Awhile back, we noted that the one of the next major Electronic Arts properties set to come to Facebook would be EA Sports PGA Tour. Now the game is finally live in the form of EA Sports PGA Tour Golf Challenge. Simplified with much more casual-social mechanics than its counterpart, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, this new app attempts to reach a more common social user.

Unlike Madden NFL and FIFA Superstars, Golf Challenge is not quite a full-on sports manager sim. However, it’s also far from a true golfing title like Tiger Woods. Lacking any real control in the actual golfing mechanics, the game has been pruned down to marginal management and simple point and click play. Of course, while many may rejoice in the removal of tedious power, aiming, and slicing mechanics, just as many may find the game far too simple.

The idea is simple enough: Golf. There’s no real goal for the player other than trying to be better than their friends and beat their high scores… err, low scores. Each day, users are given a challenge made up of a handful of holes from a random golf course. Within this challenge, they attempt to beat out their friends, earning points and money based on how well they do.

Once players attempt their first daily challenge, the simplification begins to stand out. When preparing to swing, users can only adjust the relative position of where they are targeting. This is represented by yellow circle that shows where the shot might land. The better the golfer and equipment, the smaller the circle and more precise the shot. Depending on the terrain and wind speed, players must adjust this target area accordingly. Additionally, choosing different clubs will also affect distance and accuracy.

As for the shooting itself, this is done with a mere click. Power, curve, and other modifiers are all automated. The only control is a bit of spin the user can put on the ball after it is in flight. This can be controlled by clicking and dragging a direction on a golf ball icon, but it is extremely difficult to judge what kind of spin is helpful until the ball is very close to the ground. Even though play slows when spinning is applied, it is often too late by the time an accurate spin can be applied. It’s actually safer to just not use the feature at all, most of the time.

This lack of information also comes into play by not really being able to survey the course as a whole (save for an automated flyby). Players can really only ever see where their shot may land and where they are standing, making it difficult to judge where each shot should go. This isn’t a problem for smaller courses, where the hole can be seen from the first swing, but for larger ones, or courses with a lot of bends, it can be annoying.

Other than basic aiming and spin, players can also improve their game by training their golfer and improving their equipment. The former works much like Madden NFL Superstars, in that as players play, the “training” of their golfer decreases. As such, practice sessions must be constantly applied to keep said training percentage high. Each of these takes a set amount of time, but will have its affects applied only after the user has started a new training session. The equipment, on the other hand, is similar to many free-to-play shooters, except rather than guns, players are purchasing drivers and wedges. These items augment the aim, power, and/or spin of shots, but like many guns in freemium shooters, only last for a finite amount of time.

In Golf Challenge, that time is determined by a number of shots. Once the item has been used for a stated number of shots, it disappears. In fact, shots, as a whole, are the primary gating factor behind daily play. Working like energy, every shot made consumes, well, a shot, and it takes several minutes to recharge (unless players want to buy more with virtual currency).

On the social side of things, basics such as leaderboards and gifting are present, but there is a bit more of a competitive element added in features like the Daily Challenge, where users earn bonus cash if they beat friends’ high scores.

In fact, it’s pretty important to try and earn as much money as possible, for playing anything other than the Daily Challenge requires some coin. As users level up, they unlock new, full golf courses (not just three holes like the Challenge), but will also have to pay a sizable chunk of change to play. Also, while on the topic of different game modes, there are sections for directly challenging friends and a PGA Tour season. Unfortunately, neither are available at this time.

As a whole, PGA Tour Golf Challenge is well made, but its design does leave some questions. While FIFA Superstars and Madden NFL Superstars have done much better than most sports manager games on Facebook, the dumbed-down elements of Golf Challenge may detract from its user base. It’s just less involved. On the other hand, it also seems possible that its more simplistic golfing mode will makes the game more attractive to the average Facebook user.

Sims, farming games, RPGs and other standard social game genres all offer strong monetization and engagement opportunities to developers. But what about Facebook’s many lightweight and casual games? For these, it can be difficult to keep users around, much less paying.

AppPrizes, a Seattle-based startup, is working on a way to plug in a major new mechanic to lightweight games: tournaments.

Unlike companies like BringIt or GSN, which offer skill-based tournaments that are closely integrated into the game design and make complex calculations, AppPrizes’ tournaments are basic and fast to add in, simply adding up scores from gameplay in the examples the company showed us.

Also unlike other tournaments, AppPrizes actually offers real prizes, instead of virtual goods or currency (although the latter may be required to join). This is where its business model comes in. The company initially asks users to choose potential prizes, which helps it to run targeted ads. The develop gets a portion of this ad revenue.

