It has a new name, new graphics and different gameplay. But FarmVillage is still at its core FarmVille, a game that Zynga hopes will fill Japan with virtual cornstalks and cows.

Zynga is launching FarmVillage tonight in Japan on Mixi, the Japanese social network that’s partially owned by Zynga investor Softbank. Unlike the Facebook or iDevice version of the game, FarmVillage is built for feature phones, which are what most of Mixi’s userbase has.

The result looks a bit different from what you may be used to. Aside from a more compact layout for the smaller screen, and lack of a player avatar, there’s also a distinctly Asian feel to the art:

With no touch screen controls, the game relies on directional buttons to choose the plot of land and which action to perform.

Softbank’s $147 million investment in Zynga came this June, and Zynga’s buyout of Japanese developer Unoh followed in August. Like Zynga’s other moves this year, its first Japanese release was fairly slow in coming since the company initially expressed serious interest in Japan.

But Zynga’s best growth prospects probably lie overseas, so we’re likely to see more launches of this sort fairly soon. Mixi offers access to only 20 million users, which is smaller than four of Zynga’s games on Facebook, but its members are known to monetize extremely well.

It’s been about a year since virtual aquarium applications splashed onto Facebook, but that doesn’t stop the occasional iteration from seeping through to mobile now and again. The most recent is a game by the name of Tap Reef HD on the iPad. Developed by Jirbo, it’s free, and also available on the iPhone. It could be the app for aquarium lovers who prize high-quality visual effects more than innovative social features — in fact, it already is for many, having reached some top positions on the iTunes App Store leaderboards.

Bef0re we get into the details, here’s a refresher in virtual aquarium games. Essentially, players are tasked with caring for a digital fish tank and raising a wide variety of colorful salt water fish in the process. With Tap Reef, the functionality is no different from previous titles in that players purchase fish from the store and feed them periodically so they don’t die. Most apps we’ve seen let users sell fish for a profit assuming they’ve cared for them properly.

Each fish also comes with a set happiness meter which is affected by regular feeding, the cleanliness of the tank (users must sponge the algae every few hours), and “petting” one’s fish. It’s a bit odd, for sure, but this is merely tapping on the fish itself. What is curious, is that this is one of the visual perks of the game. The app is actually 3D, and tapping on a fish allows the user zoom in on the animal, following it closely with the camera.

For an aquarium genre that has ranged everywhere from cartoon-fish to stiff, Photoshop cutouts, Jirbo’s title actually looks very nice with actual 3D fish models. Are they perfect? No, when zoomed in, there are a number of visible texture seams or z-buffering issues, but for a mobile game, it’s certainly one of the better titles out there.

Despite all the colorful fish swimming in all directions, it is surprising that the game has no real decorum. The focus of Tap Reef is solely on the fish (and there are a lot) and the only decorations involve new backgrounds and some soothing musical scores (well, there’s also a clam and a diver).

Obviously, this is one of the negatives of the game, as other fish titles, such as Fish World, had the décor affect the fishes’ happiness level, creating a function to the aesthetic, and allowing the fish to sell for more. Here, happiness still affects the value of the fish, but there is less involvement to it.

Another aspect worth noting, is that each type of fish comes with a “hardiness” rating which is indicative of how easy it is to care for. The hardier it is, the less it has to be fed, pet, or the tank need be cleaned. As with real salt water fish, however, the fancier ones require much more attention, but are also worth more coin. Also, once fish reach adulthood, they can also be bred. Doing so will cause a pair of fish to swim together for a time until the new baby is born. Of course, once again, aside from the visual, this is a mechanic that has been seen and done before.

On the social front, Tap Reef is integrated with Facebook directly. This allows for automatic importation of any Facebook friends that also play the game, as well the ability to easily share achievements and screenshots. Also ,within one’s profile is a visible set of stats (fish born, fish deaths, fish sales, etc.) that display just how good a fish keeper one is. Additionally, there are global leaderboards that compare all Tap Reef players together.

Puzzle Saga is a new title from King.com that has recently appeared on our top emerging apps list with north of 349,000 monthly active users and 68,000 daily actives. A simple puzzle game that feels reminiscent of games such as Puzzle Quest — specifically Puzzle Quest 2: Mage Trainer on Facebook – it’s spins the concept into a cutsie RPG. Filled with a handful of casual-style puzzle games, the app attempts to combine small tidbits of strategy as well as arbitrarily placed virtual spaces with its core puzzle play.

The core mechanic is playing match-three puzzles to charge different colors of mana, which in turn casts different spells during your “fights”. Broken up into four categories — defense, fire attack, healing, and kinetic attack — these spells are used to defeat monsters encountered during game play.

