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

Inside Mobile Apps

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

Monday, July 25th, 2011

• Flurry: Whales Help Push Up Average In-App Purchases in Freemium Mobile Games
• Emerging Paid iOS Apps: Zombies, Pirates & Captain America Rise Over the Weekend
• See New Perspectives on the Zombie Apocalypse in Zombie Gunship on iPhone

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

• Twilio’s New SDK Lets Developers Add Skype-Like Calling to Their Apps
• Emerging Top-Grossing iOS Apps: Updates Push Addmired, Gameview Titles Higher
• Electronic Arts’ Mobile Revenue Climbs 10% Year-Over-Year to $57M in First Quarter

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

• Total Revenue From Top 200 Grossing iOS Games Climbs 79% Year-Over-Year, Distimo Says
• Emerging Top Free Apps on iOS: Music, Television, Learning, & Beauty
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: EA, Pontiflex, Kabam, PopCap and More
• The ngmoco:)-DeNA Deal Gets its First Real Test With Mobage Launch on Android
• Deadlock: Online Proves Great in Theory, But Disappoints in Connectivity

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

• Q&A: Fiksu CEO Micah Adler on How Acquiring iOS Users Has Changed After Offer Walls
• How Much Has The Cost of Acquiring a Quality iOS User Changed This Spring?
• New Hires in Mobile: Big Fish Games, EA Mobile, Foursquare, & More
• BulkyPix Wins the Hill With New WWII Strategy Game for iOS

Friday, July 29th, 2011

• Outfit7 CEO Nabergoj Steps Down, Founder Login Steps Up As Temporary Replacement
• Mobile Roundup: RIM, Funding, iPhone 5, Samsung & More

Inside Social Games

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

Monday, July 25th, 2011

• Mahjong Saga, Gourmet Ranch, Global Warfare Top This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• Clash of the Dragons Deals Collectible Card Combat on Facebook
• Playfirst Sunsets Diner Dash as Traffic Declines
• Zynga and Tencent Announce Partnership, Launch of CityVille Chine Expansion “Zynga City”

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

• Roman Taxi: Royal Era Puts a Spin on City-Building Fare
• Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy Assembles an Impressive Army of Users on Facebook
• EA Claims Social Game Revenues in Q1 2012 Rise Despite Year-on-Year Drop in MAU

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: PopCap, MegaZebra, Tagged and More
• Zoo World 2, The Pokerist Club, Battle Pirates Lead This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by DAU
• Clone Wars: What Copycats Really Do To The Social Games Industry
• Digital Chocolate’s Millionaire Boss is Moving Up in the Business World on Facebook
• MapleStory Adventures Launches on Facebook Today

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

• The A-List Gives Facebook Users a Brush with Fame on Facebook
• New Hires in Social Gaming: Claritics, Happy Elements, IMVU, & More
• Super Rewards Founder, Pot Farm Creators Net Angel Funding for New Social Game Studio

Friday, July 29th, 2011

• International Releases Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• GnomeTown Invites Residents to Party, Pillage and Pummel
• What Do Facebook’s Developer Traffic Targets Really Mean for Zynga (and Everyone Else)?
• Social Gaming Roundup: Electronic Arts, Mobage, Layoffs, & More.

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, July 25th, 2011

• 60 Photos, Quizzes, Pages, Mobile, Bandsintown and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by MAU
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Craftsman, Unilever & Zynga, American Express and El Pollo Loco
• Acceptly Uses Social Contacts to Help Students Get Into College
• Facebook for iPad: Our Feature Breakdown of the Leaked Official App
• Video Privacy Protection Act Delays US Launch of Netflix Facebook Integration

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

• New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Buddy Media, Syncapse, North Social, 140 Proof and More
• Amy Winehouse, Jesus, Dior, Domo, “Captain America,” and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
• BrightWhistle Raises $1.1 Million to Offer Facebook Ad and Landing Page Optimization to Health Care
• Facebook vs Twitter — How Smart Marketers Use Both Differently
• ComScore Report: 27% of Facebook Browsing on News Feed, Just 10% on Apps

