Most Facebook users have seen the various RPGs that circulate around. Each of these games follow a fairly formulaic methodology in their game play, but developers are always (or should always be) looking for new ways to employ new game mechanics. That said, Football Tycoon by Blue Frog Gaming takes a curious spin on a standardized genre.

Okay, so it isn’t a huge leap from traditional RPGs – but rather than just managing one character, in Football Tycoon you need to balance your resources and level your entire football team. Each team consists of nine team members (quarterback, running back, wide receiver, etc) and each of these has corresponding statistics that need to be upgraded with both cash and energy. As expected, these make your players, and in turn, your team stronger, thus allowing you to win more games.

These games, however, are not too different that most RPG events. Essentially, all you do is go to “Play” select a team to duke it out with and a text based result and score is presented to you. Upon playing, you receive some cash, and you can continue to play until your stamina is depleted.

What is nice about playing games in Football Tycoon, though, is that you earn some money regardless of whether you win or lose (of course, winning is worth more). However, this is where a little “social strategy” comes into play.

One of the key social elements to this game is your fans. Fans allow you to earn more money per game by strategically purchasing business elements such as endorsements or stadium upgrades. These, in turn, can earn you extra income per game, and passively, and as you play more games and level up, new income features become available to you. However, the number of fans does not merely affect endorsement deals, but rather also grants access to different and more effective training methods (drills) that better increase your player’s statistics.

Beyond fans, you can also utilize your friends as players on your team to earn you some extra stats, and you can even add your very own nicknames with them, adding a nice personal feel to the game.

The only real downside is that the energy and stamina numbers are rather low at the start and players end up sitting around and waiting for them to recharge most of the time. In general, people don’t like to have to wait that much (it’s boring), and while this is an issue in most Facebook RPGs it is far more prevalent in Football Tycoon as you only have five energy and four stamina as opposed to a more standard ten and can use it all up in about 15 seconds. But again, this is very minor and not much of a hinderance.

If you can look past the slow pacing of the game, Football Tycoon is a pretty fun game for any football fan. Furthermore, the developers do take a few baby steps away from your cliché RPG template with the team concept, and the social elements are nicely implemented. In the end, however, the game still feels like another Mob Wars, only with a different look and a few minor tweaks.

Sim games are increasingly popular these days. In open ended “sandbox” style sim worlds, players are given a set of tools and can do more or less whatever they want within the game parameters, setting their own goals. Ever since the success of games such as The Sims and GTA, there have been more and more sandbox-style games released.

The social space is no exception, with titles like Pet Society, YoVille, and Citypixel. Another game has been rising in the Facebook ranks in the past few months called myFarm by PlaySocial, and you can probably guess where this game is set.

In myFarm, players begin with four plowed and seeded plots of land within a grid of empty grass. The game is very simple from here: You can (a) harvest crops that are grown for money, (b) plow new land for planting, or (c) purchase items to improve your farm. Those are the basics of the game play, but that is all you need, as the real depth is figuring out the best crops to grow and earn the cash you need to make your farm bigger and better.

The game plays very similar to Roller Coaster Tycoon (in its most basic format), where you plop items down in an isometric plane. At the moment, you can purchase trees, new crops, animals, and various buildings, each of which have unique attributes that add to your farm (i.e. if you purchase a woodshed, you can now cut trees and sell lumber). As it stands, however, not all items have something special to contribute, but based on what the developers state in game, they will soon. Thus, a lot of the items are more aesthetic than functional. (Of course, there is nothing wrong with that. Trying to make something others will see look good is half the fun.)

In fact, that is one of the key social elements in the game. If you so desire, you can peruse around the various farms your friends have started, and send each other gifts to help grow your respective lands. On the surface, that might seem minor, but it adds a moderate competitive flare to the game, as there tends to be a strong allure to the prospect of being better than your friends (whether one admits to it or not).

Regardless of whether or not you want to compete against friends for the biggest and best looking farm, the game is still a fun little sandbox to play in. Its very simple game play makes it quite easy for anyone to pick up and start having some fun with it right away. Also, with any luck, the developers for myFarm will soon add in some of the functions for purely aesthetic items soon, which should add some further depth to some already entertaining game play.

