Inside Social Games

Mahjong Saga, Gourmet Ranch, Global Warfare Top This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU

AJ Glasser• Jul 25th, 2011

Social Games

RockYou Playdemic’s Gourmet Ranch surges toward the top of this week’s list of fastest-growing games by monthly active users, beat out only by King.com’s just-launched Mahjong Saga. Global Warfare, Zoo World 2 (here shown as Zoo World), and a new-ish Texas Hold ‘Em Poker game round out the top five.

Last week, we heard from RockYou CEO Lisa Marino on the changes Gourmet Ranch is undergoing. Currently, the game serves as a guinea pig for the publisher’s new ad platform. It also recently received a content update that adds exotic animals to the marketplace.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Mahjong Saga	1,876,231	+1,035,266	+123%
2.	Gourmet Ranch	2,370,949	+575,151	+32%
3.	Global Warfare	4,767,343	+550,285	+13%
4.	Zoo World	4,741,847	+396,633	+9%
5.	The Pokerist club — Texas Poker	835,558	+392,625	+89%
6.	Gardens of Time	15,636,971	+379,307	+2%
7.	Kingdoms of Camelot	2,481,833	+278,890	+13%
8.	Shadow Fight	1,618,476	+267,012	+20%
9.	Cooking Mama	1,684,143	+241,946	+17%
10.	Social Empires	2,984,983	+240,950	+9%
11.	Animal Party	900,139	+219,998	+32%
12.	inFAMOUS Anarchy	2,620,256	+204,310	+8%
13.	Addicting Games	1,592,229	+193,826	+14%
14.	DoubleDown Casino	2,149,761	+185,041	+9%
15.	Bubble Saga	7,214,243	+182,840	+3%
16.	Millionaire Boss	350,149	+181,477	+108%
17.	المزرعة السعيدة	866,888	+172,362	+25%
18.	Super Mario 3	771,510	+166,277	+27%
19.	Battle Pirates	1,120,534	+149,041	+15%
20.	Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy	492,192	+138,328	+39%

At number 19 is Kixeye’s Battle Pirates, which finally seems to be getting some attention almost four months after launch. The game suffered from some technical difficulties early on that likely discouraged the developer from promoting the game too heavily. With Kixeye’s newest game due out before the end of the summer, however, now might be the time to promote Battle Pirates in order to grow an audience ripe for cross-promotion.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

This Week’s Headlines From Across Inside Network

Christopher Mack• Jul 24th, 2011

Social Games

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 18th, 2011

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

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

Monday, July 18th, 2011

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, July 18th, 2011

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Ubisoft, Spooky Cool Labs, Metamoki, Kabam and More

Inside Social Games• Jul 23rd, 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 Ubisoft, Spooky Cool Labs, Social Point, LeadBolt, Context Optional, Metamoki, Inc., Glu Mobile and Kabam.

Game Server Engineer

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: Mergers, Funding, Azure Toolkit, PlayPhone, & More

Christopher Mack• Jul 22nd, 2011

Android, Business, casual, Connect, Electronic Arts, facebook, international, iphone, Mobile

Amazon Moves Into Social Games — IndustryGamers reports that RPG game designer Jonathan Tweet has been hired by Amazon for what could be the social games job they wanted to fill back in May. Details aren’t immediately clear, nor has there been any announcement of a Google-developed social game.

Azure Toolkit for Social Games — A preview of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games has been made available this week. Through the new toolkit, developers will be able to more easily build social games on the Windows Azure platform, and includes accelerators, libraries, developer tools, and samples tailored to .NET and HTML5 games. It also supports leaderboards, user profiles, and in-app purchases.

Unilever Enters Social Gaming Through FarmVille — Unilever has entered the social gaming space with its LUX brand via the Chinese version of FarmVille this week. Through the social game, they have launched a limited-edition event dubbed “LUX Fantastical Manor,” which was created by advertising agency JWT and Zynga for Unilever. The one-month event will allow users to decorate their farms with various LUX-branded beauty items.

