Social Developers Aide Japan — With the devastating earthquake, subsequent tsunami in Japan, many social developers are doing what they can. To start, Zynga has partnered with Save the Children for its Japan Earthquake Tsunami Children Emergency Fund and has donated $1 million through virtual goods purchases from FarmVille, CityVille, and FrontierVille. The totals were reached in 36 hours.

Playfish is also donating through EA Sports FIFA Superstars. Working through Mercy Corps, who are working with their longstanding partner, Peace Winds Japan, the company is donating 100% of all direct donations or revenue from virtual goods purchases — “Japan Elite Transfers” — in game. The donations are featured on the Mercy Corps page and will go to balloon shelters, emergency tents, water, food, and blankets.

Gaia Online and virtual world WeeWorld are also helping out, selling virtual goods in their titles, says EngageDigital. Thus far, Gaia Online has donated $45,000. Both companies are donating to the Red Cross.

We Rule Reaches New Milestones — According to VentureBeat, Ngmoco’s social-mobile title We Rule has reached a number of new milestones this week. Amongst them are over 13 million downloads, and over 3 billion minutes played.

Classic Game Show Comes to Facebook — The popular 1960s game show, The Dating Game has come to Facebook and other social networks this week. The new title is the latest creation from developer 3G Studios.

Spil Games Exceeds 130 Unique Monthly Users Worldwide — Spil Games has stated that it is now the largest social game platform in the world. The company has noted that its traffic now exceeds 130 million unique monthly visitors.

Disney Interactive Lays Off More Employees — Disney Interactive Media Group has laid off another round of employees following a review from former PlaydomCEO, John Pleasants, says paidContent. Approximately 80 more employees (2 percent), focused on online media, have been laid off.

MinoMonsters Marks 1st Release from Youngest Y Combinator Founders — Josh Buckley, at 18, and Tyler Diaz, at 17, have launched their first social title, MinoMonsters this week. The two are the youngest pair within Y Combinator.

Myspace ID Off-Site Login Gets Simplified — MySpace is looking to simplify its off-site logins for developers using Myspace ID. The company is rolling out OAuth 2.0 support while phasing out OpenID login. OpenID will continue to function normally for a period of time, while developers transition over to OAuth.

As the social gaming industry matured, survey questions and market research became a popular alternative revenue source to ads for developers through companies like Trialpay and Peanut Labs.

Now we’re starting to see the same thing happen on mobile.

Qriously, a U.K.-based company backed by Accel Partners, lets developers earn revenue from standard, mobile banner-sized ads that ask users a single question. Christopher Kahler, the company’s founder, says it offers developers eCPMS in the range of $1.50 to $4. They’ll be working with mobile ad mediation companies in the near future, so developers will be able to bundle Qriously in with whatever other ad networks they’re using. The product’s currently in beta and reaches more than 10 million unique users, the company says.

Unlike social gaming-oriented solutions like Peanut Labs, Qriously’s questions are not incentivized. They are basic single questions that sit at the bottom of an app. There’s a slider users can drag to show which side they agree more with (see above). People tend to answer the questions because they’re curious about what other people think. Because of this simple curiosity, Kahler says the engagement rate on his company’s questions are at least ten times higher than what’s seen with basic display ads.

> Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps.

In a brief announcement, Zynga is saying today that it has bought the team from Floodgate Entertainment, a long-time developer of of games across PC, casual, mobile and social platforms. The team will be joining Zynga Boston — a studio that was formed last August around acquired social music game developer Conduit Labs. Zynga isn’t telling us much more about what the combined teams will be working on (we’re checking to see what happened to the company itself). Here’s a bit of detail from the official statement:

The team from Floodgate will immediately bolster the Zynga Boston team, with industry veteran and current Floodgate founder Paul Neurath joining as Creative Director. Paul brings to Zynga over two decades of experience in game development and is responsible for a number of acclaimed titles. In 1990 Paul founded Blue Sky Productions, which became LookingGlass in 1992.

Floodgate’s long list of creations include: Ultima Underworld, Madden Football 1994, Command & Conquer, EA Sports NASCAR 2007, Age of Empires, and recent mobile title Mo-Pets.

