Inside Social Games

Sims and Smurfs Still Ahead on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Games by MAU

AJ Glasser• Aug 22nd, 2011

Social Games

The Sims Social and The Smurfs & Co. switch places in the top two, while The Pokerist Club edges past Zoo World 2 for a spot in the top three on this week’s list of fastest-growing games by monthly active users.

There’s not much in the way of newcomers to talk about this week, but we observe two Chinese-language games — FarmVille Chinese and Happy Elements’ My Kingdom — squeezing into our top 20. This is something of a rarity as most Chinese-language games only turn up in our rankings by daily active users, never quite reaching the size needed to claim spots on our top 20 rankings by MAU. FarmVille Chinese is still the largest Chinese-language game on Facebook to date:

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	The Sims Social	7,324,839	+4,729,401	+182%
2.	The Smurfs & Co	5,179,425	+1,826,178	+54%
3.	The Pokerist club — Texas Poker	3,351,092	+1,018,296	+44%
4.	GnomeTown	1,846,815	+842,744	+84%
5.	Zoo World	9,358,291	+709,980	+8%
6.	Magic Land	571,442	+521,639	+1,047%
7.	Texas HoldEm Poker	35,311,169	+488,818	+1%
8.	Slotomania – Slot Machines	5,036,279	+405,273	+9%
9.	MapleStory Adventures	1,658,810	+397,764	+32%
10.	Ninja Saga	5,340,835	+363,427	+7%
11.	Poker Play Now app page All Languages	3,659,397	+347,641	+10%
12.	Backyard Monsters	4,109,063	+265,458	+7%
13.	Gardens of Time	16,618,062	+250,189	+2%
14.	DoubleDown Casino	2,698,291	+246,718	+10%
15.	SlotSpot	727,050	+240,628	+49%
16.	FarmVille 中文版	1,544,432	+240,158	+18%
17.	Megacity	1,697,875	+231,442	+16%
18.	ESPN Sports Bar & Grill	938,180	+227,608	+32%
19.	Cidade Maravilhosa	1,451,940	+209,221	+17%
20.	我的王國(My Kingdom)	1,413,612	+201,777	+17%

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• Aug 21st, 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, August 15th, 2011

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Friday, August 19th, 2011

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

Monday, August 15th, 2011

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Friday, August 19th, 2011

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, August 15th, 2011

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Friday, August 19th, 2011

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

Inside Social Games• Aug 20th, 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 Ace Studios/Tetris Online, Breaktime Studios, Tagged, King.com, Aarki, Acquinity Interactive, TinyCo, GREE International, Elti Solutions.

Director of Publisher Sales

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: Game Awards, Acquisitions, Lawsuits & More

Christopher Mack• Aug 19th, 2011

Business, casual, facebook, international, Mobile, Other platforms, Social Games, zynga

Wooga Wins Best Publisher & Best Social Game – The 2011 European Games Award was given out earlier this week. Of the 69 nominated companies across 23 categories, social developer wooga walked away as the best European publisher and host of the best social game, Diamond Dash.

Digital Chocolate Acquires Sandlot Games — Digital Chocolate acquired casual games developer and publisher Sandlot Games. Through Sandlot, Digital Chocolate is looking to expand further into Seattle and Eastern Europe as well as “grow faster in pursuit of its cross-platform leadership strategy.”

SyFy Games Notes Six Facebook Games On The Way — SyFy is working with KlickNation under a muti-year, multimillion dollar contract, reports Games.com. While the social games developer will release Age of Immortals for Facebook later this year, SyFy president David Howe also told Hollywood Reporter that “around six Facebook games” are also in the works.

Restaurant City Hits iOS in Canada — Restaurant City’s iOS version is finally going live this week, starting in Canada.

[Update] Empire Avenue Now Supports Foursquare & Instagram — Virtual stock market Empire Avenue has announced a new update that introduces support for Foursquare and Instagram. Every check-in, photo, tip, comment, and follower, will improve players’ virtual stock value. Empire avenue also recently announced the raising of $1.2 million in funding.

[Announcement] Thunderstone Game Franchise to Launch on Social & Mobile Platforms — Zabu Studio and Alderac Entertainment Group have announced that strategy card game franchise Thunderstone will be making its way to Facebook, iOS, and Android with a free-to-play model.

[Announcement] Castle & Co Launches on Naver — Ubisoft is expanding Castle & Co to Korea. Under the name of 마법의 성 (Magic Castle), the title is now live on Korean social network and portal, Naver.

