Booyah, the developer of the location-based iPhone game MyTown, is announcing an interesting partnership with Facebook today. MyTown players will now be able to earn Facebook Credits by checking into real-world locations, as well as receive credits by completing sets of virtual items

The easiest way to understand the deal is to see Facebook as just another brand partner for My Town, taking a place alongside more traditional retail brands like H&M and PNG.

Each company should benefit. On MyTown’s side, the game is giving users another reason to keep playing, as well as associating itself with a prominent platform. “We’ve always wanted to understand how we can drive traffic from other platforms into our product,” Keith Lee, Booyah’s CEO, tells us. “And secondly, we want more people to get use our app with Facebook Connect. It’s a really great synergistic aspect,” he says.

As for Facebook, the company has been working hard to bring more user attention to Credits, which a large number of games on Facebook now use (though few use Credits exclusively). Previous promotions, like a Credits giveaway through CrowdStar, have taken place mainly on the site, but MyTown will give Facebook a way into the iPhone market.

In the future, this kind of partnership could become even more interesting. A number of Facebook games are spreading out to mobile platforms like Android and iPhone, as well as other web destinations; Credits could thus take on a value outside of Facebook, and conceivably even be traded for real-world goods or services, since they’ll have a defined value across a broad virtual economy.

Lee says that Booyah is currently figuring out its own strategy of how to tie virtual goods more strongly to the real-world fun of location-based gaming, although he’s not willing to give any more details for now. But Booyah should have plenty of options, as it also seems to have a quiet strategy around publishing other games, like Facebook’s Nightclub City (which we just chose as our top game of the year).

A quick update on MyTown: it’s still the largest location-based app out of the trio of itself, Foursquare and Gowalla, with 2.5 million users, up from about a million in February. Lee says that the game has an even reach across the country, unlike the tech-heavy audiences of some other location-based games.

[Editor's Note: The following article was previously published on Inside Facebook. Facebook's growth and traffic stats in India are excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Click here to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]

We estimate Facebook’s country market penetration monthly as part of the Facebook Global Monitor report. Typically, market penetration figures are determined by the percentage of the population that’s on Facebook. For most of the developed world, this metric provides a good view into Facebook’s popularity. But what about poorer countries, where many people lack internet connections? Measuring Facebook’s popularity, in these countries, quickly becomes complicated.

It’s more than a merely academic question. On Monday, we reported that Facebook’s new office in Hyderabad, India will hire up to 500 people. The office will serve as a global sales and operations node — but it also seems likely that Facebook has some confidence that India’s penetration levels will rise, providing a viable market for the company. So today, we’re taking a closer look at India’s present, as well as its possible future.

At first glance, Facebook appears to be a failure in India, which is well known as one of the two bastions of Google’s Orkut. Out of a total population of 1.14 billion people, India has only 9.5 million Facebook users — a market penetration rate of only 0.8 percent.

The story changes when we begin looking at India’s much smaller internet population, for which we’ll use the World Bank estimate of 51.7 million. Here’s how India’s growth on Facebook looks over the year when using that number:

Other estimates of India’s internet population vary — a more recent measurement by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) puts it at 71 million — but any measurement we could use shows a penetration of at least 10 percent, growing fairly quickly. This is especially impressive considering that most data connections in India are not broadband.

India’s internet penetration will rise over time, and it’s likely that a significant number of its citizens could be internet-connected within a few years. However, an even more interesting consideration is the growth of the mobile web.

While wireline connections are few and far between ( a fact that also reveals part of the problem in connecting more Indians to the internet) wireless phone ownership has grown by leaps and bounds. India added 16 million wireless users in May alone, according to government statistics, which count 617.5 million wireless users as of June, over 50 percent of the population.

The problem is that few of these wireless connections are being used for data; another IAMAI study, from January, showed that only two million users make significant use of their mobile internet connections. However, as you can see on the IAMAI chart at right, the younger generations — those most likely to be using Facebook — are the heaviest mobile data users. Yet another study predicts 260 million mobile internet subscribers in India by the end of 2015.

For Facebook, these various statistics won’t add up unless the social network can easily connect with users, load data and, most importantly, serve ads. That’s where Facebook Zero comes in: a stripped-down version of the site that some have suggested could become Africa’s Agora. India’s population being larger than that of the entire continent of Africa, it’s not unreasonable to consider that the country is more important to Facebook.

