Arkadium Launches Arkadium Stadium — Social and casual games developer, Arkadium, has launched Arkadium Stadium this week. Now, players can post to Facebook from its suite of 12 games, all playable directly from their Facebook wall.

Funtactix Announces New Social World Launch: New Boyz — Online world/social game publisher Funtactix recently announced an upcoming hip-hop social world, New Boyz: The World. Part of an agreement with Warner Music Group, the coming title will be an avatar-based, music-driven world monetizing with digital merchandise. It launched May 2.

Scoreloop Creates new Mobile Social Gaming Platform in Hong Kong — Scoreloop has announced a new deal with Hong Kong mobile carrier CSL Limited.  The new deal creates a mobile-social gaming platform directly for the carrier. The service is now available to any CSL user with and Android device.

OpenFeint Debuts in China — Social mobile gaming platform OpenFeint has launched in China this week with the help of The9. The platform is dubbed The9 Game Zone for Android devices, and according to TechCrunch, is one of the reasons why Gree agreed to purchase OpenFeint last week for $104 million.

Playmatics Raises $1 Million — A social and mobile gaming startup by the name of Playmatics raised $1 million in funding this week. The funds will be used to develop a “real world game,” initially for Facebook, called Shadow Government, in which players will attempt to build, or destroy, their own virtual country.

As we continue to explore the integration of brands within social games, we notice several branded TV game show games debuting on Facebook or popping up in our top 20 lists of games by traffic growth. Here we examine the top five of these games in order of size.

Televised game shows make for interesting social games on several levels. First, they represent a challenge in deep brand integration where a developer works with an advertiser to promote a product. Second, TV game shows challenge developers to create features that capture or replace elements that make the show popular, such as a synchronous puzzle-solving experience or the prize-winning portion of the show. Third, and most interesting, TV game shows rely on audience recognition that varies sharply depending on region and target demographic.

Family Feud, iWin Inc. and Backstage, Inc.

MAU: 3.2 million
DAU: 610,000

Family Feud the TV show pits teams of families against one another in a race to name the most popular responses to survey questions (e.g. “What would you bring on a picnic?”). The show first aired in 1976 and still runs today, hosted by comedian Steve Harvey. iWin President Peter Negulescu says the developer was able to tap into an audience for the game by letting the community create and answer surveys to form the basis for the in-game rounds. When the Facebook game first launched in March 2010, it showed rapid growth toward its all-time high of 7 million MAU and 1.5 million DAU in July of that year.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Ludia Inc.

MAU: 1.2 million
DAU: 234,000

The TV show of the same name has one person choosing multiple choice answers to trivia questions for an amount of money that increases with each correct answer. A wrong answer results in losing all of the money. The Facebook game focuses on a competitive style of play where you and several other people are all racing to give the correct answer and each question’s dollar value is revealed just before answering. Each person who answers incorrectly not only receives no money, but also functions as a multiplier for the value which then goes to all the players who did answer correctly. A special bonus goes to the player who answers the fastest. The game just launched last week.

Wheel of Fortune, GSN

MAU: 1 million
DAU: 202,000

Wheel of Fortune is a word trivia game that first aired in 1975 where contestants spin a wheel to earn money or rewards and then have the chance to guess which letters might be contained in a word or phrase obscured on a game board. The idea is to guess the puzzle in as few letters as possible, beating out other contestants who also get to guess at letters. Whichever contestant has the most money at the end of the show (either through solving the most puzzles or having the most lucky spins), wins the grand prize. The Facebook game removes the element of direct competition, instead keeping track of scores through leaderboards. The game got off to a slow start when it launched in summer of last year and seems to be showing signs of decline in the last two months.

The Price is Right, Ludia Inc.

