The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Ubisoft, Storm8, Playfish, Kabam, and
Playdom.

• Lead Artist (San Francisco, CA)
• Producer (San Francisco, CA)

• Users Relations Associate (Redwood City, CA)

• Head of Acquisition Marketing (Redwood City, CA)

• Senior Product Manager, Payments & Monetization (Redwood City, CA)
• Business Intelligence Quantitative Analyst (Redwood City, CA)

• Social Game Design Lead (San Francisco, CA)
• Art Director (Mountain View, CA)
  
• Senior Game Designer (Mountain View, CA)

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts and widgets on the sites. That way, you can be sure that your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

From Ikariam to Evony, we’ve seen our fair share of browser-based strategy titles grow using Facebook as a portal. The latest to join this ever-growing list is Clash of Kingdoms by Koram Game, which brought in over 700,000 new monthly active users during a recent growth spurt.

Best described as Evony set in ancient China, Clash of Kingdoms boasts many of its predecessors’ features. Nevertheless, a strong cooperative play element makes this particular strategy game feel a bit different. Of course, the big draw back is the accompanying breadth, which could leave players floundering with an overwhelming amount of information to learn.

Players start out as a lost Chinese hero,whi is found by a wandering handmaiden. Immediately, players are presented with a fairly unusual top-down scene, reminiscent of an old Super Nintendo game, of the main character wiping out a horde of bandits. The aesthetic doesn’t quite provide the epic feel the developers were going for, but it does make for a nice hook and immediately shows some of the more differentiated modes of this title.

After the opening come the basics, which ought to be familiar to Evony-type game players. Users are granted a manor, and from it, they construct resource gathering structures to harvest lumber, stone, iron, and food, and residences to earn silver. Players then build a handful of different military facilities (e.g. a barracks) and begin training troops.

Like Evony, each structure must be placed on a specific plot of land and can be upgraded to be more effective. Additionally, the bigger the upgrade, the longer it takes to construct, thus items purchased with virtual currency (gold) can expedite the process. It’s also worth noting that the amount of space within one’s manor is finite, with extra plots opened through the use of gold.

Next up, players will likely visit the “city.” The way the game is laid out is that multiple users live and work together, to protect the same city. It is from within these walls that the player can take part in myriad text-based quests in order to earn experience, special items, trade resources, and contribute to the defenses of the city. Additionally, the city also plays host to the recruitment of “heroes.”

Along with the player’s avatar, heroes are non-player characters that are used to lead regiments of rallied troops into battle, boosting stats such as damage, defense, and so on. Many of these leaders will also come with special spells and abilities that grant them, and their armies, advantages in battle. In addition to this, all heroes can gain experience through the noted quest system and can be equipped with whatever items and equipment one finds.

As anyone that plays Evony-style games can tell you, these strategy titles take a long time to really get anywhere, and Clash of Kingdoms is no exception. With what little army we have, however, we were able to at least catch a glimpse of the battle system through what are called “Historical Campaigns.” A sort of top-down grid in which troops are given to the user, players watch the battle unfold in a turn based system while the computer does all the work. Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be any real tactical control, but that doesn’t mean strategy is not present in Clash.

We were lucky enough to join Clash of Kingdoms amidst an offensive against some other neighboring cities. Users have the ability to deploy their hero-led regiments to various parts of the world as well provide aid to other troops already on the field. While this is all confusing and muddled for a newcomer, it was fascinating to watch the more experienced users of our city strategically attack points around the primary target, in order to draw away defenses, then move in with a full attack force and sack a rival city.

Other users are dramatically important in Clash, and the idea of putting groups together in cities (rather than all alone at the start) adds a greater level of teamwork.

Of course, as interesting as this might be, this is all assuming the new user can actually figure out what is going on. From research, to donating silver to city power-ups, to gaining rank for your avatar and earning a salary, Clash of Kingdoms is on the bloated side when it comes to features. Everything is served in a text-based tutorial early on, and while it’s enough to get started, the majority of the game is still learned through trial and error.

