This Week’s Headlines From Across Inside Network

• Jun 12th, 2011
Social Games

Here are all the latest headlines from around Inside Network this past week.

IMA LogoInside Mobile Apps

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

Sunday, June 5th, 2011

Monday, June 6th, 2011

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Friday, June 10th, 2011

ISG LogoInside Social Games

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

Monday, June 6th, 2011

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Friday, June 10th, 2011

IF LogoInside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, June 6th, 2011

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Friday, June 10th, 2011

New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: A Bit Lucky, King.com, Kixeye, Lolapps and More

• Jun 11th, 2011
Jobs

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at A Bit Lucky, King.com, Kixeye, lolapps, Tagged, and Acquinity Interactive.

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps 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.

Social Gaming Roundup: E3, Zynga, Health, & More

• Jun 10th, 2011
Advertising, Business, casual, Electronic Arts, facebook, international, monetization, Playdom, Sim, Social Games, Strategy, VirtualGoods, zynga

ZyngaZynga Getting Better About Domain Name Secrecy — Zynga has previously dropped clues on upcoming releases with trademark applications and domain registrations, however, as spotted by Fusible, the company is getting more secretive about both. As an example, Empires & Allies didn’t have a trademark filing until the day of announcement in the U.S. Additionally, in order to help remain incognito with domain registrations that show up on GoDaddy, the company is registering under @yahoo.com email extensions instead of @zynga.com.

EA Adds to Its Social Games Lineup — Electronic Arts made some social game announcements at E3 this week, showing off a Facebook version of one of its most popular franchises with The Sims Social, which we highlighted earlier this week. EA is also teaming up with Hasbro to bring yet another title to Facebook in the form of RISK: Factions. The social strategy game is currently in closed beta, but EA did display an amusing trailer at E3, spoofing that of Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II.

City of MightPlaydom Prepares for War with City of Might — Social developer Playdom revealed its own entry into Facebook’s rapidly swelling strategy genre with City of Might, announced at E3. The upcoming game as described by Games.com is a combination of a city builder and strategy game in which users collect resources to build structures and units in order to invade the cities of other players.

[image via Games.com]

2010 Digital Revenue Equates to $5.9 Billion — The Entertainment Software Association, chief organizing body of E3, released a study that states that the primary driver of the game industry’s growth is digital. According to the report, digitally downloaded games, add-on content, mobile apps, subscriptions, and social games made up 24% of all game-based sales in 2010, equaling $5.9 billion in revenue.

Majesco Expands Socially — Video game publisher Majesco Entertainment announced several acquisitions from Quick Hit Inc. in order to expand Majesco’s social games reach. Additionally, Quick Hit founder and CEO Jeffrey Anderson will join Majesco as its senior vice president of social games.

Moshi MonstersMoshi Monsters Exceeds 50 Million Users — Mind Candy announced that its social virtual world for kids, Moshi Monsters, broke the 50 million registered user mark. According to the announcement, 15 million of those users are in North America.

Businesses Seek to Use Social Games to Improve Health — According to The Wall Street Journal, Keas Inc. and Redbrick Health Corp. are hoping to help companies cut health-care costs by improving employee health through social gaming.  Through their respective social gaming services, they hope to use social mechanics to coax workers into eating properly and exercising through the use of mechanics such as prizes, incentives, achievements, and so on.

Zynga to Limit Shares for IPO — According to the New York Post, Zynga is planning to limit the number of shares in its initial public offering. The number of shares is being estimated at 10 percent or less.

Zynga Opens Dublin, Ireland Office — In more Zynga news, the company has officially opened its largest European office and multilingual operations centre in Dublin, Ireland. The office is said to include customer support, community management, and support functions (e.g. IT, human resources, etc.).

Shadow Fight Brings Stylized Martial Arts Combat to Social Games on Facebook

• Jun 10th, 2011
Action, Social Games, Sports

Shadow Fight is a new game from experienced European social games publisher Nekki for the Facebook platform. The game launched in early May and since that time has made itself a regular on our weekly top 20 list of emerging Facebook games.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Shadow Fight currently has 398,425 monthly active users and 44,879 daily active users.