Much of this could take place without anyone realizing — Facebook currently offers no public accounting of how many users access it through mobile connections. What is clear, however, is that mobile is Facebook’s market of the future, at least for countries like India.

We’ll be publishing Facebook’s latest global traffic growth data tracking the site’s growth in markets around the world, including India, in the July edition of the Facebook Global Monitor report. The Global Monitor is available as part of a membership to Inside Facebook Gold. To learn more or join, please visit gold.insidenetwork.com/facebook

It’s the end of June, and we have seen a tremendous influx of quality games into Facebook since the beginning of the year. Each month new genres, new ideas, and new evolutions of old ideas have continually raised the bar, from the boom of city builders to the sea of World Cup inspired soccer apps. Which among these many new titles are the top new games will differ according to individual taste, but we’ve endeavored to pick out the best Facebook games for this first half of 2010 with an eye to the many different popular genres

A note on our methodology: we’ve taken a look at all of our game reviews since January and picked out our top 10 Facebook favorites based on factors like presentation quality, style, attention to detail, originality or adaptation of old concepts, and, of course, fun factor. The number of users, as measured by monthly active users (MAUs), also plays a part, but the titles below are by no means all among the most popular Facebook games.

Here are our picks:

10. Mercenaries of War

The list starts out with a classic genre — the RPG — with a game from earlier this month: Mercenaries of War from Kaboom Social Games. To a degree, Mercenaries is your typical Facebook RPG, but Kaboom steers away from high fantasy, instead shoving the player into an apocalyptic world of war.

War-based RPGs are nothing new, but Mercenaries stands out in its blending of console gaming concepts into a traditionally text-based genre. Many missions involve animated action, with the player shooting up guards or pitting a squad of their mercs against some big bad boss, Final Fantasy style. Beyond this, even the text-based missions come with added polish, showing the player searching for an object or welding through a door.

As for battles, it’s gratifying to watch your mercenaries duke it out with other players in a bloody skirmish. And here Kaboom once again has a careful attention to detail, as each character responds and reacts to damage. Moreover, there’s a very cool element of “Adrenaline,” that makes you all but invincible after a few battles.

As it stands, Mercenaries of War only has around 15,000 monthly active users, but it’s a game we hope catches on.

9. FIFA Superstars

FIFA Superstars from Electronic Arts / Playfish is certainly one of the better soccer apps out there. Don’t be confused, however, as it’s not like the traditional FIFA console titles; instead, it’s a coaching-based sports game. Players manage a team of professional FIFA players and train them the way they see fit.

What really makes the game shine is the level of polish. For each training exercise the player performs, the team visibly reacts, and for each training tool purchased, their stadium changes. This produces something close to a city-building element in the game, with great aesthetic rewards to achieve.

It’s also worth mentioning that FIFA is the largest intellectual property brought to Facebook by Electronic Arts, giving the game a very “name brand” appeal. Couple this with gratifying matches against other players, and you’ve got a recipe for a very popular app.

Currently FIFA Superstars is closing in on 2.8 million MAUs.

8. FrontierVille

Part FarmVille, part Treasure Isle, part city-builder, FrontierVille is designed to stem some of developer Zynga’s declining traffic. Set in the age when the American West was new, players set out to create a homestead for themselves in the untamed wilderness.

In truth, most of the features in FrontierVille are not new, but are rather improvements on concepts used in Zynga’s most successful titles. In order to make money and build their homes, players must grow crops, which FarmVille proved most players enjoy. The farm blends with the surrounding wilderness, which constantly encroaches on the land, forcing players to clear it and discover any number of collectible treasures (including a few bears and snakes to fight off), much like Treasure Isle.

One new addition is the non-player spouse that eventually moves out West with you, allowing you to eventually raise a family (or an entire extended clan) to help with the chores. There are also improved mechanics for helping friends, including a new concept of reputation that adds to the rewards of helping out.

Despite its newness, FrontierVille has over 12 million MAUs.

7. My Empire

Not all city-builders are about a bustling metropolis. At least that was Playfish’s point of view when it took players back to ancient Rome in EA’s entry to the city category, My Empire. This is a fairly simple game centered around two factors: Population and Happiness. In order to succeed, one first builds housing to attract citizens, then begins to tax them. Unfortunately, while this revenue stream is easier on the player than constantly harvesting crops, the NPCs hardly like it.