Zynga also highlights that this is the tenth acquisition in the past ten months. The company has made small purchases a key part of its business for many years, with many of the acquirees going on to take leading roles on future games. Here are the previous nine:

• XPD in Beijing
• Challenge Games in Austin
• Unoh Games in Tokyo
• Conduit Labs in Boston
• Dextrose AG in Frankfurt
• Bonfire Studios in Dallas
• Newtoy Inc. in McKinney, Texas
• Flock team
• Area/Code, New York

[Paul Neurath image via Zynga]

Leading this week’s list of emerging Facebook games (defined by those games which are still under 1 million MAU) is the Chinese language title, 開心探寶 which translates to Happy Treasure Hunters. This sim/adventure game is heavily inspired by Zynga’s Treasure Isle, and doesn’t appear to iterate too much on the proven mechanics of the game. We were unable to find the name of the developer, however they launched the game in mid-January. According to AppData, our platform for analyzing the top growing Facebook games, Happy Treasure Hunters has gained 761,000 players in just the last week alone.

In the second position this week is Spot The Difference, an older game that launched in 2008 by Lunatic Games. This simplistic game that challenges players to seek out all differences between two pictures was profiled in last week’s emerging games leaderboard. Spot The Difference grew by another 306,000 players over the past seven days and is now sitting at over 778,000 monthly active users.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,% 1. 開心探寶 815,768 +761,292 +1,397% 2. Spot The Difference 778,456 +306,280 +65% 3. NBA Legend: Official NBA Game 448,799 +253,583 +130% 4. Super Billares 911,914 +244,207 +37% 5. Fish World 981,763 +228,157 +30% 6. Pirates Saga 780,609 +206,574 +36% 7. Galaxy Online II – Most Competitive Strategy Game 711,106 +204,105 +40% 8. Okey Plus 800,053 +197,211 +33% 9. My Kingdom 250,878 +178,117 +245% 10. Poker Texas Boyaa 858,612 +163,982 +24% 11. Slotomania – Slot Machines 910,592 +156,808 +21% 12. DDTank 472,391 +151,348 +47% 13. Horse Academy 228,367 +135,213 +145% 14. Footy! 824,758 +126,086 +18% 15. Townster 460,973 +121,246 +36% 16. 無限德州撲克 870,483 +112,412 +15% 17. แฮปปี้ฟาร์ม ๓ 250,826 +108,172 +76% 18. Dragon Age Legends 204,431 +90,023 +79% 19. 麻將-台灣麻將 439,041 +88,367 +25% 20. Twilight Wars 331,799 +84,835 +34%

NBA Legend is the official NBA Facebook game developed by Lionside, Inc. and launched last month. It grew by 130% in the past week, bringing it to just under 450,000 MAU. On first impression, NBA Legend well-polished and fairly easy to understand, however after spending some time with the game it feels little less a basketball game and more like a forced experience attempting to take advantage of working mechanics in other Facebook games. Your home court is simply the place where you “drill”, which means clicking on yourself and choosing a length of time to drill for (similar to a contract in a game like Social City). Drilling with your neighbors is how you build up chemistry with your teammates, however going to visit them feels like at attempt to make a neighbor system work in a game that isn’t really suited for it. Actual basketball games are as simple as switching out team members and clicking “play”, then watching as the match is simulated and a score is randomly given to you. Despite not that much of an interactive sports games, NBA Legend has been showing some early growth.

Dragon Age Legends is the companion game to Electronic Arts’ new console and PC RPG Dragon Age II. The game was in closed beta and only available to those who had purchased the retail version of Dragon Age II until recently, but it is now available for anyone on Facebook to play. Touted as a “Facebook game for people who hate Facebook games”, Dragon Age Legends is a light RPG with tie-ins to the console and PC version of Dragon Age II. Players use energy to compete in battles with creatures and enemies and are rewarded with in-game items for Dragon Age II. Dragon Age Legends has nearly doubled its playerbase in the past week and now has 204,000 MAU.