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

• PicBadges, Mobile, Horoscopes, Cupid and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU
• “Facebook for Business” Resource Center Eases Onboarding for Marketers and Advertisers
• Facebook Users Can Now List That They Are Expecting a Child in Their Profiles
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Boards: Context Optional, Lolapps, Ngmoco :), PopCap Games and More
• Platform News: Facebook Lets Developers Create Test Users Through the Developer App GUI

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

• Facebook Careers Postings: Research, Engineering, Communications, Credits and More
• Facebook Hires and Departures: Engineering, Business, Communications, Recruiting, Sales and More
• Hearsay Social Raises $18 Million, Can Now Run Facebook Ads for Corporate/Local Pages
• Facebook for BlackBerry v2.0 Adds Chat, BBM Support, and More Beta Tested Features

Friday, July 29th, 2011

• Hulu, Profile Banners, BeKnown, Friends and Twibbons on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU
• Webtrends Expands From Apps and Analytics to Full Facebook Page Management Suite
• Facebook Test Lets Users Tag Family Members by Typing How They’re Related
• Facebook White Hat Program Now Offers Bounty for Disclosing Security Bugs
• Facebook Roundup: Prineville, Ceglia, Seattle, Ads, Credits, Mobile and More

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 MegaZebra, PopCap Games, GREE International, Inc., Tagged, Context Optional, lolapps, ngmoco :), Pontiflex, Electronic Arts and Kabam.

• GAME DESIGNER – SOCIAL GAMES

• Social Marketing Software Customer Support Specialist
• Social Marketing Software Quality Assurance
• Account Manager — Social Marketing
• Software Trainer–Social Marketing Suite

• Email Marketing Product Manager

• Marketing Manager
• Consumer Insights Manager
• Technical Director, Developer Support
• Associate, Culture
• Director, Investor Relations / Corporate Communications

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.

Electronic Arts at $56 ARPPU in Sports Social Games — Earlier this week, Electronic Arts released its first-quarter earnings report which notes a profit of $221 million, compared to $96 million last year. According to EA Sports president Peter Moore, these games have reached an average revenue among paying users of $56; a number greater than that of players on consoles.

Three Melons Hit by Layoffs — According to Gamasutra, Disney-owned social games studio, Three Melons has been suffering layoffs as of late. The Argentina-based studio has seen 30 layoffs thus far “and counting,” says a source from inside the company. Disney has not confirmed the number.

Google+ Prepares Social Games Launch — According to AllThingsD, Google may be announcing its social gaming plans as early as next month. Moreover, while the company is evidently approaching developers regarding their games coming to Google+, say anonymous sources, multiple other sources are stating that Google will take less than a 30 percent cut of social gaming revenue.

Mobage Comes to U.S. – Tokyo-based DeNA has launched its social games platform, Mobage, in the United States. Run by ngmoco, the platform is now available on Android Market with roughly 20 free games available. Read more on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.

[Update] Zombie Farm Goes Social — The Playforge’s Zombie Farm has received a significant social update this week. The mobile farming simulation title, with zombies, has added in several social mechanics such as visiting friends, connecting to a social community, playing games of “Zombie Tag,” and sending gifts.

PlayMob Looks to Hook Players on Virtual Goods With Charity — PlayMob is looking to user charities to get social games players into buying virtual goods, reports TechCrunch. Essentially, players will purchase the virtual goods by donating to charity. Through the service, developers can choose which goods they wish to donate with, with a minimum of 50 percent of revenue going to charity, while the charities themselves receive a reduced costs of fundraising and PlayMob earns a flat fee of 10 percent.

Zynga Game Cards Come to Middle East & North Africa — Zynga game players in both the Middle East and North Africa will now have access to Zynga Game Cards, reports VentureBeat. Through a new partnership with Zynga, Gate2Play will distribute the game cards throughout stores in the regions as well as make them available through virtual “e-PINs.”

Kontagent Partners With Quepasa — Analytics company Kontangent has announced a new partnership with Latin social network Quepasa. Through the new partnership, Kontangent will acquire exclusive rights to power Quepasa’s casual games portal, Quepasa Games, with its analytics platform kSuite.

THQ Betting More Heavily On Social Games Following Q1 FY2012 Loss — THQ was disappointed by its $38.4 million net loss posted in Q1 FY2012, but it plans to put more effort into bringing its brands to social networks in order to reach a “critical mass” of users. The studio’s next social game, MargaritavilleOnline, is due out in fall.