To mitigate this, players must collect resources to build attractions from the ancient world, like baths and arenas. What makes My Empire shine, though, is that with ancient Rome, Playfish is able to, and does, incorporate a very unique style and mysticism to the game, avoiding some of the rules of modern cities. From the great Coliseum to the Sphinx, everything in My Empire looks fantastic and when a city is in a state of completion, it is a truly gratifying sight.

My Empire now has north of 5.1 million MAUs.

6. Zoo Paradise

Released in early March, CrowdStar took a stab at the tycoon genre with Zoo Paradise. The whole concept was to construct a zoo of exotic and aesthetically pleasing creatures in order to attract as many paying customers as possible — who can then be exploited with overpriced merchandise and food!

What really made the game stand out, then and now, was the sheer variety of environments and decorum. Each habitat feels similar with their cell-shaded, almost anime appearances, but at the same time each also looks different. From forests to deserts, every element is gratifying to look at. Combined with special, new, habitats such as aliens, dinosaurs, and even World Cup animals, Zoo Paradise always feels pretty fresh.

Beyond constantly added mini-games, it also doesn’t hurt that it was the first major CrowdStar game to take part in the CrowdStar Cares charity for the Gulf oil spill (if only by a few hours).

Zoo Paradise has 4.4 million monthly active users.

5. Mall World

Published by 6 Waves, Mall World marks the midway point on our list as a game that truly hits its target market, teenage girls, successfully. Best described as a sim, Mall World is a game that allows players to run their very own boutique in the middle of a giant Facebook mall.

More than just making a store and avatar look pretty, players actually have to manage a virtual business, leveling up and unlocking new and better fashions to purchase and sell. What makes it even better, however, is that sales stem from real users buying your stock, making your choices all the more important. The only downside is that random Facebook friends visit the store are automatically turned into girls — although this could also be a source of amusement.

The game also has a wonderful mini-game to earn extra cash for its female audience, called the Dressing Room Game. Players are given one random clothing item to match an ensemble with and please a customer. Although exceedingly simple, it’s a very cool idea.

In fact, the ideas of Mall World has earned the title constant, steady, growth to 3.7 million MAUs.

4. NanoStar Siege

The strategy genre makes its appearance with the Digital Chocolate title NanoStar Siege. Though the game doesn’t top the charts as far as numbers goes, it’s still one of our favorites. Players are able to build up an army of characters and deploy them on a vertical plane, where they march up and attack anything in their path. The idea is to reach the enemy’s fortress and take it down.

What really stands out with the game is the idea of heroes. As part of the Nanoverse, Siege allows players to buy and create decks of virtual cards that are useable across any NanoStar game and grant unique, special powers. Here, they can buff friendly NPCs, strike down enemies, or become powerful units themselves.

It’s also great to be able to set up your own defensive AI when you aren’t present to play. Anyone that attacks you (friends or otherwise) must contend with your deck and your army. Furthermore,  players can strategically decide where place units to defend their fortress as well, as well as when special cards will be deployed.

Currently NanoStar Siege has around 660,000 MAUs.

3. Epic Goal

Here’s another game that’s been growing but hasn’t reached its deserved numbers: Epic Goal from Watercooler. Wrought with an amusing cartoon style, players recruit friends to play on their soccer team and compete for the top rankings. Nonetheless, unlike FIFA, this app is only part management, and takes a very action-heavy approach.

Unusually, players actually control what happens in soccer matches. For Facebook, that counts as a risky move, but Epic Goal’s controls shine wondrously, with a simple point and click interface that contextually creates a clickable button around teammates that are near for a pass, opponents with the ball for a slide tackle, and around the player controlling the ball for a shot.

This is taken alongside team management, for which each player (named after Facebook friends) must be trained in speed, shooting and other skills on a practice field in an amusing set of animations. With the attractive visual style, the training is fun in its own right.

As it stands, Epic Goal has over 166,000 monthly active users.

2. Social City

Playdom’s Social City was the first big-company title of the city-building boom. Like any of its ilk, this game tasks players with managing population, income, and the happiness of its citizens. It’s the balancing between the three that is fantastic. Income is obviously needed to do anything, but population is also needed to gain experience in any significant numbers; in turn, if happiness is not met, population cannot grow.