Even as an experienced gamer, the game can feel overwhelming, discouraging the impatient or casual player from trying. The title looks pretty on its splash page, but quickly becomes a cluttered mess of buttons, rules, icons, and features.

In the end, Clash of Kingdoms, like those that came before it, remains targeted to a niche audience. This review barely scratches the surface of Clash, as there are still dozens of mechanics we’ve yet to even see or find the opportunity to participate in. Frankly, for those outside the target audience, learning a spreadsheet program would be less work and, likely, more fun.

Several months have passed since Zynga last ruled our weekly AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users, but with the addition of CityVille to its ouevre the developer is back. Not only did the city-building game bring in new players, but Zynga has also managed to pull a bit of fresh blood into its older apps, too.

Here are all 20 games:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	CityVille	1,051,653	+1,051,653	+100%
2.	FarmVille	17,200,603	+842,502	+5%
3.	Texas HoldEm Poker	6,588,421	+425,384	+7%
4.	MindJolt Games	2,089,241	+412,851	+25%
5.	FrontierVille	7,114,716	+297,941	+4%
6.	德州撲克(中文版)	1,212,817	+250,921	+26%
7.	Family Feud	1,159,021	+200,759	+21%
8.	Games	1,457,841	+200,683	+16%
9.	Die Herausforderung der Städte	185,624	+185,139	+38,173%
10.	Bejeweled Blitz	4,294,133	+151,477	+4%
11.	Millionaire City	2,976,770	+148,498	+5%
12.	Traveler IQ Challenge	141,072	+136,538	+3,011%
13.	Gowalla	135,387	+118,352	+695%
14.	Mighty Pirates	195,167	+98,059	+101%
15.	Ravenwood Fair	719,396	+86,031	+14%
16.	Pool Master 2	106,120	+82,344	+346%
17.	Treasure Isle	3,043,749	+76,571	+3%
18.	Kingdoms of Camelot	698,128	+73,164	+12%
19.	小小戰爭	635,947	+71,187	+13%
20.	超級職場 — 超人氣！免費休閒養成遊戲！	118,108	+70,811	+150%

FarmVille, Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille helped CityVille’s gain of a million DAU out with about 1.5 million more. Of course, most of those players are brand-new, and it will take time to see how many stick around. Even if they do, it’s hard to budge Zynga’s overall DAU:

MindJolt Games is showing its first uptick in some time this week; the company released its AdJolt advertising platform a few weeks back, and may be planning to pump fresh life into its flagship app.

At number six, Family Feud appears to be improving its stickiness, evidenced by a rise in DAU against its steady drop in monthly active users. Despite losing almost two million MAU and about 350,000 DAU in the past few months, Feud is still by far the most successful game show app on Facebook, and has managed to avoid losing any DAU at all over the past month.

6 Waves recently published another new social game to Facebook, and it’s rapidly making its name known. Developed by Game Insight, the app is Big Business, and while the name might lack a little pizzazz, it’s actually one of the better made and more highly polished city-builders around, comparable to some made by major players like Playdom.

Though a city-builder, Big Business won’t have users groaning “not again.” Rather than following a formula, the game pulls in some of what made the original SimCity fun, and in the process creates deeper resource management than the norm.

The premise is entirely typical: the player has just bought a city, and must transform it into an actual functioning metropolis, economy and all. In order to do so, they must balance population and happiness, as with Social City, as well as ecology, power, production, and roadways.

Every building constructed requires all of those resources, save the last two. The first are simple enough: players build houses to periodically increase population, and entertainment facilities keep the plebs happy so that more keep coming. However, ecology and power are a bit more unusual.

Power is provided by a Power Station building that produces a set amount of electricity. The management of it is not extensive, but players must periodically construct more stations in order to grow their city bigger. More buildings equals greater power requirements. The same goes for Ecology, with each building requiring a certain level of greenery to be present before it can be constructed. Consider it carbon offsets.