Many social game developers were surprised this month when Zynga published terms of its agreements with Facebook as part of its S-1 filing to go public, because it seemed to show that Facebook was promising traffic for Zynga’s games on web and mobile platforms.

By agreeing to make Facebook Zynga’s exclusive social platform, the document said, Facebook would in turn make sure that Zynga achieved certain web and mobile traffic goals or else the exclusivity would no longer apply.

Complicating matters, the target numbers and key terms around them were redacted from the published document, so Zynga’s competitors — and the investors who are considering buying Zynga’s public stock — have been left guessing about what the numbers really mean. Facebook could be promising .01% growth or 100% growth. Or, more fundamentally, it could be promising something vague, like the platform growing by a certain number of users overall, and the developer simply seeing growth as part of that. Without more information, other developers we’ve spoken with have tended to assume that the impact was significant, and unfair.

Facebook Responds

But now Facebook is trying to explain what’s really going on, although it’s still not discussing the specific agreements with Zynga and other developers. The traffic targets aren’t as meaningful as they might seem, says Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president of partnerships and platform marketing. “We aren’t doing anything — we’ve never done anything — that was designed to grow any one developer at the expense of others. Everything we’ve done has been for the platform, and developers with great games benefit from those products.”

Facebook, he explains, is not specifically promising any developer that their games are going to reach certain traffic numbers because they signed on to this agreement. Without going into much detail, he says that the targets are more about Facebook outlining how it hopes to grow the platform, and how the particular developer will benefit from that growth. In fact, from Facebook’s perspective, it’d be great if the company could get every developer signed on to this type of agreement.

“There are no special advantages around growth targets or anything else. Period,” he emphasizes.

So Is There Evidence of Any Special Benefits?

Overall, Zynga’s main traffic growth occurred over 2009, when it launched a range of iterative simulation titles, and grew them through aggressive viral tactics, Facebook ad spending, and cross-promotion from existing titles. Since then, its traffic has had overall declines except for when it launched new games, with total its DAU count (not the target “monthly unique user” metric in the addendum) never passing its 2009 peaks.

Other developers have in the meantime been watching for any oddities around Zynga traffic that might show some sort of special benefit.

Example 1: When CityVille launched late November of 2010, a number of factors went Zynga’s way, as this anonymous Quora user notes. At launch time, Facebook began testing out a new viral channel: requests as notifications. While some other developers were, from our understanding, getting access to this feature around the same time, the then-new feature could have helped CityVille get an all-important wave of early traffic. So did a 3-day bug that exposed CityVille traffic to non-gaming users — something Facebook had otherwise stopped doing months earlier. It also seemed as if Zynga was beating certain spam limits on email, as we and others observed at the time.

But do these instances add up to a special deal? The addendum was only signed at the end of December, weeks after the launch, so the CityVille launch wouldn’t have been covered by it. And each of the examples above can sort of be explained. The news feed issue could have been an accident — we doubt Facebook would ever intentionally introduce a bug. And as far as the email spam goes, Zynga may have just been committing some platform violations. If it was, it would have (or at least should have) been hit with Facebook’s long-standing methods of terms enforcement, such as algorithmically reduced invite allocations based on user feedback.

Rose says that Facebook does test new features with some developers before turning them on to the user base.

Example 2: Some developers are now pointing out that Zynga’s latest Facebook game, Empires & Allies, has nearly flat traffic by monthly active users at slightly under 45 million, according to our AppData tracking service. The speculation is that Facebook is somehow propping up these numbers instead of letting them fall naturally.

But that’s a logical leap, as Zynga could be taking any number of steps, from running ads, to pushing cross-promotions and other normal efforts to keep numbers at that level (although that precise of a flattening is not easy to create).

Conclusion

Facebook seems to be achieving its larger goal in any case. Zynga began pulling its games off of other social networks last year, including from Tagged and MySpace. Up through the launch of Zynga City on Tencent in mainland China later this month (where Facebook is banned), all of its social platform launches have occurred on Facebook, at least that we know of. And web-based Zynga games like FarmVille.com and the relevant mobile apps have also shown the Facebook integration spelled out in the addendum, rather than relying on other social platform providers.

