There’s a certain satisfaction to be gained from seeing an officially licensed Pac-Man Facebook game from Namco Bandai sitting at the top of this week’s list of emerging Facebook games after seeing a Pac-Man pretender creep up on last week’s list. Coming in at number two this week is Peak Games‘ newest venture, Akvaryum, a Turkish-language aquarium simulation.

Meanwhile, a game that hasn’t even launched yet managed to make the top 10 this week as The Sims Social builds momentum based purely on brand recognition. EA’s Facebook version of its popular life simulation series is a collaboration between its internal Sims Studio and EA PlayFish. The title does not have a release date as yet, but EA is encouraging fans to Like the game’s Facebook page to receive exclusive in-game items for when the game actually does launch.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,% 1. PAC-MAN 941,089 +418,350 +80% 2. Akvaryum 228,372 +228,256 +196,772% 3. Planet Domo 681,857 +179,001 +36% 4. HotShot 637,273 +163,067 +34% 5. 森の物語 337,727 +130,734 +63% 6. Feevo 570,126 +129,223 +29% 7. La Granja 429,362 +127,385 +42% 8. The Sims Social 199,807 +115,744 +138% 9. Battle Pirates 894,032 +111,544 +14% 10. WAYN – Map Your Friends 375,428 +105,669 +39% 11. Shadow Fight 491,911 +93,486 +23% 12. Clash of Kingdoms 220,318 +87,005 +65% 13. City Wars 624,477 +81,778 +15% 14. Crazy Taxi 827,516 +80,907 +11% 15. Deep Realms 952,524 +79,336 +9% 16. 胡萊三國 141,962 +74,798 +111% 17. TinierCafe 682,629 +73,211 +12% 18. Dragon Age Legends 808,403 +71,379 +10% 19. Megacity 316,621 +65,951 +26% 20. Battle Cards 468,869 +63,904 +16%

A surprise entry on this week’s list is Dragon Age Legends, EA2D’s Facebook tie-in for console game Dragon Age 2. Though the console game has come and gone and is in between downloadable content pack releases, the social game appears to be going strong through steady content updates by the week. The developer also attributes its recent growth to the release of a stand alone Flash game, Dragon Age Legends: Remix 01 (pictured), which allows players to earn in-game gifts for Dragon Age Legends.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Come back next week for our top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, our daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

HotShot is a new Facebook game from young developer PlayQ. The game launched in early May and since that time has enjoyed a steady upwards trend of both monthly and daily active users, earning it spots on our top 20 emerging Facebook games and on this week’s list of fastest-growing games by DAU.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, HotShot currently has 616,496 daily active users and 136,445 daily active users.

HotShot is a pachinko-style arcade game that appears to be directly modeled after PopCap’s popular casual title, Peggle, which as yet doesn’t have a Facebook version. Players are tasked with removing all the orange pegs from a board by hitting them with a ball fired from a cannon at the top center of the screen. The ball bounces semi-unpredictably through blue and orange pegs on its way down to the bottom of the screen, where a bucket is moving from side to side. If the ball lands in the bucket, the player gets a “free ball” — if it does not, they lose one from their stock of balls. The player must eliminate all of the orange pegs before running out of balls. When the last orange peg is hit, the bucket is replaced by a row of bins at the bottom of the screen, with each being worth a particular amount of bonus points. It’s largely luck-based as to where the ball eventually lands, as these bins also open and close at regular intervals, causing the ball to bounce away.

“This type of gameplay is different than the standard, linear, click-based progression in most social games,” explains Joseph Aigboboh, CEO of developer PlayQ. “We put tremendous detail into HotShot’s reward system, creating a whimsical set of Badges and Relics, which form the foundation of progression and achievement within the game. Production quality was also a top priority on HotShot. We spend countless hours perfecting our art and audio to provide a top notch sensory experience for the user throughout the entire game.”

Social features for the game come in comparing badge collections and Pro Scores with friends. Badges are awarded for completing challenges, while Pro Score awards are given for beating a challenge with a score above a certain threshold. There’s a “Friend Activity” button at the bottom of the friends list, but this currently doesn’t do anything.

The game is monetized through the sale of its hard currency, Gold, which is purchased via Facebook Credits. Gold can be used to buy energy for longer play sessions, power-ups which add special abilities such as “multiball” to the mix, and boosts, which provide players with advantages such as unlimited energy for a day or the ability to redo unfortunate shots.

PlayQ already has a polished game on its hands, but Aigboboh explains that the company isn’t resting on its laurels just yet.