MAU: 754,000
DAU: 131,000

The Price is Right is a show where contestants guess the price of merchandise, with the player who comes the closest to the price without overvaluing it winning the object. At the end of the show, the player who wins the most bids (by dollar value) is declared the champion. The Facebook game tweaks the format by asking players to “earn” their way to the contestant’s role by bidding on items from the audience. It also has a series of mini-games that can help the player earn extra cash to spend on contests with real life prizes (like tickets to the actual TV show). Since hitting a high note about two months after its August 2010 launch, the game has seen a steady decline in MAU and DAU to its present-day totals.

Jeopardy, GSN

MAU: 48,000
DAU: 15,000

The Jeopardy TV quiz show first aired in 1964. Three contestants race to hit a buzzer in order to respond to a piece in a unique format where the the “clue” is actually the answer to a question and the contestant must form their reply as the question. The just-launched Facebook game maintains the format, but limits competition to leaderboards only — so no racing to hit the buzzer.

Conclusions

Though TV game show games don’t bring in as many players as other genre types we’ve analyzed, and despite the fact that some TV show games ultimately failed on Facebook, we expect to see the genre grow in the coming months as more brands seek social game integration. Already, we’re aware of two new games expected in the coming months from Family Feud developer iWin, through a partnership with entertainment programmer Endemol USA: Deal or No Deal and 1 vs. 100. We’re also seeing developers work to iterate on newly-released TV game show games like The Dating Game.

All data in this analysis was compiled using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers. If you know of a TV game show game that was left off this list, let us know in the comments.

Jeopardy is a licensed Facebook-based adaptation of the trivia TV show of the same name developed by GSN Digital. Though social games based on TV game shows seem to struggle to connect with an audience, the developer is confident that it can build a competitive experience that draws users on a daily basis.

Our data service tracking application, AppData, indicates that Jeopardy’s monthly active users climbed to 48,000 since the initial closed beta of 10,000 people which started on March 28. Daily active users sits at 15,000 after an initial spike to a little over 30,000 on April 25, when the game officially launched to the public.

The game follows a similar format to the TV show, with players choosing categories and monetary values then answering questions using multiple-choice answers. Possible answers aren’t revealed until the player chooses that they are going to answer the question. Players also have the option of either passing on questions they know they won’t be able to answer, or using a 2x multiplier for questions they think they definitely know the answer to.

Play is limited to a certain number of “episodes” — players are given an initial “allowance” of episodes to play, then given an additional free episode 8 hours after they have played a previous one. Additional episodes can also be purchased.

“The Jeopardy experience falls most closely in line with the other game show executions like our own Wheel Of Fortune, iWin’s Family Feud and Ludia’s The Price Is Right,” says Jeremy Shea, VP of GSN Digital’s Lab division. “It is a casual game and not an RPG, so there is little in terms of character development, but rather we rely on the inherent competitive nature of these types of game to provide the real value to the player.”

The social aspect of the game comes from competition against friends as well as the opportunity to ask for assistance on the Final Jeopardy question. If a player wagers more that $1,000 of virtual winnings on the final question, they are able to ask friends to help them. Players can also request and gift excess pass and multiplier boosts as a means of encouraging friends to play more.

The game is monetized through the sale of boosts, extra episodes, and Gold, the in-game currency. Facebook Credits can be used to buy each of these things, but Credits are the only available payment for batches of each (e.g. a 50 pack of boosts). As such, players who spend real money on the game will be able to play much more frequently than those who do not.

“As the app has only really been out in the market for a few days our product roadmap is mostly focused on testing and enhancing the key user experiences, conversion points, viral mechanics and revenue drivers,” says Shea, speaking of the game’s future. “We have a set of features in the initial stages of development that we anticipate will drive daily repeat play and will also add a quick and fun game mechanic to the overall experience.”

Jeopardy’s launch comes as the MAU and DAU figures for GSN’s previous TV-inspired game, Wheel of Fortune, are both showing steady decline.

