Inside Social Games

Popular Facebook game Mob Wars has recently been rumored to be the most profitable app on Facebook. While that will never be known for sure, one thing is clear: Mob Wars is making a lot of cash. Probably in the tens of thousands of US dollars per day. How?

One large reason: Mob Wars has baked incentivized CPA offers from Super Rewards directly into the game, and expertly tuned its virtual economy to drive offer conversions without significantly imbalancing the economy or damaging game play. (Mob Wars also works closely with CPA monetization firm Offerpal Media.)

> Read the full article at Inside Facebook

Battle Tanks is a turn-based Flash Facebook game that lets you control a small artillery task as it tries to blow up the enemy. It’s a PvP game that also supports 2 vs 2 and 3 vs 3 games. Battle Tanks is an old game, but many in the younger Facebook generation may never have played it or taken part in its addictive form of strategic geometry.

Each match starts the same: you’re on one side of the field of battle, and your opponent is on the other. Each turn you have the option of moving forward or backward and/or giving more power to your shot. The game is one of angles and distance, so be careful how you place your shot. An overpowered shot will harmlessly blow up the land behind your enemy. As the game progresses, you get access to upgraded shots that you can either use immediately or wait till your gun upgrades further.

The animation is crisp and the explosions are fun to watch. It’s extremely satisfying to create a crater so large that your opponent can’t maneuver and becomes an effective sitting duck. It’s plenty challenging and it will take you a few games to get the hang of the controls.

As you play, you earn money in the game’s econo

my and eventually can purchase better tanks with special abilities. The price tags are so high, however, that expect to invite every friend you have and then play the game for hundreds of hours. Of course, you could also always take part of old of the partner offers which will get you instant game money for only the cost of your soul (or credit card).

The developers seem to make frequent announcements and keep unveiling new features, making the game richer and deeper. If addictive, intelligent gunplay is your cup-of-tea, then Battle Tanks is definitely worth your time.

Development: 7

Game play: 8

How many times I lost before I won a match: 6

While there will always be a lot of bad games in the world, there are those few fantastic gems that shine above the rest. Word Cube by Unit 501 is one of the latter.

Word Cube is a word formation game similar to WordTwist or Bookworm. The difference, obviously, is that players work via a cube. The game starts out with a 5 minute timer and players click on any visible letter, illuminating all eight adjacent letters as they attempt to connect them together in order to form words (a la Bookworm). However, unlike other word play games, the design is quite original.

The game sits in an isometric view allowing the player to see three sides of the cube. The cube is 3×3x3 and as you use letters, the hue of that letter face gradually becomes a reddish color until the block goes away forever and you have to use the letters beneath it. Furthermore, you can manually remove cubes as you see fit that allow other players to make strategic decisions on improving your score and what letters they choose to use.

In addition to design, the game is incredibly well polished. Unlike most Facebook games, the developers have taken the time necessary to present attractive looking graphics, sound effects, and excellent presentation. This effort has put Unit 501 in the ranks of other major casual developers such as EA Pogo. The game really stands out  from the crowd of average, boring Facebook games.

There is honestly not much wrong with the game play. If I were to pick nits, I would say the biggest quip I have is the use of a timer. In any game, it is important to push the player forward and one such method is creating a sense of urgency. Generally, games like this have a light puzzle aspect, so to push players they use a clock. Personally, I think it has been used so many times, that it feels a bit like a cop-out. It would be refreshing to see more game developers negate the clock feature and find other means to push players forward. For example, increasing the puzzle aspect so that solving it is the overall goal rather than a high score, or perhaps better social capabilities for active competition, could help.

Ultimately, however, Word Cube doesn’t feel like a very “interactive” social game. The best social feature is that the game displays your current rank and percentile rank on Facebook. You can also invite friends to beat your high score and you do get rewards for challenging friends. However, the game play itself is pretty solitary.

The developers could improve the game by employing asynchronous versions of dynamics like those found in multi-player Tetris. In Tetris, when a player removes multiple rows, blocks fall down on top of their opponent and it becomes a battle of who can survive the longest. This simple feature causes the two games to interact with one another, and forces each player to actively react to their opponent’s progression.

Honestly, however, these are less flaws anre more aspects that can be changed or added to further improve the game. Word Cube is a wonderfully presented game with a solid design, and the developers certainly meet their claim as one of the “most addictive games” on the web (or at least Facebook). If Unit 501 continues this trend of well designed and well polished games they will certainly make a name for themselves and rise quickly amongst the social gaming ranks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another round to play.

Playfish is an established developer of a number of top social games including Pet Society, Bowling Buddies and Word Challenge. The title that seems to be performing best right now is also the one in which the company is introducing its first transaction based service.

Who Has the Biggest Brain? is a brain training game with a social gaming twist. Players have the option of a free-to-play “classic” game or the paid Pro option. The free version of the game lets you play through a series of 4 games that test how big your brain is. These tests vary from completing calculations to deciding which is the heaviest object, or memorizing objects. Thankfully, there is some variation in the game types so you don’t get bored.