PlayPhone Signs Top Chinese Mobile Developers — Mobile entertainment content distributor PlayPhone announced at the Casual Connect conference this week that it has signed a deal with two of the largest Chinese mobile game developers, China Wireless Arts and Magic Universe. Through the partnership, the former will bring their title “Journey to Egypt” to Android for the PlayPhone Social patform. The latter is to incorporate the MMOG “Latent Dragon” for Android as well.

Social Gamers Plant 25,000 Trees — Talkie CEO Chris Swain issued the “Plant a Real Forest Challenge,” in association with Conservation International and Trees for the Future to Ecotopia players last month. The challenge had players planing 25,000 trees, in-game, in 25 days. For each in-game tree, Talkie committed to planting a real life within the Guaranta, Promissão Reunidas, Promissão Dandara and Arco Iris communities in São Paulo, Brazil.

[Launch] Pet Society Vacations Hits iOS — Playfish has expanded its Pet Society title into iOS with the launch of Pet Society Vacations. The new title is free-to-play and allows users to take their virtual pets off to island paradises, customizing their very own houseboat.

Playdom’s Next Title: Galaxy of Wonder — It looks like Playdom is expanding into the stars with its City of Wonder IP. Earlier this week, the company posted a teaser trailer on YouTube entitled Galaxy of Wonder. The developer’s newest game, City of Might, is expected to launch in the coming weeks.

Diversion Raises Series B Funding, Signs $1M deal with Sony Pictures — In a press release sent out today, L.A.-based social gaming startup Diversion has raised a second round of funding from TomorrowVentures, Hearst Corporation, and The Tornante Company. The amount of the funding has not been disclosed, but the Fame Town developer also signed a $1 million advertising deal with Sony Pictures. Its newest game, The A-List, just launched last week.

Quepasa & myYearbook Merge — Social games developer and social network owner Quepasa Corporation announced a merger with social mobile platform myYearbook. The $100 million deal ($82 million in Quepasa common stock and $18 million cash) will effectively double the pair’s user base with over 70 million registered users for the web, 2.2 million mobile instalss, 11.5 million mobile game installs, 2.1 million social game installs, and a consolidated TTM revenue and EBITDA of $33.6 million and $5.9 million respectively.

[Announcement] Double Down Adds Social Slot Tournaments to Facebook Game — Social and casual games developer Double Down Interactive has announced the introduction of “Social Slot Tournaments” within its Facebook title DoubleDown Casino. The new feature is available on all 10 of the slot machines in the social game, allowing 100 players to compete against each other with the top 10 earning virtual currency prizes.

[Announcement] Arkadium Opens Mobile Gaming Headquarters in Toronto — Casual games developer Arkadium has announced that it is expanding once again, this time opening a new mobile gaming studio in Toronto, Canada. Focusing on HTML5 and iOS titles, the new studio is slated to bring ten new games to market over the next year.

StreetRally Rolls Off of the Assembly Line Onto Facebook

Randy Nelson• Jul 22nd, 2011

Social Games

StreetRally is an arcade-style racing game for Facebook developed by Hypester. With the racing genre only just beginning to pick up speed on Facebook, this alpha-state game is an interesting case study in the challenge of adapting traditional racing game mechanics to the platform.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, StreetRally currently has 2,164 monthly active users and 157 daily active users.

Similar to “rally” style arcade racing games made popular in the 1980s, StreetRally has players controlling a car from a birds-eye view. The keyboard’s directional keys are used for steering, accelerating and braking; left/right, up and down, respectively. Pressing the shift key activates a nitrous boost, which only lasts for a limited amount of time but recharges when not in use. True to the “Rally” in its title, the game pits players against the clock, rather than directly against friends or computer-controlled opponents. Players must race through checkpoints as quickly as possible for a set number of laps across several courses. The time taken to complete the race is shared via a global leaderboard, with options to compare it against friends’ best times. Trophies can also be unlocked for completing races under certain conditions.

