Between the two companies, Namco and Bandai have a rich history of established video games from which to draw ideas for Facebook products. The now-merged developer/publisher that is Namco Bandai this year brought one its oldest brands, Pac-Man, to Facebook in two separate games. Though unique, both serve as a way to test the social game audience and Pac-Man’s own fanbase.

The first game, Pac-Man, is a faithful rendition of the original arcade game. Users move the titular yellow character around a maze, consuming dots and bonus items while trying to avoid ghosts or to eat the ghosts after consuming a special flashing dot. The game monetizes almost in the same way as the classic arcade product with the user “inserting” Facebook Credits to continue the game if they run out of lives while playing. There is leaderboard support. Read the full review.

The second game, Pac-Man S, is a product that introduces power-ups and also uses leaderboards as a means to monetize and encourage socialization. Players still control the game in much the same way, but play is limited to two minutes in which time the player must score as many points as possible. The power-ups directly affect total score, which in turn impacts player rankings. Read the full review.

Carlson Choi, Namco Bandai’s VP of Marketing, tells us that though one game is considerably smaller than the other in overall size and the smaller game is still missing some key elements, Pac-Man’s introduction to Facebook is a successful learning experience for the company.

“We took a lot of time when we first looked at the project and we decided on two different approaches,” he says. “One is the classic Pac-Man everyone knows. Then there’s the S iteration where we want the consumer engaged using microtransactions and awards. S is really interesting for us because it’s an area where we can fail and learn from that and add an experience that make sense to the consumer. You’re going to see more things coming on S, but not on Pac-Man because we want to retain the authenticity of that product.”

Authenticity is what gives Pac-Man on Facebook the edge over its many pretender products. At 31 years old, the brand is easily recognizable even among non-gamers, as are the sound effects and music. Authenticity is also a quality that allows Namco Bandai to rely on the franchise’s existing fan base as opposed to spending resources on advertising for the game.

“We have a massive Facebook network with over 2.5 million Likes on fan Page, and we have fans from [the Google version],” Choi says. “Part of what we do instead of spending ad money is activating these fans like with rewards, discounts, or events.”

The trick there is activating those fans through promotions without spamming them. Choi says that Namco Bandai is only just now experimenting with cross-promotion within its network of social games and the company is mindful of intruding on a player’s connection to the Pac-Man brand.

“The second you start pushing people toward other brands, you upset that network of fans,” Choi says. As an avid gamer himself, he sees a player’s engagement with a game like Pac-Man as a private experience. “The last thing I want to do is intrude on the personal lives of fans. We want to maintain a balance of respect with our fans.”

Like many traditional video game developers and publishers entering the social games space, Namco Bandai is keenly aware that there is some unlearning to do around development. Its earlier Facebook offerings didn’t find traction on the platform, but they did teach Namco Bandai enough to prepare the Pac-Man S team for the process of launching a social game.

“It’s about acquiring the active consumer, so you have to change your mindset,” Choi says. “That’s the biggest trap that everyone doesn’t know about. They think they know, then they fall into it. They say ‘How much money did we make the first day?’ and you say ‘Uh, nothing. We got 10 users.’ And they [panic]. The day that you ship is the beginning of the life cycle. It’s constant optimization of play environment and play style. That is a huge change for the business model and for development resource allocation.”

Choi tells us that the plan is to continue rolling out new content to Pac-Man S while also updating DigDug S and New Rally-X S. It may also consider a version of its popular space shooter, Galaga, which turned 30 this month. Namco Bandai currently enjoys 2.3 million monthly active users and just over 100,000 daily active users, according to our traffic-tracking service AppData. More than half of this traffic comes from the classic version of Pac-Man.

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 PopCap Games, Tagged, King.com, Dynamic Signal, Pontiflex, SponsorPay and Zen Entertainment.

• Web/Graphic Designer
• Producer
• Game Developer
• Artist

• Art Director – Social Games
• 2D Graphic Artist
• Game Designer
• Creative Director – Social Games
• Product Manager – Monetization

• Game Developer
• Product Manager , Social & Mobile Games
• Business Analyst
• Business Intelligence Developer

• Front-End Engineer
• Front-End Engineer
• Product Management

• Mobile Development Associate
• Senior Systems Engineer
• Senior Systems Enginer – SF
• Linux Systems Engineer

• Director Publisher Relations Europe (m/f)

• Social Media Director
• Social Media Director
• Internet Marketing Director
• Product Marketing Director

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.

Early last month, we got a good look at Shadow Fight — a stylized martial arts combat game that’s just about ready to graduate from our weekly list of emerging Facebook games when it breaks the 1 million monthly active user mark.

