Inside Social Games

How much to people like self-advancement? No, I’m not just talking about in a career, but rather in all aspects of life. The desire to advance and better oneself is a theme that game designers have often used in the RPG genre, especially online where one’s character more directly represents the player. Be it Maple Story, World of Warcraft, or Age of Conan, the primary driving factor that keeps us playing is the desire to improve our character.

This is the primary draw the designers of Elven Blood, The Royal East India Trading Company, have banked on for the success of their Facebook RPG. Maybe it is because I’m an RPG fan, but I rather enjoyed Elven Blood. Granted, I was a little confused at first, but I was able to catch on quickly.

You start the game as a measly level one elf, and like most online RPGs, you complete quests to gain gold, experience, weapons, and so on. When you select a quest, a text box generates what happened in a nostalgic, MUD/pen and paper-like fashion, and as you progress to higher level quests, an interesting storyline even begins to develop. Each quest also has a set of requirements in order to attempt it, such as stamina, equipment, and number of party members. If any one of these are missing, the quest cannot be started. You then use the rewards to buy new items to beef up your character and slowly work up your level. Unfortunately, you only have a limited amount of health and stamina, so you can’t go questing all day and have to wait a period of time for it to regenerate.

Here’s the kicker: There are faster ways to gain more health, gold, and so on through the use of what is called the “Elder Tree.” You start with 10 of something called “blessings” and use them to buy useful stats and such, but in order to get more you have to either (a) buy them via PayPal, or (b) complete sponsor offers. It may sound like a sell-out, but I have to admit, it is a good approach to monetization these days.

Of course, the true draw to Elven Blood is the wonderful social aspect it brings to the table. As I said earlier, you often require extra party members to complete quests. By inviting friends to play, they become part of your party and utilize what items you can spare. Nothing special, right? This is where the interesting part comes in: After leveling a little bit you can actually take your party out to hunt and loot other players! Attacking and defeating them allows you to garner extra experience and gold at no stamina cost! In fact, a common objective of players seems to be attempting to control the game as “Legends” vie for ranks among the bloodiest, deadliest, wealthiest, and most famous of all the elves.

The only downside to the game is there are no well polished graphics, no mind blowing sound effects, and nothing really extravagant. While it is rather popular (over 450k monthly users), it certainly isn’t for everyone and caters mostly to the fantasy/RPG crowd. Despite the presentation short comings however, the game is simple to learn and the desire to grow stronger was enough to keep me playing for a good while.

Overall, I recommend giving it a try if you have ever played an online RPG before. The game is well balanced with a number of different elements that are relatively easy to pick up on, and has a wonderfully creative way to acquire hits for their sponsors. More so than that, the social implementation is truly fantastic. Creating alliances and growing your party and character together with friends is always one of the best experience of any online game, and it is something made even better when you stand tall over those unwitting victims you just owned! Even though it is not the best presented game out there, it just goes to show that you cannot judge a book by its cover.

It has happened to anyone that has ever played an online game. You’ve had your character grieved, camped, killed, been trash talked, and so on, but there is little that you can do to absolve the problem. It’s the nature of online games and the anonymity of the internet that causes such issues to occur. People feel that since they can’t be seen and that it’s “just a game,” they can do anything they want, despite how it affects others.

Unfortunately, with the millions of online players worldwide it is a virtual impossibility (pun intended) to avoid all the jerks that infest internet gaming. However, there are now some solutions that are beginning to emerge. One such solution is a new social gaming site called MyGameMug.

As with most social gaming sites, MyGameMug provides a portal to a gaming community through the provision of games information, gaming news, reviews, event listings, etc. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary, thus begging the question: Why use this network?

There are a lot of people on the internet and a lot of different personalities. These clashes in personality is what often causes some of the grief and drama that comes along with online games. What MyGameMug provides is a bit of relief in the matchmaking process. Sure, lots of networks track buddy lists, but they do not actually provide a means of finding said “buddy.”

