Electronic Arts may announce tomorrow that it has bought Age of Champions developer KlickNation, according to sources familiar with the matter. The terms of the deal will likely not be disclosed. KlickNation has around 70 employees and has at least one angel investor, Robert Simon of Ariva Partners.

KlickNation would add a core gamer-focused studio to the two social gaming ones the company currently has in Dragon Age Legends developer EA2D and Playfish. These two studios mainly produce social games related to EA’s existing franchises like Dragon Age, The Sims and FIFA. Playfish also maintains the original intellectual property it created like Restaurant City before it was bought in 2009 for $300 million in cash and stock plus $100 million in earnouts.

In acquiring KlickNation, EA could be entering the emerging core gamer market on Facebook, which is currently dominated by strategy combat games like Kixeye’s Backyard Monsters and IGG’s Galaxy Online 2. CrowdStar and RockYou recently joined this market with their own strategy combat titles released in the last three months.

KlickNation is a relatively small developer compared to other studios producing core strategy games. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the developer at one point enjoyed 1.3 million monthly active users, and saw around 150,000 daily active users at its peak. Today, the developer sees 395,441 monthly active users and 49,022 daily active users. In the last month, all of its major games — including its newest game, Six Gun Galaxy — have flattened in monthly and daily actives, a sign that KlickNation may be preparing to sunset the games after the acquisition is announced in the same way that DNA Games did when bought by Zynga.

AJ Glasser contributed to this story.

February 8 – 9, 2012 | San Francisco

We’ve just confirmed eight additional speakers for Inside Social Apps 2012, coming back to San Francisco on February 8-9, 2012.

In addition to our current roster of industry leaders, we’ll be welcoming the following new speakers to Inside Social Apps:

• Jens Begemann, Founder and CEO, Wooga
• Lee Linden, Founder, Karma Science
• Haining Wang, CEO, Happy Elements
• Eric Goldberg, Managing Director, Crossover Technologies
• Clay Kellogg, Head of App Dev. Sales, AdMob
• Terry Angelos, Co-Founder and CPO, TrialPay
• Sho Masuda, VP Marketing, Social Games, GREE
• Dennis Ryan, EVP Worldwide Publishing, PopCap

If you’re considering attending Inside Social Apps 2012, take advantage of limited early registration pricing and register now.

Space will be limited, and both previous Inside Social Apps conferences have sold out well in advance of the event.

A very limited number of passes are available at the Early Announcement price of $399. This price will be good through Tuesday December 20th only, so we encourage you to register now.

Who’s Speaking?

We’re excited to present the following 38 confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps 2012:

	Jens Begemann Founder and CEO, wooga		Lee Linden Founder, Karma Science
	Daniel Terry Co-founder & CEO, Pocket Gems		Perry Tam CEO, Storm8
	Carl Sjogreen Director of Product Management, Facebook		Cory Ondrejka Director of Engineering, Facebook
	Dennis Ryan EVP Worldwide Publishing, PopCap		Eric Goldberg Managing Director, Crossover Technologies
	Haining Wang CEO, Happy Elements		Sho Masuda VP Marketing, Social Games, GREE
	Clay Kellogg Head of App Dev. Sales, AdMob		Terry Angelos Co-Founder and CPO, TrialPay
	Charles Hudson Co-founder and CEO, Bionic Panda Games		John Earner GM European Studios, EA / Playfish
	Paul Bettner GM, Zynga With Friends		Kevin Chou Co-founder and CEO, Kabam
	Michael Lazerow CEO, Buddy Media		Simon Mansell CEO, TBG Digital
	Clara Shih Founder and CEO, Hearsay Labs		Mike Ouye Founder and CEO, Red Robot Labs
	Suleman Ali Co-founder and CEO, TinyCo		Will Harbin Chairman and CEO, Kixeye
	David Katz VP of Digital Media, Starz		Suchit Dash Co-founder and VP of Product, Ifeelgoods
	Atul Bagga Senior Analyst – Video Games & China Internet, Lazard Capital Markets		Peter Farago VP Marketing, Flurry
	Anil Dharni Co-founder, Funzio; Founder, Storm8		Mike Sego CEO, Gaia Interactive
	Tim Chang Managing Director, Mayfield Fund		Micah Adler Founder & CEO, Fiksu
	Arjun Sethi CEO, 6waves Lolapps		Brenda Garno COO & Game Designer, Loot Drop
	Bill Jackson Creative Director, CastleVille, Zynga		Hussein Fazal CEO & Co-founder, AdParlor
	Mihir Shah President & CEO, TapJoy		Lisa Marino CEO, RockYou
	Rick Thompson Co-Founder, Playdom, and Investor		Riz Virk Co-founder and CEO, Gameview Studios

We’ll continue to add new speakers to our 2012 lineup, so please check Inside Social Apps in the weeks to come.