“A part of our team is still dedicated to ongoing development on the Wheel Of Fortune game, including a large set of enhancements to the experience that will address much of the feedback we have solicited from our players over the past 60 to 90 days,” says Shea. “We are also working on two other projects that will remain a secret until later in the year. Both are significantly different than the Wheel Of Fortune and Jeopardy applications and will add nicely to GSN’s portfolio of titles. Players can expect one of these toward the end of summer and the other before the holiday season.”

You can follow Jeopardy’s progress on Facebook with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

The Chinese language version of Boss Vegas takes our number one slot while its English language counterpart falls behind one slot on our list of the top 20 emerging Facebook games. Looks like gambling games aren’t giving up their growth pattern to role-playing anytime soon.

Further down the list, we still quite a few familiar faces including Monster Hero, Flutter and a few newer faces like World Series Superstars and UFC Undisputed Fight Nation shifting around on the list. Super-violent Grand Theft Auto homage, Auto Hustle, makes the top 20 for the first time since its official launch on April 20.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	BOSS維加斯	645,209	+491,437	+320%
2.	UNO Boost™	803,867	+219,263	+38%
3.	แฮปปี้เกาะ	480,286	+186,865	+64%
4.	Miner Speed	964,034	+179,586	+23%
5.	Puzzle Saga	615,514	+161,994	+36%
6.	UFC Undisputed Fight Nation Game	578,671	+160,234	+38%
7.	N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance: ELITE	141,361	+137,890	+3,973%
8.	Farkle Pro	184,407	+129,221	+234%
9.	Flutter	700,352	+116,813	+20%
10.	Monster Hero	415,431	+111,711	+37%
11.	Boss Vegas	496,730	+99,805	+25%
12.	Footbo City	483,147	+99,726	+26%
13.	Sanal Okey	540,678	+91,523	+20%
14.	英雄遠征-小小戰爭/開心農場活動	268,367	+87,165	+48%
15.	World Series Superstars: Baseball with MLB teams!	389,327	+77,251	+25%
16.	Battle Pirates	122,464	+76,454	+166%
17.	Hello City	442,335	+76,360	+21%
18.	Fortune Stones	450,757	+72,568	+19%
19.	Pop Boom	339,617	+71,530	+27%
20.	Auto Hustle	163,106	+69,405	+74%

In case you missed our early look, Auto Hustle is a top-down shooter that builds on the mafia theme made popular by Zynga’s Mafia Wars. The game was developed by MetroGames, which harbors hope that the title will thrive through viral channels, despite Facebook cutting back on what’s available to games. New game discovery features may restore some of that virality to Auto Hustle’s benefit.

Back at the top of the list, Boss Vegas is a casino sim where players build casino tables and games while managing customers, revenues, and “bling.” Chinese developer Happy Elements launched the English language version of the game in early February while the Chinese language version launched back in December 2010.

Casual games giant PopCap Games announced the acquisition of social game developer ZipZapPlay today for an undisclosed amount. As part of the deal, Happy Habitat will be going offline in the next couple of weeks as ZipZapPlay focuses on an unannounced project. The future of Baking Life is still being decided.

ZipZapPlay is a comparatively small developer with just 17 employees including including co-founder/CEO Curt Bererton and co-founder/COO Mathilde Pignol, who will both remain at the studio to oversee game development. The company originally launched with $1.1 million in venture capital funding around a game creation platform called PlayCrafter and then struggled to transition to the social games space before successfully saving itself with Baking Life. ZipZapPlay currently enjoys 2.3 million monthly active users and 445,000 daily active users between Baking Life and Happy Aquarium, with Baking Life being the clear leader in traffic.

Speaking to ISG, PopCap Games co-founder and VP of Corporate Strategy and Development John Vechey explains that ZipZapPlay will remain an independent developer under PopCap with the freedom to focus on projects at their own pace. Like all PopCap games, Vechey says that ZipZapPlay’s newest project will come out whenever the developer feels it’s ready. Through PopCap, Vechey hopes that ZipZapPlay will be free to explore experimental game ideas while still leveraging its knowledge of the social games market.

