Inside Social Games

EA Buys PopCap Games in Deal Worth Up to $1.3 Billion

AJ Glasser• Jul 12th, 2011

Social Games

Rumors of PopCap Games acquisition today are confirmed as EA announces its purchase of the casual games developer for $750 million, plus earn out that could bring it up to $1.3 billion. The deal was first reported by TechCrunch a few weeks ago.

According to the press release issued by EA, the deal is scheduled to close in August. Its impact on EA’s fiscal 2012 results increases Q1 guidance from a range of $500 million to $525 million versus the original range of $460 million to $500 million of non-GAAP revenue. For the full-year non-GAAP guidance, EA is amending its original figures of $3.75 billion to $3.95 billion to a range of $3.8 billion to $4.025 billion to account for PopCap’s contributions to the remainder of the fiscal year.

During a press conference call on the matter, EA CEO John Riccitiello and CFO Eric Brown joined PopCap CEO David Roberts in laying out the strategy behind the deal and what we can expect from it.

On the money side, the bottom line is that PopCap — while expensive — is worth the money. It relieves EA of the burden of creating new intellectual property for casual games, it strengthens EA’s content offerings on Origin and Pogo, and it cements EA’s position on Facebook as the number two developer behind Zynga. EA expects PopCap to be accretive 10 cents or greater in fiscal year 2013. The brunt of the costs for the acquisition will show up in Q2 FY 2012, when EA was already planning on taking a hit in marketing costs for big-ticket Q3 game releases.

On the content side, EA believes its doing PopCap a favor by outsourcing certain parts of the development process (such as updating games for new mobile devices) to its other studios. This frees up the creative people at PopCap to actually be creative in developing new games or new IP. EA also brings additional support to PopCap in Asia, where the casual games developer recently launched its Plants vs. Zombies franchise on social network Renren.

Now that PopCap belongs to a public company, we expect to get a better look at its earnings — particularly broken out by platform. No new information on PopCap’s revenues for 2010 or 2011 were provided on this call and Riccitiello declined to get into specifics, citing EA’s upcoming earnings call as the source for that information. As for clues to upcoming PopCap game releases in social and mobile, Riccitiello says that fear of ambush prevents them from discussing any title releases in detail.

“For good or for bad, our proposition going forward is to provide less visibility on what’s in the mobile social pipeline,” he says.

Trip Hawkins Talks Feudal System, Forging a “Republic of Gaming” Through Browsers

AJ Glasser• Jul 12th, 2011

Social Games

Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins spoke at GamesBeat today with VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi on the topic of browser gaming trumping the app market through the power of discovery technology and digital disruption.

High points from the talk included a characterization of the traditional video games market as a feudal system where platform-makers like Nintendo held all the power and the developers were forced to “till dirt they didn’t own” with the games they made for the platforms. Hawkins argues that as social and mobile game development first converges and then expands into a cross-platform environment that developers will need to think critically about “who owns the dirt.” The only real way to break free of the feudal system that currently controls the console video games market, he says, is to develop games for browser — which can then be played almost anywhere on any Internet-enabled device.

“The days of being able to float your boat on one platform are over,” Hawkins tells Takahashi. “There is a path out of this, which is to focus more on the browser. Browser has the opportunity to be the big winner.”

The key, it seems, is discovery technologies. Hawkins believes that the current model of app stores and marketplaces isn’t working and that developers are better off investing in engineering and marketing that will bring users to them at a lower cost than what they can currently get. He mentions almost as an aside the rapidly growing interest in streaming game services like OnLive and in the evolving markup language of HTML5.

As time ran out on the session, however, Hawkins returns to idea that developers need to fight hard not to fall into the trap of relying on a platform to deliver their games. Rather, developers should always be thinking multiplatform, should seek out ways to create new discovery methods, and look for cooperation and collective bargaining power from other developers to better relations with platform owners.

Social Point’s Flying Dog Gets by on Bare Bones Gameplay

Randy Nelson• Jul 11th, 2011

Social Games

Flying Dog is an arcade style game from Social Empires developer Social Point. Following a $3.4 million round of funding raised by the Barcelona-based studio, the game saw an uptake in both daily and monthly active users that has it on track to reach or exceed its all-time high.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Flying Dog currently has 734,083 monthly active users and 47,787 daily active users.

In Flying Dog, the player uses an elephant’s trunk to fling the titular Dog skyward in effort to fly as far as possible. This feat is performed by “grabbing” the trunk using the mouse and quickly swiping, releasing the mouse button to set the dog’s launch angle. Based on the dog’s momentum and angle when it lands, it’ll bounce back up into the air until finally running out of speed. Colorful frogs appear randomly and, if hit, serve to spring the dog further into the air than simply hitting the ground would. Four power-ups are also available: a reactor, which makes the dog fly farther; wings, which make him fall more slowly; rockets, which initially send him flying higher; and snakes, which take the place of — and are bouncier than — frogs.