Registration

There is very limited $399 Early Registration pricing for the full 2-day conference pass for Inside Social Apps 2012, available through December 20th only.

Previous Inside Social Apps conferences have sold out in advance, so we strongly encourage you to register now.

About Inside Social Apps

Inside Social Apps 2012 will explore new opportunities, as well as emerging risks, in the development, distribution and monetization of social and mobile applications. Inside Social Apps 2012 will span February 8 – 9, and will bring together the world’s leading social and mobile developers and investors for critical discussion and analysis.

Social applications first made their splash in the US in 2007, and have now evolved into a global media ecosystem. Today’s social and mobile apps comprise a profitable multi-billion dollar industry, characterized by vibrant investment activity and newly emerging opportunities on mobile platforms.

Inside Social Apps is Inside Network’s content-focused conference series that investigates the latest trends and challenges for social and mobile applications and the companies that bring them to market.

A full agenda will be announced shortly. Keep an eye on Inside Social Apps for more information.

Registration

Past Inside Social Apps events have seen sold out well before conference day, so we strongly encourage you to register early.

We have made available a limited number of tickets at special $399 Early Registration pricing, and we strongly encourage you to register now.

From all of us at Inside Network, we look forward to seeing you on February 8 and 9 in San Francisco!

Now that The Sims Social has reached maturity on Facebook, EA Playfish can move on to the next game in its release schedule — Risk: Factions. The developer is also still finding its footing in mobile and planning for a Sims Social expansion in the near future.

Risk: Factions was originally planned for a fall release, but it was delayed while EA Playfish experimented with adding new features. Akiko Abe, public relations manager, tells us that the game could be held back until after the Christmas holiday if EA believes that fewer people will be playing social games during the break. The game differs from EA Playfish’s previous board game adaptation, Monopoly Millionaires, in that it’s an adaptation of an Xbox Live/PlayStation Network/Steam download property. This means that Risk: Factions’ design will likely come down somewhere between the menu-driven interface of Monopoly Millionaires and the vibrant animation of The Sims Social. Depending on how the actual board game itself is translated into the gameplay, the potential audience for Risk: Factions could be more niche than the broad spread of players attracted to The Sims Social.

Meanwhile on mobile, EA Playfish had a hit and miss experience in bringing two of its established Facebook brands to iOS this year. The hit was Restaurant City, where the one-to-one translation of restaurant management adapted well to the mobile interface in Restaurant City: Gourmet Edition. The game is currently one of EA’s top 10 most popular iOS apps across all 100 of its games, and it ranks at No.168 in the App Store’s Top Free Apps. The miss is Pet Society: Vacation, which will shut down in December due to a lack of players. As Abe says and the farewell post alludes to, the Pet Society audience on Facebook just didn’t carry over to iOS in this case. Even so, Abe tells us that EA Playfish will continue to find its footing in mobile.

Lastly, EA Playfish is mindful of extending the life of The Sims Social on Facebook through expansions. Far from holiday content updates or light gameplay tweaks available through new purchasable items, EA Playfish is aware that Sims fans are expecting almost completely new gameplay additions on the order of those we see in the PC franchise — pets, romance, new locations, etc. Abe tells us the developer isn’t ready to talk specifics yet but that we can expect to see Sims Social getting its first expansion “very soon.”

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, Deep Fried Gaming, 6waves Lolapps, Electronic Arts, SiXiTS New Media, Natural Motion Games,  W3i, Acquinity Interactive and Live World.

• Product Performance Manager, Skillgames – King.com
• Senior Systems Developer, Skillgames – King.com
• Front end Developer, Skillgames – King.com

• Product Manager

• Product Manager for Popular Social Gaming Company
• Support Engineer – Browser and Social Games

• Technical Director, Mobile

• Senior Flash ActionScript Software Engineer

• Customer Acquisition Manager
• Lead Programmer
• Design Lead / Manager

• Online Media Buyer
• Online Marketing Manager
• Campaign Analyst

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.