[Announcement] Game Insight Releases Crime Story on Android — Social-mobile games developer Game Insight has launched their newest Android title, Crime Story. The game will allow users to build out a criminal empire, defeat enemy crime lords, and conquer uncontrolled regions of the city.

[Announcement] Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter Hits Closed Beta — Atari launched a closed beta of Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter this week. The turn-based role-playing game allows users to joing with friends to crawl through dungeons, fight fantasy creatures, and upgrade their own customizable character.

[Legal] Zynga Sued Over Credits Patent — More lawsuits enter the social space as Agincourt Gaming files against Zynga over two of its patents involving “credits-based online gaming and a prize redemption system based on the outcome of game play,” according to CNET. The company is seeking a permanent injunction against Zynga.

Also be sure to check out our social and mobile gaming highlights from GDC Europe.

Ubisoft Looking to Build on Brands, Original IP With Ghost Recon Commander, Smurfs, More

AJ Glasser• Aug 19th, 2011

Social Games

Ubisoft is preparing to expand its Facebook offerings in the coming months using a mix of original and licensed intellectual property, as well as multiplatform integration with its other games.

The French video game company recently launched The Smurfs & Co. on Facebook to very positive early results. According to Chris Early, Ubisoft’s VP of Digital Publishing, the game reached its current traffic levels of 4.4 million monthly active users and 1.2 million daily active users without ad spend. This proves, he says, that branded IP can succeed on Facebook as standalone social game experiences — when handled by the right developer.

“The brand isn’t the end-all, be-all,” Early says. “I can remember the early days of mobile [games] where somebody just stuck a brand name on a title and it had nothing to do with the brand at all. As a consumer, I was massively disappointed. Brand is an element of our success, not the reason for our success.”

Ubisoft has experience working with brand license-holders both in traditional video games as well as social games. Early tells ISG that its 2010 Facebook game, CSI: Crime City, still performs well — and could be getting an update as Ubisoft increases its attention to the social/mobile games space. That title currently enjoys 1.7 million MAU and just over 260,000 DAU.

But where the most interesting social game activity is likely to occur with Ubisoft is in its traditional video game brands, starting with the upcoming installments in the Ghost Recon video game series. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier will be available as a disc-based retail product on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, while Ghost Recon Online will come to PC and later to the Nintendo’s Wii successor, the Wii U console, as a free-to-play game. Tying these two together is a Facebook game, Ghost Recon Commander, which will feature integration with both titles.

Ubisoft is not ready to discuss the Ghost Recon Facebook integrations in detail, but Early says it will be based on lessons learned from a previous Facebook integration with Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise. That particular companion game, Project Legacy, tied into Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood on several levels. First, gameplay progression in one game was tracked in the other game — meaning that Brotherhood players could unlock new areas in Project Legacy and vice-versa. Second, playing Project Legacy earned Brotherhood players money, experience points, and items. Lastly, Brotherhood players could “send” their assassin characters into Project Legacy for training, which could then be taken back into the Brotherhood game.

“Legacy was kind of an experiment for us because we didn’t monetize it and we didn’t promote it,” Early says. Ubisoft used the game to determine whether or not their core game players would be interested in a Facebook companion game. “The answer was yes. Now, can we make it so that people will continue to play on the Facebook level? As long as there’s a correlation of [ongoing] benefits, yes. And that’s really the key learning we’re going to take forward.”

The thing Ubsioft wants to avoid is a standalone Facebook game that has no integration with its brands beyond a name. Like the mobile example Early previously mentioned, it’s not enough to put the name “Ghost Recon” on a social game and expect the game’s audience to enjoy it as a Ghost Recon experience. Another pitfall of Facebook companion games for consoles are one-time content unlocks. We saw how traffic dipped in Dragon Age Legends once players ran out of content that could be unlocked for console title Dragon Age 2, and companion game Infamous Anarchy suffered an early setback when a PlayStation Network outage made it impossible for the Facebook game to execute content unlocks for PS3 game Infamous 2 without asking players to physically copy down and enter a code.

“The holistic brand experience that we’re trying to deliver to the players is something they can keep doing on an ongoing basis,” Early says. Using Ubisoft’s rewards network, U-Play, the company does its best to make multiplatform integrations seamless so that unlocks are instantaneous.

