One of the early panels at the Game Developer Conference’s Social and Online Game Summit today was “Click Zen: Zynga’s Evolution from FarmVille to CityVille”. Mark Skaggs, Zynga’s VP of product development, talked the audience through the company’s evolution to its latest and most successful game.

The difference between FarmVille and CItyVille was stark, according to Skaggs. Launching FarmVille was all about getting a minimum viable product out the door. By the time CityVille was on the drawing board, Zynga had tripled in size.

Facebook had changed, too, leading some developers to think they could no longer produce hits. ““I actually had a spreadsheet that told me City could not grow to more than 5 million daily unique players,” said Skaggs. Initially, Zynga thought about sending the CityVille project to Challenge Games, its acquisition in in Austin, Texas.

Ultimately Zynga decided to produce the game at its San Francisco headquarters. But as the company went into preproduction, CityVille suffered from a lack of vision, said Skaggs. The team wasn’t sure whether it wanted to make the game a lighter or heavier experience; it wasn’t settled on a look or feel, or whether to launch another minimum viable product, as it had with FarmVille.

“We had to get off paper. What we found, when you’re on a whiteboard sketching it out, someone comes in and says hey, there’s an edge case and it gets modified,” said Skaggs. Before long, all the ideas were leading to confusion. So the company set to building playable prototypes that could help guide the vision.

Even with the prototypes, though, it wasn’t clear that CityVille would be a very good game. “People were coming to me privately during late summer early fall and saying, Mark, this isn’t going to be fun. It’s going to be another FarmVille,” said Skaggs. So in August, the team started to whittle down its ideas. “We kept focusing, narrowing down the scope, trying to get to the core gameplay,” said Skaggs.

Eventually, Skaggs started tracking what he called “Mile Markers”. In August and September, for instance, he started noticing that the team was gelling, with members spending time with each other and not just working alone. As September wore on, he saw the first hints of fun in the game, and by October and November the team was playing it of their own accord.

When it came to November, when the game was due to launch, the team decided to hold. Zynga had finally decided to move completely away from the minimum viable product model. This turned out to be important, said Skaggs, since it’s much easier to fix problems before launch.

CityVille wasn’t a perfect game at launch; Skaggs pointed out some areas that could have been better, including major elements like the trains, franchise interface and game space expansions. But it beat a minimum viable product, and went on to draw more than 100 million monthly active users at its peak.

Skaggs finished off with some “meta lessons” for other social game developers:

• It’s entertainment – People want a light, fun experience that loads as fast as a web page
• You’re building a product and a 24/7 business – It’s not like traditional game development, you’re got to keep working on it every day
• The battle Is won before the launch – It’s all about planning and preparation; fix problems before launch.
• Learn the space and the recipes for success – Go look at Zynga games and find common threads; if successful games keep using features, maybe you should too.
• Speed wins – Get to market and have the performance
• Deliver fun – Don’t forget that you’re making games
• You can’t make up for boring with volume – Content won’t make up for lack of fun, you need a good core game loop

For more on the prelude to CityVille, check out our guest post by Brice Morrison from earlier today: How Zynga Defused Its FarmVille Time-Bomb.

[Editor's note: Chris Morrison is a game designer and analyst at Concept Art House. He previously led coverage on Inside Social Games and continues to contribute.]

[Editor's note: This is a guest post by Brice Morrison, editor of game industry design site The Game Prodigy.]

When Zynga’s FarmVille hit 80 million players on year ago in February 2010, it was a breathtaking event for the entire games industry. The title had brought millions of new players into the market, many of whom had never played games of any sort before. And it encouraged a new generation of Facebook games, fueled by capital from excited investors and developers who would try to emulate its breakout success.

For Zynga, the success of FarmVille was exciting for sure. But it was also a ticking time-bomb. Suddenly, FarmVille had amassed millions of players who were farming their crops, building their buildings, and slowly leveling up through the game very quickly.

But for how long?

Many of these were players who had never been so involved in a game before. What were they going to be doing a few months from now? A year from now?

There were a few possible answers to this question. First, the 80 million could quit playing social games entirely. After all, they hadn’t been avid gamers before. After enjoying more than their fair share of wheat and pumpkins, they might just go back to where they came from: television, film, books, and other forms of entertainment.

A second possibility was that they could migrate to competitor’s titles. After having the door of online social gaming opened for them and other social game companies like Playdom and Playfish starting to pick up steam, it would be an easy transition.