Shadow Fight is a rarity among social network games in that it uses arcade style combat similar to traditional video games like Street Fighter with the keyboard substituting as an arcade game pad. A stylized animation renders the combatants in silhouette and the player can compete against friends in asynchronous bouts or “Dan” examination fights to increase their level. The game’s uniqueness gives it an edge in viral sharing as players can post the results of individual fights to each other’s walls.

According to developer Nekki Games, the game has 10 million installs across all eight social networks on which the game is currently available — Facebook, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, MoiMir, MyLife, StudiVZ, MeinVZ and SchuelerVZ. Nekki’s established experience comes mostly from browser games like 11×11. Here we interview 27-year-old Eugeniy Dyabin, the CTO of Shadow Fight at Nekki Games about the future of the game and how its success has helped the developer form its social games strategy.

Inside Social Games: Tell us a bit about how the game was developed. Did you use any special markup language or plugins to achieve the unique look and feel?

Eugeniy Dyabin: The game is built in Flash and we also developed a special engine for animation and physics. We did not use motion capture, instead we have used our own technology for a manual creation of character animations according to the laws of physics. This helped us make much more realistic animations for the game.

ISG: What new features will you add to the game over time? We know you were planning Mortal Kombat-style “fatality” moves…

Dyabin: Yes, the next feature will be fatalities. We will also add more new fighting techniques — grabs and throws, as well as an option to level-up techniques — and of course lots of new content like bosses, weapons, backgrounds, etc. We’re planning seven bosses. Players who beat them all will be able to to open the “Gates of Shadows.” But what’s inside this door is still a secret.

ISG: What’s the most popular in-game item users buy?

Dyabin: The most popular items at them moment are weapons, energy and coins. Fighting bosses will be also a big part of monetization when the number of high-level users has become bigger.

ISG: Do any of your monetization features affect the overall balance of the game? Like if we’re willing to spend Facebook Credits on Rubies, do we gain a combat advantage?

Dyabin: Actually the game is fair because the gameplay is asynchronous and players can’t directly effect each other. Players who buy [our premium currency, rubies] can play more often and achieve goals faster. Also there are unique items which can be bought only for rubies, but they don’t make the player invincible.

ISG: What made you decide on asynchronous combat? Is synchronous a mode you would ever consider adding?

Dyabin: Synchronous real-time combat over the Internet is a technical challenge. Especially in fighting games, where fast reactions and each individual move is critical. Fractions of seconds make a huge difference. Right now, players can fight with their friends in real-time if they play on [on the same computer with] one keyboard in two-player mode — but when we overcome the technical challenge, we will be happy to add a synchronous online fight mode.

ISG: How do you determine the difficulty of opponents in-game?

Dyabin: To determine the balance, we have an A.I. engine that dynamically raises the difficulty parallel to the players progress in the game. It also lowers the difficulty if a player loses often.

ISG: Nekki has developed other games like pet sims and sports management sims. What made you want to do a fighting game for social networks?

Dyabin: I love fighting games :) Years ago when I was a student, I’ve created my first fighting game using Delphi. There was an option to fight with a bot or with a friend on one keyboard. That game became a prototype of Shadow Fight.

ISG: What games do you see as competitors to Shadow Fight?

Dyabin: Our game is the first social fighting game with direct controls. There are many fighting games where you don’t take part in the action — you only watch the fight, or worse, just get the results. But that’s a different genre and we don’t see these games as our competitors.

ISG: Do you think the fighting genre has mass appeal, or is it only for “hardcore” gamers?

Dyabin: The game is very easy to start and is also very viral. Now we have more than 1 million MAU on Facebook and a total of about 10 millions installs across all social networks [on which we’ve released Shadow Fight]. In every network, Shadow Fight is one of the fastest-growing games, so we believe that the fighting genre has a pretty healthy mass appeal.

ISG: Will your next game also be in the fighting genre?

Dyabin: Now we are working on several games of different genres. We are also planning a fighting game with more game modes and animations, like parkour elements and stunts.

The next game will be an online football manager coming out in August/September. It will be a social version of our popular browser-based game 11×11. This game just won “Best Sports Game” in the Browser Game of the Year Awards for 2011 based on player votes. This makes us confident that 11×11 has the potential to become a real hit on Facebook and other networks.

ISG: What’s your overall growth strategy for Shadow Fight and for Nekki Games?

Dyabin: We are also preparing Shadow Fight launches in NK.pl and Yahoo Mobage.

