With Hit Social Game Happy Aquarium, CrowdStar Steps Into the Spotlight
For those who haven’t been paying attention to social gaming recently, the newest hot genre of game is not mafia battles, nor farming, nor pet care, nor even running a virtual restaurant. No, it’s taking care of fish in a virtual aquarium. And if you’re a regular reader, you’ve watched more and more of these sorts of games launch or get revealed in the last couple of months. Now, it’s time for a closer look at the biggest one of them all, and the developer behind it: Happy Aquarium, by CrowdStar.
In the company’s first interview with the media, CrowdStar community marketing manager Yvonne Lee tells us that Happy Aquarium was the first virtual aquarium game on Facebook (although there have been other types of fish games in the past). Launched in early September, Happy Aquarium has quickly gone to 26 million monthly active users and 7 million daily active users, making it one of the largest and fastest-growing apps on Facebook, according to AppData.
The game emphasizes taking care of your fish, more like the many popular pet-caring games on Facebook than the production-focused farming games — it’s “about loving your fish,” Lee says, not just selling them. Besides the usual mechanics of buying and feeding fish, you can name your fishes, train them in an obstacle-course mini game, mate them to create new fish, and enjoy the simple pleasures of being an aquarium owner, like “cleaning” algae off the aquarium with the wave of your mouse cursor. Other fishing games, notably Fish World (and now, Zynga’s new FishVille), tend to rely more on the production and sale of fish.
CrowdStar itself has actually been around for a year and a half, having originally launched a trivia game called Know-It-All Trivia. This year, the company decided to focus on high-quality games that monetized using virtual goods. Happy Aquarium was launched in September and it has spread because people liked it, not because it made heavy use of Facebook’s communication channels, Lee says. “We didn’t even implement notifications at first,” she adds, “users were actually calling their friends and family to talk about it.” If users want to buy more currency for things like new fish or fish food in the game, they can purchase it directly through Social Gold’s monetization service.
San Francisco-based CrowdStar has not officially launched other games, yet, although you can see a number of other ones, like “Sexy City,” in a toolbar on the app. These games are made by developers who are friends of the company, according to Lee. The company plans to keep building on Happy Aquarium, and is also working on “other things” — it is actually still in stealth, and isn’t disclosing funding, its number of employees, and other key details. But we do know a little bit more. The company’s chairman is Peter Relan, who is also the chairman of iPhone app developer Aurora Feint. Given this connection, we asked Lee if the two companies had any plans to work together on cross-platform games, and she says they haven’t made significant plans yet.
We’re interested to hear more, as CrowdStar is planning to disclose more details soon.
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this game is fine until you try to train your fish and it leaves you wanting to slit your wrists.
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i never atherizes 499 on the 15th of dec, i want my money back now, i payed 999 for pearls on the 12 and never got them i want my money back for that also, call me please to get this mess 267 9774293
Hi. I just can’t seem to be able to purchase any pearls. The social gold page in FB does not want to load. Can you assist pleas!
fish are so cool
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I am having trouble playing Happy Aquarium I haven’t been able to play it for awhile.Please help me to fix it Thank you Elizabeth Roberts
what is your name?
what?
quiero tener el acuario
quiero tener el aquarium
I am NOT amused!!! Why did they mess with the neighbours on Happy Aquarium on Facebook? You can be assured that you will lose a LOT of loyal HA players
not sure who to write to, i am having major issues with my happy aquarium…. it will Not load to my tanks at all… all it shows is harolds tank trying to load
me parece un coñazo ke no se pueda poner el juego en español… estoi a nivel 39 y aun no entiendo algunas cosas por ke no lo traducen… y me siento estafado por ke compre unas enbras con dinero de veradad y aora si kiero ke crienen tengo ke soltar mas dinero deverian alertar en castellano de las co0ndiciones ke tienen los distintos vichos para ke se apareen,,,
Where is the happy aquarium game. why is the secret of happy aquarium loading when i press the game. can you help me out. pls. put back the game .thanks.
We are having a great deal of trouble with the barrel. No one i know has managed to release the animal. It would be helpful if neighbors could help more then one time through out the process. Now it looks like they can only click once no matter how many days have passed in between clicks. It is very frustrating and basically we’re now ignoring that part of the game. The froggy is working well now and I am enjoying that. Thankyou for your time.
I know that is truly boring and you might be skipping to the next comment, but I just wanted to throw you a big thanks – you cleared up some things for me!
Can you please help me, first my neibours dissapeared, and for 3 days now my fish tanks doesn’t open at all, when I go in to happy aquarium the only thank I see is the one comming up before ours is supose to open. please please help me. Thank you
Dear crowdstar I am writing to terminate my account for Happy Aquarium. I am very sorry I have enjoy playing very much, but it is not the same game as went I started to play. To many changes and my limit time to put into the game as also change. Thank you for the time I have play. Norma Cronk…