German board game maker Ravensburger has just released its second Facebook title, Puzzle Adventures. The game combines conventional jigsaw puzzle concepts with power-ups and timed challenges for determining high scores.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Puzzle Adventures currently has 60 monthly active users and 30 daily active users.

Puzzle Adventures sees players solving a series of progressively more difficult jigsaw puzzles, while competing against their friends to score as many points as possible on each. The act of placing puzzle pieces is adapted for a click-and-drag interface, with additional clicks used to rotate puzzle pieces. Scoring is based on how quickly players can complete a given puzzle and can be increased by successively combining individual pieces to create point combos before a timer bar runs out. The puzzles themselves are comprised of actual photos and increase in complexity as players move from one themed world, such as an island setting, to the next.

A number of power-ups are available, with players having the option to assign and use up to five per puzzle. These include items that automatically rotate all of the pieces so that they’re right-side-up; one that displays an outline of the pieces in the finished puzzle on the screen; another that joins together random pieces for the player at the outset; as well as those that extend the timer, freeze it, and so on. In order to aid players in solving the puzzles, the game displays an image of the finished result in the bottom corner of the play field at all times.

Each time the player wishes to attempt a puzzle, one heart is removed from their stockpile. When all of the hearts are exhausted, players must wait for at least one to refill in order to play again (each requires around 10 minutes to be restored) or purchase refills. These are sold at the rate of one heart for five coins. Coins are also used to purchase power-ups before attempting a puzzle. Players receive coins based on their performance, as well as experience points that count towards players leveling up. Leveling up provides players with coins, heart refills, and keys. Keys are required to unlock some puzzles and can be purchased with coins.

Players can add their friends in Puzzle Adventures in order to compared high scores. The game also supports posting announcements regarding players setting new high scores, leveling up, and so on to their Facebook Walls and those of their friends.

Puzzle Adventures is monetized via the purchase of additional coins, used to but keys, power-ups, and additional hearts, using Facebook Credits.

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

Russian developer and publisher Nival is deepening its commitment to social and mobile gaming with an investment in Russian independent studio Bytex.

Nival, most famous for developing PC games and running the Russian free-to-play MMO portal zzima.com, is teaming with Bytex to help the smaller company co-publish a new HTML5-based collectible card game (CCG) on Facebook called Berzerk: The Cataclysm. While CCGs are typically played in real time, Berzerk: The Cataclysm is asynchronous, and has social features that allow players to showcase their card collections according to Bytex’s founder and CEO Dmitri Karasev.

What makes Berzerk: The Cataclysm and Bytex most attractive to Nival is that the game is built in HTML5, meaning it’s naturally cross platform on Facebook and mobile. This aligns with Nival’s long term game development goals and puts the developer in a space currently occupied by Zynga, Wooga and OMGPOP, which each have HTML5 games running on Facebook’s mobile platform.

“We’re focusing on cross-platform social strategy games,” Nival’s president Sergey Orlovskiy (pictured) tells us. “When we found out that [Bytex] wanted to go to the direction of making social CCGs, because of their experience we decided to invest. All of the games we’re doing right now — and we’re doing a bunch — all of them are socially connected and most of them will be cross platform.”

The partnership with Bytex is Nival’s second foray into Facebook games. Earlier this year Nival teamed with another independent Russian developer, KranX to publish Kings Bounty: Legions, a turn-based strategy game targeting hardcore gamers. While Nival is proud of the game, it has yet to hit its stride in terms of traffic. Since its release, King’s Bounty: Legions has risen to 20,000 MAU and 4,000 DAU according to AppData, but even Orlovskiy admits that the game performed below expectations initially.

“In terms of monetization, the [average revenue per user] is very good, but I would say that we’ve underestimated several things, and we’ve spent a lot of time improving the social and viral features of the game,” he explains. “We believed that the rarity of the deep, hardcore experience plus the quality of the game would create viral buzz even with a small audience, and that would make the game grow. Frankly, that didn’t happen. What we can see is that the combination of good viral mechanics built into the game, plus high quality gameplay, plus hardcore appeal works much, much better than [a game] without the viral mechanics.”