Like any quality city-builder, Playdom’s title also looks wonderful, providing a substantial aesthetic reward for building a great city. However, what did, and still does, stand out for the game is its attention to detail. Most of the city-builders we’ve seen have streets devoid of life. Sometimes there’s a guy chopping wood or a lone car, but that’s not what cities are like! Social City has people flying kites, mowing lawns, playing sports, and everything else under the sun. It actually feels like a living, breathing metropolis.

In fact, Social City became so popular that it even caught Zynga’s attention and kicked off a spate of city-building releases from other major developers, including our number seven pick, My Empire.

Social City has declined in recent months, but is still huge at 9.9 million MAUs.

1. Nightclub City

Finally, the number one game so far in 2010 is the sim Nightclub City, published by MyTown creator Booyah (though the game was never officially claimed). Forget restaurants, cities and malls, Nighclub City takes players to the more exciting world of nightlife parties, giving them the power to create their own clubs. Ever since we first spotted the app back in April, it has continued to grow and evolve into the epitome of style.

The basic concept of the game is to decorate your club, building up its luxury levels and thus increasing the cover charges and attracting more guests. More than that, however, the social features are incredible. Not only can you visit and spin a few tracks for a friend, but you can actually hire each of your Facebook buddies as bouncers and bartenders. Each one has sets of special abilities to improve your guest happiness or even the tip rates at the bar. This is further enhanced by the addition of the “Entourage,” where you can add even more friends as special guests and dress them accordingly.

Even though decorating a virtual space has been done before, Nightclub City’s décor oozes style. Nothing feels static: lights flash, objects move, fountains flow, and dancers dance, creating a truly gratifying experience. Moreover, each NPC has its own personality, from the dancing girl that rocks on, to the celebrity, to the jerk that picks fights: each element has its role in making your club the best around. Coupled with a constant stream of new buyable objects, daily giveaways of premium virtual goods, and phenomenal music mixes, Nightclub City seems like a clear choice for the top title, so far, this year.

Currently, Nightclub City continues to grow steadily, with about 4.2 million monthly active users.

The year is far from over, of course. While the pace of new releases on Facebook has slowed drastically, the quality bar has risen far beyond the waves of simple games and their clones that dominated in 2009. We have high hopes for the rest of 2010, so we’ll keep reviewing the latest games with an eye to picking out the best of the best at the end of the year.

Simulation games have been around for years on Facebook, but they continue to get more diverse, with themed versions coming out for building cities, bakeries, wineries, various types of farms (*cough*) and more. Now there’s one for the pet lovers: Playdom and pet food company Purina have quietly launched a new Facebook title, Pet Resort.

Pet Resort is certainly a cute looking game, and one likely to appeal to cat and dog lovers of all types. As sim-style game, it doesn’t bring anything particularly new to the table, but merely takes a successful design model and applies it to a new aesthetic. It’s certainly not a bad thing, as the game only comes with a few minor usability complaints — but if you’re looking for something groundbreaking, it’s not here.

Set in a fancy town, players are tasked with the construction of the perfect pet resort, as managed by themselves and their pet cat or dog. Like other sim games, players must manage the needs of their “customers” (pets) in order to earn coin and attract more. This is handled by four different types of “stations,” consisting of food and drink, bath, play, and health. As various cats and dogs enter the resort, they will have thought bubbles representing what they want, and should the station be available, they will visit it.

This is where the standard rating of popularity comes into play. Should you have the station the animals are looking for, they will interact with it, earning a fraction of popularity and a small sum of money. Oddly enough, if you don’t have the station needed, nothing negative appears to happen. You just make less money.

Actually, this happens quite a bit as players can only have so many stations at any given time – depending on their level. Also, cats and the dogs prefer different items. For example, if there is a playpen station, it can be stocked with a squeaky toy for dogs or a scratching post for cats. This becomes more complex as the player level’s up and the various animals have more requirements (e.g. health and bath do not open up until levels 11 and 28 respectively).

To add an extra level of management, each station must have a full stock of whatever supplies it requires. This is where Purina makes its appearance. Using food as the example, each purchase made will take a set amount of time to arrive and cost in-game currency. The longer it takes to arrive (minutes to hours) and the more it costs, the more servings it will serve. However, many of the objects are Purina brand food goods such as Purina Fancy Feast and Dog Chow or toys like Tuff Tugger or the Kitty Treat Ball.