What has over 2.5 million monthly players, makes revenues of over $1 million a month, and is akin to the criminal underworld? The answer is Mob Wars, and this Facebook and MySpace title has spawned a cottage industry of copycats that is now expanding its reach beyond the social networks and into the mobile world. That’s right, Mob Wars has a new iPhone equivalent called iMob Online, developed by Addmired.

Though a mobile version, this app keeps a lot of the features Mob Wars players are familiar with. It is still text based, you still take jobs, earn money, and work your way up to that wonderful crime boss you always dreamed of being.

The best news though, is that the game is free. The only thing that costs anything are little, optional “respect point” packages that you can buy from the App Store. Of course, this isn’t something unfamiliar to long time Facebook RPG players, as most RPG titles allow the player to purchase some sort of “currency” for real money to get extra bonuses in game.

Being a new game, however, means that it is going to have a few new toys to play with as well. This rendition makes use of some of the iPhone’s technological capabilities and incorporates a nifty location-aware system that will let you scan for other iMob Online players nearby, allowing you to either join forces or duke it out. That considered, future versions of this game could make for some rather interesting game features that could possibly integrate reality into game play. What if locations in game represented locations in your town? What if you could physically move about your town using GPS and have that affect the game? What if entering another town (say if you are traveling) can affect your home town? Food for thought.

Beyond the location usage, the game also includes your classic Mob Wars social features. Most already know them by heart, but such features are your standard chat, leaderboards, and in some cases news feeds. Nothing to brag about, but chances are people would complain if they weren’t there; which more or less means that such features are an expectation for anything considered a “social game.”

Nevertheless, iMob Online looks pretty cool and is certainly a must have for any hardcore Mob Wars players. Hopefully, this means the world will begin to see more popular RPGs port to the iPhone. It would be great if the mobile versions connected to the originals via Facebook Connect – for all the Mob Wars addicts out there, something like that would be a godsend.

[via PoketGamer]

The social nature of teens has proven to be quite lucrative for IMVU, who provides virtual rooms for the teen demographic. Users are capable of designing their own rooms and avatars as well as socialize, download music, and create and sell virtual goods of their own design. And last week, the company stated that it has raised $10 million in a forth round of funding.

The round was led by Best Buy Capital, and existing investors including Menlo Ventures, Allegis Capital, and Bridgescale Partners also participated.  With the investment, IMVU said that Kuk Yi of Best Buy Capital will become a member of the company’s board of directors.

IMVU’s number of registered users has increased by about 10 million (50%) since last June to 30 million. The company says it has 55 employees and is generating about $1 million in revenue every month.

IMVU CEO Cary Rosenzweig said that the company expects to continue growing throughout 2009 and should hit profitability soon.

[via VentureBeat]

Social network users should be familiar with Twitter, and most likely already have an account. However, for those that might have been living under a rock lately, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that lets users send and receive other users’ updates and displays them on said user’s profile page.

The sharing concept of Twitter is what Twoof expands upon, and rather than simply dealing with 140 word text-based posts, this website connects Twitter friends via Flash-based games. The site works similarly to most other social/casual gaming sites, but rather than creating a whole new social system, it connects various Twitter users together with its social gaming experience.

All you have to do to join is log in with your Twitter account, and you are good to go. From Twoof you can share the games you play, as well as play against your friends, followers, and even your followees instantly. Furthermore, the games are pretty fun to play and range from casual puzzle games to simple shooters. The site certainly has something entertaining for any palette, and if there just happens to be nothing of interest amongst the free games (which is unlikely), you can always purchase new games via the iTunes store from the home page.

As with most other social gaming sites, Twoof also incorporates leaderboards for each game as well as overall in the form of “Top Twoofers” (say that five times fast), which you can “tweet” or “follow” directly from the site itself.

Overall, the site in general is very easy to use (though a search engine wouldn’t hurt) and really is a great companion for any Twitter user. The only real downside is the amount of productive time that will be lost through some of these games, but such is the price for quality.

Andrograde is a new Flash game portal and monetization service that just launched late last year. Founded by William Perone (formerly an early employee at social mobile service Loopt), the consumer side of the service is a casual/social site with a collection of Flash games, and developers can submit their games to be added to the library. Most of the games on the site today are simple and easy to learn.