As for Nekki, our company is self-funded and due to the success of our browser games in the last coupe of years, we are in a comparatively safe financial position. Therefore we will continue to spend money on advertising and leverage cross-promotion when we launch our next games. Currently we are looking for a business development manager in U.S. for remote work. We are also open to all kinds of cooperation or partnership discussions. We are not planning to develop apps for smartphones, but it is an interesting market and we are looking forward to trying it, if we find a good game idea for it.

ISG: Last question — what’s your favorite fighting game?

Dyabin: Samurai Shodown 4. It’s an old fighting game by SNK, I played it for a very long time.

Empires & Allies maintains the lead while an assortment of casino and strategy games creep up our top 20 list of fastest-growing games by daily active users.

A suite of Kabam’s established strategy games makes an appearance in the rankings this week as the developer appears to be benefiting from some sort of user acquisition campaign that also gives it a lift in monthly active users. Its newer games, Samurai Dynasty and Edgeworld, do not appear to be part of the campaign, however as neither game turns up in the top 20. Kabam’s DAU across all its games broke the 1 million mark in the last 30 days.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Empires & Allies	7,146,851	+312,808	+5%
2.	Mynet Çanak Okey	616,575	+87,406	+17%
3.	開心農場	1,297,530	+78,306	+6%
4.	DoubleDown Casino	478,198	+74,032	+18%
5.	Global Warfare	259,803	+69,109	+36%
6.	Glory of Rome	150,716	+65,034	+76%
7.	Pet Society	1,515,323	+62,823	+4%
8.	Zuma Blitz	781,767	+48,106	+7%
9.	Happy Aquarium	780,418	+45,746	+6%
10.	Perfect Getaway	64,175	+44,734	+230%
11.	Kingdoms of Camelot	321,756	+40,778	+15%
12.	Hero City	121,904	+38,596	+46%
13.	Slotomania – Slot Machines	787,770	+35,182	+5%
14.	小小忍者 – 動漫主題網頁遊戲巔峰鉅作	43,368	+33,949	+360%
15.	La Granja	65,927	+31,010	+89%
16.	Dragons of Atlantis	432,765	+27,615	+7%
17.	Top Eleven – Be a Football Manager	725,358	+27,336	+4%
18.	Social Empires	286,708	+26,880	+10%
19.	Bubble Saga	1,082,604	+25,842	+2%
20.	Pacifica Online MMORPG ★★★★★	26,885	+25,123	+1,426%

Debuting at number 10, meanwhile, is luxury cruise industry simulation Perfect Getaway, which appears to have officially launched following three month alpha period. The game puts players in the role of a cruise operator responsible for keeping ship passengers entertained and fed by building a series of attractions and food stands, much like LOLapps’ Ravenwood Fair. Perfect Getaway comes from Perfect World Entertainment, a massively multiplayer online developer and publisher originally based in China. As far as we can tell, this is the company’s first Facebook effort.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Released concurrently with the original Pac-Man on June 5, this Facebook spin on the classic coin-operated maze game adds score-boosting power-ups to a familiar formula. It is currently Namco Bandai’s second-largest title on the platform in terms of both daily and monthly active users, with less than half the metrics of the original Pac-Man.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Pac-Man S currently has 297,469 monthly active users and 12,042 daily active users.

Pac-Man S has, at its core, all of the gameplay mechanics found in the original arcade game. Players pilot the famous pie-shaped protagonist around a neon maze, gobbling up dots for points while trying to avoid being caught by ghosts bent on stopping him. Noshing on a power pellet results in the ghosts briefly turning blue, during which period Pac-Man is able to gobble them up for additional points.

What differentiates Pac-Man S from its twin are the power-ups player can buy with virtual currency to boost their high scores. Power-ups can be used to make Pac-Man faster, make the ghosts slower, increase the number of points received for eating ghosts and add five seconds to the game clock. The latter is important because, unlike the original, scoring in Pac-Man S is based on how many points players can rack up in a two-minute window, not on a set number of lives.

Additionally, the game rewards players for quickly chomping at least three ghosts in succession with a double point bonus for eating highlighted ghosts the next time they’re turned blue. For every 10,000 points they accrue, players receive bonus point markers to chase down in the maze as well as bonus fruit to eat when all the dots in the maze are gone. Consuming the fruit adds more dots to the maze, essentially graduating players to the next “level” until the two-minute time limit expires. When the game ends, players are prompted to share their high score on their Wall before restarting or exiting.