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

Clipwire Games has come out with its own version of a frontier-themed simulation game on Facebook with its title Wild West Town. Recently appearing on our top emerging apps list, the youngFacebook app is already earning nearly 1.51 million monthly active users with a daily active user count of roughly 388,000.

Wild West Town obviously resembles FrontierVille, Zynga’s similar-themed game from last year. But while it makes use of many of the predecessor’s mechanics, it comes with a fairly different feel to it, and incorporates a highly addictive introduction sequence that truly brings the town itself to life. Along with more creative ways of rewarding players with virtual currency and getting them to allow the app access to their email, the experience feels very unique despite the game’s less original frontier premise.

The key difference between Wild West Town and FrontierVille is that right from the start players are creating a town. Players start with the predecessor’s mechanic of clearing debris (though such elements are now used in other popular games such as Ravenwood Fair) so that an actual town can be made. Moreover, with each item of debris — cacti, rocks, weeds, etc. — gold, supplies, and oil are all earned.

These become the three currencies used to manage everything, with many items requiring an amount from each category to purchase. Of the most basic are crops, which take on the typical farming-sim mechanic of plant, water, harvest, but thankfully, this is not the sole way to garner income. Actually, the clearing of debris, which constantly regrows, is enough income as it is.

What is of more interest are the various buildings. When players begin the game, they are guided by a very detailed series of quests that has the player meeting a variety of characters that come to live in their budding town. For each of them, a structure is needed, but thus far, each one has had a specific function beyond just looking nice.

One of the most curious is actually the second building constructed: The Bank. In most social games, virtual currency is often rewarded to the player upon leveling up (usually one currency per level). However, this reward becomes significantly less once the player reaches a higher level and cannot level up quickly. To remedy this, the Bank rewards virtual currency on a daily basis, coaxing users to return frequently.

Other buildings produce useful boosts as well. The Cookhouse, for example can make use of crops or purchased livestock to actually make dishes. What is interesting about this, is that each dish can reward the player with more than just experience. Most will actually provide useful powerups. As an example, should users make a “Healthy Breakfast,” all of their crops will grow by one hour.

With many structures, however, friends are needed in some way to make them function. In some cases, Facebook friends must send supplies to build them in the first place. In other situations, they are needed to actually run the place (e.g. the Cookhouse) and must be hired as employees. They don’t actually do anything, and non-player characters can be hired for virtual currency, but they are required to actually “complete” the building in general. Aside from this, friends that become neighbors can be visited and aided in the same fashion as FrontierVille. As a reward, interactions can grant extra energy.

As for anything else worth noting, regarding buildings, is players must also dig about their space to find veins of water or oil. Upon these, they can construct wells and oil derricks that will provide them with a means to water newly planted crops or earn the oil currency.

Another aspect of merit comes in the fluidity of the game’s quest system. In most social games, especially virtual space sims, the quests feel very generic. Here, each one progresses the town in a logical fashion, actually introducing new characters that range from the trouble-making outlaw to the cheery chef to the solemn banker. Each one hangs around the town, Fanglies-style, giving it a bit more life. Sadly, unlike Fanglies, they don’t move much.

As a side note, the quests system is so fluid that when a Pony Express rider rolled into town, chased by bandits and dying of dehydration, it seems almost necessary to join the Pony Express in his stead when asked. Cleverly, this signs the user up for email notifications. It wasn’t hidden, but it was so natural that doing so wasn’t given a second though. Plus, users get some free decorative items for doing so.

It’s also important to point out that the a new player is able to do an impressive amount during their first sitting. Taking a decent amount of time to consume initial starting resources, players actually do get the sense of starting a real western town. The expenditure to reward ratio works perfectly, and even though the town isn’t very large, it still feels like one; unlike other titles that only give users enough gold/energy to build a few crops and maybe a decorative item or two… exciting.

There isn’t much to complain about with Wild West Town. Yes, it is a lot like FrontierVille, but social games have been mimicking the evolution that core games went through, and just as core games that follow similar mechanics (e.g. first-person shooters) have to find new means to differentiate themselves, so too do social games. While Clipwire’s mechanics are similar to previous games, the overall feel of the game is very different.