“We thought [ZipZapPlay] was a company that can take risks and try something new, but still make a game that supports the studio’s growth,” Vechey says, referring to Happy Habitat’s experimental nature versus Baking Life’s mass appeal restaurant sim gameplay. “We liked that they were experimental but still had that commercial sense.”

Vechey wasn’t able to tell us much about the new ZipZapPlay project, but he feels that it will resemble a type of Facebook game we’re already used to. The studio’s next project, however, will probably be much more innovative, he says.

“The cultural fit is of absolute importance,” Vechey said, relating a story where he went to PopCap’s board of directors to pitch the acquisition and used as his first slide a picture of a 15-foot dragon couch (above) that the ZipZapPlay employees had all worked together to sew.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, PopCap Games currently has 16.3 million MAU and 4.3 million DAU between Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz. In a recent interview with ISG, Vechey and PopCap chief executive David Roberts told us that the games were monetizing well and we could expect more core PopCap titles on Facebook eventually.

It Girl developer CrowdStar announced today that Alex Galvagni, former senior vice president of global product development and CTO of Glu Mobile, joined its ranks this week as Head of Studios as part of the company’s strategy to go both mobile and global in 2011.

Following so closely on the news that Zynga formed a UK studio dedicated to mobile development, it’s not lost on us just how serious social game developers are taking the mobile space these days. EA and many other developers have had a head start on building up a mobile library that spans smartphones, feature phones and tablets compared to Zynga, CrowdStar and other social gaming companies.

Speaking to us by phone this morning, CrowdStar CEO Peter Relan and Galvagni share some of the short-term plans the company has to build on its mobile portfolio while expanding its Facebook games to the global market.

“We will be doing more mobile games that are not just companion products,” Relan says. “You can expect [the first of these] this quarter. You can expect one more major Facebook product this quarter and generally speaking one per quarter after that.”

In his role as Head of Studios, Galvagni will oversee most of CrowdStar’s swelling ranks and take charge of the games release schedule. He will also work to roll out the developer’s existing games to the global market both on Facebook and off, depending on the international territory. As for mobile, Galvagni stresses that it’s a big part of the strategy. “The focus is going to be on making good mobile products that work on the platform,” he tells us.

CrowdStar’s first mobile offering, an It Girl companion app, hit the App Store early last month. The developer is currently the fourth largest app developer on Facebook and the third largest social game developer behind Zynga and EA, with over 31 million monthly active users across all 20 of its apps.

Waku Waku Blitz is a simple but highly customizable game that fits our definition of the match-3 arcade game genre. Most match-3 games on Facebook that aren’t Bejeweled Blitz or Diamond Dash struggle to retain an audience, but Waku Waku developer Pix Builders hopes to meet the challenge with highly customizable gameplay options. So far, 20 days after launch, the game sits at just 631 monthly active users and 106 daily active users, according to our data service tracking application AppData.

Pix Builders’ Yvan Taurines describes Waku Waku Blitz as a “puzzle/match 3 game like Bejeweled Blitz,” but in practice it’s more like “whack-a-mole.” Square, triangular and circular shapes of varying colors pop out of holes on the screen and it’s the player’s job to smack as many as possible with a hammer in one minute. Score multipliers are given every time the player achieves a “combo” of three identical shapes, colors or both, and as the multiplier increases the player has to work faster to maintain their high-scoring potential.

Taurines claims the game is “one of the simplest games ever,” but explains that a lot of the depth to gameplay comes from “meta gameplay” in the form of experience points, player levels, and unlockable content. As the player progresses through the experience levels, new sets of shapes become available from the in-game marketplace, and completing a set offers the player specific bonuses that will help them climb the leaderboards.