Once the tests are done you get a visual map of your results and the total size of your brain is calculated in square centimeters. You are also awarded a brain level represented by a name such as “Nerd” or “Scholar”.

The social element comes from the challenge feature where you can invite what looks to be up to 10 friends to join in and try to prove they have a bigger brain than you.

The game has been available for just over 6 months and Playfish has already managed to get 6 million players. With this success in mind the company has started to expand the game, adding a range of achievements and more brain types for you to try and unlock. The Pro version is a new addition that allows the avid player to keep better track of their brain’s progress as well as allowing them to play new mini-games as they become available.

You really have to like this game to want to pay-to-play, however, and it will cost you US $9.99 for a one-year subscription or US $14.99 for 2 years. Playfish is hoping players will happily pay for the extra features, allowing them to develop their brain power without any interruption from advertisements.

Who Has The Biggest Brain? doesn’t seem to have any real competition on Facebook at the moment. If Playfish continues to expand the range of tests, adds to the achievements, and pushes the social aspect of letting your brain compete against others, players will keep coming back – and possibly even pay for the privilege.

Facebook app analytics shop Developer Analytics released a report today detailing what it’s calling the “Top 20 Facebook Apps by Monetization Potential.” While the calculations are estimates based on data points from developers, panels, and surveys, they do illustrate that social games possess many of the measurable characteristics required to monetize apps well on social networks.

What was the methodology? Developer Analytics says, “Monetization potential is calculated based on five trend equations derived from hundreds of real CPM, and CPA/Virtual Goods revenue data points collected directly from developers and partners. The five equations relate revenue to total daily unique users, return users, churn rate, application age, and daily page multiplier (impressions/unique user/day).” However, DA caveats, “We currently have not implemented our system for tracking average time by hour spent on an app per user per day, so highly engaging flash games… have heavily underestimated monetization potentials.”

Games included in the top 20 are Mob Wars (which DA says could make $20k/day), PackRat (which only has 20k DAU), Friends For Sale, (Lil) Green Patch, Pet Pupz, and Parking Wars.

DA is very excited about Mob Wars, and with good reason – the game has a ton of highly engaged users that last a long time. One thing we do know is that, like many of the great social games of our time, Mob Wars is monetizing through a virtual currency system with incentivized CPA offers via Offerpal Media and Super Rewards.

Whether the coefficients in DA’s algorithms are right remains to be seen, but one thing is clear – you can make great returns with well tuned social games on Facebook.

This is a guest post by Shervin Pishevar, Founder and CEO of Social Gaming Network. SGN is a leading global development platform for social game distribution.

Assessment of the social gaming landscape has historically been based on a few publicly-available statistics – DAU, Installers, and % Active.  But use of these statistics as evaluative criteria has failed to keep pace with the changing structure of the industry.  As the social gaming space evolves toward network and studio models, a new “Network DAU” metric will be most meaningful in comparing application providers.

When social games first became popular in mid-2007, DAU (daily active users) was an appropriate means of measuring success.  An independent developer in possession of one application could measure his success by counting the unique users who engaged that application on a given day – fairly straightforward.  As the entrepreneurial model for social gaming development has given way to network, distributor and studio models, however, DAU has been consistently misused.

SGN and Zynga, for example, each own more than 20 properties; in citing DAU at the network level, they simply sum the DAU of each of their portfolio properties.  This “portfolio summed” model for DAU does not measure unique daily users at the network level, and in turn confers an apparent advantage on networks that cross promote their applications.

To illustrate this point, imagine Network A and Network B, each with two applications, 1 and 2.  Each of Network A’s applications is used by 10 people daily and there is no overlap in usage (that is, no one who uses application A.1 also uses application A.2).  Each of Network B’s applications is also used by 10 people daily, yet there is 100% overlap in usage (that is, everyone who uses application B.1 also uses application B.2).

Using a “portfolio summed” metric, which is the current industry standard, both Network A and Network B have 20 DAU.  Yet, at the “Network DAU” level, Network A has 20 daily users, while Network B has only 10 daily users.

As the network model becomes dominant in social gaming, with networks essentially forcing users of one application to visit another to collect in-game currency, a “Network DAU” metric would be far more appropriate than a “portfolio DAU summed” metric in evaluating major industry players.  My best guess is that advertisers would agree.

Note: this is the first time I’ve tried to play anything in German. But even though I can’t quite read the language, after some trial and error I was able to figure out the basics of the game!

15.30 – Das Bundesliga Tippspiel by Marcel Duee and Marcus Engel is a German prediction game for soccer in a fantasy football kind of way (just not as complex). Each week you are able group with friends and predict the results of that week’s game(s).

Unlike other social games, 15.30 has not created an application that caters to the casual gamer, but a niche market within their own country. In Germany, soccer is the number one sport, so you can imagine that an application like this has the potential to be as big as Fantasy Football is in the United States. Furthermore, 15.30 beautifully supports social networking with capabilities to form “buddy leagues,” allowing users to predict and compete against friends, family, and people more relevant to the soccer games you care about.