Aside from this, the game is brand new and marked as “beta,” so there are a number of bizarre bugs that appear now and again. From graphical glitches that leave crops invisible or the avatars with no eyes, to energy not recharging, these come off as annoying at worst. It’s not that they’re not working, they just can’t be seen, and a simple browser refresh seems to always work. Nevertheless, not all new players are going to try that.

All in all, Clipwire is off to a good start with the title, and we expect the game to continue to improve with age.

The series of extensive hiring within the social gaming space is slowing down this week, as only four developers are showing new activity, based on LinkedIn data, as oppossed to the ten last week. In fact, none of the developers below had more than three new hires.

Nevertheless, there were some new major hires. Social competition platform YooMee Games has filled us in on the hiring of Tim McCloud as their new director of marketing. Moreover, Stephen “Chris” Ko joins Kabam as their new VP of product strategy. That said, the hire appears to have taken place back in February, and is only now being updated on LinkedIn.

As always, if your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email editor (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get it into this or next week’s post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s full list:

Kabam

• Anthony Krainer, IT Administrator — Now at Kabam, Krainer was previously a mortgage consultant for Carteret Mortgage.
• Stephen “Chris” Ko, VP of Product Strategy – As noted already, a recent LinkedIn update (the hire appears to have been back in February) notes Stephen “Chris” Ko as the new VP of product strategy at Kabam. He was previously senior director for Play 4 Free at Electronic Arts.

LOLapps

• Ivy Yup, Community Manager — Joining LOLapps, Yup was previously a QA project tester at LucasArts.

YooMee Games

• Tim McCloud, Director of Marketing — Now director of marketing for YooMee Games, Tim McCloud was most recently a digital marketer for Kabam.

Zynga

• Douglas Sherk, Software Engineer — Now a part of Zynga, Sherk was previously an interaction developer for Apption Software.
• Morgan Wren, QA Lead — Also joining Zynga, Wren was previously a QA lead for area/code, a company acquired by Zynga back in January.
• Stephanie Tan, Billing/Accounts Receivable — The final new hire for Zynga, Tan was previously a billing analyst for Google.

Anatoly Tikhman and Charles Merrin, co-founders of Playteau, are no novices in the world of games. Charles Merrin assisted Anatoly Tikhman in founding Tikgames before he moved to Real Networks where he was Vice President of North America Games, then to Smith & Tinker. He left to found Playteau in March 2010 with Tikhman, when they saw real opportunities in the gaming arena they thought were not fully taken advantage of.

Fortune Stones is their first offering, a take on the match 3 game on Facebook, with two game modes; Frenzy which is the familiar square of colored stones, and Strategy which combines puzzle solving in the shape of the game board as well as other challenges such as locked stones. Released in beta in January and announced March 10, the game is seeing strong growth even before the company begins a marketing push.

Inside Social Games: What is Playteau’s strategy with Fortune Stones?

Charles Merrin: It’s not just with Fortune Stones but Playteau’s strategy is to bring our games across all platforms.  We announced that we will be releasing Fortune Stones across other social sites and platforms including the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad, and we will do that with all our games.  With Facebook Connect, players will be able to connect their accounts and preserve their scores.

Inside Social Games: With your experience with Real Networks and the casual game space, why did you choose to launch Fortune Stones on Facebook?

Charles Merrin: The sheer size of the market and the huge amount of activity to be found on Facebook, but the code is designed to go other places.

Inside Social Games: PC, Xbox Live, PSN, PSP, the DS and such as well?

Charles Merrin (smiling): It could, indeed, yes.

Inside Social Games: How do you take an old chestnut like the match 3 game and make it compelling and make it work as a social game?

Charles Merrin: By creating games within games. By innovating within the genre, by listening to our players. It’s a faster, more dynamic design.  There’s more room for creativity as well as error. On the social aspect, there are badges to be earned and shared and there are weekly tournaments and your league are your friends playing the game.  Trophies are award to the top three players in both game modes and you can view your friends stats as well as your own, and how you compare.