One can imagine this game serving as a conduit for sales of Purina products, like earning a coupon for Dog Chow if you reach a high-enough level.

Beyond all of this, the only other major elements to the game are décor and “VIP Pets” that periodically visit. The décor is purely aesthetic, while the VIP pets give you extra popularity if you pet them. They do have a heart meter that fills up as they are pet and the more full it is, the longer they will wait for an open station.

This is actually one of the social features as well. When players begin the game, they pick a pet to keep for themselves, and as friends join and play, their pets become VIP pets as well. In addition to this, players can also visit each others’ resorts. However, rather than generic “help them out” prompts, users can not only pet up to three pets for extra experience but click on décor within their resort and purchase it for 10% off. Additionally, the player it was bought from will earn 10%. Also, on a more minor note, visiting a friend also prompts a Bonus Wheel that can reward varying amounts of experience or coin.

As far as complaints go, the only real issues are minor. The biggest annoyance was trying to figure out how to move and rotate objects in the virtual space. There is no clear edit button, nor can it be done from the store (like most other sim games – yes, there have been so many sims that this is an expectation). As it turns out, it’s all done from the inventory page. Moreover, rotation is a minor complaint as when an object is rotated, the game picks the object back up. It’s not a huge deal, but it does make the player do a little double take and wondering if it worked. With no feedback sound, it looking like it’s being moved, and the relative silhouette of the items looking the same on all sides, it’s not immediately noticeable.

Regardless, all such complaints are very minor in the long run. Overall, Pet Resort is a pretty fun game for sim lovers. True, it isn’t going to change the face of gaming as we know it, but it’s a nice new premise for an older genre. It looks goods, plays well, and is, overall, what we’ve come to expect from Playdom. As for the Purina involvement, the game is fun enough to possibly generate a good deal of marketing for them, and if it does, it will be interesting to see how many more major companies follow similar paths in the future.

Train sets are a toy of the past. But computer gaming has kept the tradition alive, in titles ranging from the original Railroad Tycoon to the iPhone’s Trainyard, which we recently reviewed. Now Facebook is getting its very own social take on the genre with Lucky Train, the first title from new developer A Bit Lucky.

From a first glance at the opening screen, Lucky Train looks like it might dive into a Miyazaki-style animated world. And indeed, there are overtones of that filmmaker’s typical settings, as you start out in a vaguely modern-looking village which is, nevertheless, about to receive an old steam train, an event begun by clicking a blinking rail crossing signal on the lower right hand corner of the screen.

This steam train — along with its more modern permutations — is the center of the Lucky Train world. A few homes are scattered around your starting village; over time, these will be replaced by larger homes, apartments, diners, banks, baseball diamonds and other structures. But aside from decoration, these serve only one purpose: to fill the all-important train with a variety of passengers.

After you fill up the train by clicking on your buildings to send over the passengers, it’s time to send the train off to its destination. And this, in turn, is where the most important mechanic of Lucky Train takes place: once the train leaves your town, it will begin making its way through your personal network.

In fact, the trains in Lucky Train can only leave if they have a destination, and at the moment, the only possible destination is a friend. Lucky Train itself is a re-imagining of Railroad Tycoon, according to A Bit Lucky chief creative officer Jordan Maynard, but where the single player of Tycoon controlled all the various destinations, this Facebook version relies on the points of your social graph.

The train’s initial trip starts with one destination, whichever friend you’ve picked for the journey. The ensuing journey is where Lucky Train gets interesting. You or your friend can edit the train’s route to add new intermediate destinations. Each new person on the route will have the chance to send the train on a longer trip, as well as upgrade the train so that it travels faster or carries more passengers.

Doing so is beneficial to all, because the train’s cargo, the passengers, will deliver more money and experience as the trip gets longer. The odd thing about this setup is that you may end up with any number of strangers on your train’s route, because the people your immediate friends add in won’t necessarily be in your own network. Maynard refers to it as the six degrees of separation of the gaming world.

The train mechanic makes Lucky Train a more intensively social game than most others we’ve seen on Facebook. You can conceivably play a game like FarmVille or Happy Aquarium without friends, and the social mechanics within those games, typically visiting a farm or fish tank to perform a few simple tasks, isn’t absolutely required to get ahead. For Lucky Train, players have to interact, and every action directly benefits both themselves and others in their network.