Both of these options would mean a disastrous and mighty fall for Zynga, which at the time was still a young company. But it was easy to imagine — growing from 0 to 80 million users in a little over six months, a reversal in the next six months could happen just as fast.

But Zynga wasn’t going to let this happen, and through quick thinking and brilliant execution, it was able to defuse their 80 million strong time-bomb and keep their flagship franchise going.

Step One: Evolve the Current Game With Existing Players

When players play a game repeatedly and with a dedicated passion, they eventually evolve into experts. While simple raspberries were more than enough to keep early players entertained, later players require more complex gameplay and goals in order to keep them having fun.

Zynga knew this, and unless FarmVille was able to develop along with their player base, they would soon find millions of farms abandoned. No one was going to hang out at level 70, doing the same thing over and over, for very long.

Thus, Zynga began to ramp up, systematically providing new features and gameplay targeted for the expert players who wanted something more. In June of 2010, the FarmVille team unlocked levels 70 through 90, giving expert players more crops, content, animals, and buildings to create. Zynga also continued hosting new events and limited edition items, including the “7 Days of Summer” where old items were released for a limited time. In July of 2010, the FarmVille team released Crafting Buildings, including a Spa, Winery, and Bakery. These massive new features allowed advanced players to create their own goods to give to friends, something that delighted advanced players.

The updates didn’t stop. Slowly but surely, the game continued to grow along with its players, more advanced and more complex. They continued through the summer, fall, and winter, adding snowmen and snowball social features. The new gameplay, made specifically for players who had mastered the basics of FarmVille, was a huge success in retaining players, not just by adding new content, but by adding new features, gameplay, and even mini-games for their millions of newly minted experts.

Step Two: Offloading Players to New Games

But the FarmVille updates would only hold but for so long. Zynga also knew that many of its players were going to grow tired of the title, no matter what kinds of new gameplay was added. Thus, part two of Zynga’s survival plan was to help players migrate to new games, games that were designed with the former-FarmVille player in mind.

With the launch of FrontierVille, Zynga had created what was essentially a sequel to its farm-based hit. The game used many of the same gameplay mechanics that FarmVille players would recognize immediately, such as growing crops, collecting ingredients, and constructing buildings. But more importantly, it had even more features and advanced gameplay for FarmVille experts to enjoy, such as raising a family, a storyline, and reputation.

Yet Zynga wasn’t done with their migration yet. With the late 2010 launch of CityVille, previous FarmVille players were greeted again with a title that conformed to the same gameplay patterns and habits they had learned on the farm, this time with incredible production values and the polished experience that the Zynga studio had learned from previous titles. Slotting in friends to fill buildings, visiting others’ cities, all very similar, but more advanced. The game also built on gameplay that players had learned from FrontierVille, such as energy and reputation.

After each of the games launched, Zynga helped FarmVille players find their new homes not only with their Zynga Game Bar pointing to the new titles, but also strong in-game tie-ins. Billboards advertising CityVille and pop-ups calling farmers to go explore the Frontier were plentiful, helping to move millions of players over so that they could continue playing within Zynga’s network.

The Story Continues

In February 2011, FarmVille hasn’t deflated to one-tenth of its glory days as many predicted. Instead, it has only been reduced by a half, a success story on its own. Meanwhile Zynga has also been able to strategically migrate many of its users to FrontierVille and CityVille, games built for the FarmVille expert as well as the FarmVille dropout.

Today, FarmVille has 50 million monthly players and still one of the highest DAU/MAU in the business at roughly 30%, a full year after many critics said it was on the way down, according to AppData. Additionally, FrontierVille has 19 million players while CityVille holds a staggering 93 million players, many of these former FarmVille players. The blessing of a massively successful social game presented an oncoming challenge, but by growing the game along with the players as well as authoring their migration to more advanced titles, Zynga was able to keep their players playing on their terms.

A game designer who has worked at EA and CrowdStar, Brice Morrison is the editor of industry game design website The Game Prodigy and has been with teams for major titles like The Sims 3, Happy Aquarium, and It Girl.

We held two happy hours in Europe in Barcelona alongside Mobile World Congress and in Berlin to get to know our community of Facebook and mobile developers across the Atlantic. In Barcelona, we held the event just a few blocks from Fira Montjuic: venture capitalists, business development folk from Deutsche Telekom, Glu and Sponsorpay as well as journalists showed up.

In Germany, we threw an event alongside Wooga, Europe’s biggest social games developer, and monetization company Sponsorpay.

Here are photos from both events.