As users progress, new puzzle types beyond the match-three will randomly appear. This includes a game where players slide entire rows and columns to match three icons (similar to games like FruitZen), as well as a Collapse-style game.

All of these games are simple and intuitive. Each spell will automatically cast when its charge bar is full, either defending, healing, or attacking the enemy, so the player’s only concern is to make matches. There are also power moves, of a sort: should a match of four or more be made, the entire row or column (depending on the orientation of the match — this also only occurs in the more common match-three game) will be cleared, charging a little bit of mana for every icon color removed. As for the enemy, they will attack based on a timer guage, inflicting damage to the player once full. Obviously, the first one to reach zero health loses.

As for the encounters themselves, they occur as players travel around a sort of fairy tale world. As they play, the game will task users with visiting different regions of the world (desert, forest, tundra, etc.) and entering various dungeons. As they do so, they must navigate by clicking on visible doors until they reach an “X” that marks the location of the dungeon boss, consuming rechargeable stamina with each door opened. Once the boss is defeated, the “Quest” will be completed and the next region will unlock.

As players win and level up, they will collect gold and unlock more powerful spells, but this is all passively done, with little involvement needed from the user. The only real control to be had, beyond the puzzle solving itself, is influencing which mana bar is filled first during fights. Nevertheless, the game is usually not difficult, so just making random matches works just fine most of the time.

Upon success in battle or leveling up, players will also earn bits of coin to spend on their virtual spaces. Within a personal castle (there are also avatar items), players can purchase a variety of wizardry décor to decorate their virtual space as they see fit. In truth, this feature feels a bit arbitrary, as the game can stand alone with just the puzzles.

On the social front, the virtual space implementation already suggests that players will be able to visit friends’ spaces, but there are more functional elements to friends as well. Beyond gifting and leaderboards, players can add each other to their “party.” Each party member will give your character a spell power boost (more damage per spell, it seems) when doing the puzzle battles, increasing based on the friends’ level. Also, party member friends do not even have to play to be added.

If there are any negatives about Puzzle Saga, the biggest is that it really does feel like a cute version of Puzzle Quest’s Facebook app. There’s nothing technically wrong with the visual style, but it’s going to be very hit or miss with most people. In later stages, the game can also unpredictably become more difficult in a way that feels like a heavy-handed push to buy virtual currency.

Credit and charge card points can be used for just about everything: flights, event tickets, hotels, gas, online shopping, the list goes on. Now you can add one more thing to the list: virtual goods.

Zynga is entering into a new partnership with American Express for charge card users with Membership Rewards points to be able to buy a special Zynga goods. For now, there’s just a handful of possibilities, but the companies say they’ll be expanding the partnership in coming weeks.

Note that 100 points are about equal to a dollar, so judging by the above prices, buying limited edition virtual goods through Amex won’t be a great deal more expensive than getting equivalent goods with regular currency in the game.

This isn’t a hugely significant deal by itself, but it does show how widely social game companies are spreading their nets to accept different payment types. Zynga is one of the few companies with the necessary scale to attract a partner like Amex right now, but within a few years other companies are likely to have access to similar services.

In recent months, a number of popular Facebook social gaming genres have found themselves translated onto the various iDevices, such as the series of “Story” games from TeamLava. Now a new type of city-building is coming to iPhone from Gameview Studios, the DeNA-owned developer of Tap Fish. Taking a turn toward the undead, the application is entitled City Zombies.

As already noted, City Zombies is a city builder, but while Gameview’s Tap series of farming and aquarium games are watered-down replicates of their Facebook counterparts, City Zombies changes things up a bit. That said, the title still feels a bit clunky with social features that lack any real control.

The premise behind City Zombies is interesting enough. Players are tasked with the creation of an undead metropolis, not necessarily for the purpose becoming a budding city, but to build an army of undeath. Comparable to Tap Town (only with zombies), players manage the aspects of population and income.

The method of doing so should be fairly familiar to long-time city-builder players. In order to make money, players must construct factories, which will produce ghoulish goods over a set amount of time. After completion, the goods can be claimed for profit, the factory cleaned, and the process reset.

Of course, to be truly profitable, more than one factory is necessary, and thus the number of factories must be gated by one’s population. To increase population, residential structures must be created, and in order to support more populace, “fun” entertainment buildings must be present. These structures directly increase population cap rather than display a “happiness” gauge as with Social City and other such city-builders.