For now, sending off passengers and filling your town (there are also trees, flowers and other typical decorations to spread around) is as far as Lucky Train goes. In the future, Maynard and co-founder Frederic Descamps plan on adding more complicated features for the advanced game, including a shipping mechanic in which trains help players trade resources used to build more valuable properties, like the Eiffel Tower. Future additions could also include the ability to send messages with trains, expand to new communities, and learn more about the historically-based trains used in the game.

But even in its first release, Lucky Train is pretty unique, with a bright, friendly art style and several interesting mechanics that differ considerably from other Facebook games. It’s a bit simpler at the moment than some other games that we’ve seen recently released, but its more unusual features should stand it in good stead while A Bit Lucky works on adding more to the game.

Further extending a lead mostly established by superior endurance, Kontagent has raised over $4 million more this month, bringing its total to $6 million. The funding was dug up from an SEC filing earlier today by VentureBeat, and later confirmed by the company.

Kontagent is one of the few companies that offers in-depth analytics for Facebook applications, working much as a web tool like Google Analytics would, but with some important additions like the ability to track the contributions of individual users. This April, the company took the wraps off a major update including greater control over data and revenue analysis.

At the time, we were able to list a number of angel investors within the social game industry, from Hit Forge’s Naval Ravikant to Mochi Media’s Jameson Hsu. The $4 million round brings in several venture capital firms as well, with Altos Ventures and Maverick Capital leading (partners from both firms are joining the board).

The Kontagent platform is tracking 60 million users across all the Facebook apps it’s installed on; a few of its clients include Gaia Online, PlayFirst, PopCap and Tencent. We’ve got full lists of the original angel investors and clients in our April story on Kontagent.

Social game developer CrowdStar is cementing its existing status as the lead test partner for Credits, Facebook’s virtual currency. The two companies have signed a deal where the developer will exclusively use Credits as the paid virtual currency in all of its games for the next five years. It has already been using Credits exclusively since this past December, and claims that its average revenue per user (ARPU) has gone up by almost 50% as a result.

CrowdStar has been in a good position to try out Credits, because it gained most of its users last fall; developers that got established earlier have tended to invest more money in their own monetization services. Many are concerned about the cost of Credits, including the 30% fee that Facebook takes out of all purchases of the currency as well as the loss of control and breakage. By starting fresh, CrowdStar has less to lose even as it sees what it can gain.

> Continue reading on Inside Facebook.

[Editor's Note: Facebook may be making significant changes to the platform, but developers aren't standing still -- they're busy continuing to find new ways to engage users. Here's a guest post by Tim Trefren, cofounder of real-time analytics company Mixpanel, looking at the latest trends his company is tracking among developers.]

Because a range of our customers are social game developers, we can get a high-level look at trends they’re seeing in their Facebook applications. One of the big trends we’re seeing is that games are using tutorials to generate strong retention among new users. A related trend is that this initial retention is critical to the health of your game, in the weeks following launch. Here’s a closer look.

Impressive Results From Tutorials

One thing we’re seeing succeed is the tutorial-based signup process. A well-crafted tutorial removes all the ambiguity out of getting started and helps teach a new user how to play the game.

If you’re not familiar with this technique, the FarmVille signup process is a good example. FarmVille explicitly teaches you how to harvest, plow, and plant seeds with a 3-step tutorial.

Now that you’re familiar with the concept, let’s take a look at the data I’ve compiled from a number of games.

By The Numbers

The most impressive finding of this analysis is that individual steps in a tutorial convert at over 90% on average. Meaning, once a user has started a tutorial, they have a greater than 90% chance of continuing at each step.

This doesn’t include the first step, however – as you might expect, it’s harder to get users to start a tutorial than it is to get them to complete additional steps.

First step conversion rate: 71.4%
Additional step conversion rate: 95.06%
Overall completion rate: 37.9%

Many companies are now utilizing the tutorial technique, and it clearly deserves its popularity. Conversion rates of 95% are practically unheard of, but tutorials appear to be delivering these results.

An Interesting Trend in Visitor Retention

Another thing I noticed was a strong trend in retention behavior. There are some remarkable similarities in the *pattern* of visitor retention across games, despite the differences in the actual numbers.