Several licensed car brands are available for purchase with the game’s soft currency, including Honda’s Civic, Nissan’s 370Z and the classic Chevy Firebird. Winnings from races can be used to purchase upgrades, including visual deals like window tint, decals and rims; engine & transmission such as filters, radiators, turbo-chargers; suspension parts; tires & brakes; exhaust and nitrous.

Social features include friend invites, Wall updates based on performance and trophies, a chat lobby and the ability to post challenges to friends inviting them to beat your best times on specific tracks. The latter takes the place of real-time, head to head racing.

StreetRally currently isn’t monetized beyond its soft currency, coins, which are earned by performing well in races and spent on cars and upgrades. “We are planning on monetizing our game via Facebook credit but that won’t happen in the near future,” Hypester’s Martin Tuvi tells ISG. “The idea is that after the game has been fully developed and launched and also spread enough then we will add new cars, car parts and other features to the game which will be buyable with Facebook Credits.”

As for additional features to be added in the near future, Tuvi says that drifting and pursuit features will be available in the live beta version. “We’re also developing a drag race feature and a precision driving race type,” he adds, the latter referring to a increasingly popular motorsport known as Gymkhana. According to Tuvi, these modes are almost ready to roll out in a game update. In the longer-term, Hypester is planning to implement a full racing league feature in StreetRally that will allow players to progress from amateur to professional while competing against other similarly skill drivers.

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

Google+ and Social Games: What We Know So Far

AJ Glasser• Jul 22nd, 2011

Social Games

Everybody has assumed for many months that Google was working on its own social gaming platform of some sort and now that Google+ is live, we’re beginning to see what some of the features for its games platform might be.

The first is the obvious tool set for developers. Hints in the source code point to API calls that replicate what social game developers can already do on Facebook to generate friend invites. Today, sharp-eyed readers of tech blog Slash Gear caught mention in a Google help page of APIs that allow developers to post to a Games Stream, such as “/_/games/getGameFriends”, “/_/games/getActivities” and “/_/games/postToStream” — that help article has since been removed.

The second is payment methods. Google Checkout now offers a Checkout for the Web option that allows developers to collect payments for virtual goods from within a game. This isn’t that much of a surprise as Google acquired virtual currency service developer Jambool apparently for the purpose of integrating its Social Gold in-app payments experience with Google’s infrastructure. That payments API launched in May.

The final component is the mystery of developer relations. Plenty of Facebook social game developers have expressed enthusiasm about working with Google+ as a games platform and we know that Google already has its own in-house social game developer in the form of Superpoke Pets! developer Slide. It was also recently revealed that Google did indeed invest in Zynga. Even if the FarmVille developer gets some kind of edge from the funding, social game developers have every reason to be excited about bringing games to Google+ once the platform is open to third parties. If nothing else, it lends them more negotiating room with Facebook for better terms.

Kixeye’s Next RTS, War Commander, Due Out in August

AJ Glasser• Jul 22nd, 2011

Social Games

Yesterday at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle, Kixeye developers Paul Preece and David Scott gave a small preview of the company’s next real-time strategy game, War Commander, due out in August.

War Commander is a military-themed game set in a modern era with a higher degree of realism than Kixeye’s preceding games, Battle Pirates and Backyard Monsters. The game also implements more traditional RTS gameplay mechanics established in classic games like Command & Conquer; the ability to select and control individual units or drag the cursor over a group of units to select and control them, for example. Players will have access to 27 different unit types at launch.

Kixeye’s history on Facebook is a strangely low-key one for a developer whose games are all about blowing stuff up. Back when the company was still calling itself Casual Collective, it took a cautious approach to the Facebook platform by designing Backyard Monsters for a wide audience with cutesy graphics married to well-balanced combat. About six months ago, Kixeye decided to “get hard,” as Preece and Scott put it, ditching the cutesy look for edgier monsters and a persistent world where the damage players did to one another didn’t just vanish into a pop-up notification of “So-and-so attacked your base.” As a result, the game went from being 40% female to 96% male and now has excellent retention despite shrinking overall in monthly active users.