Some users may also choose to buy a prize if they don’t manage to win it, adding a bit more to the revenue. The real point of the tournaments, though, is to increase retention and help differentiate simple games, according to AppPrizes

“I want to make games.” Most gaming professionals hate this statement, and all the ignorance it usually implies. Trying to disabuse the person making it does nothing to dissuade them from wanting “to make games.” Drecom, in association with Kairosoft, has had a successful simulation launched in Japan that responds to this statement, and is attempting to translate it for an American audience.

Game Studio Story is an ambitious simulation of the basics of what it takes to create a video game, any video game, from platform consideration to budget to time constraints.  Players begin with a studio of four developers – not necessarily friends. More than four friends can be playing the game, but only four slots are open to be team members. Any team members who are not players reduces the number of studios the player can visit.

General play is the flow of developing a title: choosing the platform, the genre, the theme, distribution of points, and then choosing whether to spend money on quality, time, or research. Though Game Dollars are the primary currency, Research and Time are just as important. Research can be thought of as intellectual property and is terribly difficult to obtain. It’s spent on leveling up members of the team, increasing specific qualities of a game (fun, sound, art, etc.), or to ensure attempts to improve a game in production.

As a player levels up, he can add more team members, assigning duplicate roles to those already on the team – sound, designer, programmer, or story writer – or advanced positions later, such as producer or hardware engineer. Events representative of E3 and DICE occur, marking just how well (or poorly) the team is doing.  Sequels can be produced, licenses purchased from other studios, team members contracted to other players.

A myriad of reports are available to the player: demographic popularity, effectiveness of PR campaigns, sales history of active titles, bulk history of complete sales, awards,  and rankings according to other players. Each game is ranked with a Metacritic-type score (including a negative bent towards less popular genres regardless of quality and vice versa) that affects sales and awards.

Game Studio Story is faithful enough to the overall reality of game development, but after nearly eight weeks, the game is still in alpha and shows little if any signs of further development, with features like virtual currency remaining unfinished. Of course, one might easily complain about the faults and holdups, but a quick play of the game itself should serve to disabuse players of the notion that progress is easy.

Let’s face it. Monday’s are rough in the workplace, and despite best intentions, many often find themselves off in a bit of a daze part of the day. This is where a new game from UK-based Zoe Mode comes into play. Office Daze is a virtual space, business sim that seeks to poke fun at the monotony of corporate work environments in an attempt to show the lighter side of work.

Well, that’s the idea anyways, as Office Daze attempts to follow in the footsteps of other satirical titles such as Office Heroes or the role-playing game, Ponzi Inc. with its humor. At times, the virtual space sim succeeds in this regard, giving the user something to smile at every once and a while. However, the times in which this occurs feels few and far between, and, as a whole, the game feels very dull with little reward and poor user feedback.

Since work itself can be dull at times, so in Office Daze, players are not the employee, but the employer. The idea is to build a successful corporation by building out their own virtual office space and filling it with quirky characters dubbed “minions” to do all the dirty work. That said, the methodology of play is exceedingly simple.

The basic business works sort of like Sim Hospital, in that players construct specific cubicle spaces within their office in order to do work. These range from secretarial cubicles, to data entry, to meeting rooms, with each one allowing for a different type of work to be done. This “work” makes up part of the game’s comic relief with jobs such as sending “Idle Gossip” as a form of data entry or send “Email Complaint[s]” as secretarial work. Each job takes a set amount of time to complete, and will earn some semblance of profit upon completion.

As one can see from the two examples, the jobs aren’t all that funny, and there is nothing more to them than the titles. Office Daze attempts to make up for this, slightly, with the minions one hires to do said jobs. Similar in respect to employees in Ponzi, each minion must be hired (candidates file in whenever the user creates a new cubicle space) and have a brief blurb describing their personality. For example, “Tatty Matt” is a “scruffy, charming and wholly underrated. Cooks for his girlfriend.” Again, though, it is attempt at humor that only sometimes earns a polite chuckle.

The game also incorporates décor, which is expected for any sort of virtual space oriented game. Unfortunately, the game is weak here on many fronts. First off, the décor works sort of like Nightclub City, in that it boosts the rating of one’s office. Unfortunately, the description of what this does on a functional level is said only once, in a brief tutorial blurb, and never accessible again. It is supposed to do something along the lines of keeping workers “happy,” but what that exactly means is unclear. If we had to make an assumption, it would be along the lines of attracting new, and more qualified minions.

