PyramidVille is a city building Facebook game from French social game developer Kobojo, which recently secured $7.5 million in funding to put toward expansion and acceleration plans. Since that time, PyramidVille has shown rapid growth for the month of June that puts it toward the top of our fastest-growing Facebook games both by monthly active users and daily active users.

According to our data tracking service AppData, PyramidVille currently has 2.4 million monthly active users and 466,747 daily active users.

The premise of PyramidVille is simple and similar to other city-building games. Set in ancient Egypt, the player is given a plot of land that has to be cleared and cultivated for urban growth. Players build homes, workshops and functional decorations called wonders, as well as grow crops and tend to animals. There are additional decorations such as pots of flowers and fences for players to customize their city. Everything takes both in-game currency and raw materials to build, which is where the game adds in social features through trade.

While the game starts players off with a small cache of supplies for building, it eventually asks players to craft their own materials for more complex quests. Any material that can be crafted is added to the player’s inventory, which the game dips into for friend gifting. This is a contrast to other city-building games that create giftable items whenever the player wants to send a gift or answer a request for a gift. Additionally, friends cannot rescue withered crops’ while visiting a friend’s city. These choices create a deeper sense of community instead of the simple “click-fests” of some city building games.

The most remarkable feature in PyramidVille is the level of polish in graphics, such as the ripple of water in a trough, bees buzzing around hives, as well as animated workshops that appear active while in production. The polish also includes all the functional perks that players of Facebook games seek such as the sorting of friends who play the game, a timer which informs the player when a friends city is ready for a visit for the player to earn rewards, as well as the ability to use the scroll wheel of the mouse to zoom and out of the game.

PyramidVille monetizes through its premium currency, Gemmes, which can be spent on special items or on gameplay acceleration. The game’s standard currency, gold, can be bought with Facebook Credits or earned in-game. A third currency, Orbs of Anubis, is only available for purchase with Gemmes and it is spent on super powers that can do things like revive all your wilted crops or collect all the taxes in your city in one click. The super powers feature was only recently added to the game.

Representatives from Kobojo were unavailable at time of writing to discuss future plans for the game. When we last spoke with the developer, VP product and strategy Vincent Vergonjeanne told us that Kobojo would invest most if its newly-acquired funding into marketing its games on Facebook and into expanding its localization efforts. It looks like both have brought in new users to PyramidVille, with the game’s traffic leaping from about 1.4 million to past the 2 million mark in just the last week, during which time the game was localized in Italian and Spanish. Vergonjeanne also mentioned a piece of proprietary technology that would be used to port PyramidVille and other games to mobile platforms, but we cannot confirm if that has happened yet.

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

A Better World is a Facebook game from developer ToonsUp that specializes in writing animated software that encourages players to perform good deeds in real life to create “a better world” where players feel good about themselves and make positive choices.

According to our data tracking service AppData, A Better World currently has 101,134 monthly active users and 5,992 daily active users.

A Better World combines city building with several other traditional social game genres like farming and pets as the core gameplay experience. Players can also decorate their homes, plant crops in a community garden and explore the world to find meditation grottoes where they can leave uplifting messages for other players to read. There are also mini-games like Threecycle, a match-three game featuring recyclable items, and Thump-a-Thought, which is essentially whack-a-mole. Playing the mini-games earns the player Do-Good-Gold to spend on in-game items that range from housing decorations to avatar customization, gifts for friends, pets and seeds to grow plants in a community garden.

The game monetizes through Facebook Credits, which can be used to buy Do-Gooder-Gold or premium decorations and gameplay boost or quest-completion items. Quests are themed towards the realization of a better world through doing good deeds in-game, like sending players to Gratitude Grotto to leave a message of gratitude, rescuing a cat to adopt as a pet or giving a friend a gift. In lieu of gifts, which the player must buy from the gift shop before giving away, A Better World allows players to send “positive thoughts” to other players for free.

A Better World takes some risks with gameplay by punishing lapsed or infrequent players. Upon returning to the game after a long absence, these players will find a gray raincloud over their avatars’ head that follows them around until they do enough good deeds to “work it off.” The plants in the community garden also die if you don’t water them, and we think that pets will run away if not tended to; however, the pet feature was only just introduced, so we haven’t been able to test this theory.

Interested readers can follow the progress of A Better World with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

Trials of Elsword is marketed as a tie-in Facebook game for side-scrolling massively-multiplayer online role-playing game, Elsword Online. The tie-in is actually a “demo” version of the full MMOG where Facebook players can only unlock additional characters and gameplay modes by inviting friends, which is a strategy we haven’t seen much of on the platform.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, Trials of Elsword currently has 8,529 monthly active users and 943 daily active users.

