This Week’s Headlines From Across Inside Network

• Nov 6th, 2011
Social Games

A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between October 31st and November 5th.

Inside Mobile Apps

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

Monday, October 31st:

Tuesday, November 1st:

Wednesday, November 2nd:

Thursday, November 3rd:

Friday, November 4th:

Saturday, November 5th: 

Inside Social Games

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

Monday, October 31st:

Tuesday, November 1st:

Wednesday, November 2nd:

Thursday, November 3rd:

Friday, November 4th:

Saturday, November 5th:

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, October 31st:

Tuesday, November 1st:

Wednesday, November 2nd:

Thursday, November 3rd:

Friday, November 4th:

Saturday, November 5th: 

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

• Nov 5th, 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 TinyCo, Games Cafe Inc., King.com, Acquinity Interactive, BLiNQ, Lolapps, Natural Motion Games, ngmoco :) and Check Point Studios.

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: Sony, Playdom and DeNA

• Nov 4th, 2011
casual, Electronic Arts, facebook, monetization, News, Playdom, Social Games, zynga

New Social Game Focused PlayStation Home Debuts – Sony has unveiled the new look for its proprietary gaming service PlayStation Home. Formerly a virtual social destination for PS3 owners, the service never quite captured the interest of the gaming community. The new version of Home switches the focus from social to social gaming, and now lets users explore an environment filled with quests, shopping and more than 230 games, some of which are free-to-play social games, supported by advertising and microtransactions.

Nexon America Q3 Revenues Up 29% - Nexon America is reporting its third quarter revenues were up 29% year-over-year, partially to the due to the success of its microtransaction business model. This is the ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth, according to the developer. In the last year, Nexon has entered the social games market with MapleStory Adventures and Zombie Misfits, as well as with investments in social game developers A Bit Lucky and 6waves Lolapps.

DeNA’s Baseball Team Won’t Sport Mobage Name - Andriasang is reporting that DeNA has reached an agreement to purchase the Yokohama BayStars. Unfortunately for the company, Nippon Professional Baseball, the organization that manages the league quashed DeNA’s plans to add Mobage branding to the name of the team.

Call of Duty Elite Features Deep Facebook Integration - Activision’s Call of Duty Elite, a multiplayer subscription service for first person shooter Call of Duty will integrate Facebook directly into the game, allowing players to log in with their Facebook profiles and play with their friends from the social network according to a developer video posted on Destructoid.

More Details Emerge for DeNA/Grasshopper Manufacture Partnership - In September we reported that Japanese developer Grasshopper Manufacture would be teaming with DeNA to create games for social and mobile networks. This week DeNA revealed that the two companies are forming a spin-off venture which will be tentatively called Grasshopper Social Network Service Inc. The new company will be headed by Grasshopper CEO and auteur designer Goichi “Suda 51″ Suda.

Social Games Profitable for Konami – Japanese gaming giant Konami’s video game segment brought in 58.1 billion yen between April and September of this year, up five billion yen from the same period in 2010. The company was helped by a 12 billion yen increase in social game revenue from games on the Mobage and GREE networks. According to the company, it had 11.5 million registered users on social game networks in September, but only 2.5 million at the beginning of the year. Its latest social game, Frogger Pinball, is now live on Facebook.

Funzio is the Most Innovative Social Game Company - Crime City developer Funzio has been named to this year’s Dow Jones VentureWire FASTech 50, a list of the most investment worthy startups as selected by the VentureWire and a board of venture capitalists. Funzio was the only gaming company who made this year’s list.

Hilleman: HTML5 Will Need to Improve to Survive - EA’s creative director Richard Hilleman has revealed that HTML5’s performance issues have proven to be major hurdle for game developers. According to Gamasutra, who attended the presentation at the New Game Conference in San Francisco, Hilleman said it was difficult to predict how an app would run different hardware specifications, and that HTML5’s audio issues will need to be addressed. Hilleman encouraged the industry to set technical standards for the platform and improve how games using HTML5 are distributed and monetized if the platform is to ultimately be successful.

Playdom Files for Trademark on City of Warfare - Fusible has discovered that Playdom has filed four trademark applications for the name City of Warfare. At this point its unknown if City of Warfare is a new IP or if the trademarks are for rebranding City of Might, a Playdom game currently in closed beta.

Gameforge Laying off 100, Cancels Games – Gameforge is significantly realigning its business structure to better integrate with Frogster in a move that will see the company scrap at least two upcoming games and lay off 100 staff. Gameforge is eliminating its client based games and web games divisions and replacing them with development and publishing divisions. Gameforge and Frogster merged in August.