Orlovskiy is happy to use Kings Bounty: Legions as a learning experience, and it hasn’t reduced his confidence that social games will be an important part of Nival’s offerings in the future. Facebook-only development, however, is not a viable strategy for Nival as user acquisition and marketing costs are far higher on the platform for new companies. Orlovskiy says that the amount of advertising and filtering required to create a dedicated player base of hardcore users would be unfeasible, even though these players tend to produce much higher APRU than casual ones.

Orlovskiy goes on to say that the still-emerging mobile platform presents more opportunity and a more natural platform for strategy games thanks to touch interfaces. Mobile development is also being pushed forward as developers find better ways to incorporate social features thanks to Facebook Connect and the emergence of true mobile social gaming networks.

“Since the whole industry is moving from web to mobile, the same needs to happen to us,” Orlovskiy says. “It’s inevitable that evolution will take us in this direction, the same way that games evolved from an offline to an online experience.”

Nival opened a studio in Kiev specializing in social and mobile development this September.

CastleVille officially passes The Sims Social in daily active users this week, putting it on top of our list of fastest-growing Facebook games by DAU.

Growth appears to be slowing down for Zynga’s newest role-playing/life simulation, however, with less than a 10% growth rate in DAU for the last five days. CastleVille’s monthly active users — a means of gauging the game’s overall reach — still has some momentum with just over 28% growth in the same time period. We’ll see how the holidays impact the early trajectory of the game; but there may also be some influence from Zynga’s IPO roadshow, which kicks off next week.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	CastleVille	7,200,000	+1,300,000	+22%
2.	The Sims Social	6,100,000	+200,000	+3%
3.	Ninja Saga	720,000	+180,000	+33%
4.	Bubble Witch Saga	3,000,000	+100,000	+3%
5.	Tetris Battle	2,200,000	+100,000	+5%
6.	Words With Friends	5,300,000	+100,000	+2%
7.	المزرعة السعيدة	920,000	+70,000	+8%
8.	Feevo Blaze	120,000	+60,000	+100%
9.	Coco Girl	470,000	+40,000	+9%
10.	Best Casino – Free Slots, Bingo, Poker & Blackjack	310,000	+30,000	+11%
11.	Car Town	720,000	+30,000	+4%
12.	Magic Land	370,000	+30,000	+9%
13.	Ninja Saga (Español)	140,000	+30,000	+27%
14.	Pool Live Tour	660,000	+30,000	+5%
15.	Social Empires	900,000	+30,000	+3%
16.	Top Eleven – Be a Football Manager	960,000	+30,000	+3%
17.	Bizim Çiftlik	250,000	+20,000	+9%
18.	EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars: Real football & soccer!	290,000	+20,000	+7%
19.	Galaxy 2.0: Best Space Sci-Fi Strategy Game	60,000	+20,000	+50%
20.	Gem Rush	30,000	+20,000	+200%

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

Read our reviews of…

• CastleVille
• The Sims Social
• Ninja Saga
• Bubble Witch Saga
• Tetris Battle
• Words With Friends
• Feevo Blaze
• Coco Girl
• Car Town
• Magic Land
• Social Empires
• Top Eleven
• FIFA Superstars
• Gem Rush

Disney Playdom will sunset its long-running social game, Social City, this December just three months shy of the game’s second birthday on the Facebook platform.

As the approximate life cycle of a social game on Facebook seems to be roughly 12 to 18 months, the move comes as no surprise. It’s even less of a surprise, considering Disney Playdom’s recent success with Gardens of Time and its efforts to release new social games based on Disney properties in 2012. Effective resource management dictates that developers need to spend more on the games that are making money, and shut down ones that aren’t in order to allocate resources to new games.

It is rare, however, to see one of Facebook’s big five social game developers taking an older game offline even if it is more than 18 months old. Many of those games (particularly Zynga’s) still enjoy large audiences that, in theory, monetize at a higher rate than those who are playing a new game in its first three months of life. Image also keeps older games online, as many developers are defined by the success of their original games.

In the case of Social City (review here), it was one of several hit games Playdom offered in its pre-Disney acquisition days. Sorority Life and Mobsters were also “big name” games that attracted millions of users back in the early days of the Facebook and MySpace games platforms. Social City, however, got a larger amount of media attention than other pre-Disney Playdom games because it launched just before the Disney acquisition and went on to win a Game Developer Choice Award at GDC Online in October 2010. Due to its success, the game survived the initial upheaval after the acquisition (which saw the sunsetting of Playdom’s Big City Life, Treetopia, and Fanglies in October 2010) and even made it onto Android where some of Playdom’s competitors were experimenting with cross-platform social game experiences.