Players begin the game with the option to choose one of the three main playable characters from the full game, each of which representing the traditional role-playing archetypes of melee, ranged and magic. The three character types each have a physical attack, a magical attack and a super attack in addition to their combat specialty. Players choose one of the characters and proceed to the Storybook mode’s tutorial where they can try out the combat system.

As of press time, the only playable quest in Trials of Elsword involves rescuing a girl from the Monkey King. Clearing the quest nets the player points and a redeemable item the player can only claim by logging into the full game. After clearing the quest for the first time, all three characters become locked and the player can only re-enter Trials of Elsword to replay the quest by inviting a friend. Once players have collected enough friends to clear the single quest with all three characters, they have the option of unlocking Challenge mode by inviting five other friends. Challenge mode ranks friends’ scores on a leaderboard.

As needy as it seems to be with friend invites, it’s obvious that Trials of Elsword is more of a marketing experiment than a dedicated social game. At this point, the game doesn’t feature any monetization, not even to get around the friend invite requirement. We also note that it’s experiencing significant bugs, such as freezing at the final screen, failing to reward credit for question completion, and issues with redeeming collectible items in the full game.

Even so, Trails of Elsword represents an interesting opportunity for MMOs on Facebook. We’ve seen that the Unity engine, on which Elsword Online is build, is capable of running complex 3D experiences on the platform and we’re seeing more MMO-style games emerging from big and small developers. If Elsword developer Killer3rcombo had the inclination, it could conceivably run Elsword Online in its entirety on Facebook and also run the game from its own site, potentially increasing its overall user base. Or, if the current “demo” strategy were somehow revised to support true social network gameplay, Elsword could at least tap into an additional revenue stream via Facebook.

As the Facebook component only just launched a week ago, we’ll be keeping an eye on it to see if developer Kill3rCombo revises its strategy. Elsword Online launched in the U.S. on May 5.

Interested readers can follow the progress of this game with our traffic tracking service, AppData.

A Mystical Land is a 3-D massively-multiplayer online role-playing game playable on Facebook as well as through the game’s website. It’s one of the first Facebook games to utilize the Portalarium Player, a web browser plug-in developed by video game entrepreneur and developer Richard Garriott at his new company of the same name. A Mystical Land is developed by Mad Otter Games and published worldwide by Neonga AG.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, A Mystical Land currently has 25,000 monthly active users and 1,000 daily active users.

The game is a full-fledged MMO that features combat, crafting professions and quests, feats, achievements, badges and collections. The gameplay is targeted toward a casual player, as if often the case with browser-based MMOs due to the limitations of the platform. A Mystical Land, however, is one of very few full 3D games on Facebook and it has more in common with classic MMOs than it does with the modern casual browser-based MMOs.

Players start the game by creating and customizing a character. The classes are traditional fantasy MMO fare: warrior, wizard, hunter and priest. The interface is very simple and players have a choice of using the keyboard, mouse or a combination there of to navigate the world. In this world, players can fight monsters to earn experience points. A Mystical Land also offers alternative gameplay activities like harvesting, fishing, mining, raising farm animals and something called insect lore, where your character crouches over what looks like a giant ant hill with a magnifying glass. Player are not required to participate in combat if they prefer the crafting and lore activities.

The feel of the game is reminiscent of an earlier time in MMOs, mainly due to the simple but pretty graphics, non-player character dialogue and combat. Like those older MMOs, players spend most of the game in a single area where monsters respawn so that players can kill them over and over again for XP. If a particular creature is required for a bounty or completion of a quest, players wait their turn to kill it, which is a contrast to modern MMOs that create instances for each player so there isn’t competition for the monster.

Other classic-style MMOs on Facebook have struggled in the past to connect with players on a massive scale. Most of these have been isometric top-down games similar to Garriott’s 1997 MMO, Ultima Online, where 2D avatars move about in a 3D landscape for what we think of as a “2.5D” experience. Sacred Seasons 2 and City of Eternals are examples of this kind of Facebook MMO. MilMo, on the other hand, is a cross between traditional social game and traditional MMO with full 3D artwork; however, it also suffers from limited appeal as its targeted at children.

A Mystical Land also uses Facebook Connect viral features from its browser version, allowing players to find their Facebook friends in the game, although a Facebook account is not required to play the browser version of the game. Recall that any player using Facebook Connect off the platform to access the game is counted toward that game’s MAU and DAU figures. The game is monetized by purchase of its premium currency, crowns, which is used to buy consumable items like potions and spells and for avatar customization items. Currently, crowns can only be purchased through Neonga, but the developer tells us it is working on implementing Facebook Credits.