As a free-to-play game, many of these items will cost the game’s virtual currency (Zombie Bucks). That said, there is a decent balance between virtual currency costing goods and those that merely cost in-game coin. What does, however, cost a good chunk of virtual currency are the zombies for one’s zombie army.

This is where City Zombies starts to take a more interesting turn. In addition to the traditional factory type that earns money, players can also construct a zombie factory, of sorts, to bolster their undead ranks. Once the player has created at least eight zombies they will be able to attack a neighboring city. When initiated, the player’s horde will begin filling the city streets and attacking, at random, whatever buildings get in their way.

Unfortunately, any control here is minimal, leaving the player only the option to tap the attack icon in the bottom-left in order to boost the zombies’ collective strength. After a bit of time has passed, and the town lies in ruins (literally), users will collect a respectable bonus of in-game coin, experience, and occasionally Zombie Bucks.

What adds to this aspect of the game is that it’s both different and interesting to watch one’s armies tear down another city. Since this is the more unique aspect to City Zombies, the virtual currency is used quite wisely, having most of the zombie factory choices costing Zombie Bucks and rewarding users not only more zombies, but more zombies more quickly.

Raiding cities is also where the social play comes to the forefront. Well, sort of. Each time the player attacks a city, they are actually attacking another player’s creation. As it stands, we’ve not been attacked yet, so it’s unclear as to whether there are any effects from being attacked (though the game’s lack of comment on the matter suggests there is not). This is a shortcoming of the game, at least from a social standpoint. The neighbors attacked appear to be completely random, leaving a level of anonymity.

Connecting to other random players in a game is fine, but only when there is some semblance of control in player visitation like in TeamLava’s Story apps or attack types such as in City of Wonder. Here, there is no clear way to add friends, visit/attack their cities, or even browse other users in general. That’s a shame, too, because the zombie invasion feature is certainly interesting and with more in-depth control and finesse, could really be a strong selling point.

Unfortunately, as of right now, the feature feels a bit clunky, as does the rest of the game. Like the Tap titles before it, everything has a very stiff and robotic feel to it. Along with basic, and redone, play, there just isn’t any flair with City Zombies. There is no real style that truly wows the player, and this is likely the reason as to why most players that download the game either love it or hate it (if the app‘s customer ratings can be trusted).

In the end, City Zombies is an average game that reuses Facebook city-building concepts and spins them with a darker, more interesting twist. The game could benefit from more style and finesse, and perhaps more control on the user’s part. All the same, it is still only version 1.0, so we will see, in time, what new iterations bring to the table.

[Editor's note: Brenda Brathwaite is an accomplished game designer with credits on classic titles like Jagged Alliance and the Wizardry series. She is currently Creative Director at social game developer LOLapps. This post previously appeared on her blog, Applied Game Design.]

The player of a social game needs to feel closure.  The principle of closure is so important that without it, a game will struggle with low retention and all the problems inherent therein.

What is “closure?”

I will define closure as the ability to leave the game with a feeling of certainty that one has done all one can do and that things will be okay until one returns so long as the player abides by known rules. It’s all wrapped up — or knowingly left unwrapped (e.g. the player runs out of energy) — and the player perceives that she understands the complete game state.

In any Facebook game, closure exists if:

• I understand the primary grind of the game.
• I know when I need to come back to tend to the primary grind of the game.
• I know precisely what will happen if I fail to come back either because the game tells me what will happen or an implicit mental model exists.
• I know the things that can modify this stability (being whacked or assisted by another player, for instance).
• I have a means to protect my game state or enact revenge for things happening in my game which I perceive are beyond my control (and returning in time is within my control).

If players are unable to achieve a state of closure, they leave the game feeling confused at best or failed at worst. Typically, failure to achieve a state of closure results in players feeling uncertain in their decisions or uncomfortable with what they perceive will happen while they are away. Players who leave feeling something in this range are less likely, then, to come back. Why come back for more “confused” or “failed” or “uncomfortable”?

Closure is a tricky thing to identify, too, and it’s closely tied to a word I’ve used several times — perceive. The player’s perception of the game state is more important than the actual game state.

For instance, during the development of Ravenwood Fair, there were multiple times where I perceived the game state was doing something when, in fact, it wasn’t moving along those lines (though I am a designer on the game, I didn’t design the creature AI, so I was free to perceive whatever I wanted). The Fair is surrounded by a scary forest, so I felt uncomfortable leaving them there, fearing something would go very wrong. I needed to know they were safe while I was away, otherwise, I didn’t feel good leaving.