So what about money in Big Business? Within the game, there are a number of production buildings for money. From farms to oil refineries, players start out contracting for work. This means that players spend a little coin to produce some product over a set amount of time. The longer the time, the greater the end value.

Here’s where things get fun. Once any given good is complete, it can either be shipped off to the store to be sold directly, or taken to yet another production facility and refined further. As a basic example, a farm can produce grain which can either be sold directly, or transported to a milling plant to be turned in to either flour or millet, thus increasing its value. In time, players will have materials being produced and shipped all around town, crafting an industrial loop as they attempt to create the most efficient form of business within their city.

Transport is also a key element, as players must connect every building with a road and must purchase a variety of vehicles (trucks, milk tankers, gasoline trucks, etc.) to actually haul the goods. When the player moves resources around, these vehicles will leave a pre-placed garage and use the fastest route to the production facility, transporting the good to the desired location. The bigger the city, the longer this takes, so intelligent road placement, while not critical, is helpful. Furthermore, trucks break down, and while none of ours have bit the dust yet, there is a mechanic structure that can be built to apparently service them.

The real allure of Big Business isn’t so much the resource management, as it really isn’t all that hard (at most it’s a choice between what to build within a finite space), but the level of polish this game has. Like the Playdom games and Zynga’s newest, CityVille, this is an app that feels very alive with cars moving, lights flickering, and people milling about. And like SimCity there are random events, such as fires and medical emergencies that require players to deploy, with a click, rescue services and earn money.

Other nifty little features are that Big Business follows a real-time clock, with the city changing between night and day and updating its animations and effects accordingly. On top of that, the game further plays up the aesthetic value of city builders by allowing users to alter the color schemes of many of their buildings.

Socially, the game is a bit disappointing, with social mechanics that are rather basic compared to the rest of the game. Players have leaderboards and gifting, but the only other real form of interaction is to visit friends’ cities and clean or repair their buildings for some extra coin and experience.

If Big Business has any flaw, it’s that every building must be connected by a road. However, unlike, say, Millionaire City, the roads must already be present before placing a building, which can be moderately annoying. The ecology and power aspects of the game feel like great additions, but there’s not a whole lot of meaning behind them as no real choices have to be made. If the user needs either power or ecology, they place a building where they have space. There’s no strategy behind placement or even much in what to build.

Nits aside, Big Business is a fantastic addition to the city-builder genre on Facebook and does a tremendous job of pushing the genre ahead. The game is a bit too new to give an accurate prediction on how it will do, but the game has done fairly well in its first days, picking up over 28,000 monthly active users.

At a conference today, Google unveiled the new Chrome Web Store, a custom-built destination for its Chrome browser with downloadable apps and games, including social games.

The social titles available are limited so far to just a few games like FarmVille by Zynga, Millionaire City by Digital Chocolate, and OMGpop’s Balloono. Google doesn’t appear to have put a lot of effort into the integration; the “apps” are effectively glorified bookmarks leading to preexisting destination sites.

But with Google claiming that 120 million internet users are now on Chrome, the Web Store nevertheless deserves a look from social developers.

All of the Web Store’s featured offerings so far are actually paid casual games like Onslaught! Arena and Wordico. If that business model succeeds, the Web Store could recreate the paid vs free app battle taking place on mobile devices.

On the other hand, Google may have trouble convincing many users to hand over credit card information, so free apps may do best on the Web Store. Over time, a base of repeat payers using Google Checkout or Google acquisition Jambool may build up, but Google has yet to even figure out monetization of paid apps on its Android mobile OS.

Developers who want to move off Facebook could do well with Google, either creating destination sites for Google to point to — effectively making it a directory and discovery service — or as more full-featured downloadable apps.