In terms of social features, Pac-Man S is fairly limited at time of writing. Currently, there are scoreboards featuring both a friends-only and global view, plus the ability to invite Facebook friends to play the game. Clicking on a friend’s name in the scoreboard simply takes players to their Wall. Monetization also appears to be missing from the game at this time, although a non-functional option to purchase points does appear on the menu. Players are given a large number (more than 100,000) of these points upon first accessing the game, and they’re used to purchase power-ups before gameplay begins priced at 1,000 to 2,500 points each.

Given the game’s apparent unfinished state, it’s difficult to gauge Namco Bandai’s commitment to the title. Pac-Man still out-performs Pac-Man S a month after launch and there is no shortage of knock-offs with more robust growth figures. Furthermore, a lack of moderation and spam filtering on the game’s Page suggests that little attention is being paid to Pac-Man S, at least at present.

You can follow Pac-Man S’ progress using AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

With Zynga’s IPO filing on Friday, we finally got some numbers to bear out what had been common, but unproven, industry knowledge: that Zynga had been able to overcome handing 30 percent of its revenue to Facebook and weakening virality on the platform by monetizing its existing user base better.

The company appears to have more than doubled average revenue per user across a number of metrics from the first quarter a year ago. So caveat to these figures first: they aren’t perfect estimates since Zynga broke out revenue on a quarterly basis, but showed uniques and actives on a monthly or daily basis. Nor do we have any ARPU figures for individual games, because Zynga did not break out revenue per title in its filing.

But it looks like Zynga boosted monthly ARPU (or average revenue per user) to $0.33 in the first quarter of this year from $0.14 in the same time period a year earlier. We get this figure by dividing reported revenues for that quarter by the number of monthly actives, then dividing again by three for individual months in the quarter.

If we take average revenue per monthly unique user (MUU), which won’t double-count users who play more than one Zynga game on Facebook, it also doubled to $0.54 from $0.27 in the first quarter from the same time period a year earlier. However, Zynga’s “monthly unique users” metric doesn’t de-duplicate people who play Zynga titles on both Facebook and mobile devices.

A more closely watched metric, ARPDAU (or average revenue per daily active user), also more than doubled from $0.01674 to $0.04219 in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier.

The reason this is important to note is that last year, Zynga’s growth in terms of acquiring new users slowed dramatically as Facebook phased out notifications, which made it easy for people to invite their friends to games. Zynga also started phasing in Credits, for which it had to give a 30 percent revenue share to Facebook.

The nagging question at that point in time was whether Facebook would effectively kill its golden goose by making its platform less profitable and attractive to developers. These numbers suggest no — at least for the very biggest companies that secured first-mover advantage.

Tapjoy, which helps developers on Facebook, Android and iOS earn revenue through offers and CPA ads, raised an additional $30 million from JPMorgan. The announcement comes just a few months after Apple clamped down on one major revenue stream for the company — incentivized installs — or where game developers cross-promote other apps and give their players virtual currency for downloading titles from other companies.

Tapjoy chief executive Mihir Shah said the company remains profitable despite the setback. “We’ve been profitable for a number of quarters and top-line revenue has been growing,” he said. “Our gross margins have grown quarter-over-quarter even after all of this.”

At the same time, the company has seen a tenfold increase on Android in the size of its network and the number of paid actions it pushes in the last three months. Revenue on the platform has also seen a commensurate increase. Tapjoy recently launched a $5 million fund to help developers port their apps to the platform.

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

Slotomania is a slot machine gambling simulation from developer Playtika, which was reportedly acquired in part by Harrah’s, a casino brand in the Caesars Entertainment Corporation. Launched in December 2010, this game recently made a reappearance in our weekly lists of fastest-growing games by daily active and monthly active users after being absent for several months.

According to our data tracking service AppData, Slotomania – Slot Machines currently has over 4,179,000 monthly active users and over 912,000 daily active users.

Slotomania engages players in the same manner as slot machines in Las Vegas by using colorful graphics, music, and a steady stream of winning free coins to keep them playing. Players start the game with 200 coins and access to a “Farm Fortune” slot machine that features large, colorful cartoon-y farming icons such as chickens, barns and pigs on a three by five grid with a set of numbers along the left and right side of the board that form lines from one side to the other. Players choose how much virtual currency to bet on a spin and across how many lines they want to hope for a match.

The video game element comes from leveling up individual slot machines. As players place bets within a specific slot machine, they gain experience points. When they reach a new level, they unlock a new slot machine with a different theme (e.g. “Bubble Rumble” at level two with 250 points). As the games level, the number of lines within the slot machine also increases, allowing the player to make larger bets and earn more prize money.