Interestingly enough, when I was assured my perceptions were false, it didn’t actually make me feel much better. My perceptions about the way I thought the game was working and my buy-in of the perception (and the mental model upon which it was based) were too strong. So, instead of saying, “Okay, cool”, I struggled with how I thought the game should behave and felt a strong need to see it rectified. It was an odd moment of dissonance for me, but the resultant design solution gave me closure. The “Protectors” system you see in the game today was designer John Romero’s effective solution to the problem.

It’s worth going into this a little deeper on two points:

1. It was a gendered problem.
2. It couldn’t be a gendered solution.

Not all problems of closure are gendered, meaning that one gender feels a much stronger need for something than the other, but this one clearly was. It was something that genuinely affected how I felt when I left the game (and therefore affected my likelihood to return to it). Researching the issue, I found it was a feeling shared by other female players, but the male players seemed completely unscathed by the issue. As its lead designer, Romero worked to fully understand the root of the problem, but his design solution needed to do more than solve my issue — it needed to be fun for all game players. Otherwise, it risked appearing like a Band-Aid on an otherwise tight system. For those interested in gendered issues in game design, I recommend Sheri Graner Ray’s Gender Inclusive Game Design.

So, closure.  In the social space where the player has absolutely zero investment, it’s critical. I must leave feeling that I know what happened, what will happen, and what role I am expected to play in it. I need to know (not merely feel) that everything has gone right. I need to know I have maxed my gameplay session. If I don’t understand your grind, the role of various components in the grind, or what my role is in some part of it, you’ve lost me (and some part of your DAU, too).

Closure allows players to comfortably leave the game with a plan, and that means they are much more likely to return.

Mobile payments may be the most promising new online payment method in the United States. But consumers have been slow to go mobile for payments, owing to unfamiliarity with the idea of paying through their phone and several difficulties on the business side. KreditFly, a new company emerging today, has a plan to bypass these problems and get players of social games and MMOs on board.

KreditFly was founded by Paul Kim, an entrepreneur who previously helped the Korean firm Danal spin off a startup called BilltoMobile. Danal re-acquired BilltoMobile in February for almost $100 million, and Kim moved on to KreditFly, which he helps will solve problems he encountered at BilltoMobile.

The biggest of those problems is mobile carriers. In the US, carriers grew fat over the past decade charging hefty set fees to the ringtone business, which itself could get away with losing a large portion of each ringtone it sold.

Most ringtones were sold through premium SMS, in which the consumer uses text messages to agree to a transaction. With parts of the ringtone business continuing today, carriers have been slow to cut those premium SMS fees to a level that would be competitive with payment methods like credit cards or PayPal.

So KreditFly wants to simply cut out the carrier. The company has a pretty simple idea: just make the initial mobile transaction as easy as possible. To buy a small amount of virtual curency in a game, you just have to enter your phone number. You’ll get a text message with a confirmation code, that you then enter along with an email address. And that’s it.

This payment flow feels a lot like premium SMS, but KreditFly isn’t putting a charge on your phone bill — or anywhere else, in fact. The initial charge is a micro-credit, and you can get away without paying for it at all. But in exchange for the $10 of free virtual currency, your phone number and email address will be blacklisted from KreditFly forever.

What KreditFly hopes will happen is that you’ll choose to pay. Some time after the initial payment, you’ll get a reminder from KreditFly to pay, which you can do with a credit card, retail store payment, money order, or almost any other non-mobile payment method.

Once you’re in the service, you have to keep your account fueled up. The micro-credit is one-time-only. But after the initial payment, KreditFly should have an easier time getting people to keep using; getting new customers to try the first time has always been the biggest marketing hurdle.

Paul Kim, the company’s founder, seems pretty confident that he’ll be able to outdo other mobile payment companies. Despite some recent changes like AT&T’s direct mobile billing plan, Kim is counting on carriers not moving quickly enough to bring down their transaction costs. “For the rates to come ubiquitously below 20 percent is just not going to happen in the near term,” Kim says.

As for its own payment methods, the KreditFly is patenting its payment methods and has ways to keep from blocking the new user of a previously blacklisted mobile number.

The remaining risk seems to be that a high percentage of users will default on their payments. If this happens, the merchant that KreditFly is working with will take the hit. But Kim says that initial testing will bear out the superiority of KreditFly in the United States over premium SMS companies like Boku and Zong, both of which are now test partners for Facebook Credits.

“No matter how you slice and dice the numbers, when you actually net out fees, it’ll be better than premium SMS. You don’t get screwed for 50 percent of your transaction,” Kim says.

KreditFly’s initial partner is Aeria Games, a portal with about 15 million users. The company has an undisclosed amount of funding from Altos Ventures and ATA Ventures.