“We’ll be releasing a new feature called ‘Acing’ that adds additional depth and rewards to the game as early as next week,” he says. “‘Acing’ builds on HotShot’s existing ‘Pro Score’ feature. Over the longer term, we plan to continue creating unique challenges through innovative layout and level design. Seasonal content is in our future plans as well as enhancing the social aspects of the game.”

The game has enjoyed a good degree of success since its launch in early May, picking up over half a million monthly active users and growth showing no sign of slowing down at this time.

“[The game] has been incredibly well received by users,” says Aigboboh. “A very high percentage of users return to the game for additional sessions after their first. Nearly all of the game’s growth has come from viral sources.”

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

Social game enhancement service BringIt says it’s seen strong engagement results from integrating its skill-based mini-games into social games like CrowdStar’s Happy Aquarium, but the future of the platform could lie in “remnant” Facebook Credits.

BringIt increases engagement in social games by adding skill-based “mini-games” where players can essentially bet virtual currency on themselves as they play an arcade-style game like match-3. Depending on how well the player performs, the mini-game pays out its parent social game’s premium currency as a prize. BringIt recently updated its service to accept Facebook Credits for bets, though winnings are still doled out in its social game partners’ in-game hard currency.

By adding Facebook Credits, BringIt has tapped into a revenue stream based on the idea of “remnant” or leftover Facebook Credits that players are bound to find themselves with after spending the bulk of their supply on actual in-game items. It’s very much like the old arcade machines that cost a single quarter per play being placed next to the more elaborate arcade games that cost 75 cents — only with BringIt, you could potentially win more currency to go spend on the more elaborate game.

When BringIt first experimented with this integration in RockYou’s Zoo World, it found that 6.5 percent of users will try the skill game. Of those, 55 percent come back daily to play again, leading to an average increase of 6 minutes and 30 seconds in session time. BringIt found similar results when it recently partnered with TheBroth to add a “Barn Blast” match-3 mini-game into Barn Buddy and its Turkish language version, Komşu Çiftlik. BringIt also has added other integration features to its service such as daily bonuses, gifting mechanics, tournaments and leaderboards.

Going forward, BringIt CEO Woodrow Levin says that the company is looking at a mobile offering for its social game partners that would use the same wallet. This could be a huge help to social game developers wanting to expand their intellectual property onto iOS and Android without actually having to develop an entirely new product for the platform.

Facebook users in Europe will soon have the opportunity to earn Facebook Credits by completing hard offers through the offer walls of social games. Facebook today announced partnerships with SupersonicAds from the United Kingdom and Deal United from Germany to let European users buy magazine subscriptions, online movie rentals, and more to earn Facebook’s virtual currency.

Facebook will only allow Credits to be distributed through offers by approved providers once the July 1st deadline passes and all games to switch to Credits as their payment method. Therefore, attaining approved offers coverage in Europe through these deals is important so developers can still monetize users in the region who won’t pay for Credits directly.

Currently, game developers often work with offer providers like SupersonicAds and Deal United to give users their proprietary premium in-game currency in exchange for making purchases — sometimes known as completing hard offers. Direct response advertisers aggregated by the offer providers earn money from the purchases, and pay out to the game developers for bringing them customers and to cover the cost of the currency.

> Continue reading on Inside Facebook.

Battle Cards is a new game from Creara, one of the largest social games publishers in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The game launched in early May this year and very recently landed on our top 20 list of emerging Facebook games.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Battle Cards currently has 463,288 monthly active users and 15,334 daily active users.

Battle Cards is a virtual representation of a customizable card game, where players square off against each other in an attempt to either launch their own rocket first, or destroy their opponent’s rocket before they can do the same. Players can launch their rocket by increasing its health points to 150, or defeat their opponent by reducing their health to zero.

Cards fall into two categories: red attack cards and blue defense cards. Some cards allow players to build up “attack” or “material” points, and some cards require the spending of these points in order to either directly attack their opponent, increase their rocket’s health or put a temporary defense against a particular type of attack in place. Over time, it’s possible for players to learn what to expect from their opponent’s deck of cards and be able to plan accordingly, though being a card game, there’s still a healthy element of luck involved.

The game is monetized via the purchase of premium items, with Facebook Credits being used directly within the game as a hard currency. Premium items range from card expansion packs, allowing players to customize their deck, to temporary boosts and advantages at the start of the game such as protection against certain amounts of damage. The game also features a soft currency which can be used to purchase certain items, though many items require Facebook Credits in order to collect.