MyGameMug provides users with an actual matchmaking survey similar to what you might see on a dating site. Granted, the context is very different, and it isn’t meant to be a dating site (though the potential is there), but it breaks down a user’s personality and pairs them with others that have similar tastes.

The survey itself is about 40 or so questions that really get into the details of a person’s play habits and styles. In short, it asks questions that would separate, for example, the hardcore player from the casual, or the trash talker from the quiet person.

Once finished, you receive a horoscope-type analysis of your personality (i.e. “The Helping Hand”) as well as more detailed breakdown of who you are as a gamer. Furthermore, as soon as you have finished you are presented with your top three matches, whose profiles you can view immediately before you even sign up (if you so choose). From there you can see how close of a match they are to you based on a percentage score, the games they are currently playing, their network activity, and their contact information.

MyGameMug is yet another service pushing the gaming industry into a more social direction, and with the continuing growth and popularity of online games, its market size could be substantial. Sadly, even through the use of the MyGameMug network, it is impossible to eliminate all of the drama, griefers, and social problems of the online world. Nonetheless, it is a step in the right direction in at least minimizing the interaction with clashing personalities. Being able to find like-minded individuals to play with in any game is always a wonderful experience. It’s just more fun; and isn’t that what playing games is really all about?

At first glance, Mediannex Cannon seems like one of those dozens of flash games that we’ve all seen before. It is, and it’s not one I’ll be recommending. However, there is an important element to this game that is completely different than anything we’ve reviewed in the past: if you win at this game, the developers claim they’ll pay you. In cash.

The intro of the game is, well, interesting:

“This is Mediannex Cannon game where you could earn money while you playing the game…the special thing about the game is that we’re awarding you with real money if you have win the game. we’re awarding real money for number of people every month who those are rank1, rank 2, rank 3 and who have earned more points. so try to beat others scores and win the money every month.”

This is likely a gimmick and not lead to any actual money changing hands. The introduction seems to have been written by someone with a sixth grade understanding of the English language. The game itself is equally pedestrian - you try to launch an egg from a cannon and click to determine power and angle. There are a number of objects that the ball can bounce off of to keep its flight going, and so firing the cannon at the best trajectory is a bit more subjective. After you fire, the ball lands and explodes upon impact. You cannot reload the game to try again, in fact the only clickable button in game is the streaming ad that runs through the middle of the flash screen. The forums and FAQs were down when I reviewed the game, so pretty much the entire app is a mess.

But I didn’t review this game to bring up its merits (there aren’t any in terms of gameplay), but rather to question the idea of developers paying users for playing. The prospect of money surely will make this mediocre game more popular than it has any right to be. Financial incentives may be a great hook, but it could open up pandoras box for developers. Once you start offering money to users without anything close to a clear revenue model, you won’t last long.

Game play: 1

Development: 0

Ill Omens: 10

The 2nd annual Virtual Goods Summit is rapidly approaching on Friday, October 10, at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. The summit will focus on the key questions in the emerging virtual goods space, especially focusing on how virtual goods and economies are influencing the development of social networks,  games, and community sites.

The conference will feature a mix of panels and afternoon breakout sessions, and the lineup includes a bevy of thought leaders from top gaming, infrastructure, and social networking companies. The full panel lineup is below.

To register, click the button below and use the code INSIDESG for a 10% discount. Look forward to seeing you there!

Conference Details

• When: Friday, October 10, 2008
• Time: 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM
• Where: UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center
• Address: 1675 Owens Street, San Francisco, CA 94158
• Register: Here

Conference Program

9:30 AM - What Users Want: Branded and User-Generated Virtual Goods

One of the key decisions in any virtual goods offering is determining what users want. Looking for answers as to what your users want from your virtual goods offering? Curious about how to blend branded and user-generated virtual goods? Our panel of experts will share their experience on what it takes to get started and how to make a well-informed decision on this crucial topic.