So, overall, we still don’t know all the details of the agreement. But at least Facebook is now explaining itself. And up to this point, there hasn’t been convincing evidence showing otherwise.

We’re interested to hear back from other developers who have signed similar agreements, or are considering doing so. Please email eric (at) insidenetwork (dot) com if you’d like to discuss on or off the record.

Playdom has launched GnomeTown, its latest foray into Facebook gaming. Since going live earlier this month, the game has seen significant, sustained growth in both daily and monthly active users.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, GnomeTown currently has 162,869 monthly active users and 31,726 daily active users.

The basis of GnomeTown lies in the familiar mechanics of clearing a plot of land and constructing buildings on it. Throw in a bit of agriculture here and there, then collect money from buildings and food from the fields. You won’t find one thing in Playdom’s new ‘ville, though, and that’s energy. Players are able to build, harvest and interact with the game without the common artificial wall of energy units that must recharge over time – or by purchasing more. Also, instead of requiring that players spend premium currency on set units of land expansion, the game uses machetes, single-use items that can be used to clear one ‘block” of land at a time and can themselves be purchased from the in-game shop. Players can also team up with helper characters, cutesy animals that can be assigned to complete tasks independently while the player performs another. These tasks can be paused if necessary, or accelerated by using up the player’s food stock.

In another twist, GnomeTown’s social features include the ability for players to compete with others through some novel interactions. It’s possible to “brawl” with other players by raiding, “party” together and trade in what’s called “journeying.” Additionally, the decorations and structures players can purchase for their town each have attributes which provide boosts to performance in these interactions. For example, a carnival game might give the player an edge in “brawl” encounters. Allying with friends can also help tip the scale in the player’s favor in these situations.

Players can earn coins for performing various actions in the game. This soft currency can then be spent on an assortment of items and structures from the in-game shop. A portion of the game’s content can only be purchased using gold, a hard currency available for Facebook Credits. (Coins can also be purchased directly using Credits.)

GnomeTown has just emerged from a closed beta and we’ve seen an enthusiastic response to Playdom’s handful of recent updates to the game’s Wall. The title seems to have a good deal of momentum behind it and a genuinely engaged – and growing – legion of players , even if it is a little weird for a game to let players put cute forest creatures to work in their fields.

You can follow GnomeTown’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Happy Elements’ 森の物語 (Forest Adventure), an Arabic farming sim, and four different language versions of Galaxy Online II dominate this week’s list of emerging Facebook games.

ETA: Due to a miscategorization, Collapse Blast was left off of this list in error. It should appear at number one with 472,608 MAU with +385,437 gained in the last seven days for +292% growth.

Galaxy Online II comes from massively multiplayer online game developer IGG (I Got Games). The a space-themed real-time strategy came to Facebook in English earlier this year and has since slowed down in growth across monthly active users and daily active users. Mark Zhang, IGG’s vice president of global operations, tells ISG that the game is highly engaging for its core users, making the game ultimately profitable. The plan for IGG is to localize Galaxy Online into 10 different languages in the coming months, including one or two of the “emerging” languages Facebook is keen to reach (e.g. Portuguese for the Brazilian market). Zhang says the developer is careful to analyze any potential international market, as IGG already had one bad experience in a small market where Galaxy Online failed to penetrate.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,% 1.  森の物語 555,894 +291,374 +110% 2.  المزرعة السعيدة 945,321 +193,799 +26% 3.  Galaksi Online II Türkçe: En İyi Bilim Kurgu Oyunu 205,210 +178,186 +659% 4.  Little Cave Hero 285,125 +160,207 +128% 5.  Millionaire Boss 434,601 +149,096 +52% 6.  Six Gun Galaxy 305,771 +105,041 +52% 7.  Bingo Island 967,686 +104,523 +12% 8.  Animal Party 953,339 +98,934 +12% 9.  Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy 542,692 +98,296 +22% 10.  Türkiye Texas Poker 414,147 +96,155 +30% 11.  Galaxy Online II Philippines – Best Sci Fi Game 275,624 +92,393 +50% 12.  Fantasy Football 2011 137,343 +82,060 +148% 13.  Galaxía Online II, Mejor Juego de Ciencia Ficción 780,427 +80,304 +11% 14.  Clash of Kingdoms 192,011 +78,189 +69% 15.  GodsWar – Best 3D MMORPG Browser Game ★★★★★ 453,688 +76,341 +20% 16.  Monster Fusion 200,749 +66,487 +50% 17.  The Sims Social 890,826 +64,592 +8% 18.  Buddy Rush 372,761 +63,342 +20% 19.  Galaxy Online II: Français-Meilleur jeux de Sci-fi 204,367 +61,030 +43% 20.  Texas HoldEm Poker Deluxe: Your Poker Portal 969,859 +54,700 +6%

