This Week’s Headlines From Across Inside Network

• Nov 19th, 2011
Social Games

This Week’s Headlines from Across Inside Network

A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between November 14th and November 18th.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms and virtual goods. 

Monday, November 14th:

Tuesday, November 15th:

Wednesday, November 16th:

Thursday, November 17th:

Friday, November 18th:

Saturday, November 19th:

Inside Social Games

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

Monday, November 14th:

Tuesday, November 15th:

Wednesday, November 16th:

Thursday, November 17th:

Friday, November 18th:

Saturday, November 19th:

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, November 14th:

Tuesday, November 15th:

Wednesday, November 16th:

Thursday, November 17th:

Friday, November 18th:

Saturday, November 19th:

New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: 6waves Lolapps, EA, TinyCo and More

• Nov 19th, 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 6waves Lolapps, Storm8, Checkpoint Studios, Live World, JibJab Media Inc., Acquinity Interactive, Electronic Arts, Deep Fried Gaming and TinyCo.

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 News Roundup: Google+, Car Town and Nordeus

• Nov 18th, 2011
casual, China, facebook, News, zynga

First Person Social Games on the Way from New Studio U4iA – Former Activision vets Dusty Welch and Chris Archer have formed a new studio called U4iA that will focus on hardcore social games according to Gamasutra. The company has trademarked the term “first-person social” and is set to release its first game in 2012.

Gigamedia Reports Third Quarter Loss, Promises to Pivot into Mobile – Taiwan-based social game company Gigamedia reported this week that its third quarter revenues had dropped 12% quarter over quarter to $7.8 million dollars. The company also reported a loss of  $3.9 million dollars for the quarter. In a press release accompanying the results, CEO Yichin Lee said the company would change course, extending its platform to mobile devices.

Brazilian Social Gaming Market Growing Quickly – Research firm SuperData is predicting that the Brazilian social gaming market is will be worth $238 million by 2014. At that point more than 52 million Brazilians will play social games, up from the 35 million people who currently identify as social gamers.

Nordeus Best Social Gaming Startup of 2011 – Serbian social game company Nordeus has been named the best gaming startup of 2011 at the annual Europas Awards. The company won the award due to the strong performance of its football game, Top Eleven, which currently has over 3.3 million MAU, according to AppData. The Europas Awards are decided by a panel of industry experts.

Brands Flock to Google+ – Bright Edge is reporting that 61 of the world’s top 100 brands (well known household brands like Coke and McDonald’s) have set up Google+ brand pages since they’ve been available. However, according the company’s November Social Share report even the biggest brands had yet to attract a significant following on the brand new social network. According to a quick search of the social network, just 221 people have added Coca Cola to their circles.

Zynga and Best Buy Team to Offer Limited Edition FarmVille Toys - Just in time for Christmas, fans of FarmVille will be able to collect a series of 8 FarmVille plush toys. Each toy is $9.99, or $0.99 with the purchase of $25 Zynga gift card. The toys will be blind-boxed, but players who collect all 8 will be able to unlock a special in-game Super Orchard.

Car Town Teams with Nitto Tire for Yearlong Campaign - Cie Games has signed an agreement with Nitto Tire to embark on a year-long integrated advertising campaign in its Facebook game Car Town. The promotion will include in-game activities, contests, giveaways and virtual items. Car Town is no stranger to in game promotions, having previously signed deals with Walmart and Universal Pictures.

120 Million People a Week Playing Social Games according to PopCap Survey – PopCap has funded a study conducted by Informations Solutions Group that has found the number of people playing social games has grown extensively. According to the study than 81 million people play social games at least once a day and 120 million people play social games once a week. The whole study can be found here.

Google+: Rumors of My Demise are Greatly Exaggerated – Online analytics service Experian Hitwise is reporting that Google+ traffic continues to grow, with the site receiving 6.8 million US visits between November 5th and 12th, 5% more than it received the week before. 74% of those hits were from returning visitors.