June Parina of Spark PR chats with Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch.

Chris Chandler, who just joined Mig33 from Microsoft as vice president of business development, talks with Olga Steidl, who heads marketing for SPB Software, which works with device manufacturers to create apps for phones.

Steidl poses for a quick shot with Johannes Heinze, who is head of mobile for Sponsorpay.

Marcel Weiss, who blogs about e-commerce for ExcitingCommerce, listens intently.

Henric Suuronen, who recently joined Wooga as head of studio from Digital Chocolate’s Barcelona office, shares a drink with others.

Janis Zech, SponsorPay’s chief revenue officer, has a side conversation with Frogster chief executive Andreas Weidenhaupt.

Jens Begemann, chief executive of Wooga, gives a short talk about how to use data to optimize game design on Facebook.

Philipp Moeser, Wooga’s co-founder, chats with Max Franke, who is developing an unlaunched game.

The SponsorPay team poses for a photo in between drinks.

Projjol Banerjea, who recently joined SponsorPay as director of marketing, strikes a pose.

A sideroom in Wooga’s office where designers get creative with character design.

The raccoon from Bubble Island hides in a corner of Wooga’s office.

While movie studios used to focus family film promotion tie-ins in physical objects like the toys offered with fast food meals, they’re increasingly using social games as a way to raise awareness. The latest example is a partnership between Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies and Zynga to bring the new animated film Rango to FrontierVille for a week leading up to the film’s release.

From today until Mach 6th, gamers will search for chameleon Rango, ask friends for virtual goods needed to complete a branded quest, be shown the film’s trailer, and win a special virtual good. Exposure to FrontierVille’s 19.4 million monthly active users with the film’s content and main character should increase buzz and box office revenues.

Zynga previously partnered with Paramount to promote the release of the DreamWorks animated film MegaMind within FarmVille. That one-day promotion in November 2010 engaged nine million users and saw four million messages about the branded content sent by gamers to their friends, leading Paramount to seek the Rango deal. Another partnership with Universal Studios engaged 19 million Mafia Wars users over one week to promote the DVD release of crime drama Public Enemies.

Social games are emerging as a powerful vehicle for brand promotion and a significant revenue stream for developers, as we previously detailed in our article “How Brands Can Advertise Within Social Games“. While television or print advertising can get branded content in front of potential customers for a few seconds, social game audiences can be engaged with promotions for minutes or hours. Their large, interconnected audiences are a great way to seed word of mouth.

Developers have to choose their partnerships wisely, though. Diverting a production team who could be creating high-return virtual goods or new game mechanics can be costly, so developers must only accept deals where they can charge a high initial production fee and high price per engaged user. They also must ensure the promotion fits naturally within the game, or risk turning off their users. The financial details of the Rango deal have not been disclosed, though Zynga says branded promotions typically take a month to plan and build.

FrontierVille was a hit upon its release in June, with Zynga successfully cross-promoting the game on its other properties to reach a daily active user count peak of 8.9 million, according to AppData. However, since the December 1st release of CityVille, the most popular Facebook game ever, FrontierVille has slipped from 6.8 million to 5.2 million DAU to become #6 in terms of both DAU and MAU. That’s still a plentiful audience for Paramount and Nickelodeon, though.

The in-game promotion is set up as a branded quest. Users first locate Rango on the frontier, who informs them they need to save their settlement from drought, similar to the plot of the film. Users must then collect ten water buckets by sending requests to friends who also play FrontierVille. If they succeed, they are shown a trailer for the film and awarded a gold Rango statue they can display on their frontier. Since the film is set on the frontier, the promotion is a good fit and will feel like a relatively natural extension of the game.

Zynga’s Global Director of Brand Advertising Manny Anekal tells us that FrontierVille gamers are “collectors and completionists” who strive to attain all the game’s virtual goods. By offering a limited edition virtual good that can’t be otherwise won or purchased, they’ll feel compelled to complete the Rango quest. Anekal says Zynga is open to doing more promotions for films and other brands as long as they enhance gameplay.

Strategies for which social games fit with what types of brands, details on social game marketing deals including price points of startup fees and cost per engagement, and a case study of a campaign promoting Disney’s film Tron: Legacy within Booyah’s social game Nightclub City are available in the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your brand, company, or app with Facebook.

We can’t go a week without talking about Ravenwood Fair, as increasingly sophisticated game has been taking the Facebook gaming world by storm over the last month. With another week of big gains for LOLapps’ breakout game, Ravenwood leads the pack this week after excluding Daily Horoscope and Birthday Cards (which are not actually games). It gained another 592,949 players this week, bringing it up to over 10.6 million monthly active users.