Beach Cooler Games Rises from Ashes of Blue Fang - Gamasutra is reporting the former CEO and lead designer of now defunct studio Blue Fang Games have formed Beach Cooler Games, a Boston based startup that will focus on the mobile and social markets. Blue Fang was best known for the Zoo Tycoon series and the Facebook games The Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

Social Games Evolving Faster Than Any Other Entertainment Medium: Insomniac CEO - Insomniac Games’ CEO Ted Price has given a candid interview to Gamespot explaining why a AAA console developer is getting into the social games market with its new division Insomniac Click. According to Price, social games are an exciting new frontier that is  “evolving faster than any other entertainment medium in the past 50 years,” which makes it difficult for developers who are “trying to figure out exactly where we want to focus in terms of making our mark in social games, because… there is no right way to do it.” The full interview can be read here.

Zynga: Developing in HTML5 Painful, But Worth It - Zynga’s Paul Bakaus had some interesting comments to make about HTML5 at the New Game Conference in San Francisco. According to Gamasutra, Bakaus explained that the lack of gaming support in the emerging platform makes developing for the platform feel like the dark ages of gaming, but it offers great opportunities to make the web a better platform for games.

Twiitz Blends Real and Virtual Goods in Online Store -  Twiitz is hoping to crack into the online shopping market with a store exclusively targeted towards social gamers. Featured items in the online retailer’s store come with $15 dollars worth of Facebook credits, delivered via pre-paid cards included with the items.

TheBroth Hires Claritics to Improve Barn Buddy - Australian social game developer TheBroth is implementing social analytics make its flagship Facebook game Barn Buddy even more popular. The developer has selected Claritics, who make a line of cloud-based SaaS analytics apps that provide real-time information and feedback on engagement and monetization efforts. According to AppData, Barn buddy currently has 1.6 million MAU and 370,000 DAU.

[Launch] Tight Lines Fishing Brings Social Fishing to Facebook - Independent Austrian studio Socialspiel released its first Facebook game this week, social fishing game Tight Lines Fishing. The game challenges players to compete against their friends to catch the biggest fish. Socialspiel was formed in 2010 by former employees of Deep Silver and Rockstar Vienna.

OMGPOP Expands Facebook Offerings With HTML5 Based Gem Rush

• Nov 4th, 2011
casual, facebook, Featured, Reviews

Single player, arcade-style puzzle games are not in short supply on Facebook, but OMGPOP’s brand new game Gem Rush stands from the crowd out thanks to its slick graphics, rock-solid execution and integration of Facebook’s Timeline system.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Gem Rush currently has 30 monthly active users and 10 daily active users.

Developed by OMGPOP veteran game designer Will Chen, Gem Rush is best described as a blend of Dr. Mario and Puyo Puyo. In the game players race against the clock to steer pairs of gems onto columns and try to make sets of three or more. Once matched, the gems explode, and any gems left above will fall down and create chain reactions. The faster the player makes matches the more the score multiplier racks up, and the more violently the gems explode. Clear an entire screen of gems and it fills up again from the bottom.

Every time a user levels up, they receive a 1% score multiplier bonus, meaning the more one plays, the higher their score will be. While this makes it easy for players to keep hitting new personal bests, it also gives higher-level players a distinct advantage over new players on the game’s leaderboards, even if they technically have the same skill level.

Social features in Gem Rush are limited to leaderboards and weekly tournaments where players can win medals for having the highest score among their friends. While it’s simple and fast to invite friends to complete against you in weekly tournaments, Gem Rush doesn’t reward the player with extra items or power-ups for recruiting more players.

On the monetization front, Gem Rush is also a very simple package; there is no soft currency in Gem Rush or premium items to purchase. Instead the game monetizes by allowing players to purchase life refills, eliminating the five minute wait it takes for each one to regenerate on its own.

What might be the most interesting thing about Gem Rush is its development pedigree. The game is part of OMGPOP’s much larger ongoing project to create their own HTML5 framework for Facebook games. While HTML5 may still be an evolving set of standards, it’s perfect for OMGPOP according to Christian Montoya, the company’s VP of product.

“The game loads very fast,” said Montoya. “That’s because all the screens aside from the actual gameplay screen are  HTML5, not Flash. This framework allows us to launch similar games on Facebook very quickly and even gives us the ability to launch HTML5 games in place of Flash games as well.”

However, where the real advantage lies with HTML5 is in the time it takes to implement Facebook’s new features. While Facebook announced Timeline at the end of September, most apps on the platform, including brand new social games, are still using the old permissions system — i.e. requesting access to a user’s friends, or to post as the user. Because Gem Rush was developed in HTML5, OMGPOP was able to quickly incorporate Timeline, which lets players share less personal information and exercise greater control over how they broadcast the game’s activity updates.