Shanda Games Reports Record Quarterly Revenues, Sees MAU Drop - Chinese free-to-play MMO publisher Shanda Games released third quarter results that showed the company posted revenues of $212.9 million, a 23.4% increase year on year,  but had lost 3 million MAU between the second and third quarters.

GaiaX Expands With Philippines Based Subsidiary – GaiaX, a Japanese company that provides social media monitoring and social app support services for a variety of companies, including DeNA’s Mobage network, is expanding, launching a new multi-language subsidiary that will be based in the Philippines. The subsidiary will be called GaiaX Asia Corporation.

Live Gamer Raises $8.5 Million - Online virtual goods marketplace Live Gamer has raised an additional $8.5 million in funding from a mixed securities offering.  The company, which bills itself as a combined e-commerce and advertising platform has raised more than $35 million so far.

Mobile, Social Gaming Cutting into Handheld, But Not Console Dollars – According to a new survey from the Cowen Group, only six percent of self identified “gamers” reported spending less on traditional console games because of time spent playing mobile and social games. However, out of people who identified themselves as “casual gamers” 29% of them reported being less likely to use a dedicated handheld system like Sony’s PSP or Nintendo’s 3DS.

Will Wright Has a HiveMind – Sims creator Will Wright is launching a new game and company, both called HiveMind according to an exclusive interview on Venturebeat. HiveMind’s products will be based around collecting information and then customizing the game for its player, rather than the typical model, which sees the player adapt to the game’s rules. While Wright was low on specifics, he did reveal that the company’s products could be staged on either mobile devices or Facebook.

Warren Spector on Social, Mobile Games - In an interview with IndustryGamers, Deus Ex creator and games industry veteran and Warren Spector has revealed a mixed attitude to mobile and social games. Spector was quoted as saying: “Selfishly, I look at social and mobile games and think, “Didn’t I just spend 20+ years of my life trying to get away from graphics and gameplay models like this?” It seems inevitable that social and mobile will be a big part of our gaming future, that’s for sure.”

[Launch] A&E Brings Storage Wars to Facebook as Social Game – A&E’s hit reality TV show Storage Wars is now a social game on Facebook. Players in the game compete with one another to bid on storage locker auctions, just like in the TV show. The release of the game coincides with the debut of the new season of the show.

[Launch] Dungeon Overlord Makes Official Debut - Night Owl Games’ Facebook MMO Dungeon Overlord has gone out of beta with 80,000 MAU, according to Appdata. At the end of October we reported that The9 Korea had acquired the exclusive Korean operating rights for the game.

Put “-Ville” in a Mobile App Name, Risk Litigation From Zynga

• Nov 18th, 2011
Legal, Mobile, Social Games, zynga

Zynga, the social gaming giant that is famously trigger-happy with litigation, is getting defensive about names ending in “-Ville” on mobile platforms like iOS and Android.

Latman Interactive, a small developer behind a paid hidden object game called Quackville, said it received a noticed from Zynga, asking it to change the name of its game and rescind an application to trademark the name. Zynga declined to comment on this.

However, here’s an e-mail excerpt from a lawyer working on behalf of Zynga to the studio’s chief executive Richard Latman:

To summarize, Zynga is concerned that you have adopted a trademark that shares very close similarity to its popular game names CITYVILLE, FARMVILLE, FRONTIERVILLE, PETVILLE, FISHVILLE and YOVILLE. Your trademark application for QUACKVILLE claims only “downloadable computer game software.” We believe there is a strong likelihood that consumers will confuse QUACKVILLE with Zynga’s –Ville marks, shown above. Therefore, we must insist that you voluntarily abandon your trademark application and game name.

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

What We’re Playing This Week on Inside Social Games

• Nov 18th, 2011
Board, casual, Electronic Arts, facebook, Featured, Puzzle, Reviews, RPG, Sim, Social Games, zynga

[Editor's Note: Each week, we roundup the games our editors and contributors have played during the week. Quite apart from our standard reviews format and our weekly AppData rankings charts, this post is intended to share an opinion-based viewpoint of the games we play with scores out of a 10-point scale assigned for emphasis.]

