Inside Social Games

LOLapps, a developer of Facebook apps and games funded by Polaris Ventures, got its start building a white label quiz and gift creation platform for Facebook users. Since then, however, it started developing its own original Facebook games, which have been moving up the charts recently. Today, the company’s new strategy is being revealed: LOLapps has productized its Facebook role-playing game platform, and is partnering with large developers to bring their IP onto Facebook.

The first such partnership is with Atarti’s Cryptic Studios, who is working with LOLapps to create a social game version of Champions Online for Facebook. The original Champions Online MMO was released on PC on September 1st, and retails in the US for around $40. The Facebook version launches today.

According to Manu Rekhi, head of product and marketing at LOLapps, Cryptic partnered with LOLapps both to introduce the Champions Online brand to Facebook users with the intent of leading them to the paid version of the game, and to monetize through virtual goods.

“This becomes a very good funnel for them,” Rekhi told us. “Players are already immersed in their character and the game. They can either pay to level up or go download the game. Instead of getting users to sign up for Netflix, you get users to buy the game. It’s a win-win-win for users, Cryptic, and us. We’re making the original pie bigger, and creating a new pie too.”

According to Rekhi, the game was produced in a matter of weeks. Once the deal with Cryptic was signed, LOLapps’s writers and designers applied the Champions Online story line and theme to its RPG platform, while being very conscious to take care of the Champions brands.

Because LOLapps is not a custom shop, they don’t have to charge partners anything to launch the game, something Rekhi says is music to developers’ ears. Rather, LOLapps games can monetize through driving incentivized sales of downloadable games, or by virtual goods inside the Facebook game itself. It all depends on the partner and the rights they have to the IP. And, because of its network of white-label quiz and gifting apps, the company can drive distribution itself as well.

Fundamentally, Rekhi hopes the LOLapps model can help reduce the hit-driven risk of the games business by driving more demand for games.

“If you can reduce that risk from 1/10 to 1/7 or 1/5, that’s huge value that our partners can get out of this. They can funnel all their users to a game that’s being launched three months out, drive pre-sales, and show purchase intent [in a LOLapps version of the game]. That would have been harder to do before,” he says.

“A lot of [larger developers] have tried building their own games, or going through agencies, and failed. They don’t really understand how things work. When you go in and say not just we can build it, but we can make a variety of interesting things happen within it, it actually gets pretty easy to convince them. If it doesn’t work, they lose nothing.”

To assist in the development of its social RPG platform, LOLapps acquired MMO games studio ROFLplay in July. They bring a “very strong Asian influence, as you can tell by Yakuza Lords,” Rekhi says. The company’s second game, Diva Life, was a departure from Yakuza’s storytelling style. Rekhi says its platform enables the company to quickly roll out new features in one game or another.

“What Facebook has done is really amazing – all your friends are already there. Kudos to Facebook for mapping the social graph,” Rekhi says. “The traditional large customers just take a lot longer to really see what the value is there, so we’re filling the gap.”