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CrowdStar’s New Happy Pets Game Sees Zynga-Like Growth
November 16th, 2009
| By Guest Post | 34 Comments » |
If you have been following Facebook games, you know that the latest popular genre is fishing games. And if you read this site, you’ll know that CrowdStar, the developer behind the largest of these, Happy Aquarium, is exploring several other games as well. Now, the company appears to be starting a happy game line, judging by the early results from its new virtual pet-caring game, Happy Pets.
The app, launched last week, has grown from 0 to 870,000 monthly actives by today — not bad by any measure, but especially impressive given that this is the company’s first follow-up to Happy Aquarium.
Similarities and differences from other pet games
In Happy Pets you adopt kittens and take care of them as they grow into cats (puppies are coming soon). In some respects its game play is similar to Pet Society as it gives you experience points for feeding your pet and keeping their litter box and food bowl clean. But less like Pet Society and similar to its other game Happy Aquarium, the focus seems to be on caring for and loving your pets rather than production for sale. In fact, the game-play discourages pet sales by giving you fewer coins for selling your kittens then you paid for purchasing them.
Other notable factors include high-quality graphics, and a real-life feel. The kittens behave more like real kittens, rather than human-like cartoon characters that look like cats (as is the case in Pet Society). For example, a Happy Pets kitten moves towards your touch when you pet it.
Limited social and stickiness features
At the moment there are very few actions that a user can engage in besides adopting and feeding kittens or cleaning their litter boxes. While they can furnish the living room where pets live, the kittens only interact with a few of these items. Also there is very little reason to invite friends other than stealing daily piggy bank coins from their living rooms. While you can pet your friends’ kittens (and gain experience points), these actions aren’t shared with your friends via notifications or newsfeed postings.
However, it is still very early in the life of the game and Crowdstar is probably working on these and other improvements. It will be interesting to watch the game over the next few months to see what improvements they make and how those impact stickiness.
Acquisition channels
Like other popular Facebook games Happy Pets makes significant use of the invite friends and gift giving viral channels. Gift giving is currently only limited to three decorative items. However each time you access the gift giving feature, the game asks for permission to recruit friends by posting a non-gifting note about the game into your newsfeed. It also uses the newsfeed for other in-game actions like announcements of leveling up in game, adoption of new pets, as well as photos of the your pets doing cute antics. Once the new Facebook redesign goes into effect these game stories will become less obvious, so Happy Pets must quickly develop in-game announcements that users are not only likely to share but also interact with if it wants to maintain user growth from the newsfeed.
Happy Pets is being promoted in a toolbar that runs on Happy Aquarium, an older CrowdStar quiz app called Know-It-All Triva, and other, relatively small apps made by “friends” of the company. Happy Aquarium has more than 25 million monthly active users, so that game alone could be driving a lot of people to Happy Pets.
Overall, Happy Pets has shown significant potential but to develop engagement and further capitalize on the social graph it needs to create more socially expressive and engaging features in the game. That being said, in the short time it has been around it has appeared to demonstrate how smaller can gain significant growth by developing engaging content and using cross-promotion.
At this growth rate, Crowdstar is looking like a serious contender for Zynga, Playfish, and other social game developers.
Sana Choudary works with traditional game developers who are having the challenge of understanding how to build social games. She helps them understand how to use and optimize viral channels and social media marketing to build popular social games. She blogs at Traffichoney.com.
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November 16th, 2009 at 11:55 am
this is not real organic growth. it’s called app molting and all that’s REALLY happening is promoting of another app within the first app. hardly news because it happens all the time.
November 17th, 2009 at 9:41 am
I wanted to check this game out only to find that in order to play it I have to complete one of those awful survey’s (Win free this or that.. just give us your info!) that lead to unwanted emails and phone calls. I’ve reported them for this. I’m thoroughly annoyed!
November 17th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Nustik, there are multiple factors that could be driving the app’s growth, including how CrowdStar uses the news feed and other communication channels.
The news, in terms of cross-promotion, is that the company is doing it so well here.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Tara, I don’t see any offers in the game.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Tara, the game doesn’t even use offers to monetize they only use direct pay. You must have visited someone else because I don’t see any offers there.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I don’t like it because you can’t breed! it SUCKS!
November 28th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
It always comes up with a connection problem with Happy Pets, and my connection is Excellent, so there is something wrong with the game.
December 4th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
oye now my sister die and I fill like crying help
December 4th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
i love my famaly
December 4th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
[...] try to come out with higher -quality games faster than their competitors, with some recent examples being CrowdStar’s Happy Pets and more recently Zynga’s PetVille. But, the most recent example we’ve seen is a new [...]
December 5th, 2009 at 12:07 am
[...] read the rest of the post please visit: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/11/16/crowdstars-new-happy-pets-game-sees-zynga-like-growth/Similar Posts:Should you make a competitive or cooperative social [...]
December 7th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
[...] our leaderboards this past autumn, first with genre-defining virtual aquarium game Happy Aquarium, then with virtual pet-caring game Happy Pets. The company — or actually, two companies — is coming up as Zynga, the [...]
December 15th, 2009 at 10:18 am
[...] then followed up on Happy Pets (and preceding pet games, like Pet Society and SuperPoke Pets) with PetVille earlier this [...]
December 15th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I love this game. But the teachers cut me off from facebook because i wasn’t doing my work, i think they are over reacting, anyways this game is cute.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
still love em’
December 19th, 2009 at 5:40 am
add me
December 20th, 2009 at 8:36 am
i got and it put me in a room with a cat bowl and litter tray will not let fed the dog cus i need a dog bowl and will not let me open the shop i am a dog lover and have dogs now i i have adog thats dying cus your game wont let me feed it can you help soon
December 21st, 2009 at 11:27 am
you are cruysi
December 29th, 2009 at 3:19 am
This is soooooooooooo cool game
December 30th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I’m now level 19 at Happy Pets
January 3rd, 2010 at 3:27 am
euhtfug
January 3rd, 2010 at 3:31 am
,i love this game
January 15th, 2010 at 5:23 am
im a good girl
January 16th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
c poche ton site web sérieux c vrm de la marde ps shu sure que tu sais meme pas parler fr
February 1st, 2010 at 6:35 am
i really wont 2 play happy pets now it sounds brill xx <3
February 7th, 2010 at 1:37 am
hi.i am nikita
February 13th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
elo every1 lv u all not f off bastards
February 19th, 2010 at 9:49 am
[...] Happy Aquarium, and it has since launched two followups that have done well in their own rights, Happy Pets and Happy Island. As of today, it has 10.3 million daily active users, the second most out of any [...]
February 19th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
I Like This Game
it’s Ok…!!!
February 21st, 2010 at 2:38 pm
kewl
March 13th, 2010 at 3:17 am
mou aresei poli auto to paixnidi eidei exw duo gates kai duo skylous sto pixnidi!!!
March 14th, 2010 at 6:08 am
I like this game! I am Level 31! I have 8 pets in each room but i have only 4 pets in my 4rth room.Oh! and I have alot of Babies on Happy Pets! >_<
March 14th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I love that game im in level 46 tomoz love u <3
March 14th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I love that game im in level 41 !!!!