Social City’s Facebook traffic was in decline even then, however, down over 50% in monthly active users and over 80% in daily active users from its peak point of traffic at 12 .6million MAU and 3.1 million DAU seen in spring of 2010. In the last six months, MAU and DAU have continued to fall, eventually putting its DAU as a percentage of MAU — a metric that helps us see what kind of retention a social game enjoys — below 10%, which is where most developers usually shut down or abandon a game. It’s a similar story to Playdom’s Market Street, which launched in 2010 and was sunsetted in August 2011.

Zynga will start its investor roadshow next week ahead of a much-anticipated initial public offering. Fortune’s Dan Primack first reported the story, but we’ve confirmed it with a source that’s knowledgeable about the company’s plans. Zynga declined to comment.

The roadshow will start Monday and involve executives like chief executive Mark Pincus, along with chief operating officer John Schappert and chief financial officer David Wehner. We don’t know where the roadshow will happen or to whom the company will be pitching, but a video of Zynga’s presentation will probably become available at some point next week.

We’re also expecting to see an amendment to the company’s earlier IPO filings, likely on Monday that will include pricing.

Just to revisit: Zynga originally filed to raise as much as $1 billion back in July. There are six underwriters on the offering including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Allen & Company.

In its most recent quarter, Zynga earned $12.5 million in net income on $306.8 million in revenue, with revenues up 80 percent from the same quarter a year before. However, the company’s number of daily active users have declined two quarters in a row to 54 million users, a negative signal for future earnings growth if Zynga can’t continue to boost its average bookings per user. The company did boost average bookings per user to an all-time record of 5.8 cents per user per day in the third quarter of this year.

The company’s timing is interesting. December is generally the month when many mutual funds rebalance their portfolios, which might potentially open up more capital for the company’s offering. The company’s also coming to market at a time when concerns about the stability of the euro are fueling day-to-day volatility in global equity markets.

With an up-to-$2 billion IPO that Zynga may file in the coming weeks to fund its continued global expansion, Facebook’s migration to Credits, Google’s launch of Google+, and the continued rapid growth of in-app purchase-based businesses on the iOS and Android mobile platforms, virtual goods are impacting businesses across the media landscape. Virtual goods, and the companies that distribute them, are continuing to bring about one of the largest disruptions entertainment, communication, and e-commerce infrastructure businesses have seen in years.

Inside Network is proud to announce a new original research report by Charles Hudson and Justin Smith that presents a comprehensive examination of the size and future of the virtual goods market in the United States, entitled Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2011 – 2012. This is Inside Network’s third annual edition of the US Virtual Good Market report. It will be released on December 6, but is available for discount pre-order now.

Where will the virtual goods market go in 2012 and what are the biggest opportunities left unclaimed? How will existing players fare as Facebook, Apple, and Google reshape the mobile gaming landscape, and larger and more sophisticated players enter the market? Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2011 – 2012 provides deeper insight into monetization, development, and the key questions facing the space in 2012 than you’ll find anywhere else.

Get the Annual Membership Get Annual Membership (Includes Report + 3 Additional Quarterly Issues): $2,495 $1,995 USD* OR Buy Single Report: $995 $795 USD* * Pre-order discount ends December 5, 2011. All pre-ordered reports will be delivered on December 6, 2011.

About the Report

Inside Virtual Goods is a new report researched and created specifically for entrepreneurs, investors, and analysts interested in the growth of this exciting new category of online commerce that is fueling the growth of games-as-a-service businesses. During a research phase spanning the last few months, co-authors Justin Smith and Charles Hudson have spoken with dozens of executives and entrepreneurs from all parts of the ecosystem in order to form what we believe are the most detailed estimates, analyses, and predictions for 2011 and 2012.