Andrograde offers basic social features as well, including a live chat system integrated into all the game pages. Many titles also have leaderboards for user generated content, like levels.

However, the core of the service is its virtual goods platform. Developers offer their game for free to Andrograde and create features in their game that costs “Andrograde Points” (which can be used in any game containing the Andrograde API). Every time a player purchases something in your game, you get paid for it at the end of each month.  Developers are responsible for making the bonus features seem compelling enough to merit a purchase.

Andrograde says it offers developers an average $1 for ever 550 plays, and claims better performance than services like Kongregate, Game Jacket, and MochiAds offer.  Developers can check out an API demo game here.

The Facebook Platform has been growing dramatically around the world in recent months, and entrepreneurs are building new businesses that are generating a majority of their revenues from international users in 2009. One such new social game development company is showing that international Facebook games can generate impressive revenue numbers with relatively small distribution.

TYLER Projects, founded by three friends in Singapore, has largely been flying under the radar since their Facebook launch in late 2007. Their flagship game, Battle Stations, has been steadily growing in popularity in recent months – about 70,000 people have played it in the last 30 days.

However, co-founder Leonard Lin has agreed to speak about the company’s business publicly for the first time with Inside Social Games. Below, Leonard talks about TYLER’s Battle Stations strategy, demographics of the game’s audience, and how the company has been successful in building its virtual goods business on Facebook.

Thanks for your time Leonard. Could you give us a little background on TYLER Projects?

TYLER Projects was founded by 3 guys who just enjoyed coding Flash games for fun on weekends.  “TYLER” is an amalgamation of the founders’ names (TY – tiamyang, LE – Leonard, R – Ron).

We coded a Flash based RPG (called Mobile Weapon) with features similar to a Final Fantasy game and tried to sell it as a casual game. We had about 3 million unique players trying the free version of the game but hardly anyone actually bought the premium version (the usual biz model for casual games). We then realized it was because we had a large audience mismatch; the casual games market was comprised mainly of females aged 25 – 40 whereas most Mobile Weapon players were aged 12 – 18 and male (they also didn’t have credit cards).

Then we saw some games (Warbook specifically) doing really well on the Facebook platform and getting exponential growth in users and thought “hey, we want a piece of that action too”.

When did you start Battle Stations, and what has been your strategy to date with Battle Stations?

We started working on Battle Stations in late 2007. We had just about exhausted all our money (our own money, we don’t have any investor backing) making our first game. If we were going to make another game we knew we would have to do it differently if the company was to survive.

Battle Stations was a last ditch effort to save the company. I (Leonard) was actually going for job interviews at some banks while we were creating the game, while the rest of us were making websites for corporate clients to pay the bills.

We came up with the game design for Battle Stations in 3 days and deployed a prototype on Facebook within 2 weeks. We didn’t have a strategy when we first started Battle Stations, we just assumed that we’d get exponential growth and things would take care of themselves. That didn’t happen. Battle Stations grew and then it stalled at about 10,000 DAU.

We decided not to go the route other developers went: focusing on growing their user base, adding more apps, making them more viral, etc. Instead we kept working on Battle Stations trying to improve it: more content, better security, better gameplay and balance.

The reason we chose that strategy? We wanted to monetize with a virtual goods model; and for that to happen our game would have to be:

1. Relatively secure – Customers probably wouldn’t like it very much if a hacker or scripter could obtain the same virtual goods for free.
2. Long term engaging – The game has to have enough content and provide a deep enough experience if we want repeat purchases of our virtual goods.

Going forward the strategy is to evolve the game into something that will provide players entertainment for many months (or even years, like WoW) as well as to come up with new titles with a broader appeal (airships are a rather niche market afterall).

What are the age/sex/location demographics of your players?

Age:

• 30% – 12 – 17 years
• 52% – 18- 34 years

Sex:

• 54% Male (this is from Quantcast, although our in game numbers seem to suggest a much higher % of males, closer to 90%). Players who didn’t list their sex in FB are automatically assigned a male character. We didn’t log down how many users didn’t have their sex specified in their FB profile.

Location:

• 51.8% of players from Asia (Top 5 countries: Hong Kong 17.5%, Singapore 12.2%, Malaysia 6.6%, Indonesia 6%, Australia 3.4%)
• 21.0% from US
• 7.3% Canada

You can view the detailed data at Quantcast.