Gaia Online’s Monster Galaxy is another hot title to watch, as it almost tied Ravenwood Fair in the number of new players this week. According to AppData, our tracking service for monitoring the traffic of the top Facebook games, 592,312 new players enjoyed the Pokemon-style RPG.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,% 1. Daily Horoscope 1,459,511 +920,499 +171% 2. Birthday Cards 6,990,584 +864,357 +14% 3. Ravenwood Fair 10,618,282 +592,949 +6% 4. Monster Galaxy 6,654,969 +592,312 +10% 5. Diner Dash 1,445,174 +514,722 +55% 6. Glory of Rome 1,269,759 +388,082 +44% 7. Gourmet Ranch 997,265 +294,332 +42% 8. Backyard Monsters 3,973,811 +287,058 +8% 9. Bubble Island 6,159,924 +246,400 +4% 10. Monster World 6,014,530 +244,349 +4% 11. It Girl 9,183,499 +210,757 +2% 12. Fantasy Kingdoms 794,005 +202,838 +34% 13. Salon Street 1,315,613 +194,953 +17% 14. Mynet Çanak Okey 2,397,065 +176,375 +8% 15. UNO® Boost 1,058,424 +175,708 +20% 16. Dragons of Atlantis 2,635,883 +174,029 +7% 17. Mall World 6,509,295 +172,373 +3% 18. Miscrits: World of Adventure 1,241,376 +163,399 +15% 19. Tavla 1,132,514 +148,303 +15% 20. Happy Hospital 2,490,410 +136,745 +6%

Gourmet Ranch is a unique organic farming and restaurant management game released by Playdemic last July. Playdemic was acquired by RockYou in January of this year in an effort to create more full-featured social games after RockYou’s Toy Land and Farm Land games failed to gain substantial numbers of users. Gourmet Ranch has been crawling up the chart, slowly gaining MAU over the past year before gaining significant momentum at the beginning of the year. It is now at a peak high of just over 997,000 MAU and should be sneaking past 1 million in the next couple of days.

Miscrits: World of Adventure is a Broken Bulb Studios game that we reviewed in January. In the two months since this Pokemon-themed pet game has debuted, Miscrits has grown to an MAU of 1.2 million. Competing almost directly with Gaia’s Monster Galaxy, these multiplayer pet combat games exploit a players desire to complete collections to show off to and compete against their friends. While 1.2 million isn’t extravagant when compared against a game like CityVille, this game has been growing fast for its medium sized developer and clearly has something special that players are seeing.

The data in this post comes via AppData, our data service tracking growth and trends across the Facebook platform.

Here are all the latest headlines from around Inside Network.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms, and virtual goods.

Monday, February 21st, 2011

• Verizon Launch Pushes Facebook for iPhone Usage, But Less Than Christmas Did

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

• Telltale Games Brings Us Back To The Future on the iPad
• Inside Network Happy Hour This Friday — Berlin
• Are In-App Payments and Facebook Credits on a Collision Course?

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

• Basic Path Drawing & RPGs Meet in Battleheart for iOS
• SponsorPay Raises $5 Million From Nokia Growth Partners as It Moves Into Mobile

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

• New Hires in Mobile: EA Mobile, Brooklyn Packet, Glu Mobile & More
• Booyah’s Upcoming Nightclub City DJ Rivals Strives to Blend What’s Worked on iOS, Facebook
• Capcom’s Smurfs’ Village, Zombie Cafe Grab 10 Million Downloads on iOS
• Mobile App Roundup: MocoSpace, Android 3.0, iPad2, & More

Friday, February 25th, 2011

• Apsalar Looks to Usher in the Next Generation of Mobile Analytics
• Inside Network Happy Hour Tonight in Berlin
• Andreessen Horowitz Bets TinyCo is Poised to Become the Zynga of Mobile with $18 Million Round

Inside Social Games

Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, February 21st, 2011

• Football Life Takes Another Approach to Sports RPGs on Facebook
• Ravenwood Fair Crosses 10 Million Players on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

• The National Basketball Association Makes a Play for Facebook Users in NBA Legends
• Interview: Playfish’s Adam Gutterman on Designing Monopoly Millionaires for Facebook
• After Dramatic Year on Facebook, Digital Chocolate Raises $12 Million From Intel Capital
• Inside Network Happy Hour This Fridays — Berlin

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

• Social Game Platform Hi5 Launches SocioPay for Cross-Platform Game Monetization
• FrontierVille Rises to the Top of This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by DAU
• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Arkadium, Daglow Entertainment & More
• A Closer Look at Monopoly Millionaires on Facebook
• Are In-App Payments and Facebook Credits on a Collision Course?