Shadow Fight is a martial arts competitive fighting game with a stylized “silhouette” aesthetic. Players choose a shadowy avatar to represent themselves and compete in a series of one-on-one battles against opponents drawn from their Facebook friends list. Players aren’t directly competing against their friends in real-time; all the choice of friend as opponent means is that following victory, the player is able to post a message on their friend’s wall saying that they “beat” them, thereby encouraging the friend to join in the game also. It is also possible to play with two people on one keyboard — the second player also chooses to represent themselves as one of the Facebook user’s friends, though this does not affect the other player’s statistics if they are also a Shadow Fight player.

Players can engage in a variety of different fight scenarios, ranging from one-on-one unarmed combat to tournament play. Competing in tournaments and winning increases the player’s tournament rating, which in turn unlocks more challenging tournaments. Players are ranked on a worldwide leaderboard according to their rating, so competitive players who want bragging rights will need to compete in tournaments rather than only engaging in single combat.

The fighting itself is controlled by the arrow keys coupled with punch and kick buttons. Gaining a “Dan” level, achieved by passing an examination battle, unlocks additional moves for the player to use, all of which are unleashed with a combination of directional keys and the two attack buttons.

Competing in fights of any kind costs Energy, with different types of fight costing different amounts of Energy. Dan examinations, for example, cost significantly more Energy than a friendly duel. Energy can be replenished by waiting, leveling up or by using items. Energy items can be acquired either by random chance following a match or purchased from the in-game store.

The game features a standard currency of Coins, which can be used to purchase three different traditional martial arts weapons for use in some tournaments. It also monetizes with a premium currency of Rubies for purchasing Energy boosts, stronger versions of the three weapons and magical items to assist in defeating strong “boss” opponents. Rubies can be acquired in several ways; they are awarded for inviting friends and completing a “daily checklist,” but can also be acquired by exchanging Coins or purchased via credit card and PayPal. The game did not support Facebook Credits at the time this article was originally written, but has since switched to use them.

Representatives from Nekki didn’t get back to us before publishing this article, but future expansion plans for the game are already clear. “Fatality” moves, inspired by the popular Mortal Kombat video game series are due to be added to the available techniques soon. It also looks like some premium player avatars will be available in the future. The modular nature of the tournament system also means it will be easy for Nekki to slot in more opponents and challenges for high level players as the community progresses through the experience levels.

Shadow Fight’s user figures are showing a healthy upward trend at this time. It doesn’t look from Nekki’s website that it has started a big marketing push for the game as yet, with the only mention of it being a press release from May 24 announcing the game’s launch. Once Nekki steps up the marketing efforts, it’s possible the company could have a successful — and unconventional — title on its hands.

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

Digital Chocolate’s Marc Metis Explains Army Attack Strategy

• Jun 10th, 2011
Social Games

Late last month, Digital Chocolate quietly released its newest game, Army Attack, to Facebook just a week or so ahead of Zynga’s debut of a similar product, Empires & Allies. Both games join Global Warfare developer Kabam and several smaller developers in exploring the hardcore strategy genre on Facebook. While we’re still waiting to see which games emerge victorious, we interview Digital Chocolate President Marc Metis on Army Attack’s strategy now that the game is live and the strategy genre growing.

To date, Army Attack has 2.1 million monthly active users and 446,000 daily active users. Empires & Allies has 1.1 million MAU and 526,000 DAU. Global Warfare, meanwhile, has 698,000 MAU and 75,000 DAU. You can follow each of these games’ traffic patterns on AppData, our tracking service for social games and developers.

Inside Social Games: Army Attack launched with a single-player campaign and some light social features that allow players to visit one another’s armies. Will you be adding player-versus-player combat to the game in future iterations?

Marc Metis: We will be rolling out PvP to the game, but we haven’t announced when, yet. We’re also working on other features and some surprises. What we’re trying to do here is create a game that blends [real time strategy] elements with proven Facebook mechanics in a way that’s a real game with deep and satisfying gameplay. Which is difficult to do all at once. Getting a polished game and getting cooperative gameplay has been a starting point, and PvP is a natural evolution that’s been in our road map [since the beginning].

ISG: Did you know about Zynga’s Empires & Allies when you were conceptualizing Army Attack?

Metis: Not when we green-lit the game, no. It’s not as huge surprise, though. It’s a big market and there were other players out there with [strategy] games. We’re trying to deliver a fun and easy to get into experience with real gameplay and depth. We don’t shy away from being a war game. When you jump in, it feels like a war game from the start, not like a citybuilder you’re already playing. We don’t need to build a war game that will appeal to every demographic under the sun. We’re going for it.