The game seeks to incentivize players by rewarding them with free items for Liking the game and inviting friends. Flying Dog also has a leaderboard for comparing your score against friends also playing the game. Social Point monetizes the game through the direct purchase of the aforementioned power-ups using PayPal and credit cards as funding sources, which isn’t in line with Facebook’s requirement that all games use Facebook Credits for payment. In fact, we don’t see any Facebook Credits options at all in Flying Dog’s payment options — although Social Point’s Social Empires monetizes through Facebook Credits.

The company had not responded to our request for comment on this by post time, so we’re not sure if Flying Dog will see any sort of content updates. We observe that the game’s Wall is a collection of messages encouraging visitors to play the game mixed with a copious amount of spam comments. Even so, the simple mechanics clearly have enough appeal to maintain over 40,000 DAU for almost an entire month. Similar games, like Apollo 69, haven’t been able to retain half as many users.

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

Pet Tales Makes Caring for Puppies and Kittens a Walk in the Park on Facebook

Randy Nelson• Jul 11th, 2011

Social Games

Developed by Rivet Games, Pet Tales is a combination of pet collecting and world management for Facebook. The game is a visual offspring of FooPets, a previous title from the developer (then called FooMoo), that offered meticulously rendered, lifelike animals.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Pet Tales currently has 765,132 monthly active users and 86,470 daily active users.

The gameplay in Pet Tales is split into two components. The first is adopting and caring for a pet. From the outset, players can choose to adopt a puppy or kitten from one of several breeds. Dogs available include dalmatian, rottweiler, golden retriever, beagle and chihuahua breeds. For cats, the initial breeds include American longhair, calico, white shorthair, Maine coon and Persian. Once the player has chosen and names their pet, they’re given the opportunity to pet them (by moving the mouse pointer over them), feed them, give them water and play with them.

After establishing these basics — keeping your puppy or kitten happy and healthy is the core goal of the game — it introduces a more involved world management aspect that incorporates decoration, tasks to complete and various social mechanics. The player is given a dilapidated parcel of park land and must begin by ridding it of gopher holes, weeds and dead leaves, which expends energy. Once the park is cleaned up, the game tasks players with buying and placing various decorative and play items, which, like the park itself, must be regularly maintained. Some examples include park benches, water sprinklers, sun mats and fire hydrants. Pets can interact with some of these items, rewarding the player with coins and other rewards. Ultimately, players can adopt more than one pet, and their furry family can share the lushly landscaped park their master has created.

Social elements come into play at this point. In addition to random, computer-controlled animals, the player’s park is visited to pets belonging to their friends who are playing the game. These visiting canines and felines can be interacted with, which rewards the player with coins and increases their confidence level. Pets can also be sent on “play dates” with friends’ animals, which produce awards and more self confidence. Friends’ parks can be visited directly and interacted with in order to speed up tasks, and there’s a leaderboard that compares the player’s experience level to that of their friends. Additionally, players can send and receive gifts from friends and can place items that allow for social interaction, such as a guest book friends can sign when they visit.

Pet Tales is monetized through the purchase of in-game items and “instant achievement” of goals using two premium currencies, Coins and Bucks, which can be purchased using Facebook credits. At first glance, it appears that PayPal and credit cards can be used to purchase the currency — which would violate Facebook’s policy of only allowing the use of Facebook Credits. The payment process eventually leads to players buying Facebook Credits, however, which are directly converted into Bucks and Coins, effectively keeping players’ money in Pet Tales rather in Facebook Credits that can be used elsewhere.

Rivet Games could not comment on its plans for expanding or enhancing Pet Tales in the future, but the title is receiving new content in the form of themed items on a regular basis.

Pet Tales has seen steady growth since its relaunch [launch?] in early June, likely in large part because of its endearing, realistic pets, varied tasks for players to complete and robust social features. Plus, who can say “no” to a pair of virtual puppy eyes?

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

Perfect Getaway Sets Sail on Facebook With Service Industry Sim

AJ Glasser• Jul 11th, 2011

Social Games

Perfect Getaway is a resort cruise simulation game for Facebook from massively multiplayer online developer Perfect World Entertainment. The game got off to a rough launch several months ago, but appears to have blossomed into an official launch early this month that landed it on our weekly growth charts.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Perfect Getaway currently has 622,926 monthly active users and 66,453 daily active users.