CastleVille — Zynga’s newest Facebook game feels like FrontierVille, plays like CityVille, and has some of the best music we’ve ever heard in any game — social or console. Like Ravenskye City, the game started off a bit stingy with the energy gauge, which limits gameplay sessions to maybe 20 minutes once per day. It looks like Zynga has tweaked the amount of energy a player can earn by performing tasks like chopping down trees or constructing buildings, however, meaning we can now potentially play more times per day without getting out our wallets. The PvE could use some work as we waste a lot of the energy gauge beating on wolves and rats even after crafting special items that ostensibly kill them off more quickly.
Score: 8
Here’s the app.

Coco Girl — Metrogames second fashion title for Facebook puts a lot of emphasis on the daily outfits players choose for their avatars. It also features several mini-games that are incorporated into the daily quests that players complete to earn more virtual currency to spend on items. We’ve had more fun playing these mini-games, which include a hidden object game and a pipes puzzle, than we have had shopping for clothes in Coco Girl. Maybe if there weren’t so many restrictions on which types of clothes players could buy (Heart type, actual price, Facebook Credits-only, etc.), we’d pay more attention to the shopping part.
Score: 6
Here’s the app.

The Sims Social — EA’s Facebook version of its Sims series started off as a 10 in our minds, but now that the game is three months old, it’s lost some of that newness that lent the game such a broad appeal. Lately, our gameplay sessions consist of clicking through requests in our inbox and looking for new stuff to buy in the store, since we’ve maxed out both our skill levels on a variety of objects and our trait levels. Unless EA Playfish adds a significant game-changer in the next week or so (pets, the ability to have babies, group lots we can visit to do other stuff besides shop), we’ll probably shelve this to focus on newer games.
Score: 6
Here’s the app.

Triviador — While waiting around for EA Playfish to launch Risk: Factions, we tried out another Risk-style board game for Facebook called Triviador. This title turned out to be more like a game show because of the trivia emphasis, but the conquer-the-map gameplay is still very compelling especially with the grave-sounding voice over and rousing battle music. Though most of the trivia questions are based on number answers (e.g. “What year did X happen?” “How many X in a Y?” etc.), Triviador has a pretty transparent system for determining which player wins ties or wins in the case where both answered the question incorrectly.
Score: 7
Here’s the app.

Bonfire’s Hooked Reels in Card Game Fans on Facebook

• Nov 18th, 2011
Casino, facebook, Reviews, Social Games

Hooked from Bonfire is a fast-paced, aquatic themed, arcade-style card game derived from poker. Players create as many high-ranked hands as possible within a 60-second time limit, using power-ups to help boost their scores.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Hooked currently has 210,000 monthly active users and 20,000 daily active users.

Players are given one minute to amass as high a score as possible by assembling hands of cards based on rank, suit, and pairs. Hands follow the rankings used in poker, such as straights, flushes, full houses, and so on. In order to assemble their five-card hands, players must quickly look over a selection of six fish bearing cards to choose from before they swim off the screen. At the end of the 60 second period, their score is displayed and they can try again for a higher score. Winning helps players level up; when they reach certain level milestones they can unlock new stages to play on.

The game features a number of power-ups and gameplay mechanics that require players to spend pearls, a premium currency, in order to use them. These include those that create automatic pairs and change card suits. Players also have the ability to play wild cards and swap out the six cards for a new set to choose from by spending pearls. On occasion, free power-ups swim by in the form of fish that provide score multipliers.

Hooked’s social features include friend invites and bragging about high scores via viral channels. The player’s standing compared to that of their friends’ is shown in a life leaderboard at the bottom of the screen. Players can compete head-to-head against others in real-time, or enter a tournament where their five highest scores for the week are added up, with the game’s top players receiving free pearls.