ISG: Real time strategy is a genre nobody seems to want to fully realize on Facebook, as the very nature of the platform is asynchronous, which is why so many strategy games are currently turn-based. Which elements of the RTS genre did you focus on for Army Attack, if not the “real time” part?

Metis: You can’t just take [RTS gameplay] and slap that on Facebook in its old incarnations and expect it to work in the same way. Players don’t want that much complexity, but there are a significant number of players that want a deeper, more real gameplay experience.

When we launched the game, we felt no one had yet cracked the code in making a great war themed game on Facebook. We do have that balance of elements where if you want to play it like a traditional RTS, you can move quickly and it will respond virtually when you move and [the enemy characters] will also attack you while you’re away. The AI lets you play how you want. There’s all kinds of signs of life, of battle going on. If you step away from it, there’s not a huge punishment for that. And if you want to slow down and think strategically, you can pause as well. That lifts the best elements of RTS and turn-based games.

ISG: A core element to strategy games, especially ones that feature PvP combat, is the idea of losing. We’ve heard developers say that it’s actually difficult to encourage strategy gamers to attack one another initially because the Facebook demographic seems to be conflict averse. Especially when it’s people from their friends list they’re attacking.

Metis: We have some experience in this area with MMA Pro Fighter and we’ve taken lessons from that [game] to advance our approach [to combat]. We believe that you don’t have to part ways with friends in real life because of a game, you just have to approach it reasonably. People love competition. But we won’t be so punitive that all your efforts and progress get crushed by someone else.

There’s also benefits to competition between people beyond your friends [through random match-ups]. It’s challenging and gets people’s competitive juices flowing, but you feel like it’s fair. If there’s someone just ahead of you, and we haven’t taken something from you or set you back too much, [it feels] both fun and fair. That is one of the differences between truly really hardcore games on other platforms [and our games].

ISG: You’ve alluded to the concept of “real” games on Facebook for “real” gamers. What do you mean when you say “real” in this context?

Metis: You know it when you see it. We try and have games that go beyond simple click compulsion and have some strategy elements. The core idea that [the game] is easy to get into, but if you choose to master it, you can go a lot deeper. There’s a few ways [to definite] real gaming.

[For gamers], there are groups of people who spend money on games, spend money regularly on games, or spend an inordinate amount of time on games and openly consider games to be their hobby. This is in contrast to people who will play games, but won’t identify with the experience. Or [people] who will spend time in a game, but not spend money on it. There is a difference between a simple time-wasting diversion and something you want to spend time and money on.

There’s some correlation between types of games people will spend money on and types that are pure diversions. Not all games that have high MAUs monetize, not all of them serve people who identify as [gamers]. If you offer games that go beyond the simple click compulsion with elements of strategy and competition, and allow them to go deeper than what [they] find in the first sessions of gameplay, you can tap into [both] those audiences. Few companies are well positions to understand both, [because] hardcore gaming as it’s been defined by [video game] consoles [is different from] the very specific approaches and mechanics on Facebook, which in many ways are a world of their own.

ISG: So now that Army Attack is live and set for some content updates, what else can we expect to see from Digital Chocolate in the near future?

Metis: We have a number of other games coming out soon. You’ll also see us using our unique proprietary technology to take our games to other platforms, such as mobile. We started off on Millionaire City, that’s done well for us on mobile on both iPhone and Android. Don’t be surprised when you see Zombie Lane on a mobile platform in the future.

Planet Domo Tops This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

• Jun 10th, 2011
Social Games

Just one week after first appearing on our list of emerging Facebook games as tracked by AppData, TheBroth’s Planet Domo lands in the top spot while Digital Chocolate’s Army Attack does indeed graduate from the list after breaking the 1 million monthly active user mark earlier this week. If you’re at all shocked that Zynga’s rival game, Empires & Allies, didn’t make the list this week — don’t be. The game broke 1 million MAU within a week of launch.