The game casts players in the role of captain of a cruise ship that services a variety of regions across the globe. Early stages of the game have players setting sail between North Atlantic island destinations such as Cuba and Jamaica. Players much manage passengers’ satisfaction levels by supply entertainment, food, and the occasional mood activity boost like “Whale Sighting” or “Captain’s Announcement.” Individual attractions like food stands and lounge chairs can be harvested like crops to gain experience points, energy, and “leisure,” which is a sort of secondary soft currency.

The leisure currency creates a strange challenge to the game. You need it to supply food stands and you can only generate it through harvesting attractions, but your total capacity of leisure is limited by how many decorations you’ve placed on your deck. This creates an awkward trade-off where players have to sacrifice deck space on their ship for decorations instead of placing leisure-generating attractions or primary soft currency-generating food stands.

The primary game mechanic appears to be balancing cruise time with the amount of currency and energy available to keep passengers happy. Each cruise costs a certain amount of soft currency and a “stardust” item that can be obtained for premium currency or as a gift from friends. Cruise length determines how much XP and other rewards a player gets for completing a cruise — and the longer the cruise, the more energy and soft currency the player winds up spending to keep passengers happy.

Social features appear limited to hiring friends to work the food stands and visiting friends’ ships to harvest their attractions and food stands. Friends do not need to agree to work said stands, so there is no “friend gate” preventing a player from progressing through the game in the early stages. Additional cruise destinations require question completion, which may or may not call for recruiting friends to play the game.

As for monetization, Perfect Getaway offers a premium currency called Anchors in exchange for Facebook Credits. Anchors can be used to purchase better decorations and attractions as well as customizable features for players’ captain characters. They can also be used to complete a cruise instantly. At time of press, the pay flow is a bit confusing as it appears as though the game is still accepting PayPal and credit card payments for Anchors — which would be a violation of Facebook’s updated terms of service that require social games to accept only Facebook Credits as a means of payment. As it turns out, however, progressing through several screens of payments eventually yields a transaction of PayPal or credit card to buy Facebook Credits, which are then converted to Anchors. It’s an interesting pay flow that may help the developer keep its audience’s Facebook Credits entirely within Perfect Getaway as opposed to potentially selling a player Facebook Credits that the player might go and spend on other social games besides Perfect Getaway.

Representatives from Perfect World Entertainment did not comment on Perfect Getaway’s future features, though they were clear about the use of Facebook Credits in the game. We observe that the game recently added a Far East destination content update that introduces Asian themed items and locations. Similar content releases are likely in the game’s future.

The broadly defined genre of service industry simulation can range from running a theme park to managing a business, but we find that these games tend to fall more in the restaurant simulation category than anything. After all — whether you’re visiting a fair in the woods or setting sail to the Bahamas, people need to eat. Nevertheless, Perfect Getaway appears different enough from competing titles like Ravenwood Fair to have attracted attention. The fact that its a vacation-themed game released in the middle of summer probably makes it more attractive.

You can follow Perfect Getaway’s progress on Facebook using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

My Country Lets Players Build Nations, Game Builds Impressive User Base

Randy Nelson• Jul 11th, 2011

Social Games

My Country, a nation-building game developed by European social game developer innoWate, is making some waves on our growth charts as 6waves continues its publishing arrangement with the studio. The game appears to have soft-launched in early June ahead of an official launch somewhere around the 17 of that month.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, My Country currently has 805,493 monthly active users and 44,489 daily active users.

As the city-building genre becomes saturated, various games have had introduce gameplay components to set themselves apart from Zynga’s juggernaut, CityVille. My Country focuses on micro-management of the buildings and businesses that players create in addition to the traditional expansion of their nations. Players are tasked with establishing businesses — a taxi cab company, for instance, under the Transportation category — then must expend energy to open them, upgrade existing buildings in order to earn the components to (in this case) hire a taxi driver (a Professional) and eventually establish contracts that will bring in cash over a period of time.

Everything that is built adds to a country’s overall value, and upgrading buildings enables them to house more residents. The game uses an experience point system that allows players to level up, with each new level offering a variety of new content from businesses such as water parks to cosmetic features.

Social integration resembles that of other city-builders where players can visit friends’ countries in order to help them achieve accomplishments. The game keeps track of players’ standing among their friends based on level, population and overall value of their countries.

My Country is monetized through the sale of items and gameplay boosts that can be used for everything from accelerating construction to purchasing items to expanding players’ countries and “forcing” friends to become neighbors, and through the sale of the game’s soft currency. Facebook Credits is also used as a premium currency, but there is an additional sort of currency called “Magical Gems” which, when found, temporarily increase the percentage of in-game dollars players can receive in exchange for Facebook Credits.