“Whenever Facebook announces new features, we can have them live on Gem Rush almost immediately,” explained Montoya. “When Facebook announced Timeline, our developers were able to get the features working within a day. Obviously we believe that integrating new social features gives us a huge advantage on the platform, so the value proposition is not a question. We believe that a lot of new games aren’t using Facebook’s newest features because they don’t have infrastructure that allows them to iterate quickly on those features. We don’t have that problem.

Montoya also hinted Gem Rush may see life on other platforms and as a mobile app, which seems to be a natural move for the company, as the game’s HTML5 framework, makes it much easier to bring the game to iOS, Android or Facebook’s mobile app.

You can follow Gem Rush’s progress using AppData, our tracking service for social games.

Supercell’s Facebook Action RPG Gunshine.net Comes Out (of Beta) Shooting

• Nov 4th, 2011
facebook, Reviews, RPG, Social Games

Finnish developer Supercell has reached a major milestone with its debut title, Gunshine.net. The futuristic action RPG recently reached version 1.0, officially lunching after an extended open beta.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Gunshine.net currently has 170,000 monthly active users and 20,000 daily active users.

Gunshine.net is an action RPG with both single- and multiplayer components. In it, players take on the role of a new resident of Dawnbreak, an artificially created island. Upon arrival, they are imprisoned, escape, and join a resistance movement in an attempt to bring down Labycore, the evil corporation responsible for the island’s construction.

The title combines elements of traditional RPGs with gameplay reminiscent of dungeon crawlers such as Diablo and Torchlight. Players move by clicking the mouse on their destination, or clicking and holding to move while walking. Attacking enemies is done by clicking on them, with the player’s character continuing to attack the same enemy until they’re dead or the player selects another target. The graphics are fully polygonal, appearing almost console quality, and the gameplay is viewed from an isometric perspective.

Role-playing aspects include character customization, from hair and facial properties to clothing and accessories, as well as skills, weapons, and items. Players can collect items and money from defeated enemies, with the loot sometimes containing materials necessary to craft weapons, armor, and other items. Before players can craft items — a process that requires not only materials, but time as well — they must acquire the plans to make them. These can be obtained by completing missions and defeating bosses. Both acts also reward players with money, diamonds (the premium currency), and experience points. When players level up, they gain automatic increases in their attack, defense, and other stats.

As a real time, massively multiplayer title, Gunshine.net features public areas like nightclubs where players can see one another in the game world, converse, trade, and form parties for conducting boss battles. Players can assemble their own teams to take on bosses, or use a matchmaking system within the game to be place on a team. Once a team is formed, they can enter a boss area and fight alongside one another to bring down larger enemies. When the boss is defeated, players can stake a claim on the loot that’s dropped, with the game basing who gets it on an expressed level on interest. The game also allows players to chat in real time, trade items, and send one another components for crafting. If players die in boss combat, they can also ask friends to help revive them.

The title is monetized through a premium currency, diamonds, which can be used for buying weapons, clothing, and item components as well as for unlocking additional crafting slots so that more than one item can be crafted at once. It’s also possible to purchase health items and revive oneself if defeated in boss battles with premium currency.

Supercell has been vigilant in keeping Gunshine.net updated with new content, from additional areas (there are currently six main areas, many with more than a dozen locations) to a variety of different weapons — realistic and sci-fi inspired. The developer also maintains an active official forum for the game. We’re interested to see how the game performs in the long run as other real-time massively multiplayer games on Facebook have struggled with the platform’s naturally asynchronous environment.

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

Zynga Spent Nearly $20M on Acquiring Four Companies in the Third Quarter

• Nov 4th, 2011
facebook, Mobile, zynga

Zynga spent close to $20 million on acquiring four additional companies in the third quarter, an analysis of the company’s amended IPO filings show.

In a filing submitted today that shared the company’s third quarter performance, the company said it spent a total of $40.6 million on buying 13 companies through the end of September. That’s up from $20.8 million it said it spent on nine companies through the first half of the year, in an older filing.

Assuming it was announced right when the deal closed, one of the four companies is known. It might be Toronto’s Five Mobile, which was a gun-for-hire studio that large brands would partner with to build their own mobile apps. That deal was announced in July.

The three others are unconfirmed. New York’s Astro Ape Studios was said to be another acquisition when the company’s executives all changed their LinkedIn job descriptions to that of Zynga employees. But Zynga never confirmed nor denied the deal.

>> Continue reading on our sister site Inside Mobile Apps.