I hear that you’re doing $40,000 in monthly revenue on virtual goods sales.  Is that accurate?

We started selling virtual goods end of July 2008. We started selling ad hoc through emails and Facebook PMs. We only managed to get a “cash shop” listing all our items for up for in September. The growth in sales was pretty quick: August – $15K, September – $20K, October – $25K, November – $39K, December $50K (all revenue figures in USD); As of January 15th we have made $25K for this month.  Going forward I’m expecting our average monthly revenue from Battle Stations to be about $30K – $40K. We also did a campaign with Sony Ericsson recently although advertising-based income is not a focal area for us now.

We had 34,000 MAU in July (hardly impressive by Facebook standards). That figure went up to 55,000 by September and dipped hovered around 50,000 MAU for October and November. Only in early December did the numbers start to improve and by the 31 of December we had about 68,000 MAU. I’d say on average we had only about 50,000 MAU on average last year (as soon as MAU replaced DAU)

What are your price points for most items?

The best selling item is our Action Points (these are like extra turns to play the game) package, these are priced at $5 each. The most expensive item is US$40 though we have players offering up to US$60 for limited edition items and customized character “skins”.

What payment processing partners do you use?

We started with just Paypal but we’ve added Cherry Credits which provides prepaid cards for quite a few countries in Southeast Asia. Are speaking with a few new payment providers which will give us complete Asia coverage for accepting offline / non credit card payments.

What do you think are the most important things your team has done well in building your virtual goods business?

Many Facebook “games” might give some short term satisfaction but they don’t really involve any strategy (which is critical to creating an engaging experience). They also have limited content which means players will get bored quickly once they feel they’ve seen all there is to see in the game (which is bad obviously if you want them to spend money on the game).

We regularly catch scripters, audit our code for exploits and listen to a lot player feedback on possible cheating. Clamping down on cheating means competitive gamers will be more willing to spend time and money on the game.

I wouldn’t buy a $20 virtual game item in a Facebook game that I only play for 5-10 minutes a day and would be bored with after a month. But If I’ve been playing a game actively for a year and it’s still fun; then buying a $10 – $20 virtual item to enhance my enjoyment might not be such a ludicrous idea.

Thanks for your time Leonard!

Inside Facebook has the story today of Hong Kong-based 6 waves, which started out as a developer of applications for big brands in Hong Kong but has since become a global developer of entertainment applications and social games.

While the company hasn’t shared many details publicly before today, AppData’s listing of 6 waves’ portfolio of 60 applications shows that the company has been aggressively distributing its apps and games in Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Turkish – all corresponding to markets where Facebook has been growing rapidly in recent months.

Among them: 6 waves’ Pet Contest application is also available in Chinese, German, Italian, Spanish, and French. And 6 Waves’ Gangster Wars application is available in Chinese, Spanish, German, French, Turkish, and Italian. The company has developed several other applications for specific regional markets.

In addition, while the company is not disclosing much in terms of revenue numbers, it is ramping up both offers and direct transactions.

Read more at Inside Facebook >>

It’s time for another tips session, and this time, it’s off to the mafia. Mafia Wars seems like a simple game at first glance, but once you get into it, it actually begins to become somewhat complicated with hits, different jobs, adding members, equipping all of them, and so on. What do you buy? What quests do you do? How should you level? These are all questions that are posed by new players, and it can be a bit daunting. Well, we searched high and low for ways to help you out, and hopefully these tips and tricks will help those new players that simply feel overwhelmed.

So you’ve started Mafia Wars and you’re not sure where to start, well, the first choice is easy enough: Pick a “Maniac” class. While earning more cash or health might seem appealing, energy is what allows you to do quests and it is significantly better to earn both cash and experience instead of just one. That said, it’s time to get down to business.

DO NOT add to you mafia right away. Yes, you do want a large mafia to be stronger, but if you are ill-prepared, this is going to hurt more than help. Essentially, you want to have a “Mafia Mikes” and a “Bloody Chainsaw” (please note, that the bloody chainsaw is a special item bought from the home page and will periodically change. For all intents and purposes, the special item tends to have similar stats, and is often interchangable if the chainsaw is gone) for every two members. Here’s the thing though, the game bases the amount of members you need for another one of these items based on your current members. So say you bought a chainsaw with a mafia of 12, but then added 8 people, you’ll now need 22 members to buy another one, thus losing out the extra chainsaws you could have bought at 16, 18, and 20 members. Assuming that you are now equipping properly, it is time to spend some experience points.