Each minion has a set of attributes associated with them, shown by a star rating, as well as how much they cost to do a particular task. However, there are also two other stats that are icons of a happy looking character and a banana peel. As for what these mean, we have no idea as there isn’t even a mouse-over tooltip. Once again, we have to make an assumption and this probably affects how much money one earns from doing a task. Why make this assumption? Because upon completion, tasks have a star rating as well. The better the worker, the better the rating, and thus the more profit earned… we think. The game likes to keep secrets.

As for other issues with the virtual space mechanics of Office Daze, décor elements are very unintuitive and unrewarding. For starters, players can place, say, chairs and the game, in fact, asks them to do so in the tutorial. One would expect that doing so consists of dragging the icon from the in-game store to the office floor. One would be wrong. The game gives users a sort of décor arrow icon and they must click on an existing chair to change it to a new one. They cannot place it anywhere they want; only where a chair is already placed in a built cubicle.

This leads to yet another décor issue. Players can’t be creative! Whenever any decorative item is bought, the game shows players where they can put it. There are only four decorum slots in each cubicle and, initially, four slots around the office itself. In addition to this, players can’t even change the walls or tiles of the office, only the cubicles. Decoration and creativity are huge elements to these types of games, and Office Daze effectively stunts both aspects. Ironic, considering it is trying to make fun of lifeless, corporate jobs.

The social elements of the game are rather uninspired too. As users might expect, they can hire friends, that play, as minions, and visit their virtual offices for daily, monetary rewards. Aside from this, the other basics include a leaderboard system and sending gifts. Furthermore, there are sections for achievements/awards and in-game collections, but neither have been implemented yet. Oh, and, of course, players can post accomplishments to their Facebook feed.

These basic elements are, in fact, the biggest problem with Office Daze. As you can probably already derive, everything has a basic cookie-cutter design to game play. There is no flair or style with the game, and everything feels done because, “that’s what popular games have.” About the only saving graces, is that as players level up, their décor options change from shoddy and rundown to classy and professional, and the avatars themselves have a moderatly amusing, bobble-head style to them.

Unfortunately, this makes up for the shortcomings in no way, and is even further forgotten by the lack of information given to the user. It’s not like Office Daze is difficult, but it just really doesn’t tell the player anything other than make cubicles, hire minions, and do work. There aren’t even tooltips half the time. Heck, players don’t even know they can rotate cubicles unless they read the FAQ, and even then it’s done with arrow keys, not a context-sensitive mouse click like pretty much every virtual space game ever. It’s done with the arrow keys (on that same thread, if players try to place décor and want to cancel, they have to hit escape, not click it off with a cancel button).

In the end, Office Daze does make an attempt at a premise that is a bit more uncommon, but is tragically flawed in both design and usability. Players are left with questions on what things do, and have minimal creative control over their spaces. Furthermore, the humor is bland, at best, and the majority of the game just goes through the motions of trying to be an interesting title, bringing no flair of its own to the table. All that in mind, the application is about exciting as the mundane jobs it attempts to crack at.

We’ve spent the last few years tracking traffic to applications that use Facebook in our AppData measurement service. As part of that, we’ve been building up a database of mobile applications that integrate Facebook Connect to allow users to log in using their Facebook identities.

Using that data, we’re launching a new weekly post for Inside Mobile Apps, looking at the 10 mobile applications that gained the most Facebook users in the past week.

As more and more device manufacturers, platform providers and carriers work to make their mobile devices more social — and as developers introduce more social features to mobile apps — we intend for this list to help our readers more easily track whose efforts are yielding new traffic.

So let’s get started.

> Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps.

After several weeks averaging almost three million new monthly active users per day, CityVille’s gains have fallen to an average of under two million MAU per day on this week’s AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU. Of course, that would be amazing for any game, but the important detail is that CityVille may peak after reaching 100 million MAU.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	CityVille	97,827,688	+13,604,922	+16%
2.	Monster Galaxy	5,077,595	+1,095,648	+28%
3.	德州撲克(中文版)	6,297,224	+858,066	+16%
4.	Zuma Blitz	7,676,969	+695,487	+10%
5.	Texas HoldEm Poker	36,109,648	+563,993	+2%
6.	Zoo World	8,960,956	+461,149	+5%
7.	It Girl	7,380,943	+404,528	+6%
8.	GodsWar Online	507,203	+333,933	+193%
9.	Texas HoldEm Poker – Deluxe ★★★★★★	628,878	+268,708	+75%
10.	Mahjong Zen	1,540,501	+247,323	+19%
11.	Birthday Cards	8,509,517	+225,097	+3%
12.	寵物戰爭	511,935	+215,404	+73%
13.	CSI: Crime City	2,080,756	+210,242	+11%
14.	Hero	999,646	+205,329	+26%
15.	Casino City	2,029,252	+204,476	+11%
16.	UNO® Boost	644,637	+187,456	+41%
17.	Mahjong Trails	1,811,630	+163,910	+10%
18.	Backyard Monsters	3,276,944	+155,423	+5%
19.	恐龍王國	1,746,351	+141,070	+9%
20.	Dragons of Atlantis	728,089	+127,669	+21%