Beyond that, though, Ubisoft can potentially expand a player’s rewards network across their Facebook social graph. Early describes a gameplay concept in which a player’s Facebook friends can accrue benefits for a Ghost Recon player’s console and PC games by playing Ghost Recon Commander, even if the friends do not play Ghost Recon: Future Soldier or Ghost Recon Online. This would create an ecosystem where a Ghost Recon player would want to recruit non-gaming friends on Facebook to play Ghost Recon Commander so that the player could reap more rewards from the integration than if they just played the Facebook companion game alone.

Beyond Facebook, Ubisoft is looking to expand its brands and licensed IP — and their integrations — onto new platforms. Though Capcom Mobile already runs a licensed Smurfs game on iOS devices, Early says he knows of no reason why Ubisoft couldn’t develop a Smurfs mobile game to tie into The Smurfs & Co. on Facebook.

“We’re not prevented from doing something on mobile,” he says. “Part of our background is that our CEO and the CEO of [mobile game developer] Gameloft are brothers and they made a deal years ago where all of our IP in mobile development is done through Gameloft. That goes on until April or so of next year. I think our approach as we start to look at what we will be doing come next April is [to ask] ‘How can we get our brands in front of our players so they can engage wherever they are?’ We know that’s not going to be the same high-def console experience when you’re sitting at a bus stop. So the question is, how are we going to bring you that experience in a meaningful way with that IP all of the time?”

Ubisoft plans to share more details on Ghost Recon Commander this September during a press event. You can read our review of The Smurfs & Co. here.

‘Mid-Core’ Aviator from LandShark Takes Flight on Facebook

Randy Nelson• Aug 19th, 2011

Social Games

Singapore start-up LandShark Games is hoping to “upgrade” Facebook gamers from casual to what it calls “mid-core” experience with its first title, Aviator. This 1930s-themed adventure/strategy game went live last week.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Aviator currently has 946 monthly active users and 148 daily active users.

In Aviator, players assume the role of an enterprising fly boy (or girl) who’s using their piloting skills to ferry passengers, cargo and goods from city to city around the globe. The story-driven adventure begins in Africa and eventually leads to other continents. Each location features several cities to travel between, the flight paths to which must be purchased using a combination of in-game cash and certificates. Players pick up passengers at a hotel, cargo at a depot, and goods at a marketplace. Each area’s marketplace has a dynamic economy that affects players’ purchasing decisions — like searching for cities where prices are low and then ferrying the goods to cities where the goods are in high demand. Flying between cities requires gasoline, which must be purchased with in-game cash, and aircraft repairs, which regenerate over time or can be sped up using a repair kit item.

Some cities don’t have particular buildings — such as a market or workshop — when the player first visits, and its up to said player to purchase them using their earnings. Once built, the workshop allows players to buy newer, better planes with more passenger and cargo space. They can also add and remove seats as needed from the menu. Different planes also have their own repair and fuel capacity stats.

Social components include helping friends when they’re low on gas or repairs, or requesting help when the player finds themselves in the same situation. Occasionally, the in-game depot will present players with special packages destined for their friends in various cities, with bonuses awarded for delivering them. It’s also possible to visit friends in order to see their current status, progress in the game and send them in-game messages.

Aviator is monetized via the purchase of special items, aircraft and aircraft upgrades using Facebook Credits. While it’s possible to wait for the player’s aircraft to be repaired over time, the game offers an instant repair kit in exchange for Credits. Planes can be upgraded with expanded fuel capacity and repair slots. The game’s two best planes can only be purchased with Facebook Credits. However, there appears to be a good balance of paid content versus that which can be purchased using the games soft cash currency.

As the game only just launched, LandShark is focused on the early player experience. For future development plans and content, the developer is soliciting player feedback via Aviator’s Wall on new features such as gifting, daily challenges and an expanded variety of notifications.

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

Zynga Experimenting With New “Frictionless” Game Requests on Facebook

AJ Glasser• Aug 19th, 2011

Social Games

As part of a series of updates to the games platform, Facebook has been restoring some of the virality it previously removed from social games in the news feed and on friends’ walls. Here’s an early example of a “frictionless” games requests viral tool implemented in Zynga’s Pioneer Trail:

The idea is that a player selecting “Quick Post” can bypass the Facebook dialogue box (pictured above) that triggers after clicking “Ask Friends.” This would add value to the user experience because it wouldn’t take the player out of the game to click on the dialogue box for each “Ask Friends” action (of which there are a lot in most social games). This feature also adds virality to the game from the developer side as the Wall posts will appear on any friend the player has selected to send the request to.