We focused and organized the report around the following areas:

1. Social Networks, Applications, and Games - The continued growth of the virtual goods market on social networks is one of the biggest stories of 2011. We delve deeply into the trends, stats, key players, opportunities, and challenges facing the space this year and next.
2. Mobile Applications and Games – Mobile application developers that have been early adopters of the free-to-play model are have seen significant growth in 2011, making mobile the fastest-growing component of the US virtual goods market. Our study breaks down the key opportunities and challenges facing this emerging space going into 2012.
3. Casual  and Hardcore MMOs - Developers in the MMO / MMORPG space have been among the earliest adopters of the free-to-play model, while Virtual worlds and casual MMOs continue to represent a share of the virtual goods opportunity in the United States. Our study breaks down the key trends in monetization and engagement, and the prospects for the future.
4. Console Games – The console market continues to be one of the areas where microtransactions are establishing a meaningful foothold in the market. We explore why the model is succeeding, revenue and user trends, and the key issues facing this space as we head into 2012.

Each section contains:

1. A brief history on the evolution and growth of this space in the US, including a description of key players.
2. Estimates on the size of the US virtual goods market in 2011 in that area.
3. A diagnosis of the key opportunities and issues facing the growth of that space, including our outlook and projections for 2012.

In addition, prior to delving more deeply into each market segment, we’ve provided an overview of the emerging payments ecosystem that is growing to serve these new businesses. Traditional e-commerce infrastructure providers only offer a partial solution, and the virtual goods payments layer is currently in a major state of flux. In the report, we describe the variety of solutions that have been brought to market to date, and the key challenges facing the industry from a payments perspective as a whole.

For more details, check out the full table of contents below.

The annual membership, which includes the report and three additional quarterly updates, is USD $2,495. Alternatively, you can obtain just this report for USD $995.

Although the report will not be released until Tuesday, December 6, we are offering a special pre-order discount for those who purchase now. The pre-order price of US $795 for this report or US $1,995 for a one-year subscription is now available until December 5.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

• How We Got Here: A Brief History of Virtual Goods Worldwide
• Defining Terms
  • Registered users
  • Active users
  • Average revenue per user (ARPU)
  • Average revenue per paying user (ARPPU)
  • How do different developers manage their businesses?
• Growing Virtual Goods Markets in the US
  • Social Networks, Applications, and Games
  • Casual MMOs and Virtual Worlds
  • Hardcore MMOs and Free to Play Games
  • Mobile Applications and Games
  • Emerging Areas: Consoles, Subscription MMOs
• Methodology

2. The Virtual Goods Payments Ecosystem: An Overview

• Large Payment Platforms
• Mobile Payment Providers
• Offer Providers
• Direct Payments vs Offers
• Pre-paid Cards
• The Migration of Facebook Credits
• Platform Payments – Facebook, Google, and Apple
• Managing Fraud
• Related Companies

3. Social Networks, Applications, and Games

• Introduction
  • The Global Rise of Facebook
  • The Virtual Currency Payment Ecosystem and the Migration to Facebook Credits
  • Increased Optimization for Virtual Goods
• Social Networking Platforms Today
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Twitter
  • MySpace
  • Others
• Significant Changes to Facebook Platform Dynamics in 2011
  • Distribution & Engagement
  • Monetization
• Social Application and Game Genres: How Do They Perform?
  • Role Playing Games and “Hardcore” Mini-MMOs
  • Simulation and City Building Games
  • Pet Games
  • Poker Games
  • Gifting Apps
  • Arcade Games
• Who’s Buying Virtual Goods?
  • Gender Breakdown
  • Age Breakdown
  • Geographic Breakdown
• How Are They Spending Money?
  • Item Type Breakdown
  • Payment Method Breakdown
• Market Size Estimate
  • Total Number of Monthly Paying Users
  • Total ARPPU Per Month
  • Total US Virtual Goods Revenues from Social Networks in 2011 and 2012
• 2012 Outlook
  • Growth Rate
  • Major Risks that Could Hamper Growth
• Leading Companies

4. Mobile Applications and Games

• Introduction
• History of virtual goods model in US
• Major genres for free-to-play iPhone apps and games
• Resource management and simulation
• Platformers
• RPGs
• MMOs
• Board / Casual

• Mobile Application and Game Platforms Today
• iOS
• Android
• Others

• Demographic Breakdown
• Gender
• Age
• Geography

• Mobile Application and Game Genres: How Do They Perform?
• Analyzing the Market Opportunity
• Total Player Base
• ARPU
• ARPPU
• Distribution of monetization between virtual goods, advertising, and initial purchase of downloadable product
• Payment methods
• Total US Virtual Goods Revenues from Mobile Applications and Games in 2011