Moving on down the list, we see two of EA’s sports social games gaining some ground with EA Playfish’s World Series Superstars snagging second and PGA Tour Golf Challenge landing farther down at number 16.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1. Planet Domo 477,889 +236,225 +98%
2. World Series Superstars: Baseball with MLB teams! 713,325 +208,100 +41%
3. TinierCafe 583,752 +177,089 +44%
4. Global Warfare 698,939 +162,991 +30%
5. Hero City 988,454 +161,133 +19%
6. Addicting Games 928,384 +142,663 +18%
7. City Wars 516,785 +136,045 +36%
8. HotShot 450,888 +135,403 +43%
9. Deep Realms 855,484 +130,853 +18%
10. La Granja 269,637 +117,450 +77%
11. 英雄遠征-開心農場 299,340 +109,957 +58%
12. Battle Cards 394,868 +108,332 +38%
13. Footbo City 462,752 +107,160 +30%
14. Dragon Age Legends 727,867 +101,669 +16%
15. Shadow Fight 384,921 +98,947 +35%
16. EA SPORTS™ PGA TOUR® Golf Challenge 363,450 +88,047 +32%
17. Pacman 405,472 +77,460 +24%
18. Megacity 240,083 +74,353 +45%
19. Bingo Island 657,108 +67,930 +12%
20. Bingo Adventure 312,277 +67,185 +27%

Debuting on our list this week at number 17 is an unofficial Pac-Man clone from Telaxo called Pacman. The app appears to suffer from some naming confusion, referring to itself as Ghostman in-game and in the URL. In any case, it’s very obviously an unlicensed copy of the original Japanese arcade game that features no monetization, a single leaderboard for tracking the scores of friends and a control scheme designed entirely around the arrow keys. A licensed version of Pac-Man by license holder Namco Bandai recently hit Facebook with a new monetization strategy built around an “insert quarter to continue” gameplay  loop made famous by classic arcades.

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.

Pop Rocket Games Marries Social Sports to Text RPG Genre on Facebook in CopaSocca

• Jun 9th, 2011
Social Games, Sports

CopaSocca is a soccer-themed text-based role-playing game from newcomer Pop Rocket Games. The game launched to the public on May 25, though was silently live from the middle of April as an open pre-beta release. There was a complete database reset prior to the official launch date, however, which cost the game some early-adopter players and has caused the game’s MAU figure to decline throughout the first week of June.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, CopaSocca currently has 1,275 monthly active users and 124 daily active users.

CopaSocca casts players as captain of a small-time soccer team. As with other Facebook games in the sports genre, energy can be spent either on training soccer skills or on earning soft currency with part-time jobs. Once players are satisfied with their training and earnings, they can compete against other players’ teams, either watching matches via text commentary or skipping directly to the result. Players can also customize their personal avatar with haircuts, clothing and other equipment. Certain pieces of equipment offer bonuses to match performance, and some are required to unlock special abilities acquired through training. Players can also invite friends or random Facebook users to join their team, which presents the opportunity for better performance than with the default players provided.

The game is presented simply and clearly, and Pop Rocket made the conscious decision to build the game in HTML rather than Flash in order to allow it to be accessible from the widest possible range of devices, including non Flash-capable devices such as the iPad.

Pop Rocket Managing Director Tahsin Avci describes the game as an “egocentric football manager” game.

“On Facebook you are sharing everything about yourself and what you are interested in, it’s always you in the focus,” says Avci. “And that’s where CopaSocca is perfectly fitting in. You start your career as the next big-time pro football player. But football can’t be played solo, so you as the team captain invite your friends or other Facebook players into your own team.”

To encourage regular participation, the game features weekly competitions. There’s a league system, where players can battle for promotion or to avoid relegation on a weekly basis. There’s also a weekly “top scorer” competition. Avci notes that these two competitions have been very effective in motivating players to check back and play regularly, but hopes to add more personalized, customizable “friend leagues” in the near future alongside the global competition.

The game is monetized through the purchase of hard currency, in this case known as Credits, which can be purchased using Facebook Credits. CopaSocca Credits can be used to top up energy or fitness levels, but can also be spent on boosts to improve match performance, premium equipment to improve skill values, and vanity items to decorate the player’s Trophy Room. All seems well with the payment system now, but as Avci explains, it wasn’t always that way.

“Like many other companies we were affected in a recent malfunction period for Facebook Credits that occurred for at least all European countries for nearly a week,” he explains. “From our perspective Facebook didn’t seem to take the issue seriously and reacted very late.”