Thanksgiving didn’t change much on our weekly AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook games by monthly active users — more or less the same mix of large and small developers is present with only a couple new entrants. Here’s the full list:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Vegas City	2,746,935	+877,045	+47%
2.	FrontierVille	29,271,413	+603,957	+2%
3.	Island God	1,515,461	+419,956	+38%
4.	Hollywood City	3,107,475	+414,168	+15%
5.	Epic Fighters	721,374	+381,723	+112%
6.	Crime City	6,256,827	+327,563	+6%
7.	Bar World	635,811	+310,334	+95%
8.	Ravenwood Fair	4,429,099	+307,112	+7%
9.	La sfida delle città	501,394	+294,670	+143%
10.	City of Wonder	6,443,840	+291,101	+5%
11.	寵物戰爭	304,017	+279,583	+1,144%
12.	Simply Hospital	2,944,742	+278,463	+10%
13.	Social City	5,775,591	+222,009	+4%
14.	Bubble Island	5,682,563	+216,981	+4%
15.	Monster World	5,190,136	+215,910	+4%
16.	德州撲克(中文版)	3,354,700	+213,853	+7%
17.	Mighty Pirates	581,274	+211,889	+57%
18.	Car Town	7,213,091	+203,820	+3%
19.	Puzzle Saga	349,324	+191,980	+122%
20.	OyunPark	356,718	+186,251	+109%

As before, Digital Chocolate has multiple games on this list. This time it’s four of the top five: Vegas City, Island God, Hollywood City and Epic Fighters. The problem for all of these games is relatively low stickiness, or the percent of monthly actives coming back daily.

But while some commenters have made this problem out to be a fatal flaw for DC, it’s not clear yet that the company can’t continue with relatively low stickiness, since its better games have shown good long-term growth to offset their lower DAU. It’s also worth noting that quite a few of the games on the list also have DAU / MAU lower than 15 percent, perhaps signaling a new norm for certain genres.

Crime City comes in sixth, after the flood of DC games. Although its growth of 327,563 new MAU is still strong, we can see from the game’s MAU chart that the gains are slowing:

Next up is Bar World, a new take on the nightclub-management style of game. Most games that have sought to follow in Nightclub City’s footsteps have failed to impress, but Bar World may be able to do well, based on our review of the game. Bar World may also be able to benefit from scooping up departing Nightclub City players; the latter game has lost about two million MAU in two months.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Facebook— tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

• The Nuts and Bolts of Facebook’s Acquisition Strategy

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

• Phrases Appears to, But Doesn’t Really, Pass FarmVille on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• Philippines’ Largest Mobile Carrier Backs Zong Payments for Facebook Credits
• Through Sharing and Spin-Offs, Phrases Becomes Largest Facebook App by MAU – for Now
• PayPal’s Shoptimist Offers Group Buying and Sweepstakes
• Buddy Media’s Tool Improved for Multi-Page Management and Teams
• Facebook Tests Its First Search Operator, a “Quick Link” to Photos

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

• With 100 Million Downloads on GetJar, Facebook’s Mobile Apps Reach Across Devices
• Announcing the Facebook Marketing Service Provider Directory
• “Member Suggestions” Module Recommends Friends to Add to your Facebook Groups
• American Express Runs Big “Small Business Saturday” Campaign on Facebook
• Facebook Growing in the US and Around the World this Fall, Measurement Firms Show
• Fascebook Gets Closer to a Trademark on the Word ‘Face’
• Facebook Offers All Page Owners Deeper Analytics

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

• Get Real-Time Feedback on Potential Purchases with Zappli’s MyShopanion
• The Holidays Kick Up Growth on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Ads API Profile: Ad Parlor’s Full-Service Solution for Game Developers
• Shoebuy.com Gives Purchasers 50 Free Facebook Credits Via Ifeelgoods
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Zynga, Digital Chocolate, Solvate, & More
• “Iframe Post Proposal” and Unique Identifier Mechanisms Aim to Solve Facebook User ID Issue
• Facebook Allows Page Post Targeting through the Graph API

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

• Facebook Job Listings: More Developer Advocacy, Engineering and Human Resources
• A Quick Look at This Year’s Black Friday Marketing Efforts on Facebook Pages

Friday, November 26th, 2010

• Connect Rises on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Facebook Pages Can Have All Their Admins Removed, Leaving No Way to Control Them
• Add a Friend Without Knowing Their Name with Facebook’s Updated Find Friends Browser
• Facebook Roundup: Lamebook, Egypt, Syria, Israel, Google, Video and The Beatles