Google is also offering hardware acceleration for browser apps, opening the way to more animation and better graphics, and attempting to further establish HTML5 as acceptable for game development.

For now there’s no reason for any social developer to go out of their way to work with the Web Store, but with the Chrome OS and new iPad competitors launching next year, it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Facebook has seen its fair share of city-builders in the last year, but while the genre is rather saturated at the moment, very few of these titles involve the concept of raising armies and battle. With only a handful that do — such as recent iterations of My Empire or City of Wonder — Blue Shell Games has a fairly unique app on its hands with Urban Warfare.

Though similar to the Playfish and Playdom titles, Urban Warfare takes an altered approach with units, supplies, and defenses that reflects real-time strategy games. Though basic and suffering from a lack of style, the title boasts an interesting core. Its potential shows in the continually growing number of monthly active users (currently near 345,000).

For some unexplained reason, everyone in the universe of Urban Warfare is at war with everyone else. Players are tasked with the construction of their very own city in this chaos, but, the outcome isn’t to create the best looking metropolis. It’s to house and raise an unstoppable army.

The way it works is simple enough: as players level, they can construct a variety of homes, to allow their population to grow and various businesses (gas stations, markets, pubs, and so on) to earn periodic income. Once a cash flow is established, the army can begin to grow.

Starting with a barracks, users can choose to train soldiers that range from simple scouts, to machine gunners, to full-on tanks. With each unit, the overall attack and defense strength of the city increases according to the cumulative attack and defense stats of every unit made. As one might expect, the longer the training time, the stronger the unit (purchasing items with virtual currency can expedite the process).

With an army now growing, players can engage in one of the game’s core elements: battle. This works similarly to City of Wonder in that players can choose to attack any player within their level range (including friends) and receive a bonus of experience, coin, and steel. The results are determined by the attack and defense points of each city, but this can’t be predicted, as the game only ever shows an enemy user’s level and their top units (not all their units). It’s also possible to loses units as casualties, so it pays not to be reckless.

Once players reach level 10, they can then begin constructing buildings that will produce steel, which becomes a requirement for constructing both ships and airplanes via their respective construction sites (Shipyard and Air Force Base). Once these buildings are available, the ability to manage resources, population, and units begins to reflect a strategy title. It’s not terribly in-depth, as it consists of merely building the best unit for the optimal amount of time — which will vary based on level — but the idea is there. That said, if there were a form of rock-paper-scissors balancing between units, along with a means to gather intelligence on enemy armies, legitimate, asynchronous strategy would become possible.

Aside from the obvious social mechanic of battling other people, friends can also visit one another to receive bonus coin as a sort of donation, or they can opt to steal. That said, the latter appears nothing more than a cosmetic choice, as it still involves simply clicking on one of your friends’ money-making structures. Beyond this, battling friends allows for wall-posted brags and even posts about a bounty for their defeat. Gifting, leaderboards, and the occasional text-based event requiring friends to click a wall post for a reward are also available.

Though Urban Warfare has an interesting concept, the game lacks any real style, with a drab and static appearance. There’s nothing truly gratifying about winning battles as it just goes to a win/lose text screen with the results, nor is there any life in the city. A little bit of pizazz (like Mercenaries of War) in the former and a bit more liveliness (like City of Wonder) in the latter would go a long way. Even decorations can be a problem, as it isn’t possible to rotate anything, which can be a problem with structures like roads.

There is also a concern with spam, as when we first began playing the game, we received a number of email notifications about our city being attacked (when friends were involved, at least). Thus far, it hasn’t occurred again, but many players would find even intermittent emails annoying.

Overall, Urban Warfare is not a bad game, and its competitive concept is fairly rare for Facebook. The dull presentation and lack of flair likely contribute to the low DAU count of 25,000, but with an art update and a bit more depth to the strategy elements, Urban Warfare could catch on.

With Facebook cross-promotion bars like Applifier and AppStrip having gained traction, the idea is spreading into other social networks.