森の物語 is a combination farming/city-building/exploration sim in which players control a single villager looking to establish a settlement out in the jungle. The game has richly detailed graphics and myriad customization options for player avatars. Those familiar with Zynga’s FrontierVille may be tempted to cry “clone” — but it’s not immediately clear how much weight those accusations carry.

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.

Super Rewards founder Jason Bailey is teaming up with Pot Farm creators Josh Nilson and Galan Akin to form a new social game studio in Vancouver called Eastside Games. The trio has secured $1.5 million in angel funding and plans to release a new game before the end of 2011.

Super Rewards was one of the first companies to explore the monetization of virtual goods in social games when the Facebook platform opened to developers in 2007. Bailey claims that after just 18 months on the market, the service was already operating at a $100 million run rate (although we heard it was bought for much less than that). He sold the virtual currency monetization platform to Adknowledge in July of 2009 and has since been looking for a way to return to the social games industry. He now serves as CEO of Eastside Games as well as majority owner.

Nilson and Akin come from developer Downtown East Side Games retain their original titles from Pot Farm studio Downtown East Side Games, serving as studio manager and creative director, respectively. The new studio also owns the rights to Pot Farm on Facebook, which currently has just over 900,000 monthly active users and is still profitable, according to Bailey.

Eastside Games is entering the social games market from an advantageous position with the revenues it takes in from Pot Farm, but it’s still a much rougher landscape than it was two years ago. Facebook has changed its developer policies in a way that decreases developer revenue share and maximum audience reach (with the loss of the viral channels) while investors are turning their heads toward cross-platform developers with mobile strategies. To find an audience that can keep the studio running, Eastside Games sees itself going niche.

“If you have a good game with a 1 million MAU count, you can support a small studio,” Bailey tells ISG. “The gold rush is over, but there is still plenty of gold in the hills if you can sit down, shut up, and build compelling games the fit the social/mobile formulas. We want to build ten games with 1 million-plus MAU over the next couple of years. From an enterprise value, I’d rather have ten 1 million-users games than one 10 million-users game.”

The first of these titles is Zombinis, “a collectable battle game featuring cuddly and somewhat explosive zombies with detachable body parts and addicting gameplay.” The title is due for release in Q3 on Facebook as well as open web, and potentially on Google+ should the Games service be open to third party developers at that point. Eastside Games says they see serious potential in Google+ as the in-app purchase fee charged to developers is a mere 5% compared to Facebook’s 30%.

This disparity between platforms is one of the reasons Eastside games is keen on running its game on its own site. The game will be available on and compatible with payments systems of other networks, but the developer means to keep the open web version attractive to users with exclusive content.

“[That] way we own the user, we control the experience and we pay the lowest tax rate,” Bailey says. “Zuck and Jobs want a 30% cut, Google is talking about a much more fair 5%, but regardless, the safest place for us is to not be at the whim of one platform, high taxes, and draconian content restrictions.”

As for releasing games onto mobile platforms, Bailey admits that Eastside has struggled with smartphone game development, eventually concluding it’s better to have a product that funnels players to a single location where they could play the game from any site.

“It is harder than it looks,” he says of mobile development. “Pushing players from FB to iOS or vice versa is more challenging that it seems on the surface. But we have created a playbook that is working.”

Hiring in the social games space picked up ever so slightly this week, as nine companies showed new activity, according to data from LinkedIn and other sources. Social games analytics firm Claritics and IMVU each brought in senior staff. Sanjath Shringeri joins the former as the new director of engineering, moving over from being an engineering manager for Tapjoy. IMVU gains Jenny Rutherford as its new vice president of marketing, a role she previously held at Oodle.

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 each person’s profile.