“We have a lot to add to Waku Waku Blitz over the coming months,” says Taurines. “We can’t reveal all the upcoming features, but for example, we would like to add localization, an updated leaderboard that will keep track of one’s highest score ever, and some cool gameplay additions. And of course, we will add new shapes, new weapons and new backgrounds! Actually, cool effects for weapons will be added very soon — if not today, tomorrow.”

The game only monetizes through the sale of its standard virtual currency, which can be spent on new shapes, weapons and backgrounds from the in-game shop to customize the play experience. More buying options are unlocked as the player proceeds through the experience levels, and each successfully completed game also rewards the player with coins, so there is no obligation for them to spend real money, but Taurines says that “paying a small quantity of real money will save [the player] a huge load of time, and will help him to collect all of his missing items.” Taurines is keen to ensure that monetization of the game is “not intrusive to the player” and emphasizes that Waku Waku Blitz is primarily a “free to play game.”

The game currently uses Social Gold to take payments, but this will not be supported for much longer, according to Taurines. The game will be changing over to Facebook Credits in accordance with Facebook’s policy by July, and Taurines believes that Facebook’s system is “a good one — even if [it is] pricey.”

Waku Waku Blitz launched on April 8. Both its MAU and DAU numbers are currently very low, but it’s early days for the game, yet.  The next few months will be critical to determine whether it succeeds or fails based on what Pix Builders can do to support the game with new features — and whether Taurines and his team pursues future plans on Facebook or elsewhere.

You can follow Waku Waku Blitz’s progress on Facebook with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

After two weeks of relatively heavy hiring, the stream of new faces has finally begun to slow down, even if only by a little bit. According to data from LinkedIn, seven developers hired new team members this week but we did see at least one executive hire from a different source. Joining Kabam this week is Derek Sidebottom who will becoming their new chief people officer.

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 the information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn, and is only as current as people’s profiles.

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

CrowdStar

• Brinton Williams, Producer — Joining CrowdStar this week,  Williams was previously a producer at Harmonix Music Systems.
• Nicole Epps, Flash Developer — Also joining CrowdStar, Epps was a lead programmer and designer at Semiotic Technologies.
• Chad Wilson, Game Designer — Wilson was previously a game designer (systems) at Cryptic Studios.
• Sam Juarez, 3D Artist — Juarez was previously sales at Best Buy.

Digital Chocolate

• Manuel Razola, Senior Server Engineer — Now a part of Digital Chocolate, Razola was previously a software architect at Capgemini.

Kabam

• Derek Sidebottom, Chief People Officer — As noted prior, Derek Sidebottom joins the folks over at Kabam. Prior to this, he was the vice president of human resources over at Electronic Arts.
• Kevin Yang, Art Intern — Joining Kabam, Yang was previously a student at San Jose State University.

Playdom

• Stephen Justice, Quality Assurance Tester — Joining Playdom, Justice was a quality assurance tester at NetDevil.
• Alex Kivelstadt, Associate Product Manager — In an internal change at Playdom, Kivelstadt changes roles from that of a  ”game services agent.”
• Russ Zaliznyak, Senior Acquisition Analyst — Zaliznyak was previously a business analyst at Intuit – Homestead Technologies.

Playfish

• Simon Hunter, Senior Artist — Joining Playfish this week, Hunter was most recently a freelance artist.
• Paula Valença, Analytics Developer — Also joining Playfish, Valença was previously a tutor at Universidade do Minho.

PopCap Games

• Joshua Carter, Quality Assurance Tester II — Joining PopCap Games, Carter was previously a cashier with Best Buy.