Inside Social Games: No trash talking?

Charles Merrin: No, but if our players want it! We’ll provide it!

Inside Social Games: Facebook Games have gotten a bad reputation of spamming their players, spamming their friends list or needing many other friends playing to advance in the game.  How have you avoided that trap?

Charles Merrin: The majority of our contact with our players is via Facebook and Twitter and we make regular postings twice a week, so our players have come to expect a regular update, but we don’t think it necessary for players to receive two emails every day!  As for requiring friends to play the game, there is a power up in the Strategy mode that is unlocked with six friends, and you get more bonus coins if you have ten friends playing the game.  More of a value-add then an onerous requirement.

Inside Social Games: What about gifting? Is it even possible to keep that balanced in a game like this?

Charles Merrin: It’s coming. The gifting of power ups is on its way. You are right in that we’ve had to design it in a way as not to unbalance the game but yet be of value to the player.

Inside Social Games: Is it too early to talk about monetization of the game, seeing as how you’ve only just announced its launch? How are you monetizing the game?

Charles Merrin: Monetization is going well. We’re working to improve it, but we’re proud of how well it’s going. We’ve listened to our early users and adopters and we provide many of the game’s features for free and game coins are easily earned, but we’ve got many points of monetization in the game.  First there are the power ups which can be bought, then we have tile-sets, collections, backgrounds, and level sets.  Players can either play the game to earn collections which provide different boosts and earn the game coins to buy other things or just buy them outright.

Our players do love the cosmetics though. We have a dog themed background wall paper and players have clamored for a cat themed one which is coming out soon, and the different tile sets are also popular.

Inside Social Games: Finally, why will Playteau be successful?

Charles Merrin: Firstly, I would say the team we’ve assembled.  Anatoly and I have, between the two of us, released over 40 games, designed on every platform imaginable.  We’ve assembled a very strong team here.  Secondly, it’s the portfolio strategy. What we are concentrating on are the best of breed strategies and designing games for portability across all platforms.  We will not be shy about innovating within a genre even as we also look to innovating outside of a genre with new games.

Inside Network itself is hiring for an Operations and Sales Support Coordinator, a job that will put you in the middle of the industry as we continue to build out our business operations. It’s part-time and open to entry-level applicants in the Silicon Valley area. More details here.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Electronic Arts, Games Cafe, Diversion, Hands-On Entertainment, and Inside Network.

• Sr. Customer Experience Manager (Redwood City, CA)

• Social Game Designer (Calgary, AB)

• VP, Online Media (Hollywood, CA)
• Lead Flash/AS3 Client Engineer (Hollywood, CA)

• Lead Artist (San Diego, CA)
  
• Game Artist (San Francisco, CA)

• Operations and Sales Support Coordinator (Palo Alto, 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. 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.

Although its monthly active user count has been falling, Zynga has managed to keep up a strong rate of daily active user growth for its latest hit on Facebook, city-builder CityVille. DAU indicates highly engaged users who are willing to pay for virtual goods, so we can assume that Zynga is doing quite well for itself financially — and will continue to do so for quite awhile to come, given the DAU trajectory.

We take these numbers from AppData, our data tracking service providing performance metrics on applications and developers on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name DAU Gain Gain,% 1. CityVille 21,212,965 +735,392 +4% 2. Games 1,936,176 +412,910 +27% 3. 開心探寶 251,590 +247,459 +5,990% 4. Mynet Çanak Okey 752,289 +239,662 +47% 5. Bejeweled Blitz 3,671,801 +163,537 +5% 6. Zoo World 554,358 +118,806 +27% 7. 德州撲克(中文版) 528,740 +109,921 +26% 8. Komşu Çiftlik 725,530 +104,307 +17% 9. Gourmet Ranch 311,834 +82,671 +36% 10. Resort World 589,331 +81,801 +16% 11. Monster Galaxy 640,569 +78,256 +14% 12. FarmVille 中文版 452,853 +77,813 +21% 13. FrontierVille 5,073,629 +73,406 +1% 14. EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars: Real football & soccer! 587,034 +71,414 +14% 15. Monster World 1,219,925 +51,738 +4% 16. Texas Grand Poker 109,812 +50,667 +86% 17. Pool Master 2 128,300 +46,585 +57% 18. NBA Legend: Official NBA Game 86,500 +45,556 +111% 19. 開心農場 1,146,417 +43,544 +4% 20. GooBox – Jeux Gratuits 330,707 +43,410 +15%