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:

Claritics

• Sanjath Shringeri, Director of Engineering — Social games analytics firm Claritics brings on Sanjath Shringeri as its new director of engineering. Prior to this role, Shringeri served as an the engineering manager for Tapjoy.

Happy Elements

• Jason Shum, PHP Engineer — In an internal shift at Happy Elements, Shum moves up from his prior role as a GIP intern.
• Karina Beltrão, Portuguese to English Translator — Beltrão was previously a monitor at the Federal University of Alagoas.

IMVU

• Jenny Rutherford, Vice President of Marketing — One of today’s major hires comes from IMVU in the form of Jenny Rutherford. The company’s new vice president of marketing, she was previously filling the same role at Oodle.

Kabam

• Kristina Wayte, Art Intern — Wayte joins Kabam this week. She was most recently a freelance artist for Lightsource Studios.
• Chao Zhang, Platform Developer, Front End — Joining Kabam as well is Zhang, a former web developer for Asurion.

King.com

• Daniel Gustafson, Product Manager (Social/Mobile) — Kicking off a trio of new King.com hires, Gustafson was previously a product and public relations manager at PlayStation Sweden (Nordisk Film).
• Cherry Yang, Advertising Operations Manager — Also joining King.com, Yang was formerly an online production manager for northern Europe at Betfair.
• André Nylander, Product Manager (Social/Mobile)  — Nylander was most recently a product manager for Net Entertainment.

Loot Drop

• Eunjung June Kim, Animator — Loot Drop hires a single individual this week.  Kim is noted to have been previously a part of Slide as well as an animator and illustrator for Google.

Playdom

• Greg Rossell, UI Designer — Playdom hires two individuals this week starting with Rossell. Rossel was previously a UI Designer for Electronic Arts.
• Harmony Ho, Junior Graphic Designer — Also joining Playdom is Ho, a former freelance graphic designer at Randel Design.

Wooga

• Milim Kim, Junior Game Artist — Wooga shows activity this week, hiring Kim, a former project manager and game designer at Social Media Intranet Learning Environment (SMILE).

Zynga

• Justin Lauria, Associate Software Engineer — Joining Zynga this week is Lauria, a former junior developer for Autonomy.
• Michael Walters, Quality Assurance Tester — Now a part of Zynga, Walters was most recently a quality assurance tester at Sony Online Entertainment.
• Nicolas Gramlich, Software Engineer — Gramlich was previously an intern at the Fraunhofer USA Center for Experimental Software Engineering and is also currently the owner and admin for andengine.org and anddev.org.
• Connor Baskauskas, Marketing Developer — Baskauskas was formerly a web developer for Business Calcium, Inc.
• Mayur Bhimjiyani, Intern — Bhimjiyani was previously a student at DSKSIC.
• Micahel Lyn, Narrative Designer — Zynga hires on Lyn this week, a former freelance writer for 2K Sports and a current freelance writer for SME.
• Gene De Roule, Tier 2 SRE — Also joining Zynga, De Roule was formerly a UNIX systems administrator for DataPipe.
• Aj Chelson, Senior QA Security Engineer — Chelson was previously a QA tester at Playfirst.

Literally casting players as budding Hollywood actors, The A-List is the follow-up title to FameTown from Diversion, Inc. Just after launching earlier this month, the developer announced securing an undisclosed sum of series B funding, plus a $1 million advertising deal with Sony Pictures.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, The A-List currently has 453,694 monthly active users and 47,978 daily active users.

The core gameplay of The A-List is familiar: Players customize their own slice of the game world (in this case their “block”) with businesses and decorations, clicking on the former and expending energy to receive cash and experience points as a timer resets until they’re available for collection again. Energy, as in other games of this type, replenished over time or when players level up. Everything has a Hollywood movie theme, however, which carries over into the various quests that can be completed in order to earn more cash, experience and fame.

The game world is comprised of the player’s home block in addition to several others, including “FameTown and Highland,” Beverly Hills’ famous shopping destination, Rodeo drive, and a collection of movie sets. At each of these locations, players take part in multi-step quests such as attending premieres, taking acting lessons, rehearsing lines, or filming. Completing quests rewards players with cash, fame and experience points along with items such as scripts and fan letters, which comprise collections that can be exchanged for more money/fame and special items.