Monster Galaxy was the only other game to break a million MAU gain, crossing the significant five million MAU mark that only a few games from small and medium-sized developers passed in 2011. The Pokemon-style game is having trouble retaining users, though, with its percent of MAU returning as daily actives having already sunk to only seven percent. Its monetization stats may also be lower than more typical Facebook games, with only powerups available for purchase.

The rest of the games up to number eight, GodsWar Online, are all titles that we’ve seen numerous times. GodsWar is an old MMORPG from Igg, an Asian developer, that’s been ported on to Facebook; as an MMO it’s not terribly impressive, but the game does seem to be performing better than past MMOs on Facebook.

The only other game of interest in the top 10 is Texas HoldEm Poker – Deluxe ★★★★★★, which, as it happens, is also an Igg game, but in a much more thoroughly mined genre. Igg’s audience appears to be mainly international, and its gains so far are likely the result of heavy promotion.

Several times a year I tell myself that every possible manner of match-3 has been created. I am always wrong.  Last year’s summer release of Puzzle Quest 2 and its multiple variations of the match-3 mechanic was a reminder of how easily this simple premise could be used to create player-versus-player gameplay. Similarly, Atari’s new Facebook title Faeries vs. Darklings takes what could have been a simple arcade title and adds enough variation to keep the match-3 mechanic interesting, while including a touch of competition.

Faeries begins with a basic tutorial asking the player first choosing whether to protect the forest as Faerie or try to claim it as the Darklings. Choosing the dark side will cost a cool 1000 Atari Tokens, a player’s entire initial bankroll. On Tutorial Island, the player is walked through what makes FvD different from the typical match-3 title before being set loose on two additional islands to either claim or reclaim the forest, as the case may be.

Initially, the game feels very familiar. One need only complete the standard vertical or horizontal matches of 3-like colored icons. However, above the board the opposite faction is advancing, attempting to claim the forest. To the left of the board are 2-4 colored icons. These are the matches that must be made in order to ready a creature to battle the onslaught. Each colored icon has an attendant number from 3-12 indicating just how many must be cleared. Complete the series, and the creature becomes ready.

As time progresses, the second, third, and fourth wave requirements become visible, allowing more matches to count towards releasing creatures for battle. However, releasing creatures out of order will not halt the progression in any meaningful way. The first faerie is intended to fight the first darkling; the second to fight the second, and so on.

Waiting for multiple creatures at the ready and then releasing them in succession does give bonus points, which increases the player’s score. This becomes important when determining exactly which faction currently “owns” that area of the forest.

Unlike the aforementioned Puzzle Quest where all matches counted towards increasing Mana, Experience or Coin, FvD requires specific colors for an action to occur and not every board works particularly well. (I played a board that had a single match before it reset and then another single match, causing me to lose that particularly play-session). However, like Puzzle Quest there can be other considerations when playing; one does not always play to fight back the opposing faction.

Matches of four or more produce Tokens, allowing the player to earn micro-currency in game. This currency can be used to change factions or to purchase spells. There are six spells available for purchase and they can vary from exploding a 9X9 grid, an entire line, or scrambling the entire board. But spells are a rather special consideration in that they have three uses which must be used – one at a time – in the next three games, else they expire.  And spells are particularly useful – and eventually necessary – when trying to manage the high score for a particular board.

Having the highest score is more than just beating a friend; it determines what faction owns a piece of the forest. If I play as the Darklings, have the highest score from among 15 friends and then take Mount Nekkara, Mount Nekkara is then claimed by the Darklings. However, if I change factions, either I or another player for the Faerie faction must beat my high score to reclaim the forest.

Additional Atari Tokens can be purchased to purchase spells or to switch factions but the cost is prohibitive.  The tokens can be used in other Atari games. Whether the cost is a result of balance in other games is difficult to determine.