Here’s what CityVille’s past month has looked like:

Looking down the list, one can see that a wide range of apps in other languages are seeing new growth. 開心探寶, or Happy Treasure Hunters, comes from two individuals. The game oddly has been around for months with hardly any users, then saw its MAU and DAU counts shoot up from nearly nothing in the last few days — apparently a new marketing effort.

Turkish card game app Mynet Çanak Okey also continues to climb in both MAU and DAU counts, apparently meeting a desire for a Turkish-language experience despite the many card game competitors out there. It grew by nearly 50% to reach around 750,000 DAU. Similarly, Boyaa’s 德州撲克(中文版) — “Texas Hold’em (Chinese Version)” — grew by more than 20% to around 500,000 daily actives.

It’s not just local developers reaching local audiences though. International developer The Broth appears to have gone in and nailed the Turkish demand for farming apps, as its Komşu Çiftlik or “Neighboring Farm” which has been showing high retention around steady growth lately. Zynga’s Chinese-language version of FarmVille, FarmVille 中文版,  also seems to be coming along reasonably well.

Social developer Wooga, who is now the fifth largest game developer on Facebook according to AppData, is launching their fifth Facebook title this week: Diamond Dash. A simple arcade-style game reminiscent of the older casual game Collapse, the arcade concept is not wholly unexpected considering the success of its puzzle game Bubble Island, which garners nearly 6.5 million monthly active users and more than 1 million daily active users.

Though Diamond Dash is essentially Collapse, its current form also finds itself combined with the basic time element from games like Bejeweled Blitz as well as standard social mechanics (e.g. leaderboards).

It’s simple enough. Players are presented with a screen full of multicolored blocks, and they must click on groups of three or more in order to remove them. As they do so, more blocks will fall down in their place and its rinse and repeat for one minute (à la Bejeweled Blitz). As one might expect, the more groups removed, and the more removed per click, the higher the score becomes.

As an added boost, should players remove groups in a fast enough sequence, they will initiate a special ability called “Magic Fire,” which will subsequently boost their score even further for a short amount of time. That said, activating the power-up requires a very quick eye and is not very forgiving.

If this all sounds simple, that’s because it is. The only other addition, at the moment, is that friends can invite other Facebook friends to play and compete via a weekly tournament (which is basically a leaderboard that just resets every week). Other than this, players acquire a finite number of plays per day, dubbed Lives, and require players to ask for lives from other friends through a Facebook message.

Interestingly enough, the lack of features is not without purpose. In fact, players can only reach level four (experience is earned through finishing games) at this time. The reason, according to Wooga, is that they’re trying to garner early feedback, and had, in fact, only seeded the game to a few thousand users yesterday; just to see how it grows.

Though there is no timeline given, Wooga also states that later, players will be able to unlock the actual diamonds in Diamond Dash, which are noted as boosts to the core play. What these boosts are specifically, we have not been told, but they will be used to augment the final game score. In fact, these will be part of the coming monetization mechanic that will utilize Facebook Credits to allow users to buy them (whether or not they are earnable by other means is unknown). Additionally, players will also be able to purchase additional Lives should they wish to play more often.

In a more ambiguous note, Wooga also tells us that Diamond Dash will also host, in some way a “well-proven gameplay mechanic from virtual world social games.” This refers to titles such as Wooga’s own top title, Monster World. Sadly, they did not share any more than that, nor do we have a prospective date on when to expect such features.

In the end, the current form of Diamond Dash is pretty basic and nothing more than a social adaptation of Collapse. Even so, the game appears far, far from done, and Wooga has a number of additions in store for the game. Considering the success of the company as a whole, future iterations of their new title ought to be very high quality and could very well be a repeat success of Bubble Island.