Once all of the quests within a given movie set are completed, players are rewarded with their completed film, which can be screened at cinemas in their friends’ blocks for more fame. Other social elements include bragging about items found and quests completed via viral channels such as Walls and visiting friends’ blocks in order to collect cash for bonus income.

The A-List is being monetized through the direct purchase of “exclusive” items using Facebook Credits. Credits can also be spent to purchase more of the game’s soft currency, cash, which can buy a good amount of regular items from the game’s shop, like businesses, decorations, landscaping, “bling” and energy. The Fame can only be earned through in-game actions.

Aside from the obvious branding implications in the Sony Pictures advertising deal (see ETA below), we observe that the developer has an active content release schedule detailed on its Wall. Some of the new items already launched allow for more customization of blocks, which feeds into a sub-form on the game’s discussion Page where players show off what they’ve created.

ETA: Diversion, Inc. CEO Dayvid Iannaci tells ISG his company has “a very robust content schedule allowing for weekly and sometimes even daily publishing of new maps, movies, quests and items.” The company’s Sony Pictures deal currently includes a series of collectible items from The Smurfs now live in the game. In the long run, Iannaci foresees “vast improvements to the customization area and even perhaps the ability for higher level players to create their own user-generated content,” and potentially even “mobile versions of the game that will actually connect to social networks and keep track of user’s progress and actions, regardless of which client they happen to be using at the time.”

You can follow The A-List’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Having been in the works for many months, MapleStory: Adventures is Nexon America’s foray into the social game space and it takes its most famous online property the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game MapleStory to the Facebook platform.

MapleStory: Adventures is in the process of being entered into our traffic tracking service, AppData. Facebook currently lists the game as having 84,728 monthly active users as of the end of the game’s closed beta period.

The game on Facebook is not an MMOG but a regular RPG. Players receive quests and kill creatures to gain experience points and equipment for their characters. The game is a 2-D platformer and looks and plays remarkably similarly to the MapleStory MMOG, and players will recognize the MapleStory style characters, art and humor.

In place of synchronous play with friends as expected in MMOGs, MapleStory: Adventures allows players to hire their friends characters to party with them in an asynchronous manner. That is to say, the computer animates the characters rather than players behind a keyboard. Other social features include the usual gifting found in many other Facebook games, and the requirement for a certain number of friends in order to unlock portions of the game.

Players start off with a level one wizard or warrior and get sent off immediately to kill monsters, collecting experience points, coins, collectibles and equipment along the way, hiring friends as needed to defeat stronger boss monsters. All action is simple point-and-click, and an energy gauge restricts the amount of actions a player can perform in a certain amount of time. Players can refill the gauge with potions by waiting or consuming potions that can be purchased with soft currency, hard currency, or gifted by friends. Character customization is another big part of the MapleStory experience brought to MapleStory: Adventures. All equipment items have unique appearances and the better the equipment, the more fanciful and colorful it looks.

Maple Story: Adventures is live as of today with full monetization in place. During our session with the game during its closed beta, we observed that the developer means to monetize the energy gauge as well as the character customization. Additional monetization comes from virtual items like keys to open treasure chests and scrolls for skill improvements — though, like energy refills, these items can be gifted between friends.

At Casual Connect in Seattle, we spoke with Nexon Vice President of Business Development Won Il Sue about the developer’s goals for the title. Though Nexon has invested in social game developer A Bit Lucky, Sue says that MapleStory: Adventures is not in competition with the other studio. Rather, MapleStory: Adventures is a learning exercise for Nexon aimed at putting the MapleStory franchise in front of a larger audience. The end goal, says Sue, is to link the two games either through a coupon-driven cross-promotion or perhaps through a more complex tie on the back end.

“[A Bit Lucky] is not just a financial investment but a strategic investment,” Sue tells ISG. “We can help [the developer] bring their upcoming game to the Asian market. And we can learn from them [through Lucky Train].”

So far, Nexon has learned to keep MapleStory and MapleStory: Adventures as fundamentally independent products with elements that work to their respective native platforms (e.g. the energy gauge). Sue says Nexon will be especially interested in seeing how paid items in Adventures perform compared to how those same paid items perform in the original game. At this time, Nexon does not plan to bring all paid items from the original game to Adventures.

MapleStory: Adventures enters open beta today. Interested readers can follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.