A newly launched cross-promo bar called Game-Promo for MySpace claims to be use the same click-trading concept: if a player of your app clicks on a game title shown on the bar, you get a credit which entitles you to a click from elsewhere on the network.

The network makes its money from taking a 10 percent commission on outgoing clicks, with the left-over clicks being sold so developers who want to bring in more traffic than they send out.

Cross-promo networks are hardly a new idea on the internet, but they’ve only recently taken off on Facebook. Applifier, the first to launch, appears to have a majority of Facebook’s small developers on its network, while Tapjoy recently bought AppStrip, Applifier’s main competitor.

Four days after opening CityVille on Facebook, Zynga is calling the new game its biggest-ever launch. Some 290,000 people played the title in its first 24 hours, according to the Zynga, with 25 percent continuing long enough to set up a franchise in a friend’s city, an action that takes at least 15 minutes of game play.

CityVille’s first-day performance is only important in context, though. Zynga had two other major releases this year: Treasure Isle and FrontierVille, in April and June respectively. Both games had slower starts than CityVille, followed by rapid growth:

It does look like CityVille’s growth will continue to surpass FrontierVille, from this early vantage point. However, note the hockey-stick growth that Treasure Isle enjoyed beginning on its sixth day in the wild; it’s unlikely that CityVille will be able to surpass those gains, which left Treasure Isle at its peak of 27 million monthly active users after just one month.

Treasure Isle can’t necessarily be repeated, since Facebook made some of its biggest viral channel changes the same month that game was launched. As for CityVille, Zynga tells TechCrunch that its growth is primarily organic, not from advertising.

The list of techniques Zynga used to create CityVille’s early growth spurt would likely be quite long, but as we noted on its first day out, it includes email campaigns and inciting new players to invite their friends over from FarmVille. There are also social mechanics like staffing your government buildings with friends, which helps push out invites and interaction between players. Our preview lists more, including an in-game economy that creates money and goods from connections.

Zynga’s cross-promotional abilities can’t be rivaled by any competitor — it’s simply too large in comparison to others — but given CityVille’s growth so far, the title will likely serve as a template for the next round of new social games.

The historical data on the chart above comes from AppData Pro, which also offers additional metrics.

The folks over at TeamLava are at it again, expanding their iDevice “Story” series of games with their latest iPhone and iPad release, Bakery Story. Joining the likes of predecessors Restaurant, City, and Farm Story, this new free-to-play application couples familiar game play with the Baking Life premise.

Essentially a carbon copy of TeamLava’s last release, Restaurant Story, Bakery Story revisits old concepts from Facebook counterparts. The game is of decent quality in both production and social features, but lacks dramatically in the originality department. It’s a game that will mainly be appealing to those seeking a new Story aesthetic to dabble in.

The whole point of Bakery Story game is to build a successful bakery. In order to do so, players utilize drink makers to make beverages, such as coffee, and ovens to cook up brownies and cakes. Using the Café World mechanics of “preparing” each step of the food making process, the products are created over a period of time and then served atop an empty counter.

Each product will serve so many customers until used up, earning coin for each one that visits (longer cooking products are worth more). So long as there are seats and food available within the bakery, customers will remain happy, thus boosting the popularity of the player’s shop, and in turn, earning more patrons.

The visuals feel more or less the same as Restaurant Story with its blocky, basic look, and general lack of movement and animation. The only thing that really feels any different is that some of the décor and the color scheme.

If there is any one thing of interest about Bakery Story, it’s that décor is not gated by level. Right from the get go, players can decorate their virtual bakery with whatever they can afford, using both in-game and virtual currencies. This allows the player a greater opportunity to become hooked on the game, as they are able to see exactly what they can buy and can, potentially, decorate their space as they see fit, unlike games that only grant one or two new items a level. Nevertheless, the game still has level gates on food and drink, as well as how big one can make their bakery and how many cooking appliances can be owned at any given time.