Zynga

• Yuvaraj Gautam Chakravarthy, QA Lead — Chakravarthy was previously a software QA engineer at AOL.
• Reginald Harris, Senior Program Manager — Now at Zynga, Harris was a senior project manager for Android and Chrome at Google.
• Michael Courage, Principal SDE — Also now a part of Zynga, Courage was most recently a senior SDE at Microsoft.
• Stuart Capewell, Lead Software Engineer — Capewell was previously a senior software engineer at Electronic Arts.
• Huyen Huynh, Senior QA Manager — Huynh was previously an information services consultant at the Judicial Council of California.
• Kimberly Sambrook, Research Recruiter — In an internal shift at Zynga, Sambrook changes roles from university relations manager.
• Brian Crombie, Site Support Lead — Crombie was a DMS deployment tech at Pfizer.
• Timothy Dyer, Accounts Payable Specialist — Joining Zynga this week, Dyer was previously a financial specialist II at Gilead Sciences.
• Wilfred Schmidt, Senior Software Engineer — Schmidt was most recently a software engineer for Microsoft.
• Praful Kaul, Engineering Manager — Now at Zynga, Kaul was previously a file systems engineer at NetApp.

Backyard Monster developer The Casual Collective is re-branding itself as Kixeye as part of its strategy to refocus on Facebook game development and establish itself as a developer of “core” games.

Founded in 2008, Casual Collective was a casual Flash game developer and publisher known best for distributing the award-winning puzzle game, Desktop Tower Defense. In addition to acting as a games porta, Casual Collective was also a social networking hub where players could create and join clubs, participate forums and chat rooms. The company brought Desktop Tower Defense to Facebook in 2009 as Desktop Defender and then created another game of the same genre for Facebook, Backyard Monsters.

Will Harbin, CEO of the newly-named Kixeye, explains what the company plans to do under its new brand.

Inside Social Games: The Casual Collective is a recognizable name in Flash gaming. Why the name change?

Will Harbin: Well, we had a full refocus of the company on core games on Facebook over a year ago and we are only just catching up with changing the name of the company. It was due, as we are no longer a casual game company.

We’ve proven to ourselves that there are core gamers on Facebook that are seeking more than just a simple tower defense game. Backyard Monsters has over a million daily active users and the number is still growing steadily as we continue to re-vitalize the game with new art and new content. Monetization has been excellent and there has been renewed interest since our last major update which allows players to expand their “backyards” by defeating and claiming adjoining hexes on the new world map. Player feedback has us developing new monsters and we are currently in the early development of a customizable “Godzilla” which will be a guardian for the player’s base.

We basically validated our new approach and are now finally changing our name to reflect our new direction.

Inside Social Games: What will happen to the gaming portal and all its old games now that you’re so deeply committed to Facebook?

Harbin: They are still there. We relaunched our website in February, but the old website is only a click away from the landing page. Our focus now is on designing and supporting core games on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean we are dumping our beginnings. We still have loyal players of our casual games.

Inside Social Games: What are you working on then, to support or add to your cadre of games on Facebook?

Will Harbin: Backyard Monsters is our most popular game on Facebook right now and we are working hard on an alliance feature. This feature will be one that will eventually work across all our Facebook games, creating a network for Facebook friends that play our games. We are also just formally launching Battle Pirates, which is a fully synchronous multiplayer game. A game [that], if I might say, is monetizing extremely well at this early stage.

Inside Social Games: Are you at all worried about cannibalizing the Backyard Monsters player base by releasing games so similar in genre?

Harbin: We are measuring both games and testing some re-marketing. There are some that are playing both games, but we believe that the market is big enough to build a new user base. At the same time, the games are different enough that they will also attract different players. There are certainly more casual aspects to Backyard Monsters but Facebook is a wide open market for core gamers, and games will go where the gamers are.

Inside Social Games: What’s next after Battle Pirates? Zombies and ninjas?

Harbin: [Laughs] Actually, we’ve got a full scale military combat game in the works that we believe will resonate well with the traditional games market. We’re doing very well now and Kixeye is expanding and we’re hiring. We’ve got 50 positions open right now so if you have any interested readers, send them on over.

Be sure to read our reviews of Backyard Monsters and Battle Pirates.