The social element of the game comes from both the synchronous multiplayer component, which features a chat system, and also from the “Personnel” system, which allows players to assign Facebook friends to various “combat” roles. For example a Personnel friend can grant the player the ability to peek at opponents’ cards, reduce costs of various cards and numerous other benefits. In order to make use of the Personnel perks, however, a player’s friends must have Battle Cards installed. Friends not currently playing Battle Cards will receive a wall post from the game inviting them to join, and if they decline, the game allows players to purchase “virtual friends” using Facebook Credits.

We weren’t able to reach the developers of the game before publishing this article to confirm future plans for the game, but the fan page’s wall indicates that Creara is introducing limited-edition cards for purchase from June 15 onwards. It’s likely that this will become a regular feature of the game, with players able to customize their decks with “exclusive” and “rare” cards. The addition of a card-trading system would also fit well with the customizable card game theme, as there does not appear to be one at this time. The game interface also promises a “Contest” feature will be added soon, presumably indicating that the game will have officially-organized tournaments in the near future.

You can follow Battle Cards’ progress using AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

In terms of the number of social developers hiring on new individuals, the activity continues to be fairly high, with a few companies bringing in new leaders, according to data from LinkedIn and other sources.

King.com, RockYou!, and Zynga all added new players to their respective management teams. King.com brings Mark Charkin to the table as its new executive vice president of global business development and ad sales. RockYou! hires Ed Stepankovsky as its new director of sales, and Zynga notes Steve Schreck as the company’s new group general manager.

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.

Here’s this week’s full list:

Digital Chocolate

• Manish Jha, Game Producer — A single hire joins Digital Chocolate. Jha was previously a senior QA engineer at Knowledge Adventure India.

GSN

• K. Caitlin Wheeler, Executive Director of Business & Legal Affairs — In an internal shift at GSN, K. Caitlin Wheeler moves up from her prior role as a director of business and legal affairs.
• Victoria Fealkoff, Marketing & Promotions Intern — Fealkoff joins GSN this week. She was previously a real estate assistant at Prudential California Realty.

Happy Elements

• Hyehwa Park, Regional Operations — Now a part of Happy Elements, Park was most recently and intern, AE at Innocean Worldwide, Beijing.

Kabam

• Darryl Wong, Player Experience Associate — Joining Kabam, Wong was formerly a customer service and support representative at Costco Wholesale.
• Eddie Hsu, Associate Producer — In an internal shift at Kabam, Hsu moves from his prior role as a research analyst.

King.com

• Mark Charkin, Executive Vice President of Global Business Development & Ad Sales — As noted prior, Mark Charkin joins King.com’s management team. Charkin was most recently the global vice president of sales at Bebo.

LOLapps

• Kanane Jones, Game Tester — Now at LOLapps, Jones was previously a game tester for SCEA Format QA.

Mindjolt

• Stephanie Chow, Marketing Intern — A single hire comes in for Mindjolt. Chow was most recently a research assistant at UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Playfish

• Mike McKellar, QA Engineer — Now part of the Playfish team specifically, McKellar was (and technically still is) a QA Lead for Electronic Arts in general.
• Maria Vengut, Online Content Manager — Also joining Playfish, Vengut was previously a redactora (editor) for Brides Times.
• Maria Bada, Online Content Manager & Resident Translator — Bada was most recently a researcher and communications officer at Fondazione Pangea Onlus.

PopCap Games

• EJ Lee, Artist/UI Designer — Joining PopCap Games, Lee was previously an artist and visual designer for ZipZapPlay, which was acquired by PopCap back in April.

RockYou!

• Ed Stepankovsky, Director of Sales — As highlighted already, Ed Stepankovsky is now at RockYou! He was most recently a national sales executive at AdGent Digital.

Zynga

• Steve Schreck, Group General Manager — As noted prior, Steve Schreck joins Zynga as its new general manager. He was previously the director of business and strategy for Microsoft Games Studios.
• Umang Patel, QA Engineer — Also joining Zynga, Patel was most recently a software QA engineer for MShift.
• Hasham Ali, Software Engineer — Ali was formerly a software engineering intern at Apple.
• Michael Reilly, Product Management Intern — Reilly was previously an associate at J.P. Morgan.

[Editor's note: Charles Hudson is a co-author of our Inside Virtual Goods industry research report series, a Venture Partner with SoftTech VC, and the CEO and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games, a mobile games company based in San Francisco, CA.]

In May 2011, the Inside Virtual Goods team conducted our second annual survey of social games players. Yesterday we released the findings of the report, “Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Habits of the Social Gaming Audience 2011.” Today’s post is intended give you a sense for some of the more interesting findings in the report.