The future for CopaSocca holds a wider variety of cups and leagues for players to participate in, as well as more robust communication and socialization features. At the same time, the Pop Rocket team is planning to work on another sports management game and is also developing a new IP named Project Luna with Daedalic Entertainment, due out this fall.

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

TheBroth Open to Funding for Facebook and Mobile Social Games, but Happy to Do Its Own Domo Thing

• Jun 9th, 2011
Social Games

Barn Buddy developer TheBroth has had a long, healthy life on Facebook without raising funding or advertising on the platform, CEO Markus Weichselbaum tells us. With the release of Planet Domo and the developer looking at getting into paid mobile games, however, he says it may be time “if you allow me the pun, to harvest our investments.”

Weichselbaum is founder and CEO of TheBroth, which began as a community website based out of Perth, Australia in 2005. The company had some success with early apps on Facebook, including the 2007 jigsaw simulation game PuzzleBee. In 2008, TheBroth relocated to San Francisco and began steady releases of one major game per year to Facebook and eventually other social networks like hi5 and international social networks in Europe. This year, the developer worked with licensee Big Tent Entertainment to produce a social game based on Japanese TV mascot, Domo, which debuted on Facebook late last month with strong early growth.

“[Big Tent] heard through the grapevine that we were good with localization and multiplatform [releases] and they figured well, that’s the right kind of company to approach,” Weichselbaum tells ISG. “And we liked Domo. He doesn’t have a particular facial expression. He can be happy or angry and you wouldn’t know the difference. So you can project a lot onto Domo. If you make your own Domo, it’s really an expression of self. That makes him really ideal for a game because he’s so malleable and so accessible.”

Accessibility is a key component of TheBroth games. Having its roots in the early days of Facebook games gave the developer incentive to keep gameplay design simple and immediately available after only a few minutes of tutorial. Even today, the Barn Buddy tutorial is only six screens long and the Planet Domo tutorial is considerably shorter than other mission-based adventure games of comparable complexity.

The only downside to this quick-play approach is that TheBroth has sometimes had to sacrifice presentation. Particularly with its early games like Kickmania, the art style and presentation date the game in a way that could turn off a social gamer new to the space and therefore more accustomed to higher art quality. Weichselbaum says that TheBroth would like to go back to Kickmania and some of its older titles to bring them up to speed; but right now, its focusing its resources elsewhere.

“We’re a small company, we don’t have all the resources to do what we want to do right now,” he says. He explains that with Kickmania, TheBroth originally wanted to do a “female” version of the game because the premise of “kicking someone’s ass” was just too male-oriented to achieve mass appeal. That never came about, though, and now TheBroth is instead looking at bringing the game to mobile.

“Kickmania is my favorite and one of the most promising of gameplay types out there combining social aspects and casual gameplay,” Weichselbaum says. “The whole look of it is sort of 2008, so there’s a lot of work to bring this one into modern times. We feel this is going to be ideal for mobile.”

Right now, Weichselbaum TheBroth has a few free apps available on mobile devices, but he wouldn’t say what they were or where we could find them. TheBroth is still experimenting with game types and techniques for releasing games to mobile. Some of their older Facebook properties would actually be better suited to tablets and iPads, he says.

“We think that our games are less suited to smaller screens, but would have a fantastic place on tablets,” Weichselbaum says. The key concern, he explains, is finding games that are action-based, preferably grounded in physics as opposed to mission-based social games like Barn Buddy and Planet Domo. In the case of smartphones and feature phones, the game needs to use the core features of the platform in a way that jibes with gameplay. For exmaple, Weichselbaum says, TheBroth’s Hoop Fever Live would be the perfect candidate for iOS and Android because all players need to do is drag a finger to plan the trajectory for a basketball — and that’s it.

“For mobile, you want something something you can do on the bus,” he says. “You can just take it out and throw some more angry birds at some pigs. It makes sense — a short interaction you can go back to whenever you want. This is an action game you can play for 30 seconds and it’ll be really fun.”

Another game type TheBroth wants to revisit for mobile is jigsaw puzzles. The developer has proprietary technology that supports an actual puzzle simulation where players either need to drag pieces in order to rotate them or can toggle an auto-rotate mode that activates when the player selects a puzzle piece. This technology is currently in use within PuzzleBee and forms a Planet Domo mini-game; Weichselbaum could easily see it as a standalone jigsaw title for iPad or tablet — but not for smartphone.