Before I go any further, here’s a quick overview of the concept: Visitor retention is the percentage of visitors who come back and interact with an application after their first visit.

Visitors are chunked into groups—also known as ‘cohorts’—and then analyzed based on the the behavior of the group as a whole. The most common method is to group by visit date. For example, one group might consist of all the visitors who were first seen in the week starting May 3rd.

Once you have grouped your visitors, you can track them over the following weeks and see how many from each cohort return to the site.

Now let’s look at some actual retention numbers for a variety of different games. To compile this data, I first took a sample of the different social games using our service. Then I looked at the average week-over-week retention for each game.

Here’s a graph of the average weekly retention rates for the different games:

You can see that on the surface, the retention numbers are pretty different – some of these games have long-term retention rates close to 50%, while others rapidly approach 0%.

However, the interesting thing to note is that while the absolute retention rates are different, the pattern of retention is very similar across games. They all have a massive dropoff after the first week, with relatively flat retention in the following weeks. If you take a closer look, the ‘flat’ parts of the graph run nearly parallel, meaning they have very similar weekly conversion rates.

We can take a closer look by calculating the “conversion rate” – (e.g. week 3 divided by week 2, etc) between adjacent weeks. Here’s a graph with this transformation:

See a pattern? At the first point on the x-axis (Week 0-1), we can see that the initial conversion rate ranged from 1.76% on the low end to 62.83% on the high end. The interesting part comes later, though – no matter what the initial conversion rate between weeks 0 and 1, the following weeks convert at close to 80% across all of the games.

Basically, this means that once you’ve had a user for at least a week, they have an 80% chance of coming back each following week.

This suggests that your initial retention rate is critical, because once you’ve retained users for a week you are likely to keep them for quite a while. This behavior also raises another question: why do almost all of the games in our sample exhibit this behavior? Is it possible that this is just how social games work – retained users have an 80 – 95% chance of returning each week? If so, this could mean that the only thing you have control over is the initial retention rate. Time to write and polish your tutorials.

Tim Trefren is the cofounder of real-time analytics company Mixpanel.

Since Zynga launched FarmVille on the iPhone last week, we’ve been watching to see how it’s received. The verdict so far: pretty well, although the game is by no means making a total sweep of the rankings. FarmVille has consistently held the number two spot in the free game rankings each time we’ve looked, after Rollercoaster Extreme, and is number four among all free apps.

A more interesting view comes through Apple’s listings of top in-game purchases. The two most common purchases are the two cheapest, with the premium currency, Farm Cash, being the preferential pick. But the most expensive option, for 310 Farm Cash, comes in relatively high on the list. Here’s how it compares to another farming-style game on the iPhone, Ngmoco’s We Rule:

Players have spurned FarmVille’s mid-priced Farm Cash offering entirely, leaving it at the bottom of the list, while $49.99 of Farm Cash comes in above a number of cheaper options in coins. We Rule, with its simpler structure of only offering one currency for purchase, also shows the habit of players to skip to the most expensive option. It’s also worth noting that, since we started watching, the most expensive option for regular currency, 70,600 coins, has risen significantly in popularity.

We’ll be digging into some stats from our latest Inside Virtual Goods report tomorrow, showing more in-depth breakdowns of heavy-spending users in social games, so stay tuned.

The addictive nature of video games has often led educators to try adapting them for the classroom. Add in the virality of social gaming, and you’ve got a potent mix in which players may not even realize they’re learning. We’re seeing an ever-increasing number of educational games hit Facebook, the web and mobile platforms like the iPhone, all trying to discover the magic combination that will make traditional schooling passe.

What defines these educational games, or “edutainment” for short? It’s not necessarily teaching specific subjects like psychology or geometry, but rather the intention of expanding and enhancing the mind — meanwhile conquering the educational stigma of being boring. Here’s a look at what a few developers have done in the first half of 2010:

FreshPlanet – FreshPlanet first came to our attention early this month when its Facebook application Crazy Cow Music Quiz appeared at #8 on our emerging Facebook games list. Crazy Cow is quite successful at this point, with over a million monthly active users and a clever trivia design that exposes users to new music.