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

• New Hires in Social Gaming: Kabam, KlickNation, Loot Drop, & More
• DNA Games Builds Up a Hit With Casino City

Friday, February 25th, 2011

• Andreessen Horowitz Bets There Will Be A Zynga of Mobile With $18 Million on TinyCo
• Fantasy and Pirates Shine on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• Sibblingz Talks WebGL and Cross-Ported Games
• King.com Launch Follows a Strong 2010, With a Maturing Stable of Games on Facebook
• Social Gaming Roundup: Zynga, MySpace, Funding, & More

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, February 21st, 2011

• Badoo Tops Leading Facebook App Gainers by MAU, Joined by Hearts, Connect and Profile Banner
• Heartbroker Facebook Dating App Recruits Friend Feedback
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Zynga, Oreo, NBA, Pizza Hut, Subaru and Black Eyed Peas
• Page Destination Tab Ad Campaign Strategies

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

• Are In-App Payments and Facebook Credits on a Collision Course?
• Microsoft Rolls Out Facebook Chat to All Hotmail Users, but Only Imports 1000 Friends
• Inside Network Happy Hour This Friday — Berlin
• CityVille, Badoo, Birthdays and Horoscopes on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

• Highlights This Week from the Inside Network Job Board: Digital Chocolate, Come2Play, & More
• Facebook Announces More Ways to Publish to Users Who Click Like Buttons
• Launch Conference 2011 Day One: Top Facebook Integrations

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

• Syncapse Gets $25 Million in Funding from ABS Capital For Enterprise Social Marketing
• Payvment’s Shopping Mall App is a Competitor to Amazon on Facebook
• Facebook Hires and Departures: Latin America, Litigation, Recruiting, India and More
• Facebook Careers Postings: Journalism, Data Centers, Dublin, Austin, and More
• Bing Now Displays Facebook Likes In-Line With Search Results
• Facebook Makes It Easier for Developers to Share Application Admin Access

Friday, February 25th, 2011

• Inside Network Happy Hour Tonight in Berlin
• Hearts, Videos, Chat and Enrique Iglesias on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Apps
• Facebook Hires Founders of Professional Social Network, Pursuit
• Facebook’s Publishes Re-Imagined Privacy Policy for the Average User
• Facebook Increases Number of Visible Tab Apps on Pages, Changes Tab Reordering
• Facebook Roundup: Renren IPO, Trademarks, Sprout Social, Advertising, College and More

Zynga Prepaid Cards Coming to Latin America — Social games developer Zynga is partnering with Mentez this week, says VentureBeat.  Through the Brazilian social game publisher, Zynga will make its prepaid cards available at over a million locations across Latin America.

MySpace Sale Process Begins — According to Reuters, News Corp has begun exploring the sale or spin-off of MySpace. Thus far, early interest in the site has come from about 20 parties, with more expected as the weeks go on. News Corp is slated to begin talks in the second week of March.

News Corp Launchs Social Game Publishing Service — In other News Corp news, the company has announced the introduction of “Making Fun” — a gaming startup it quietly bought last November, that is now serving as a “full-service publisher” that will work with social game developers to fund, market, and distribute their titles.

Zio Studios Raises $1.3 Million — Latin American animation and social gaming company, ZIO Studios has announced the closing of its first funding round. The funding totals $1.3 million from fund manager Promotora’s venture capital division.

Ravenwood Fair Continues to Grow — VentureBeat has highlighted some interesting numbers from LOLapps’ Ravenwood Fair. With nearly 10.5 million monthly active users, the company is also highlighting that around 3.3 million have purchased virtual goods with 90 cents paid, on average, per transaction.  Moreover, 14% purchase something daily.

[image via VentureBeat]

Media Chaperone Raises $1 Million — According to EngageDigital, Media Chaperone has raised $1 million in funding this week. The funding is to  go towards further development of their Facebook app Piggyback, which allows parents to monitor their childrens’ online activity and spending within partner games.

Casual gaming company King.com announced a new version of its site designed for Facebook, an application called MyGames portal. While the app has been on Facebook for years, the version launched last week includes new games and an attention currency mechanic that had been previously tested and proven on King’s growing match-3 title, Miner Speed.