Ideally, you want to put all of your points into energy so you can level faster. Since quests are going to be your primary source of experience and cash (hence why you used maniac), your limiting factor is how fast your energy recharges. Furthermore, energy resets every level, so having an high energy and a fast regeneration can get you to higher levels exponentially faster. Of course, you will want other stats eventually (when that is, is completely up to you), but this will give you a nice start.

Okay, so now you’re leveling at a nice pace and you’re getting those Mafia Mikes and Bloody Chainsaws when you should. What’s next? Why, equipping your mafia of course, and this can be done either via looting or buying. In general, it is better to loot in higher missions, but if you want to be safer, just buy, and if you’ve been doing what’s been said so far, money shouldn’t be a serious issue. The recommended equipment is as follows (once you can buy them of course):

• Weapons: Bloody Chainsaws should be available to half your mafia (since you’ve been buying them every two members right?), thus the other half should utilize the Chain Guns (.50 Caliber Rifle is better once you start looting).
• Armor: Body Armor all around – period. Yes, you can buy other stuff too, but this is a definite purchase.
• Cars: Secondary to armor and weapons, but if you must have one, the Towncar comes recommended.

This should be more than enough to get you started on the right track in Mafia Wars. However, before things get wrapped up, here are some other interesting tips found around the web that should work for both the MySpace and Facebook versions of the game.

• Avoid the Hitlist as best as possible. While it might be fun at higher levels, drawing attention to yourself at lower levels is just going to get you killed over and over again by high level players. Stay under the radar as long as you can.
• If you ever attack someone and get the maximum amount of cash ($70,000), bookmark them and attack them as often as possible.
• When you do start using other stats besides energy, it is best to keep attack and defense equal.
• (MySpace Version) More Energy – Send an energy pack to a friend along with the message, then go to your MySpace page and click on the link (the image) and you will send one to yourself.
• (MySpace Version) Beat the Bank 10% – Annoying, but if you deposit $9 at a time you will beat the system.
• Best Early Cash & Experience Jobs:
  o Level 1 – 4: Auto Theft
  o Level 5 – 8: Bank Heist
  o Level 9 – 12: Museum Break In
  o Level 13 – 17: Wiretap the Cops

Best of luck, and happy gaming.

Those damn, dirty koalas… you know you can’t trust those beady little black eyes, and that overly cute, fuzzy exterior. They are just… too cute, and you simply cannot trust anything that cute. But no, the furry devils rose against the might of mankind, destroying all dictionaries in the process. Now, what remains of spoken word is held prisoner within the massive Word Machine. Well, at least that is the story the developers of this app give…

Word Machine is a simple, word-based puzzle game which, for all intents and purposes, is a digital version of those word find activities you used to do in the back of magazines and activity books as a kid. Of course, this one is slightly more difficult, but the concept is more or less the same.

When you start the game, you are presented with a random selection of words to find within a large “machine” operated by those dastardly koalas. The primary objective is to find the selection of words generated at the bottom before time expires, but you are also welcome to boost your score or time by finding other meaningful words. Once all the main words have been found, you enter a bonus mode of sorts where the machine starts scrolling off to the side, and you try to find as many words as you can before the letters leave the screen or time runs out.

The game is certainly a thought provoking game, which is not surprising considering that it was developed by a company called Brainoid. At first, the game seems a little overwhelming, but it’s actually quite simple once you develop some semblance of a strategy. Furthermore, it is a nice change from your typical word game in which you type out words from a selection of scrambled letters.

Unfortunately, the social aspect does not take as refreshing a course, as it consists of your typical leader board scoring and friend challenges that most other Facebook titles have. The social feature play second fiddle to the overall game play.

Regardless, if you are a fan of word type games, then Word Machine is worth a try. While interesting and a breath of fresh air from your typical word/puzzle game, the game is actually made quite well. Now, if they could just do something about those koalas… with those eyes… always… starring….