As this feature is clearly in its early testing phases, we cannot follow the flow of these posts all the way to the point where it winds up on a friend’s Wall. It is also not clear if Facebook would require developers to limit these “frictionless requests” (for lack of an official term) to only those Facebook friends already playing the game. The idea of a player posting games stories to non-gaming Facebook friends’ Walls seems like it would contradict all of the anti-spam measures Facebook took in the last year to limit the appearance of games stories to non-gaming users.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this feature as it develops. We expect to see Zynga reaching full implementation of frictionless requests before some other games begin to experiment with it as Zynga has a much larger workforce to devote toward testing new features. It’s also possible that certain developers are getting first dibs on testing the new feature, limiting the number of places we might see it in the coming weeks.

Slot Machines and Sports See Growth on This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

AJ Glasser• Aug 19th, 2011

AppData, facebook

Wooga’s newly-launched Magic Land leads this week’s list of emerging Facebook games, but it’s a combination of sports-themed games and slot machine sims that make the strongest showing.

We’ve previously discussed how sports-themed titles like ESPN Sports Bar & Grill and Premier League Fantasy Football (plus all its international versions) are likely getting lifts in monthly active and daily active users as a result of England’s Premier League season opening this month. The sudden spike in slot machine sims with SlotSpot, JackpotJoy, and GameShow is less easily explained, but nobody can deny the overall popularity of the genre on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Magic Land	315,153	+288,002	+1,061%
2.	SlotSpot – Best Free Slot Machines	670,991	+248,902	+59%
3.	ESPN Sports Bar & Grill	872,253	+242,010	+38%
4.	Premier League Fantasy Football	842,936	+197,998	+31%
5.	Edgeworld	567,274	+128,553	+29%
6.	Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy	831,969	+121,316	+17%
7.	胡萊三國	574,887	+119,169	+26%
8.	JackpotJoy Slots	896,337	+115,858	+15%
9.	Fantasy La Liga	130,005	+104,861	+417%
10.	Castle & Co	335,856	+97,779	+41%
11.	Spot The Difference	337,803	+95,028	+39%
12.	Galaxía Online II, Mejor Juego de Ciencia Ficción	880,180	+84,422	+11%
13.	Megaband	300,414	+75,438	+34%
14.	RocketBird	514,318	+75,175	+17%
15.	Tavla	916,345	+74,078	+9%
16.	GameShow Slot Machines	229,850	+73,764	+47%
17.	Galaksi Online II Türkçe: En İyi Bilim Kurgu Oyunu	539,006	+63,141	+13%
18.	We Are Music	530,215	+60,969	+13%
19.	1 vs 100	831,300	+60,763	+8%
20.	Buraco by Gazeus	406,529	+59,722	+17%

At No.7 is 胡萊三國 (Hoolai Sanguo), a hybrid strategy role-playing game with citybuilding elements set in China’s Three Kingdoms era. The game saw enough success on Chinese social network QQ Zone that the developers decided to bring it to Facebook — where many Chinese-language apps are finding audiences, despite Facebook still being banned in mainland China. Developer Hoolai Social Game Ltd partnered with 6waves Lolapps to publish the Facebook version.

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.

Parking Wars 2 Puts Majesco on the Sequel Bandwagon

Randy Nelson• Aug 18th, 2011

Social Games

Parking Wars 2 is a sequel to the 2008 Facebook game developed by Majesco and loosely based on A&E’s reality series, Parking Wars. The game launched just this week.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Parking Wars 2 currently has 34,127 monthly active users and 1,683 daily active users.

Like the original Facebook game, Parking Wars 2 has players buying cars and parking them on their friends’ streets — with bonuses awarded for disobeying parking laws. Placing a car in a parking space begins a countdown, during which the car earns money until it reaches a maximum amount for that vehicle. Moving the car to another spot rewards the player with the amount of money it had so far earned in the now-vacated space. Each spot has a parking sign that changes its rules randomly over time. Some say “no parking,” while others only permit certain colors of cars to park there. Friends can park their cars on the player’s street, leading to a sort of cat and mouse game of attempting to ticket illegally parked cars before their owners can move them.