As with all the other Story titles, Bakery Story utilizes TeamLava’s typical social integration. This means that users can visit any other player, friend or not, and view their bakery. Once here, tips can be left (which the visited player can collect) and will earn the tipper minor experience as well as “Star Rating.” It is the latter that is most important, as this rating will move the user up the social, community rankings, allowing it to be more visible — and thus visited more often — to other random users. Furthermore, messages can be left on anyone’s virtual space wall.

It‘s also worth noting that using the Storm8 network or Facebook Connect, players can add friends, which allows for gifting. Moreover, using Facebook Connect will allow the posting of things like snapshots to one’s social feed.

Like the games before it, Bakery Story is well put together and, coupled with push notifications, works well in the mobile environment. Nonetheless, the game brings nothing new to the space, and feels like a reskin of TeamLava’s previous titles.

From a business perspective, this is hardly a bad idea. After all, it’s how Zynga started out, with it’s collection of Wars games, and the Story games frequently find themselves on Apple’s top free apps lists, so TeamLava is obviously doing something right. All the same, it would be nice to see something a bit different from the company.

This week’s AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook games by monthly active users is once again led by a new Digital Chocolate app, this time Vegas City. But some of the other top apps are rather older:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Vegas City	3,603,126	+856,191	+31%
2.	City of Wonder	7,059,673	+615,833	+10%
3.	Frontier Bonuses	1,007,078	+610,316	+154%
4.	FrontierVille	29,872,423	+601,010	+2%
5.	Island God	2,074,902	+559,441	+37%
6.	Bar World	1,180,819	+545,008	+86%
7.	Hollywood City	3,634,751	+527,276	+17%
8.	Epic Fighters	1,214,743	+493,369	+68%
9.	Mighty Pirates	1,026,557	+445,283	+77%
10.	Monster World	5,573,490	+383,354	+7%
11.	Simply Hospital	3,278,346	+333,604	+11%
12.	德州撲克(中文版)	3,653,863	+299,163	+9%
13.	Bubble Island	5,960,339	+277,776	+5%
14.	OyunPark	615,502	+258,784	+73%
15.	Social City	6,030,879	+255,288	+4%
16.	It Girl	5,713,584	+252,454	+5%
17.	Puzzle Saga	589,381	+240,057	+69%
18.	MyGame	755,566	+235,411	+45%
19.	Pool Master 2	349,207	+228,415	+189%
20.	Ninjas Rising	329,956	+208,731	+172%

Digital Chocolate is again not just leading, but listing a handful of growing apps: Vegas City, Island God, Hollywood City, Epic Fighters and Ninjas Rising are all from the developer. All of these have now been out long enough that we can begin to see how they affect DC’s overall traffic. The two “City” games are reskins of Millionaire City, which is holding up quite nicely itself, but both Vegas and Hollywood are showing extremely low stickiness:

Epic Fighters and Ninjas Rising, the two reskins of MMA Pro Fighter, are doing fairly well, but their parent is losing MAU quickly. And Island God, the one completely original game, also shows low DAU as a percentage of MAU, perhaps a symptom of the game’s requirement that players begin paying or begging friends for consumables quite early in order to advance. Digital Chocolate’s next task is to show how it can differentiate and improve all of these games enough to growing once the initial flush of new MAU is past.

City of Wonder comes in second, with something of a revival in traffic, gaining a solid 10 percent over the week and rising back to where it was in mid-November, though with a concurrent drop in DAU that suggests the new users are from a fresh round of promotion by Disney. And the next game down (excluding Frontier Bonuses) is FrontierVille, into which Zynga seems to have pumped fresh players.

Finally, Bar World by DNA Games is continuing its rather healthy growth rate, which it began last shortly after launch a few weeks back. Though many apps attempting to take inspiration from Nightclub City have launched in the past few months, this is the only one we’ve seen that has done so with any great success.