• Brian Balfour, Viximo
• Lee Clancy, IMVU
• Amy Jo Kim, Shufflebrain
• Sean Ryan, Meez
• Moderator: Scott Raney, Redpoint Ventures

10:30 AM - Making Virtual Economies Work: Lessons from the Leaders

Managing a virtual economy is no easy task. Managing inflation, dealing with billing, and being vigilant on fraud are just a small fraction of the issues facing anyone managing a virtual economy. Our panelists will share their experiences and insights on this important subject.

• Susan Choe, Outspark
• Lee Crawford, TwoFish
• Christopher Donahue, Live Gamer
• Karl Mehta, Playspan

1:00 PM - Virtual Goods and Social Networks

Virtual goods are beginning to make a major footprint on leading social networks. Aside from offering an alternative to advertising, virtual goods offer application developers a solid opportunity to capitalize on the user engagement they generate. What will it take to fully take advantage of the virtual goods opportunity on social networks? Our panel of leading thinkers will share their views on this topic.

• John Hwang, RockYou
• David King, Lil Green Patch
• Shervin Pishevar, SGN
• Moderator: Mark Wallace, Wello Horld

2:00 PM - Breakout Sessions #1

Interested in diving deeper into some specific topics? We have a great set of expert-led breakout sessions that will dive deeper into some of the most interesting areas of the virtual goods industry:

• Session A: Metrics for Virtual Goods Businesses: The Whirled Case Study - Daniel James and Andrew Chen
• Session B: Music as the Ultimate Virtual Goods? Nabeel Hyatt
• Session C: Virtual Goods and the iPhone

3:30 PM - Generating Real Revenue from Virtual Goods

The goods are virtual, but the revenue is real. Interested in figuring out how to turn browsers into buyers and driving more engagement around virtual goods? We’ve assembled a strong group of panelists who can share their insights on how to tackle the challenge of converting virtual goods into real revenue.

• Adam Caplan, Super Rewards
• Matt Mihaly, Sparkplay Media
• David Perry, Acclaim
• Anu Shukla, Offerpal Media
• Moderator: Fouad ElNaggar, Redpoint Ventures

4:30 PM - Getting Paid: Build a Dominant Payments and Billing Strategy

Designing and merchandising virtual goods is only half of the equation. For a virtual goods model to work, determining what payment types to accept and how to combat fraud are critical issues. Our panel of experts will share their views on what it takes to succeed in this crucial part of the business.

• Gene Hoffman, Vindicia
• Tim Pechmann, GMG Enterntainment
• Paul Thind, Habbo

Pillow fighting- harmless, fun, and a bit flirtatious. Digital pillow fighting is just like pillow fighting in real life, without the fear that your opponent will have an allergic reaction to the down pillows you wield.

Developed by Shikha and Anand V. Chhatpar, Pillow Fight is a social game that lets you whack your friends with a variety of digital pillows. It’s in many ways like Facebook’s “poking” in its ambiguous sexual subtext. Pillow Fight allows you to select over a dozen of pillows (and more are unlocked as you level up) to use against your Facebook friends.

Unfortunately, you can only hit people you are friends with, so you’ll likely have to invite a lot of your friends by hitting them. Pillow Fights then go back and forth as players hit and answer back. The more wins you get, the more pillows you unlock and the higher the level you become.

Tabs include “My Active fights,” “Invite Friends,” and a leaderbboard called the “Champions” tab. The My Active Fights let you know who you are currently fighting with (great to help you organize your many pillow fights with your friends). There is also an “Instant Wins” that allows you to unlock new pillows by participating in offers. An enthusiastic user can jump several levels quickly without the need to fight or invite friends.

It’s a pretty simple game and has already gained a following likely because it’s a logical analogy to poking ib Facebook. However, it doesn’t contain any particularly ground-breaking elements, and there isn’t animation to keep you sticking around for a while. The variety of pillows is nice, but it’s still a pretty shallow game. But then again, anything deeper would probably ruin the innocence and silliness of the app.