Though it has a compelling match-3 mechanic, Faeries vs. Darklings is missing the special something that might compel a player to come back on a regular basis. Player notifications are not currently active, but as a skill-based game, eventually the players will reach the Law of Diminishing Returns.   Such incremental change leaves little impetus to continue to compete. Faeries vs. Darklings is promising, but still needs more attention from Atari.

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

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

• Innovative Games Join Holiday Apps on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Announcing Inside Mobile Apps: Tracking the Convergence of Mobile Apps and Social Platforms
• What Goldman Sachs’ Reported $450 Million Investment in Facebook May Mean
• Top 25 Facebook Games for January 2011
• Facebook and the Parallel Surge in (Early-and Late-Stage) Valuations
• With a Focus on Monetizing Mobile Apps, Tapjoy Leaves Its Scamville Past Behind
• November 2010 Facebook Traffic: Usual Growth Worldwide, Slower in US, Measurement Firms Show

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

• Facebook Promotes Friend Lists with Notification When Added to Featured People
• Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages: Harry Potter, Manchester United, Rihanna, Gaga and Bieber
• Facebook May Move Headquarters from Palo Alto to Empty Sun Campus in Menlo Park
• The Best Facebook Page Strategies and the Pages That Use Them

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

• Likes, Dating and Games Appear on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Offerpop’s Tab Apps Let Pages Run Commenting Contests that Reach the Feed
• The Facebook Marketing Bible January 2011 Edition Is Now Available
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Ubisoft, PlaySpan, Nanigans, & More
• Zibaba To Launch Affiliate Marketing Ecommerce Storefront for Facebook Pages
• RootMusic Nets $2.3 Million in Funding to Hire Engineers for Facebook App BandPage

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

• Facebook Career Posts: Mobile Operators, Lega, Data Centers, and More
• Countdown to Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco
• State, Local Government Agencies Reach Agreement with Facebook on Legal Concerns
• Vevo’s Lift Facebook App Awards Prizes to the Users Who Share Music Videos the Most

Friday, January 7th, 2011

• New Year’s Greetings Fill This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Sharethrough Helps Advertisers Place Their Videos Deep Within Social Games
• The Best Facebook-Integrated Devices from CES 2011
• Facebook Moves Friend Requests Link to the Home Page’s Left Sidebar
• Platform Update: Out with the Old Insights, Further API Migration Deadline Extensions
• Facebook Roundup: Loading Time HuffPo, Congress, Facebook Movie, Hyundai and More
• Thanks to Our Sponsors

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: A Bit Lucky, Arkadium, Menue, & More

The Green Hornet Comes to Mafia Wars — Sony Pictures Entertainment’s upcoming film, The Green Hornet, has made its way to Mafia Wars. Between now and January 14th, players can earn seven Green Hornet items in game, with an eight, “The Black Beauty” rewarded to those that collect all seven.

[image via Mafia Wars Blog]

Walker Digital Sues Zynga & Activision-Blizzard over Patent “Infringement” — According to TechCrunch, Walker Digital is filing a lawsuit for patent infringement against both Zynga and Activision-Blizzard for the patent “Database Driven Online Distributed Tournament System.” Walker Digital says that the patent “concerns a product and method of distributed electronic tournaments for a plurality of players that exchanges information with a central controller to influence game play while a player plays in the tournament, and stores player information to influence game play in a subsequent tournament.”

The games in question include the Zynga Wars series of RPGs, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft.

Peak Games Raises $1.5 Million — Turkey’s largest social gaming company, Peak Games is announcing new funding this week. The company has raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by Hummingbird Ventures. Additionally, Pamir Gelenbe of Hummingbird and angel investor Evren Ucok have joined the startup’s board of directors.

Ngmoco Shutting Down Miraphonic Apps — Social and mobile developer Ngmoco has announced that it is planning to shut down the four games it acquired along with developer Miraphonic, as Engage Digital reports. The games are set to go offline on January 16th, and consist of Epic Chef Wars, Epic Crime Wars, Epic Pet Wars, and Titan Wars.

Flock Joins Zynga — Flock, creator of the Flock social web browser, has announced that the six-year-old company is joining Zynga. Specific details regarding the acquisition have not been disclosed.

Zynga Hires More MySpace Executives — In other Zynga-related news, a piece from TechCrunch has noted the hiring of former MySpace SVP of user experience and design, Katie Geminder, and MySpace GM of social, Christina Wodtke. Both are slated to start with Zynga in the next week or so, and follow on the heels of the Zynga-hired Dani Dudeck and Owen Van Natta; a former MySpace VP and CEO respectively.