• 2012 Outlook

• Predictions and Growth Rate
• Major Risks that Could Hamper Growth

• Leading Companies

5. Web-based MMOs, Free to Play Games, and Virtual Worlds 

• Introduction
  • History of free to play MMOs
  • Emergence of the free to play MMO market opportunity in the US
  • Major genres for free-to-play MMOs and hardcore games
• Demographic Breakdown
  • Gender
  • Age
• Payments
• Analyzing the Market Opportunity
  • ARPU
  • ARPPU
  • Market Size Estimate
• 2012 Outlook
  • Growth Rate
  • Key Challenges
• Leading Companies

6. Console Games

• Introduction
• Analyzing the Market Opportunity
  • Total Player Base
  • ARPU
  • ARPPU
  • Payment methods
• 2012 Outlook
• Leading Companies

7. Investment Landscape

• Venture Capital
• M&A and IPO Landscape

8. Conclusion

• Overview: 2011 Market Estimates
• Looking Ahead: 2012

9. Appendix: Company Index

About the Authors

Charles Hudson

Venture Partner, SoftTech VC, CEO and Co-Founder, Bionic Panda Games

Charles Hudson is a Venture Partner with SoftTech VC and the CEO and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games, a mobile games company based in San Francisco, CA.

Until February 2010, he was the VP of Business Development for Serious Business, a leading producer of social games. Zynga acquired Serious Business in February of 2010. Prior to Serious Business, Hudson worked at Gaia Interactive, Google, IronPort Systems, and In-Q-Tel. Hudson also founded Third Power LLC, a conference and events company that was acquired by WebMediaBrands. Charles holds an MBA and BA from Stanford University.

Justin Smith

Founder, Inside Network

Justin Smith is the founder of Inside Network, the first service dedicated to providing news and market research to the Facebook platform and social gaming ecosystem. Justin leads Inside Network’s analyst services, manages Inside Network’s AppDataservice, and serves as co-editor of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. Inside Network was acquired by WebMediaBrands (NASDAQ:WEBM) in May 2011.

Prior to Inside Network, he was Head of Product at Watercooler, now Kabam, a leading social game developer on the Facebook Platform. Prior to Watercooler, Justin was an early employee at Xfire, the largest social utility for gamers, which was sold to Viacom in 2006.

Justin holds a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Mayfield Fellow and a recipient of the Terman Award in Engineering.

Get the Annual Membership

The annual membership, which includes the report and three additional quarterly updates, is USD $2,495. Alternatively, you can just download this report for USD $995. Although the report will not be released until Tuesday, December 6, we are offering a special pre-order discount for those who purchase now. The pre-order price of US $795 for this report or US $1,995 for a one-year subscription is now available until December 5.

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List of Related Companies: 6waves, A Bit Lucky, Acclaim, Activision, AdParlor, Aeria Games, Amazon, Applifier, Appstrip, Artix Entertainment, Bebo, Bigpoint, Blackhawk, Boku, Boomerang Networks, Booyah, Challenge Games, CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate, Digital River, Disney, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Frogster, Gaia Online, Gala-Net, Gambit, Gameforge, GMG, Google, GratisPay, gWallet, HeyZap, Hi5, IMVU, InComm, iovation, Jagex, Kabam, Kontagent, Limasky, Lolapps, Meez, Metaplace, Microsoft, MindJolt, MySpace, News Corporation, Nexon, ngmoco, Nintendo, Offerpal Media, OMGPOP, Outspark, Papaya Mobile, PaymentPin, PayPal, PeanutLabs, Playdom, Playfirst, Playfish, PlaySpan, Rekoo, Riot Games, Rixty, RockYou, Rovio, Scoreloop, Second Life, SGN, Six Degrees Games, Slashkey, Slide, SocialGold, Sometrics, Sony, Sony (Free Realms), Sparkplay Media, SponsorPay, Sulake (Habbo Hotel), Super Rewards (Adknowledge), SupersonicAds, SurfPin, Tapulous, Tencent, TheBroth, ThreatMetrix, Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates), TokenAds, TrialPay, Turbine, Viacom (MTV), Viacom (Neopets), Viximo, WeeWorld, Wooga, ZipZapPlay, Zong, Zynga