Game play: 5

Development: 6

Pillow variety: 7

In tandem with the release earlier today of the Top 25 Facebook Games, we have just run the numbers and compiled the MySpace platform gaming charts for September 24, 2008.

Leading the charts are Mobsters (by an unknown developer) and Mafia Wars (by Zynga), light social RPGs that are relatively similar to Mob Wars, one of the leading games on Facebook. Also on top with over 8 million users is Own Your Friends (also by an unknown developer named “Peter”) which follows similar game dynamics as Serious Business’s Friends For Sale and Coolapps.com’s Owned! on Facebook.

What’s notable about the MySpace Top 25 Games chart is the developers you’ll find sitting atop the MySpace social gaming world. While many of the apps are produced by independent (or stealth) developers, large social game developer Zynga is dominating the charts with 7 of the top 25 games on MySpace - many of which (like Texas HoldEm and Street Racing) have similar counterparts on Facebook, but some of which (like Dragon Wars) were originally released on MySpace.

Leading social network application developer RockYou also has a strong presence with 2 titles in the top 12, and original viral game developer Blake Commagere is still sitting pretty with Vampires, Zombies, and Werewolves all hanging in the top 25. Large Facebook social game developers Playfish and SGN do not have any titles in the top of the MySpace gaming charts.

An important difference in the MySpace Top 25 is that MySpace only publishes total user counts - NOT active users. So while many of these games may have achieved significant distribution, there’s no guarantee that users are actually engaged. It’s impossible to know exactly which games are indeed keeping the most players engaged.

(If any readers know the identity of any of the unknown developers above, please let others know in the comments!)

New social gaming community Muzui just launched last week, allowing users to play games both online or via mobile devices.

Users have the option to play the (free) games either by signing up or simply as a guest. There are no game play limitations based on whether or not users log in, but guests are unable to connect with other players via the social platform, thus defeating the overall purpose of the Muzui site.

Once signed up for Muzui, users have the options to not only play or download free games, but also add and challenge friends, receive rewards, and use the site’s various social systems. Muzui even allows you to connect to your existing Facebook or MSN account, allowing you to more easily invite your friends from said networks and even receive awards from the developers.

The site’s rewards are based on a “coin” system. Win or lose, when you play any of the Muzui games you earn coins as a reward. These coins are meant to act as badges that demonstrate your prowess and experience level playing the available games.

Muzui makes it easy for users to submit their own games and create their own levels for existing games for other users to play. You can currently create levels for existing titles like Space Cowboy and The Shadow using a rudimentary level building tool. Furthermore, the tool is quick and easy to pick up and learn, and makes an excellent asset for any would be level designers out there.

While users cannot earn any money for the games and levels they submit, they are eligible for monthly prizes for participating. Perhaps of greater value for most creators, however, is the satisfaction of having levels used in widely played games, thus offering excellent exposure for young designers.

Unfortunately, the number of games currently on Muzui is rather limited - five. Unless Muzui can make it easier for users to create more games, the lack of games will surely create a problem for the service’s growth.

It will be interesting to see how Muzui fares. The company is playing in a crowded market, but the social elements may help Muzui grow faster than the other established players in the space.

We have just compiled the latest numbers and here are the Facebook gaming charts for September 24, 2008.

Playfish’s Pet Society - recently launched in beta - makes its debut on the list at #12 this month. It looks like the company has another hit on its hands with its fourth title. Playfish continues to dominate the Facebook gaming charts with four spots in Facebook’s top 12.

Meanwhile, Lil Green Patch, Texas HoldEm, Owned!, and Friends For Sale continue to sit atop the charts. Holding strong are Zynga and SGN, each with multiple titles in the top 25. SGN’s newly acquired (fluff)Friends is hanging tough at #22, and Zynga’s newly acquired YoVille is showing staying power at #10.

Meanwhile, Blake Commagere’s Vampires, one of the oldest games on the Facebook Platform, is holding strong at #25. The game continues to attract hundreds of thousands of players each month, despite much early criticism.