“Your finger is obscuring the puzzle pieces,” he complains. “I haven’t seen a single good jigsaw puzzle on the iPhone for example. Not because people can’t program well but because the device just doesn’t lend itself. For iPad, we can’t wait to release [a jigsaw puzzle] game. It’s a no brainer.”

As ambitious as TheBorth is to get into mobile, however, there is still the need to balance the limited resources the developer has. Whenever TheBroth has worked on releasing a new game, its existing games has lost traffic as the developer cuts back on content releases. With Barn Buddy, the game first lost a significant chunk of daily active users as TheBroth worked with publisher Peak Games to release the Turkish language version of the game, Komşu Çiftlik, and then DAU took another huge hit while TheBroth scaled back content again ahead of Planet Domo’s release (pictured here).

Going forward, TheBroth has new content releases planned for both Barn Buddy and Planet Domo in the form of a competitive community event for the former and new gameplay features and levels for the latter. Mobile development and international releases are progressing at a rate that pleases Weichselbaum, though he admits that scaling would be easier with funding.

“The time may come this year where it may make sense to raise significant funding to accelerate and utilize our ability that we have because are multiplatform and multi-language,” he says. “[Scale] requires man power, it requires funding, it requires an advertising budget. Without funding, we can’t really do that as well as the big guys. But for right now, we’re quite happy to do our thing and grow organically.”

TheBroth’s Planet Domo Gains Growth Through Grind and PvP Mini-Games

• Jun 9th, 2011
Social Games

Planet Domo is a mission-based adventure game starring Japanese pop culture icon, Domo. The game was developed for Facebook by TheBroth, which also develops Barn Buddy and its Turkish language version, Komşu Çiftlik. Shortly after its late May 2011 debut, Planet Domo hit our top 20 emerging Facebook games list.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Planet Domo currently has 477,889 monthly active users and 47,500 daily active users.

The game puts players in the role of Domo, a food-obsessed creature that travels the world searching for a mythical Giant Strawberry Cheesecake. Core gameplay involves spending energy to click on locations that the player can then “harvest” for virtual currency, special items, experience points, slices of cheesecake, and pieces of postcards that eventually unlock more areas for Domo to visit. Planet Domo also features several mini-game types including a jigsaw puzzle simulation and player-versus-player activities like an egg-and-spoon race.

The social features come from gifting and from PvP gameplay. In the PvP matches, the player is pitted against another player’s Domo in an asynchronous simulation represented by an animation. A win or loss depends heavily on what offensive and defensive items a player has available, but players can only view their opponent Domo’s equipment after a match ends. Players are limited in how many PvP matches they can play per session both by a Stamina meter and by Domo’s Hit Points. As the player levels up their Domo, they can spend experience points on Stamina and HP as well as purchasing offensive and defensive items to equip.

Planet Domo monetizes through a standard currency of Coins and uses Facebook Credits as its premium currency. Facebook Credits mainly go toward accelerating gameplay by unlocking locations early and can also be spent on premium items, gameplay boosts and energy refills. Note that certain items in the game are also available in exchange for other types of resources; energy refills, for example, can be bought with slices of cheesecake as well as with Facebook Credits.

An interesting design choice in Planet Domo is “tier 2” gameplay where players replay old levels they’ve already completed for additional experience points. Tier 2 gameplay kicks in at an advanced level where players are not leveling up as quickly, or have unlocked all of the locations Domo can visit. At this point, players can back and replay old levels to receive additional experience points as well as special items to help out in PvP matches. TheBroth hopes that this “grind” gameplay will retain players past the initial 100 or so gameplay sessions it takes to unlock all the launch content currently available in the game.

TheBroth CEO Markus Weichselbaum tells us some of the future features for the game include customization for Domo that will differentiate players’ Domos from one another in PvP. The developer is also working on three new locations and is considering bringing the tale of the mythical cheesecake to an end as it introduces a new story arc to keep things fresh. Planet Domo is also set to start sending player’s in-game birthday cakes to coincide with their real-life birthdays (as they have provided that information to Facebook).

Another planned change for the title is an adjustment to the app authorization requirements Planet Domo request from players when installing the game. At present, the game asks for basic information, email, and birthday date — all fairly standard for social games — and it wants access to player data at any time, which is not a common social game request. The request appears to be putting off some potential players, though apparently not significantly enough to restrict Planet Domo’s early growth. Even so, Weichselbaum tells us  that there’s no real reason TheBroth needs access to player data at any time, so the developer plans to remove the request soon.