The 2011 survey, which reached out to nearly 2,000 active social games players on Facebook, covers a wide variety of topics, including how players discover games, how players spend their time and money across games, and a deeper dive on the spending and gameplay habits of “whales” — the top spenders in the social gaming ecosystem.

With the impending mandatory implementation of Facebook Credits coming on July 1st, 2011, we wanted to get a sense for how familiar the most engaged social games player were with Facebook Credits. As part of this year’s survey, we asked players a number of questions about their familiarity with and usage of Facebook Credits to date so as to have a baseline prior to the switch. Here’s more on what we found.

The first question we asked the survey respondents was whether they had heard of Facebook Credits. Keep in mind that the survey population here was people who are generally active social games players, playing multiple games on a daily basis:

Roughly two thirds of the audience we surveyed was familiar with Facebook Credits, which seems appropriate given that Facebook Credits are available in a number of games but are not yet mandatory across the Facebook social games landscape.

Slicing the data a bit further, we were able to get a sense for how Facebook Credits awareness varies by geography. Not surprisingly, Facebook Credits has the greatest awareness in North America by a fairly significant margin.

Of those who mentioned familiarity with Facebook Credits, we asked them a follow-up question as to whether they had actually made a purchase using Facebook Credits. Of those who were familiar with Facebook Credits, nearly half of them reported having actually used Facebook Credits to actually make a purchase:

Again, we took a look at the data on a regional basis and found that North America once again was the dominant region in which we found users who had used Facebook Credits to make a purchase in a game. Results show that Facebook Credits is beginning to get a good beachhead in North America, with less traction in the other major geographies around the globe.

Finally, we asked those survey respondents who had familiarity with Facebook Credits whether the Facebook Credits system made it easier to buy things in games:

In addition to the question, we also gave them the opportunity to provide us with some free-response feedback on whether they’ve used Facebook Credits and whether they think Facebook Credits make it easier to make purchases. We’ve included some of the more interesting free-response quotes below:

“Yes, because with FB Credits, it’s a lot easier to buy things in different games without having to buy cash to each game individually: it’s more practical, and economical.” – Male, 13-18, Portugal

“I prefer to use the [company-specific] game cards. It’s just easier for me personally.” – Female, 37-42, United States

“I only use Facebook Credits: I wont give my credit card info to individual game companies. If they don’t allow FB credits, I won’t buy” – Female, 37-42, United States

“Only did it once, because I got the credits free. Would not spend money on them.” – Female, 43-48, United States

“The first time I used them it was a bit confusing on how to start the process. Once I figured it out, it was pretty easy. I doubt I will purchase them however.” – Female, 37-42, United States

In addition to the quotes above, there was a steady stream of people who used the free-response section to make it very clear that they were happy to use the Facebook Credits that they were given for free but they either didn’t have the means to pay for additional credits or they didn’t have any interest in actually paying for things in Facebook games, no matter how easy and seamless the process might be.

Overall, the core value proposition for Facebook Credits is that it should improve conversions and monetization for developers by standardizing on a platform-wide payment system common to all games. Based on the results of our survey, it’s clear that we are still in the early stages of Facebook Credits awareness and adoption among active social games players.

The complete results of our study are available in the full report, Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience 2011.

About the Report

Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience 2011 gives you an inside view of the market at this critical juncture in the intersection of social networking and online games.

We have surveyed nearly 2,000 players of social games on Facebook from around the world and across the demographic spectrum. Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience 2011 is the most in-depth independent survey of player behavior and spending patterns in the social gaming market.

About the Authors

Charles Hudson

Venture Partner, SoftTech VC, CEO and Co-Founder, Bionic Panda Games

Charles Hudson is a Venture Partner with SoftTech VC and the CEO and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games, a mobile games company based in San Francisco, CA.

Until February 2010, he was the VP of Business Development for Serious Business, a leading producer of social games. Zynga acquired Serious Business in February of 2010. Prior to Serious Business, Hudson worked at Gaia Interactive, Google, IronPort Systems, and In-Q-Tel. Hudson also founded Third Power LLC, a conference and events company that was acquired by WebMediaBrands. Charles holds an MBA and BA from Stanford University.

Justin Smith

Founder, Inside Network

Justin Smith is the founder of Inside Network, the first service dedicated to providing news and market research to the Facebook platform and social gaming ecosystem. Justin leads Inside Network’s analyst services, manages Inside Network’s AppData service, and serves as co-editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. Inside Network was acquired by WebMediaBrands (NASDAQ:WEBM) in May 2011.

Prior to Inside Network, he was Head of Product at Watercooler, now Kabam, a leading social game developer on the Facebook Platform. Prior to Watercooler, Justin was an early employee at Xfire, the largest social utility for gamers, which was sold to Viacom in 2006.