As Facebook completes its migration to the redesigned version of the site, Inside Social Games will be monitoring the impact of the changes to the most popular games on the Facebook Platform.

If you found the above chart valuable, please feel free to send it to a colleague in the space!

We all know that the casual game player is not too keen on paying to play online games. We also know that the hardcore gamer would rather play something along the lines of Bioshock or Halo  than smaller web games. This leaves an obvious gap between those that spend a lot of money on games, and those that barely spend anything (if at all). So the big question is, how do you find the middle ground?

Casual Café has created a model somewhat similar to Asian game rooms with their two new and fantastic casual games, Burdaloo and Spyde Solitare.

The way it works, is players are charged for “credits:”

• 50 CafeCredits: USD $5.75
• 110 CafeCredits: USD $12.00
• 250 CafeCredits: USD $25.00

Like in game rooms, players pay to play for a period of time using the pre-purchased credits. In this case, 1 CafeCredit = 10 minutes of play time (about $0.01 per minute for the 250 credit option). Players are also able to play games for free as guests, but are somewhat limited on what they can and cannot do within the games.

Once paying, players gain access to a bundle of new features such as new levels, zero ads, achievements, and personal profiles. However, with a saturated casual market and any number of Flash games out there for free all ready, this begs the question: Why would anyone actually want to pay to play?

Well, according to founder Michael Scholz, the number of casual game players expecting to pay to play is approximately 1-2% of the market (and growing).This is about the same conversion rate you see in casual game downloads from places like Yahoo or MSN games. Casual Café has already reached approximately 10,000 monthly users, with many coming the UK and Australia.

These games are very well polished and rival your basic desktop games. Unlike many other online casual games, these games allow you not only save your progress but also accumulate virtual currency rewards through an account system.

Casual Cafe is also releasing these games on the Facebook Platform. While another set of games on Facebook is nothing out of the ordinary, the quality of these games do outshine many others.

What’s to say Casual Cafe’s “pay to play” model will not work in the US? The company is already having budding sinccess with its first two games. With more well designed games in the pipeline, there is clear potential for the company to continue to gain US market traction.

It’s always an wonder how games can entice people to learn new things. Over the years, there have been a number of new types of games that assist in teaching everything from language to math. Unfortunately, good educational games are often a rare commodity due to the  fact that most of them come off as stagnant and users generally expect that they will not be very fun. Nonetheless, there are games out there that break through these preconceived notions.

Playfish just released a new title that fits the definition of an educational game and combines it with the social aspects they are known for. The game is called Geo Challenge, and while it will not let you earn a PhD in geography, it does help to recall some of the basic worldly knowledge most people tend to forget after passing that high school geography class.

The game is wonderfully presented with an easy to use interface, non-intrusive yet atmospheric music, and attractive graphics. As soon as users clicks play they are immediately able to comprehend the game play, and proceed through a series of matching-style mini-games. Players begin in the midst of a busy airport and start sorting tourist suitcases by matching country names to their corresponding flags.

After the first mini-game, players move forward to match country shapes, followed by placing pins on a world map to show the location of cities they need to find. Of course, none of these mini-games expects the user to be 100% right, so Playfish takes measures to narrow down the answers. For example, in the suitcase game, the wrong answers are slowly removed as time passes, so that even if players do not know the exact answer they can still make educated guesses from the reduced choices.

As one would expect from Playfish at this point, the game includes good social context. Geo Challenge allows users to invite friends and challenge their knowledge of the world against your own. The app also shows just the player’s friends, players within the same city, or a global leader board by week, month, or all time.

Players are also capable of earning and receiving trophies for display. These trophies are earned through specific achievements like, “Score over 10,000 points without making a mistake.” In addition, upon completion of the game, you’re given a title (i.e. “Bus Driver”) according to your score. You’re also given a horoscope-like blurb that describes your personality that is not only amusing to read, but in some cases frighteningly accurate.

Geo Challenge is a fun, educational, and great looking social game. Granted, the game is no Carmen Sandiego, but it is a big step in the right direction.