Battle Pirates, meanwhile, was aimed at a male audience from launch. Like the revamped Backyard Monsters, the world was persistent and players could attack each other at any time after a tutorial period expired. Preece and Scott report emergent gameplay behavior from Battle Pirates players where they will work together to coordinate attacks on bases. We’ve also personally experienced Battle Pirates players policing themselves for bad behavior (i.e. griefing), though Kixeye does have systems in place to prevent players from picking on each other too much. The game has never enjoyed Backyard Monsters’ size, but it has shown steady overall growth in MAU and daily active users in the last 90 days.

Animal Party, Digital Chocolate’s Millionaire Boss Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

AJ Glasser• Jul 22nd, 2011

Social Games

Tribal Crossing’s 6waves Lolapps-published Animal Party tops our list of emerging Facebook games this week while a new game from developer Digital Chocolate makes its debut at number two after almost two weeks of life on the platform.

The success of Animal Party highlights the growing field of social game publishing. Just this week alone, publisher 6waves merged with developer Lolapps to expand its offerings with the Fliso game engine while RockYou CEO Lisa Marino explained her company’s expanded approach to publisher-developer relations. It seems as user acquisition costs rise and quality of gameplay becomes more sophisticated, more indie developers feel the need to partner up to get their games out there.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Animal Party	854,405	+261,471	+44%
2.	Millionaire Boss	285,505	+163,501	+134%
3.	แฮปปี้เบบี้	956,055	+146,760	+18%
4.	Perfect Getaway	857,160	+125,585	+17%
5.	The Pokerist club — Texas Poker	540,241	+125,385	+30%
6.	Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy	444,396	+123,790	+39%
7.	المزرعة السعيدة	751,522	+122,819	+20%
8.	Super Mario 3	693,689	+119,164	+21%
9.	La Granja	622,025	+115,641	+23%
10.	Bopler Games, Play with hits!	199,209	+101,836	+105%
11.	小小忍者 – 動漫主題網頁遊戲巔峰鉅作	495,387	+89,523	+22%
12.	Bingo Island	863,163	+88,964	+11%
13.	麻將─新明星3缺1網頁遊戲免費的麻將遊戲	470,467	+75,199	+19%
14.	Happy Oasis	125,337	+66,180	+112%
15.	Six Gun Galaxy	200,730	+65,327	+48%
16.	Punch Punch Revolution	356,326	+63,787	+22%
17.	The Island: Castaway	133,560	+57,923	+77%
18.	DDTank	580,341	+53,292	+10%
19.	Smeet	664,030	+51,704	+8%
20.	Mercenaries of War	189,613	+47,720	+34%

Millionaire Boss is a corporate culture simulation with almost sarcastically cute graphics and music that characterize the world of paper-pushing as colorful and upbeat. Players take the role of an up-and-coming CEO tasked with staffing an office and assigning busywork. Completing goals nets the player soft currency to spend on upgrading workers and customizing the office. A hiring friends system makes up the bulk of the social interactions, but friends do not have to agree to join the game in order for a player to use them as office workers. Full review to follow.

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.

KlickNation Grows Futuristic Wild West Social Game Six Gun Galaxy

Carolyn Koh• Jul 21st, 2011

Social Games

Six Gun Galaxy is KlickNation’s latest offering in the Facebook arena, a fully 3-D Role-Playing Game set in a post-apocalypse future earth which has declined to a frontier society.

According to our data tracking service AppData, Six Gun Galaxy currently has over 200,000 monthly active users and 22,000 daily active users.

Six Gun Galaxy is complex enough that KlickNation released a Wiki to inform players how the various skills, attributes, statistics and modifications (cybernetic implants) work in the game. The Wiki also helps players make choices in the avatar they choose to play as well as the allies they recruit, for otherwise, the information is not available in the game.