That’s not directly educational, but it turns out that FreshPlanet also has a quartet of “RedFish” iPad learning apps for young children: RedFish 4 Kids, RedFish Piano 4 Kids, RedFish Puzzle – The RedFish, and Redfish – Balloon Bursting. The first is basically a compilation of the others, but it’s a great game for young kids. Filled with vibrant colors, the title works with numbers, counting, music, colors, shapes, and so on. If you’ve got an iPad, Redfish may be a good introduction for your tot to learning games.

Tiny Planets — The most common type of educational game is tailored to small children. However, the folks over at Tiny Planets focus on a bit older crowd, kids aged six to 14.

Based on the Tiny Planets animated TV series, this game offers six “planets” for users to visit consisting of simple games, web videos, social networking, a virtual world, goods, and currency, and, of course, learning opportunities.

The biggest attention getter for us, however, was the virtual world in which players can create and decorate their very own planet, buying new avatars and items for their terrestrial inhabitance with the virtual currency (KEYs). KEYs can also be used to buy more videos and games.

Tiny Planets is rich with both entertaining and educational activities that focus on space, conservation, science, creativity, and critical thinking skills, which can be accessed via quizzes, puzzles, and even interactive books for home schooling.

Mind Candy – Although we covered it earlier this year, Mind Candy also warrants another mention. Their Pet Society’esque virtual world for kids, Moshi Monsters, is a wonderful and safe place for kids of virtually all ages to interact and enjoy. Beyond its attractive style, Mind Candy cleverly masks the learning aspects as mini-games focusing on subjects like math or spelling and granting an in-game currency, Rox, as a reward. Players may not even realize they’re learning something, as the primary focus is on getting extra cash so they can buy bigger and better stuff in the virtual overworld.

As it stands, Moshi Monsters looks small on Facebook, floating between 18,000 and 20,000 MAUs according to AppData. However, just this month, Mind Candy reported that the game had reached 20 million registered users and has even signed a book deal about the game with the Penguin Group.

Gameloft – Not all learning is for kids. Another good pick that teaches a bit about American history is fantastic for all ages. It’s the iPhone title remake, Gameloft‘s The Oregon Trail. Originally created by MECC, Oregon Trail was one of the best-selling educational games of all time (right up there with Carmen Sandiego). Now with cleaned up visuals and a new presentation, it’s ready to share the hardships of the Trail with a whole new generation.

ADS Software Group – Here’s another interesting iPhone app if you’re interested in geography. Updated and refreshed in April, ADS’ app, World Countries, contains maps from around the world. Beyond direct information and flash cards, the game also has various geographic quizzes about capitals, flags, maps, and so on. Granted, quizzes aren’t always the most extravagant way to learn, but with OpenFeint leaderboard integration, friend challenges, and achievement postings to both Facebook and Twitter, there’s an added level of competition and immersion.

On5 - Frankly, quizzes are an excellent way to teach people new things, but as suggested above, they can also be a bit dull. So On5 decided to take a game show approach with their iPhone app Quizarium; also updated in April. Based around subjects such as nature, science, sports, and so on, players compete against one another in one minute rounds for each question. Every 12 seconds that no correct answer is given, a hint is issued (e.g. the number of letters).

What makes this game even better, however, is that in addition to playing with other people synchronously, it also has Plus+ integration so that users can share achievements through the social platform and even compete via the various leaderboard systems.

Between past reviewed titles and newer ones, there is one lesson to take home: when it comes to educational games, the they mask their educational aspects, the better they seem to do. Simply look at Wooga’s Brain Buddies app from last year: currently, it’s just shy of 3 million MAUs, with around 212,000 daily active users.

Regardless, each of these titles have something to offer. And what we’ve listed above is merely the tip of the iceberg as any number of educational social games litter the networks of Facebook, OpenFeint, Plus+, Scoreloop and can be found on any of the iDevices as well.

A few more worthy mentions include the iPhone title, Brain Balance Pro from Orangefish that takes an approach reminiscent of “Who Has the Biggest Brain?” to design and is part of the OpenFeint network; Place Map HD on the iPad from Voon; and our previously reviewed user-generated quiz game, Sporcle from Sporcle Inc. It may not be a text book, but with thousands of fun quizzes from thousands of users, it’s unlikely you won’t learn something.

We still have yet to see anything challenge the legacy of the original Oregon Trail or Carmen Sandiego (even the new Oregon Trail). Nevertheless, inch by inch, developers are getting there.