With Android, iOS, Close to 20 Percent of Zynga’s Daily Actives Are Not on Facebook

• Nov 4th, 2011
Android, facebook, iPad, iphone, Mobile, Other platforms, Social Games, zynga

Zynga said it reached an average 9.9 million daily active users of its games on iOS and Android through the third quarter, according to an amended filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission today.

It means that Zynga is gradually weaning itself off the Facebook platform. Nearly one-fifth of the company’s 54 million daily actives are now on iOS and Android —  which are platforms not operated by Facebook. Keep in mind though, that Zynga’s daily active metric double-counts users who play more than one of the company’s games.

That figure may also make Zynga the company with the most daily actives relative to any other developer on iOS and Android. Storm8 said it had 4 million daily actives on iOS and Android in June. Glu Mobile said yesterday that it had 2.1 million daily actives across its network of games in its quarterly earnings call.

>> Continue reading on our sister site Inside Mobile Apps.

Zynga’s Revenue Climbs to $306.8M in Third Quarter as Daily Actives Decline

• Nov 4th, 2011
AppData, facebook, Featured, monetization, News, Social Games, zynga

Zynga said it earned $12.5 million in net income on $306.8 million in revenue in the third quarter, according to another amendment to Zynga‘s IPO filing. On a year-over-year basis, revenue rose by 79.8 percent while net income declined by 53.9 percent. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, revenue is up 9.9 percent.

Zynga’s number of daily active users slipped for a second consecutive quarter to 54 million from 59 million, which the company attributed “to a decline in players of our more mature games and a limited number of new game launches in the first nine months of 2011.”

The amendment sheds more light on how game releases set against the decline of maturing games can impact net revenue on a quarterly basis. In spite of the active usage declines, Zynga was able to raise average bookings per user, or the average amount of virtual currency or goods purchases a user makes on a daily basis, to $0.058 from $0.051 in the previous quarter.

Here we see Zynga’s overall traffic for Q3.

During the last quarter, Zynga launched both Adventure World and Words With Friends for Facebook. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the former peaked at 39 million monthly active users and 5.2 million daily active users within the first month and then went into a steady decline. (This was slightly exaggerated by Facebook’s decision to recalculate active usage in a different way this quarter.) As for Words With Friends, the title continues to show growth across MAU and DAU with current totals of 11 million and 4.4 million respectively.

With third quarter bookings up overall, it’s easy to see that even though Zynga lost users, the ones that remain likely monetize at a higher rate. Zynga’s fourth quarter game launches include Mafia Wars 2, which came out last month, and the upcoming CastleVille.

On the mobile front, Zynga reported that it was able to grow daily active usage by more than tenfold to 9.9 million through the third quarter on iOS and Android. More on that on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps. 

Zombie Island, Wasteland Empires Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

• Nov 4th, 2011
Social Games

Almost a week after Halloween and it’s zombie-themed Zombie Island on top of our emerging Facebook games list followed by strategy combat game Wasteland Empires and a soccer sim called Gol Mania.

As for the rest of our list, MindJolt has two bare bones arcade games to offer — Snake and Kamikaze Race — while more complex games like War Commander and Lucky Space also see some gains. Madden NFL Superstars looks to be on the rise again as well with the regular football season in full swing and playoff season right around the corner.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

Name MAU Gain Gain,%
1.  Zombie Island 830,000 +380,000 +97%
2.  Wasteland Empires 360,000 +100,000 +40%
3.  Gol Mania 720,000 +100,000 +17%
4.  Spa Life 560,000 +70,000 +15%
5.  Vampire Legacy 230,000 +60,000 +38%
6.  Snake 460,000 +60,000 +15%
7.  Madden NFL Superstars 740,000 +60,000 +9%
8.  War Commander 640,000 +50,000 +8%
9.  Simply Hospital 440,000 +50,000 +13%
10.  Picturiffic 120,000 +50,000 +71%
11.  Tetris 490,000 +50,000 +11%
12.  Draw My Thing 580,000 +40,000 +7%
13.  Tower Stack 150,000 +40,000 +36%
14.  Serf Wars 370,000 +40,000 +12%
15.  Super Mario 340,000 +40,000 +13%
16.  MochiGames 360,000 +40,000 +13%
17.  Bingo Bash 160,000 +40,000 +36%
18.  Slots 280,000 +40,000 +17%
19.  Lucky Space 150,000 +30,000 +27%
20.  Kamikaze Race 220,000 +30,000 +16%

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.

Zynga’s CastleVille Launching This Month

• Nov 3rd, 2011
Design, facebook, Featured, MMO, monetization, News, Reviews, RPG, Sim, Social Games, zynga

Zynga is on the verge of launching CastleVille, its latest life simulation game for Facebook and the first title from the Zynga Dallas studio formed in 2010.