The game has an engaging storyline, interesting characters and a graphical style that evokes the intended visceral, gritty feel. The game features are tied quite nicely into the social features of the game. Players build a town to earn cash that allows them to buy equipment, modifications and also recruit allies. Friends visit each other’s towns to earn cash and energy rewards, and friends can also choose to either fortify a building or rob it.

Apart from quests and combat with in-story enemies, players at level 10 can begin to challenge other players in a “rival” system in an asynchronous manner that earns them experience, cash and respect, which is a measure of their prowess and puts them on a Player vs Player ladder. Respect also acts as a different form of currency that is used to buy allies that are part of the player’s combat team.

Six Gun Galaxy monetizes by selling Platinum which can be used to purchase energy refills for actions, stamina refills for PvP or equipment and allies. It is to be noted that KlickNation is still tweaking the prices of some of the items; currently, the most powerful items in game are Platinum only, and these can be four times or more powerful than any other similar level equipment purchased with in-game cash.

Combat is turn based and can be frustrating as they are die-roll based, so an unlucky miss and a critical hit occurring between opponents usually means sure failure on side, especially in the early levels. Also, there isn’t a way to gauge the strength of the enemies wandering around the maps. Engaging in combat takes you to a separate screen where there could be more than one higher level opponent and a second wave as well.

KlickNation will no doubt continue to improve on the game and populate the Wiki with information currently missing, but the game is compelling enough that we see a slow but steady climb in MAU.

Interested readers can follow the progress of Six Gun Galaxy with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

ESPN Sports Bar & Grill Serves Up Team Spirit

Randy Nelson• Jul 21st, 2011

Social Games

ESPN Sports Bar & Grill is a restaurant management simulation in the vein of Café World, with a strong focus on sports fandom and ESPN integration. Disney Playdom officially launched the game this week after a period of live beta testing.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, ESPN Sports Bar & Grill currently has 45,617 monthly active users and 15,740 daily active users.

ESPN Sports Bar & Grill shares some similarities with Diner Dash and Playboy Party. Players take the role of an aspiring sports bar owner. Before opening for business, they must choose which sports franchise they want their establishment to be associated with from a selection of real-world clubs and teams. The basic gameplay revolves around setting up food and drink services such as peanuts, pizza, popcorn, beer and cocktails, and serving customers. The game rewards players with coins and experience for completing customer orders. Successfully completing “chains” of subsequent orders provides a boost in earnings. Customers will become irritated if unserved for too long, or become drunk after too many drinks, which necessitates them being “booted” by the bar owner.

Players can increase the revenue and popularity of their bar by expanding its size, decorating its interior, adding better facilities and airing ESPN programming (various games) on television. A variety of ESPN and team-branded fixtures and decorations – posters, floor decals, and the like – are available for players to use in creating the ultimate fan hangout. There are also a number of unique items that, when found, complete “collections.” Building these and finding all of the items in a collection rewards players with large amounts of coins.

Social aspects of the game include the ability to visit friends’ bars and become MVPs by sitting in special seats (players can also place these in their bars), or working in a friends’ bar to serve food and drink to patrons. Players can also send and receive gifts and share their accomplishments via viral channels. There is also a “trade box” where players can place items they’d like to part with in exchange for those added to their “wish lists.” A detailed leaderboard is built into the game, as well.

ESPN Sports Bar & Grill is monetized through a soft currency called coins and a premium currency, bucks. Coins purchase basic restaurant appliances and decorations, while bucks can purchase almost any item, plus power-ups. The power-ups can be used to boost the reputation of the establishment for a limited period, double tips, speed up serving and other bonuses. Some items cannot be purchased until players have reached a sufficient rank. Bucks are purchased via Facebook Credits.

As the game has just launched, Playdom is focused on ironing out any remaining major bugs. A feature we expect to see develop as various sports leagues’ seasons progress is the Game Predictor mode where players can earn rewards for successfully predicting the outcome of upcoming real life sports events. This is similar to the game predictor integrated in MLB Superstars.

You can follow ESPN Sports Bar & Grill’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.