Bonfire is monetizing Hooked with the pearls currency, which can be purchased using Facebook Credits, and with video advertising. Players can earn more pearls by playing, as they win tickets at the end of each game, which can be traded in at the rate of 100 tickets per pearl. Pearls can also be earned by watching advertisements, and the game features un-skippable interstitial video ads from time to time.

Two elements of Hooked are displayed as “coming soon” in the game. The first is a customizable user section where players can set a custom background image and build their own aquarium. This is then filled with pet fish purchased from the second upcoming feature, an in-game store. These fish will be purchased using the coins players earn by playing.

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

Facebook Updates Credits Payflow, Adds International Payment Methods, and Updates Transfer Policy

• Nov 18th, 2011
Credits, facebook, Featured, Policy, Social Games

Facebook has announced several updates to Credits today with changes that resolve a known pay flow issue, add additional payment methods for international markets, and restrict applications from transferring Credits between each other without prior authorization.

The pay flow issue deals with one of the three callbacks generated by the Pay Dialog. A recent change to the callback status=settled resulted in some cases in which users were not getting the item that they paid for. To avoid this problem, Facebook is now asking developers to fulfill orders on the callback status=placed instead of waiting around for status=settled. To completely eliminate confusion, Facebook is removing the status=settled callback 90 days from now.

Next up, Facebook Credits now supports additional payment methods in Europe, Asia, New Zealand and Latin America. The new methods added are:

  • ELV (Germany)
  • MyCard Mobile (HongKong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan)
  • Visa Electron (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand)
  • WebBilling Online Bank Transfer (Austria, Germany, Spain, Switzerland)

Find the full list of supported countries and payment methods here.

Lastly, Facebook has updated its Credits policy to restrict apps from transferring Credits between one another without prior approval from Facebook. The new policy:

2.14 You may not accept Credits in one application and deliver or transfer the purchase to the user in another app without our prior authorization. For example, an app solely designed to facilitate transactions is not permitted.

This will affect dubious apps that facilitate illegal gambling, and may also affect certain game developers that attempt to use one type of premium currency across more than one game running on different app IDs — but it sounds like Facebook is willing to make allowances for cases like that if the developer presents them.

Facebook also notes that developers should keep their company info up to date in order to receive payouts. The Facebook Credits documentation has also been revamped to address developer feedback.

This article originally appeared on our sister site, Inside Facebook.

Family Feud & Friends Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

• Nov 18th, 2011
AppData, Social Games

Ludia’s Family Feud & Friends leads the pack of emerging Facebook games this week with Mynet’s second-largest Okey card game variant and CrowdStar’s Wasteland Empires rounding out the top three.

There are a handful of newcomers to our list this week, like Hooked and Clickfun Casino, as well as a few familiar titles like I AM PLAYR and Lucky Space. Super Ferme down at No.18 appears to be a French-language version of المزرعة السعيدة, a farming sim that climbed the charts in July thanks to publishing help from Peak Games. At this time, it looks like there are two English-language versions of the app: Happy Land and Country Life. We’ve contacted representatives of Peak Games to find out more about the different variants of this game.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1.  Family Feud & Friends 940,000 +170,000 +22%
2.  Mynet Çanak 101 Okey 940,000 +90,000 +11%
3.  Wasteland Empires 590,000 +90,000 +18%
4.  Clickfun Casino 250,000 +80,000 +47%
5.  Bizim Çiftlik 860,000 +70,000 +9%
6.  Hayvanat Bahçesi 290,000 +70,000 +32%
7.  Hooked 210,000 +70,000 +50%
8.  Megacity 980,000 +60,000 +7%
9.  حديقة الحيوان 310,000 +60,000 +24%
10.  Galaxy 2.0 – Best Sci-Fi Strategy Game, 2011 180,000 +50,000 +38%
11.  Gol Mania 900,000 +50,000 +6%
12.  I AM PLAYR 240,000 +50,000 +26%
13.  Lucky Space 280,000 +50,000 +22%
14.  Slots Farm – Slot Machines 450,000 +50,000 +13%
15.  Okey Plus 850,000 +40,000 +5%
16.  Simply Hospital 540,000 +40,000 +8%
17.  Snake 570,000 +40,000 +8%
18.  Super Ferme 380,000 +40,000 +12%
19.  Triviador 160,000 +40,000 +33%
20.  TubeHero 440,000 +40,000 +10%

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.