We got an early look at the game during Zynga’s Unleashed demo event in October where Zynga Dallas Creative Director Bill Jackson showed the audience a trailer and described the game as massive in both size and scope. Jackson follows up this month with a hands-off press demonstration showcasing roughly the first 15 minutes of gameplay and the neighbor-visiting mechanic.

In CastleVille, players take the role of a man or woman tasked with exploring and clearing a forest in order to build a thriving castle town. The core gameplay loop is similar to FrontierVIlle more so than FarmVille, where players perform a broad range of industry-related tasks (like farming or animal husbandry) and exploration tasks (chopping down trees, etc.) in order to earn experience points, virtual currency, and items. Monetization comes mainly in the form of purchasing energy refills or items like buildings or decorations. As the player progresses in building up the town and opening up new areas of the map, new non-playable characters become available for the player to interact with and receive character-specific quests. There are also “beastie” non-playable enemy characters that the player has to fight off in combat, similar to the critters in FrontierVille. Social features planned for the launch are limited to visiting friends’ kingdoms to help perform various tasks, including fighting off beastie attacks.

One of the key instances where CastleVille differs from we find in FrontierVille and CityVille is in depth of NPC interactions. Like other ‘Villes, NPC characters in CastleVille carry specific quests the player can complete for more rewards. To meet these NPCs, however, CastleVille players have to unlock certain sections of the map using resources — and these sections may or may not contain an NPC. Given the size of the land to explore, Jackson says it is possible for two different players to have two different casts of NPCs in their kingdom. Moreover, additional characterization and animations have been added to the CastleVille NPCs where a character might idly perform a certain action if left alone for a while — or even interact with specific items that the player as placed in their kingdom. For example, the macho Rafael character has a push-up animation that displays randomly, and he may be able to interact with archery butts that the player can place in their castle town.

In this screenshot, we see yellow arrows indicating plants that need watering and animals that need tending, while coin icons indicate buildings that can be harvested for resources. A rat in the upper right hand side of the screen is a “beastie” that the player can attack.

A second instance is in the reputation system. In FrontierVille, CityVille and Empires & Allies, reputation functions as a level independent of player level that increases as players visit and help (or attack, in the case of E&A) other players they’ve accepted as neighbors. CastleVille changes the formula by making reputation into a currency that players earn by visiting and helping neighbors — and then can spend on special items like topiary decorations. This brings the total number of currency types in CastleVille up to four: reputation, coins, gems, and castles. Reputation and coins function as soft currency whereas gems are a premium currency that can sometimes be earned through gameplay (like other Zynga premium currencies) and castles are awarded based on how many buildings or decorations the player has placed in their kingdom.

A third key instance is in the player’s ability to alter their kingdom layout. Currently, FrontierVille, CityVille, and Empires & Allies players cannot restructure the layout of their towns without painstakingly moving individual items — buildings, bushes, roads, etc. — and then rearranging them in a way that meets gameplay objectives (e.g. getting a collection bonus by having a row of flowers alongside a building in CityVille). Though we were not able to see this at work in the demo, Jackson says that players can click and drag the center of their castle town (the courtyard, is what he called it) and all walls that the player has constructed around their castle will adjust to fit. All bodies of water can also be dragged to create moats, ponds, rivers, or lakes however the player wants to structure them.

Aside from that, it’s the little things that set CastleVille apart from its ‘Ville siblings and from other games on Facebook. The quality of the art and sound is much higher than most of what we’ve seen in 2011, and additional animations — like the wobbling of a tree as it’s chopped or fish jumping in a pond — add a layer of depth to the game. Minor gameplay tweaks to traditional ‘Ville gameplay reinforces the feeling; for example, if a player plants crops beside a body of water, the animation of the crop changes to reflect irrigation and that crop happens to grow faster than those planted away from water (see crops around the pond in screenshot below).

Given the use of mechanics well-explored by FrontierVille, CityVille and even Empires & Allies, CastleVille is well-positioned to experiment with new content as the game gains players after launch. Already, Zynga Dallas is planning to add a trading system post-launch where players can exchange in-game goods in a marketplace setting. Additionally, Jackson said there may be room to add player-versus-player combat or adapt the existing player-versus-environment combat to a larger scale that could encompass cooperative multiplayer. It seems to be the developer’s intention to make CastleVille resemble a massively multiplayer online role-playing game more closely than any other Zynga game has so far.

CastleVille launches “in the next couple of weeks,” according to Zynga. A spokeswoman said that the timing of the release was in no way affected by Zynga’s impending IPO.

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