Justin holds a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Mayfield Fellow and a recipient of the Terman Award in Engineering.

Facebook is announcing new alternative payment options for developers located 13 countries in Asia and Latin America looking to implement Facebook Credits. These payment options, supported by Live Gamer, will be added to Facebook’s existing Facebook Credit payments options starting July 1.

Facebook also says that it now supports payouts to developers in virtually all countries not hindered by government embargoes, even if a country can’t receive payouts from PayPal or specific banks. To get around this complication, the social network crafted a new pay-out process that goes through local bank accounts.

Facebook says that developers in specific countries may need to provide additional documentation to receive payouts through local banks, such as tax identification numbers (full list here). Payout is the means by which a developer converts in-app currency exchanges to real money that the developer can then deposit into its bank accounts. Facebook Credits payouts occur twice monthly. A list of current Facebook Credit payment options is right here.

Stay tuned for our next installment in the Road to Facebook Credits article series.

ETA: Payouts are currently available through local bank accounts now. The Live Gamer-supported payouts will launch closer to July 1.

It’s been no secret that many of the Facebook platform’s stars have had a hard time reaching the same level of dominance on iOS where mobile-focused companies like Rovio, Pocket Gems and Storm8 have flourished.

But perhaps the 800-pound gorilla of the social gaming world, Zynga, is starting to get some things right.

For example, at the beginning of the year, the San Francisco-based company’s poker app hovered around the 50s on the top grossing list. It was being trounced by Texas Poker from Siberian developer (yes, Siberia) Kamagames Ltd. But now Zynga Poker has climbed to consistently rank in the top 5 over the past month and was even briefly #1 yesterday in the U.S.

With Zynga’s acquisition of Newtoy, the company bought Words With Friends, an app that is a reliable top 15 performer on the grossing list. The studio, which became part of Zynga With Friends, also just launched another hit last week called Hanging With Friends, which is now #4 (see right).

And today, the company’s introducing a mobile extension of its CityVille franchise called CityVille Hometown. (You can check out our coverage of the new title here.)

>> Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps.

Tetris Battle is an officially-licensed multiplayer version of the popular puzzle game for Facebook. The game is produced by Tetris Online, Inc, which was co-founded by Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov. Tetris Battle launched in June 2010 and, thanks in part to the company kicking off a more aggressive customer acquisition strategy in recent months, it’s recently made several appearances on our top 20 lists of fastest-growing Facebook games both by monthly and daily active users.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Tetris Battle currently has 3.2 million monthly active users and 819,852 daily active users.

Tetris is a simple and well-known puzzle game that tasks players with dropping shapes made from four blocks (known as “Tetriminos” or simply “Minos” in the game) in such a way that complete lines are made across the play area. Tetris Battle adds a multiplayer twist by sending lines that are completed to an opponent’s play area, bringing them ever-closer to overflowing their play area and suffering a “knockout.” The game can be played with two, four or six simultaneous players either asynchronously or in real-time with chat.

“Aside from having a great brand behind us, Tetris Battle is on its way to becoming one of the most successful multiplayer games on Facebook,” says Casey Pelkey, responsible for marketing and business development for Tetris Online, Inc. “There’s always someone to play with 24/7, and the game matches you with people who are within a similar skillset, so the competition is very balanced.”

The game is monetized through energy refills and premium item sales. Energy is spent on playing matches, while premium items allow players to customize the look and feel of their game. Players can also upgrade their gameplay and interface experience by increasing the speed at which lines clear and pieces move. Many upgrades and items can be purchased using the game’s standard currency of Tetris Coins, but some must be unlocked and some must be purchased using the premium currency, Tetris Cash, which can be bought with Facebook Credits. The game also has some display advertising and occasional sponsorship deals — Old Navy being the most recent — but advertising is a secondary revenue stream.

As for the future of the game, Pelkey believes that the game will continue to go from strength to strength.

“New items and features are planned for each month,” he says, “but our internal goal is to make Tetris Battle the undisputed champ in the multiplayer arena on Facebook. We have one of the most talented multiplayer game designers from South Korea working on this, and we have no doubt he and his dedicated team will deliver. Their most recent changes in the game have allowed us to reach over 13 million games played daily, and we believe they are just scratching the surface on the potential of the game. As we optimize Tetris Battle and the backend to support its growth, we believe players will be really happy with the upcoming updates.”

The company is also working on a number of non-Tetris products, with match-4 puzzle title Feevo launching on Facebook and iPad recently. Tetris Battle remains one of the company’s core products, however.

You can follow Tetris Battle’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.