Pangalore Debuts HTML5-based Facebook Games Portal

• Nov 17th, 2011
facebook, Social Games

Five-month-old social game developer Pangalore has launched its first two Facebook titles, Wild West Solitaire and ArtFit. Both titles are built using HTML5, enabling their use on computers and devices that don’t support Adobe Flash, such as iPhone and iPad.

Speaking with Inside Social Games, company co-founder and chief product officer Doyon Kim says that Pangalore was able to get up-to-speed quickly because of its approach to HTML5 development. Other companies hit performance walls, he says, because they attempt to shoehorn existing Flash code and assets onto the platform, rather than building for it from the ground up. Pangalore has assembled a team of experienced game designers and developers with HTML5 expertise in order to accomplish its goals.

The company has plans to launch at least three additional HTML5-based games on its Facebook portal by the end of 2011. Its current titles combine classic board game and puzzle themes. Wild West Solitaire is a variation on the popular card game, while ArtFit, with its unique paper cutout visual style, has players piecing together colorful blocks to create images.

Pangalore is currently readying two more puzzle games, Bubble Prince and Pop the Candy, based on its HTML5-based technology. Like its current titles, they will appear in stand-alone downloadable releases for iOS and Android, which will feature Facebook Connect functionality enabling players to carry on sessions between devices. Based on our own experience, Wild West Solitaire and ArtFit run very well on iPad and iPhone when played through on Facebook in the Safari browser.

Kim tells us that beyond HTML5 casual games, Pangalore plans to use Unity 3D for titles that are “a bit more hardcore.” These will run on Facebook and have stand-alone iOS and Android releases utilizing Facebook Connect. We were shown a quick preview of one Unity 3D title it has in the works, Knights of Loreland, which combines action RPG and farm simulation gameplay in an MMO environment, with fully 3D visuals. It is expected to launch in early 2012.

Pangalore was founded by Kim, founder of Spotplex, Opinity, and Dialpad Communications, and business partner Brian Kang, formerly the CEO of Gravity Co., Ltd. It has offices in San Jose, Calif. and Seoul, South Korea. NHN Investment Corporation, based in South Korea, has invested an undisclosed amount of capital in the company.

Zynga S-1 Amendment Shows Management Changes for Van Natta, Feld and Paul

• Nov 17th, 2011
Business, facebook, Featured, Social Games, zynga

Zynga’s Owen Van Natta has stepped down from his post as Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer to become a strategic advisor, handing back millions of pre-IPO shares, according to a new amendment to Zynga’s form S-1. Other changes include director and venture investor Brad Feld leaving the board while Spring Ventures partner Sunil Paul joins it.

It’s tempting to read into Van Natta’s move, given that he’s moved from a senior role at Facebook to CEO of MySpace for less than a year, and is now coming down from his EVP & CBO role at Zynga after 14 months. According to a statements made to AllThingsD, however, that’s not the case. Unnamed sources also tell the blog that Van Natta’s move has nothing to do with a recent stock scandal where The Wall Street Journal reported that Zynga was attempting to redistribute shares among its employees. Additionally, CEO Mark Pincus said for the record that “Owen is a valuable business partner. He’s made great contributions to Zynga and continues to be an important part of our team.”

As for Feld and Paul, the timing is not altogether strange for a VC sitting on the board of a company about to go public. Paul fills his place, having previously worked with Pincus on founding a company called FreeLoader, which sold for $38 million in 1996.

Zynga’s IPO is expected to happen before the end of 2011.

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