 13 companies were Toronto’s Five Mobile, New York’s Astro Ape Studios, San Francisco’s Page44 Studios and Germany’s GameDoctors.

This post originally appeared on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.