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

New Hires in Social Gaming: Cie Games, CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate, & More

• Jun 9th, 2011
Business, casual, Electronic Arts, facebook, Hires, Jobs, Playdom, Social Games, zynga

Last week we saw a sizable amount of hiring take place within the social gaming space and that trend continues this week. Eleven social developers have shown new activity according to data from LinkedIn and other sources. Moreover, of these active companies, both Cie Games and Newtracks brought on new executive members.

In terms of Cie Games, the company has appointed Carey D’Souza as its new Chief Operating Officer. The technology and video game veteran executive comes with experience from Nexon, Electronic Arts, and Evoco. As for Newtracks, this social developer hires on a new vice president of game design in the form of Philipp Strecker, a former game designer of Young Internet.

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:

Cie Games

  • Carey D’Souza, Chief Operating Officer — As stated already, Carey D’Souza joins Cie Games this week. Most recently, the veteran technology executive was the director of technology and development at Nexon, America.

CrowdStar

  • Mutia Terian, Art Intern — Terian joins CrowdStar this week. She was previously an art intern for Hexify.
  • Alex Kurbanov, QA Software Engineer — Also now at CrowdStar, Kurbanov was formerly a software QA engineer at Picanta Foods.
  • Elena Holm, QA Engineer — Holm was most recently a student at De Anza College.

Digital Chocolate

  • Earl Dos Santos, Product Manager — There is a single hire for Digital Chocolate this week. Dos Santos was most recently a senior consultant for financial innovation at Agora Partnerships.

eRepublik Labs

  • Anthony Bray, Senior Producer, Madrid Studio — Joining eRepublik Labs, Bray was previously a planning director at Riot Entertainment and is also the founder of Typhon Mobile.
  • Daniel Grifol, Web Developer — Also joining eRepublick Labs, Grifol holds experience from 888, Party Poker, and William Hill.
  • Eduardo Herrera, Graphic Artist — Herrera was previously a concept artist, animator, and game artist at LemonQuest.

Kabam

  • Maitlyn Mennen, Intern — Joining Kabam, Mennen was previously a receptionist at Tippecanoe Mortgage.
  • Juan Jones, IT Administrator — Jones was a desktop IT analyst for IBM.

Newtracks

  • Philipp Strecker, Vice President of Game Design — As noted prior, Philipp Strecker joins Newtracks this week. Strecker was formerly a game designer for Young Internet.

Playdom

  • Juana Correa, Junior Artist — A quartet of Playdom hires starts with Correa, who was “ink and collation” at Mamá Gallina Animation.
  • Joseph Guo, Undergraduate Business Associate — Guo was previously a trade finance summer analyst at ICBC.
  • Michael Monsalvatge, UI Designer — Monsalvatge was formerly an artist for Harmonix Music Systems.
  • Jessica Yun, Production Artist — Also joining Playdom, Yun was previously a graphic designer for UCLA Athletics Marketing.

Playfish

  • Clifford Chiu, Lead Artist — In an internal shift at Playfish, Chiu changes roles from his prior position as a game artist.

RockYou!

  • Nicole Kawaguchi, Analytics Engineering Associate — Now a part of RockYou!, Kawaguchi was previously a marketing and communications intern for 6Connex.

Socialvibe

  • Nick Jordan, Account Director, UK/EMEA Sales — Joining Socialvibe, Jordan was previously a key account director at IPT.

Zynga

  • Jonathan Stump, Customer Relations — Now at Zynga, Stump was formerly a community collaborator at Graphic.ly.
  • Sharad Mitra, Associate Art Producer — Also joining Zynga, Mitra was previously an oil painting instructor at Young at Art Studio.
  • Mathew Hendry, Senior Software Engineer — Hendry was a lead engineer at WDI, Inc.
  • Brian Guenther, Product Management Intern — Guenther was previously a consultant of strategy and operations at Deloitte Consulting.
  • Ken Mai, Release Quality Assurance Analyst — Mai was previously a bartender at King George Hotel.
  • Gloria Goa, Senior Staffing Consultant — Gao was formerly a recruitment specialist at Technicolor.
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