And that’s not all. The company has also had another app portal on Facebook for more than a year, called FunFlow, which has a decent following at 1.14 million monthly active users, according to AppData, even though it has had higher traffic in the past.

In addition to the portals, two standalone games – the aforementioned match-3 title Miner Speed (currently at 670,000 MAU), and the other is Puzzle Saga, which we covered in November, which has a current MAU count of 504,000 – have been showing appreciable numbers. King.com cross-promotes these games and its portals,  feed directly into the portals.

Added all together, the company has a solid 262,000 DAU and 3.06 million MAU on Facebook, following a strong second half of 2010. Check out our AppData tracking service for top developers and applications t0 get more detail.

Here’s how the apps work.

Looking at the similarities between the two destination sites, each has a similar layout, pool of coins, and daily bonus. MyGame’s layout links to FunFlow and the two standalone titles at the top of the page, calling them “our other games”; FunFlow has “promotions” at the bottom of the page which link to MyGames, the standalones, and an additional rotating title. MyGames is of a muted color scheme in a more traditional layout; FunFlow is bright, bold and modern.

Daily bonuses on MyGames are in the form of a spin-the-wheel for coins to spend. On FunFlow, you earn a 10 percent bonus increase to your score each successive day you play. The coins are important on MyGames as each game is timed and to play additional games the player must spend coins to play versus other players. On FunFlow, coins are earned by reaching goals and the bonuses earn further points. Players can spend Facebook Credits to spin again on MyGames or to buy bonus items on FunFlow. Miner Speed (which has demographics similar to MyGames) uses the same daily bonus mechanic; Puzzle Saga follows FunFlow in both as well.

The defining difference between the two portals and their sister games is the stable of titles each carries and the way each is scored. MyGames titles depend heavily on a dizzying array of match-3 mechanics. Though some are polished clones of existing titles, more than a few are original; but all are tied to the aforementioned time mechanic. With a much older demographic, the shorter play times that don’t depend upon a reaching a goal that requires concentration or time an extended commitment that and older demographic may not be able to commit to.

FunFlow has its share of match-3 titles but the mechanic is used in novel ways as in CiviBattle – an RTS that requires building structures to produce military units to fight in battles, but all resources are gained using match-3. A post-apocalyptic top-down FPS can be found in GibFest; and an oddly satisfying pattern-matching game in NUMB3R5. Few of the games have time limits unless the time limit is needed to complete the game. Most have definitive win conditions. The player must reach this condition – spending the time to do so – in order to win coin.

At first blush, King’s single portal seems to be no different than many other attempts on Facebook. But the entire picture paints a different story. Combined they create a diverse portfolio of games that covers a broad spectrum of the market, a cornucopia of more than 47 titles to choose from.

Web and mobile game engineers tend to spend a lot of time speculating how development for their various platforms will converge — Facebook, iOS, Android, and potential future additions. Sibblingz CEO Ben Savage recently told us that he’s throwing his hat into the ring of a specific technology: WebGL, an emerging browser technology that allows 3D graphics with hardware acceleration.

WebGL is part of the HTML5 Canvas, but isn’t necessarily one of the technologies that’s being referred to when HTML5 comes up. That’s partially because it’s not widely available. Firefox and, since early this month, Chrome both offer it on the web, but Internet Explorer does not; for mobile devices, only Firefox can use it.

But WebGL has been getting plenty of attention lately, especially following a post this Wednesday on the Facebook Developer Blog. Savage has favored the idea for much longer, though – Sibblingz has been working for over a year with a sister technology, OpenGL, to build its own proprietary system for cross-platform porting of games.

The initial focus is on moving Facebook games coded in ActionScript for Flash to mobile versions. In the view of most developers, that process is more trouble than it’s worth – usually, the game is just remade. Savage says Sibblingz can use 95 percent of the original code, with a shell of Objective C around it for iOS, or Java for Android.

Sibblingz tested out the technology with Happy Island, a game developed by YouWeb sister company CrowdStar. “The proof that works is that the day the Samsung Galaxy tablet came out in the Verizon store, we went, launched it on the tablet, and it worked. It’s gratifying to say, we wrote the software and it works on devices we never knew existed,” Savage says.

Beyond code, graphics are also key. While some web developers are trying to move beyond the vector graphics that characterized many of Facebook’s earlier hits, Savage thinks that vector art will be dominant even on mobile devices, where games like Infinity Blade have already wowed users with console-style graphics.