Another great social feature in 15.30 is the automatically generated “fan leagues” that passively puts you in contact with fans of your club (your buddy league basically). You can also select your favorite club and determine some of your own UI, thus allowing you to add a little bit of personality to your game. It’s nothing too extravagant, just some simple color, and graphical changes, but the fact that the developers put thought into this shows that they have a lot of potential to take 15.30 even further.

The game adds community with non-Facebook-friends around what is called the “15.30 Shoutbox.” Now, there may be a language barrier, and this may be a different sport then what most Americans are used to, but any serious sports fanatic knows you can’t have the best time possible if you can’t talk a little trash to their friends. And that’s exactly what the Shoutbox is for. It let’s you write messages, talk trash, and just have a good time with your friends online.

As a stand alone application, if you don’t like soccer, or you can’t read German, then 15.30 is nothing special. However, that’s not what the developers wanted. They targeted a specific demographic and created a tool to enhance the number one sport in Germany in a social way, and they did a damn good job of it. Is it perfect…? If there was anything I could suggest, it would be some sort of better rewards system. As it stands, as well designed as it is, it has the potential to become boring after the initial novelty wears off. Very well done 15.30: Gute Idee und gute Arbeit!

Challenge Sudoku from Zynga is an aptly named puzzle game that seeks to take the mind-bending numbers game and make it even more stressful by introducing a time element. I’ll bill the developers for my coffee intake.

Sudoku, if you’ve been living under a rock the last five years, is a numbers puzzle that has you fill in digits 1-9 in a grid pattern so that you don’t repeat a number in any rows. It’s harder than it looks, and I’m not giving it a proper explanation, but it’s hard. OK?

The “challenge” aspect of the game is that you can compete against up to four of your friends on Facebook. Since it’s timed, you don’t actually have to play at the same time. Wrong answers deduct points, right answers add them. Like Scrabulous (ahem, Scrabble), you can play multiple games with your friends at once (since most matches consist of three rounds, you can play different rounds for each match at your leisure).

The problem with the social aspect, and challenging your friends, is getting your friends to actually play with you. While Scrabble is easy for most, the barrier to entry with Sudoku is a little higher. The developers seem eager to want feedback and create a new viral game, but right now this isn’t quite there. Adding chat, message boards, and the ability to jump in and play anybody would greatly enhance the game play.

Game play: 8

Development: 3

Predictability: 10

Developing games for social networks isn’t at all shocking in this day and age. Companies both big and small make thousands of applications and games year with a fair amount of these games and apps sharing the common goal of making money. Eric Eldon of VentureBeat recently posted details on how quickly virtual goods are becoming a serious income stream for both small self-funded teams and large companies building social games. Eldon writes,

Various estimates given to me by developers themselves and other sources peg some applications as making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month — this is money that a connected investor tells me Facebook itself isn’t even fully aware of.

Virtual goods (or micro-transactions as its known in some circles) have proven that small games and apps such as (fluff)friends, which works with the same principles of the popular 90’s Tamagotchi toys, can get users to pay for items, features and upgrades with real world money. If these micro-transactions are made by just a small portion of regularly engaged users, developers can see healthy margins.

Korean MMOs have been doing similar things for several years. Games such as RF Online, Archlord and World of Warcraft, which has over 12 million subscribers, can be played for free in Korea, and users only pay for items in the game world which improve character development and other status levels. Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have also done their own brands of arcade and mini-games withadditional fee based, downloadable content. For example, Square Enix title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As King charged small fees for additional content after the game was launched.

We’ll be tracking the growth of the virtual goods economy within social games as the space matures.

Games based on movies can be quite hit or miss. Developers release games that revolve around a movie when the movie is about to come out for co-promotion. While I had positive expectations about Bee Movie before playing Busy Bees, the game itself was unfortunately quite underwhelming.

At first glace, Busy Bees looks like an interesting puzzle game with a unique core mechanic. You have to click on these little honey combs to remove them from the game board. When you do so, the bee in the middle attempts to move towards the edges of the board. If it makes it there, you lose; thus you have to remove the tiles in order to trap it so there is some strategy involved.

Since there really weren’t any directions other than the win and lose conditions, it was a little annoying to figure out how to win properly, but then after learning how to win I noticed that the AI for the bee is excruciatingly simple. It looks at the number of tiles to the edge, and moves in the opposite direction of where you click towards the shortest route. If it can’t move directly opposite, it simple gets as close as possible. While this may not be a 100% accurate assessment, you begin to see the pattern quickly and thus the challenge is completely removed, making the game boring.

In addition to the disappointing game play, Busy Bees makes virtually no use of the social capabilities of Facebook. In fact, as soon as you try to begin the game you get this message: “CHALLENGE up to 2 friends to beat your score!” That’s it – no interactivity, no chat, nor even anything particularly exciting for your profile.

In summary, the design needs work, the presentation is lack luster, the AI is overly simplistic, and there is minimal challenge. Suffice to say, the developers for Busy Bees were not too “busy” here (pun totally intended).