To keep players engaged, the game provides coin bonuses at each level, allows players to send friends either free spins or coins. Similar to Playtika’s other title, Farkle Pro, the game also rewards players every four hours by giving them free coin bonuses. Social features include a Reel Game, which is a slot machine with friends’ profile pictures in place of the icons, as well as the usual Wall post achievements. The game monetizes through selling coins and with a TrialPay offer wall. The game is fairly generous with free coins, which perhaps explains the 20%-25% retention rate of daily active users as a percentage of monthly active users.

Interested readers can continue tracking the progress of Slotomania with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

Café Life is an older Facebook restaurant simulation that seems to be experiencing a second wind of growth started in late May 2011, despite the genre’s apparent saturation on the platform. Developed by Tencent’s Icebreak Games, the game now tops all three of the developer’s Facebook offerings — even its younger sibling, Paradise Life.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Café Life has 2,024,899 monthly active users and 280,675 daily active users as of July 1, 2011. Traffic levels were collected before the date of publication as 55% of the game’s audience is based in the United States, making it vulnerable to fluctuations on account of the 4th of July holiday.

Café Life simulates the day-to-day operation of a boutique coffee shop, tasking players with meeting their customers’ demands by producing a variety of coffee drinks and pastries, the sale of which generates funds that can be used to purchase restaurant upgrades. These include wardrobe, décor, additional employees, cooking appliances and more floor space. Items require varying amounts of time to bake or brew; the more they’re worth, the longer they take to produce. Once finished, they can be given a little added flair – “Finishing Touches,” such as adding a strawberry on top of a pie – in order to bring in more money. There’s also an element of increasing the number of customers that visit by adding a “shop pet” and other amenities.

The game is monetized through the purchase of its currency, gems and coins, using Facebook Credits. Gems can be used to rush orders and complete other tasks more quickly. Coins can be spent on acquiring any of the game’s aforementioned items immediately. Some specialty items are sold for 10 or more gems, incentivizing players to purchase them using hard currency.

Social aspects include the ability to hire friends as shop employees, who can then help speed up the completion of drinks and food and perform other tasks. These include helping players clean their restaurants and appliances. A number of other functions are included to facilitate player interaction, such as offering samples of extra food directly on friends’ walls.

Icebreak Games couldn’t be reached for comment on what factors contributed to Café Life’s new growth trend in time for this review’s publication, but we observe that the developer recently added a Mastery System that allows players to enhance their proficiency at producing each of the game’s items across five skill levels: Trainee, Commis, Pastry Chef, Sous Chef and Head Chef. Additionally, the developer looks to be maintaining a steady flow of new restaurant themes and avatar items, such as a variety of 4th of July apparel.

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

Casual game network WildTangent announced on Friday the availability social games through its off-platform site, most notably several Facebook social games like CrowdStar’s It Girl. Interesting timing for the announcement, given that Friday was the day Facebook Credits integration became mandatory for social games on its platform.

It Girl has been one of Facebook Credits’ longest-standing supporters, offering it up as both the premium in-game currency and the sole means of purchasing items almost a year before the currency became mandatory. As of Friday, Facebook Credits have disappeared from the premium currency role in the game, leaving only the soft currency displayed in the main game screen. Facebook Credits are still the sole means of purchasing items from store menus. Meanwhile, on WildTangent’s games site, It Girl still has premium currency in the form of “Diamonds,” which can be purchased with WildCoins — the platform’s equivalent to Facebook Credits. Compare the two screens below for the differences (orange question mark added by us):

CrowdStar CEO Peter Relan tells ISG that that the differences between the Facebook version and the WildTangent version of It Girl are purely cosmetic. “The only change is removal from balance display from game [user interface] since Facebook is showing this info prominently to the user,” he says.

Sean Vanderdasson, SVP at WildTangent also states that its social game offerings like It Girl require players to be logged into Facebook. The reason for that is that players and developers are striving to keep the game consistent cross-platform. WildTangent is also the operator of BrandBoost, a video advertising platform that’s currently still available in several Facebook games.

Facebook’s current policy on games that run both off Facbook and through a Facebook canvas app is that the title must offer price parity between platforms. Players are allowed to purchase in-game currency off-platform and then use that currency in Facebook canvas app, if the developer’s game supports cross-platform wallets and the developer is not blatantly driving users off-Facebook to make payments. Additionally, off-platform games using Facebook Connect are not currently required to implement Facebook Credits.

Read more in our Road to Credits series:

• The Road to Credits: Top 5 Developers Set a Slow Pace
• The Road to Credits: Mid-Market Developers Experience Technical Difficulties, Experiment With New Promotions
• The Road to Facebook Credits: On the Home Stretch With New Payment Options