At time of writing, 6waves could not be reached to talk about its plans for the immediate and long-term future of My Country, but we know the publisher is committed to international releases for each of its titles. We expect to see this game’s MAU and DAU rise in conjunction with releases to new territories as its localized for new languages.

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

Empires & Allies Battles Global Warfare on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU

AJ Glasser• Jul 11th, 2011

Social Games

Zynga’s Empires & Allies does direct combat with Kabam’s Global Warfare on this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games by monthly active users. Digital Chocolate’s competing strategy game, Army Attack, drops out of the growth race with a steady 5 million MAU to its name.

It may not be the end of the strategy Facebook game wars, however, as Playdom still means to release what sounds like a competing game called City of Might. A glance at previews for the game make it look somewhat more like Global Warfare than Empires & Allies, however.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Empires & Allies	51,099,704	+2,670,437	+6%
2.	Global Warfare	3,651,969	+1,355,005	+59%
3.	It Girl	7,426,364	+912,624	+14%
4.	inFAMOUS Anarchy	2,166,304	+783,884	+57%
5.	Gardens of Time	14,723,939	+567,791	+4%
6.	Zoo World	4,294,109	+558,259	+15%
7.	Kingdoms of Camelot	1,871,131	+540,713	+41%
8.	Pool Master	1,858,518	+462,818	+33%
9.	Bubble Island	9,237,740	+422,433	+5%
10.	Glory of Rome	1,715,410	+408,779	+31%
11.	Social Empires	2,512,506	+392,222	+18%
12.	Trial Madness	1,699,670	+381,543	+29%
13.	Perro Saltarín	1,581,235	+375,245	+31%
14.	المزرعة السعيدة	400,451	+371,177	+1,268%
15.	Revienta el teclado	1,466,524	+368,478	+34%
16.	Perfect Getaway	622,926	+312,877	+101%
17.	Cooking Mama	1,270,209	+307,912	+32%
18.	Mahjong Zen	1,275,498	+301,556	+31%
19.	Shadow Fight	1,161,522	+262,136	+29%
20.	Monster World	8,376,567	+258,112	+3%

Meanwhile, several other Kabam titles continue to make our weekly rankings charts as the developer expands its audience. With 11 known games now live on Facebook, its overall MAU is up 27% in the last week to 11.7 million as of today while daily active users rose 22% to 1.1 million in the same time period. Looks like that $85 million fourth round of funding is being put to use.

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

Inside Social Games• Jul 10th, 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.

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Friday, July 8th, 2011

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

Monday, July 4th, 2011

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

Zynga’s IPO Means More Visible Feedback for Facebook’s Platform Product and Policy Teams

Monday, July 4th, 2011

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Friday, July 8th, 2011

New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: King.Com, Tagged, PopCap and More

Inside Social Games• Jul 9th, 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 King.com, Tagged, PopCap Games, SponsorPay, Zen Entertainment Dynamic Signal and Pontiflex.

Director Publisher Relations Europe (m/f)

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.

A Closer Look at Restaurant City and Pet Society on iOS

AJ Glasser• Jul 8th, 2011

Social Games

Pet Society: Vacation’s Facebook Integration

In Pet Society: Vacation players decorate and care for both their pet and the pet’s boathouse on a tropical island. The player can also visit themed stores to buy food and decorative items, and visit friends’ boathouses to care for their pets. A diving mini-game lets player guide their pet through an underwater maze in search of more currency and decoration items.

The only content that is transferrable between the Facebook and iOS versions are the physical characteristics of their pet. Money is not transferable as the Facebook game uses Facebook Credits while Vacation uses Apple’s in-app payments system. There are, however, rewards for players who use both version of the game. iOS players can unlock content for the Facebook version and Facebook players get rewards when they first download the iOS version. More advanced players coming from the Facebook edition get a currency bonus and a trophy item in Vacation. As they progress through the iOS game, they’ll also unlock themed items in the Facebook version.

Restaurant City: Gourmet Edition’s Lack of Facebook Integration

Restaurant City will come to iOS in a faithful port of the Facebook game subtitled “Gourmet Edition.” Though the game uses Facebook Connect to find friends, it does not have integration with its Facebook parent.

In Gourmet Edition, players follow the same gameplay pattern established in the original — learning recipes, cooking meals, serving customers. Progression is rated by “themes” that the player unlocks as they become more skilled in recipes and satisfy more customers. The themes are oriented by country (e.g. French, Japanese, etc.) and contain both recipes and decoration items for the restaurant venue. Players can visit each others’ restaurants for light socialization and the game is monetized both through a premium currency and a standard currency to spend on decoration items.

> Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.