The game introduces new virtual items that impact gameplay. Players can purchase things like car wax or air fresheners, which increase the amount of money their cars make over time. Other power-ups include premium gasoline speeds up income, tire spikes make it impossible to move cars and special tickets allow players to fine double. Additionally, players can purchase houses and businesses to place on their streets that provide additional perks for cars parked in front of them. The gas station, for example, allows players to sell premium gas to their friends. Scenery and street types can also be changed in order to customize the player’s experience.

Parking Wars 2 is an innately social game due to its core game mechanic — catching your friends’ parking on your street. On top of interacting with each others streets, players can also use viral channels to announce achievements, brag about ticketing others, and so on.

The game is monetized through the sale of the aforementioned power-ups in exchange for Facebook Credits. Players can also purchase premium backgrounds based on real-life cities, special power-ups, and a portion of buildings and cars offered in the game. Other items in the game are purchased using a soft currency that’s earned through parking, ticketing and moving up in level.

Majesco has additional cars, buildings and items planned for a forthcoming game update. The publisher has told players that it will be addressing gameplay balance concerns that players who do not wish to purchase premium items can’t stay competitive with those who do.

You can follow Parking Wars 2’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Cheating in The Sims Social — An Odd Twist to the Social Graph

AJ Glasser• Aug 18th, 2011

Design, Electronic Arts, facebook, RPG, Sim, Social Games

EA Playfish’s The Sims Social “officially” launches today on Facebook, but it’s been playable in beta form long enough for people to have formed in-game relationships that challenge traditional social game interactions.

In The Sims Social, it’s possible for Facebook friends to become neighbors, which is standard for a multiplayer social game experience. Neighbors can visit one another to earn bonus energy and join friends in using whatever devices or activities the friend has purchased for their virtual home. Sims Social takes it one step further, however, with a social interaction system lifted from the original Sims franchise of games where dialogue trees guide individual Sims along a progression toward friendship, romance, or animosity, with each new “level” of relationship opening up new social interactions.

The most interesting feature of this relationship system on Facebook is the compulsive need for permission. Because gameplay is asynchronous, EA Playfish has introduced a system of invites that notifies players when their Sim has reached a new possible level of relationship with another Sim. This does not happen at all relationship levels (e.g. Introduction, New Friend, etc.), but rather at crucial levels of interaction where the relationship dynamic changes dramatically (e.g. Dating, Enemies). Once these invites are accepted, new interaction types are available for users to try — or can happen autonomously as a result of “free will” built into the game’s engine.

This presents players with interactions never before available in a social game. For example, we took our Sim to a neighbor’s house and initiated a Flirt. Because our neighbor was already in a Dating relationship with another Facebook friend, the game prompted us to ask that friend to break up with their partner. Though some romantic interactions were still available to us (e.g. Romantic Kiss, Give Flowers), the relationship could not progress until our Facebook friend ended his relationship with the other Sim.

This was the Facebook Message he sent in response to the Sims Social invite to leave their romantic partner for our Sim:

We spoke with Tom Mapham, a producer on The Sims Social, to better understand the gameplay systems at work and how this could impact a Facebook user’s social graph. In the traditional Sims games, there were no real obstacles to a player “cheating” on a romantic partner, save for the romantic partner developing jealousy that expressed itself in hostile actions (e.g. kicking over your Sim’s garbage can, slapping your Sim, etc.). Because the romantic partner in The Sims Social is controlled by an actual person, however, this jealousy mechanic doesn’t translate to a social game, and so Mapham says a gameplay choice was made to limit romantic partnerships to one per Sim.

“We felt that being able to date 30 other Sims at the same time would lose any connection to real relationships,” he says. “So at present Sims can only sustain one romantic relationship at a time. The game is a live service in beta and we will continue to review the design based on player feedback.”

At present, the game doesn’t use a player’s social graph beyond the friends list — so there’s no way for Sims Social to know that our friend indeed is engaged to another Sims Social player in real life. This gives the player, more or less, total control over how much of their real life they want to replicate or parody in the Sims Social. Though again, Mapham says, the team is open to player feedback on the matter.

As for sexual relationships (here called WooHoo), Mapham explains that Sims must reach a certain relationship level before it becomes a gameplay option, which involves a series of invites to progress to that level.

“Once that relationship level is achieved,” he says, “your Sim can ask another Sim to WooHoo and can even WooHoo autonomously. It does not need another ‘handshake’ from your friend.”

The Sims Social officially launched today on Facebook. According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, the game currently has 4,859,046 monthly active users and 2,064,153 daily active users.