Interested readers can follow the progress of this game in our traffic tracking service, AppData.

[Editor's Note: The reviews on Inside Social Games tend to focus on new or successful Facebook games that appear on our weekly rankings lists of games by traffic growth, informed by research from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Every so often, however, our reviewers find themselves fascinated by a game that may not be new or may not enjoy any particular advantage in traffic or monetization. Our weekly reviews examine these social games, which otherwise might fly under the radar.]

About two years ago, most Facebook games were simple collection games and what I played were variations of games like African Safari and Lil’ Green Patch — collections games that benefited charitable organizations. I started playing Fairyland because a friend had posted the cutest creatures from the game on her Wall and it turned out that developer Play and Connect, Ltd. donated some of their proceeds to the Nature Conservancy. Nearly two years later, I’m still playing.

Game Overview

Launched in 2008, Fairyland is a virtual farming simulation and collection game. Players buy flower pots, plant seeds, water and harvest the fruit of their labor. Each plant will attract specific wildlife that eats a certain food. Players watering plants have a chance of spotting these creatures and winning diamonds. Players also receive a message that they save one (or more) square foot of rain forest each time they harvest the fruit of a plant.

When players start the game, they receive 175 gold, 25 diamonds and 3 sprinkles of stardust and may have nine items in the garden (five at start), two of which can be feeding tables for wild life. They name a garden helper — a fairy or elf to which ownership of the garden most of the activity is attributed. The game identifies players by garden name as well as by the player’s first name and name of the garden helper. Plants generally take one to two weeks to grow and produce fruit, although higher level plants can take as long as 30 days or more to complete the cycle. The goal is to spot creatures and gain diamonds as these in combination with plants grown are what provide levels and achievements.

The mechanic that gets players coming back is a social one that extends beyond Facebook friends available in-game. Players have to spot creatures in their own gardens as well as other gardens in order to fill the creature spotted page, as well as move forward in certain thematic plant collections. Furthermore, spotting creatures in other gardens rewards the garden owners with the same amount of diamonds that you the spotter receives, encouraging garden owners to attract people to their own gardens. Fairyland gardeners can also set up mini-games in their gardens for visitors to play. The only benefit from having your Facebook friends play the game is that these players can gift each other seasonal seeds.

There are two main types of currency in the game, gold and diamonds. Gold is used every time a player waters a plant and also to purchase seeds, flower pots, food and resources for mini-games. Diamonds are used to shorten plant growing time and to purchase special flower pots and garden games. Five gold can be collected every three hours and other small amounts can be earned through other means, including finding them in friends’ gardens. Stardust is a third and rarely used type of currency in the game that comes in small amounts whenever a player purchases gold. Stardust can be used to purchase super food that attracts twice as many creatures, and special decorations for the garden that accompany in-game actions. For example, you can purchase flying pigs that appear in the background whenever you have plants in your garden out to attract the piglet.

Game Complexity and Development

Although the mechanics are simple, Fairyland is complex enough that fans have formed resource lists to keep track of all the “right” plants and pots and animals players need to advance. Garden lists show friends gardens, favorite gardens that players bookmark and random gardens. Wildlife lists tracks the wildlife you have spotted and links to pages where you can advertise your garden and find other gardens currently attracting that particular creature. Additionally, there are complex side games like alchemy and herbalism that award resources, which the fan pages break down by materials needed to complete the side games and where those materials can be earned or bought.

If growing the right plants in the right pots to attract wildlife with the right food and at the right time isn’t complex enough, there are three grades of food. Regular food costs 5 gold and attracts 5 wildlife in 3 days; organic food costs 10 gold and attracts 5 wildlife in 36 hours; and super food attracts 10 wildlife in 36 hours. From those numbers, players have deduced the time intervals where it is most likely to spot a creature when watering a plant. Complicated player etiquette systems have developed around what is considered polite behavior, such as not “swooping” in to water after a certain time has passed in “first feeds” on a feeding platter if other players have been diligently watering in hopes of spotting a rare creature.

Achievements in the game are understated but recognizable by regular Fairyland players. For example, titles attained from collecting a certain number of diamonds from spotting wildlife are not displayed, but they unlock increasingly higher level magical mushrooms for the garden. These mushrooms not only attract mythological creatures, but also deter common creatures worth, say, only one diamond from showing up in the garden. A regular player would see one of these mushrooms and be able to deduce how advanced that player was. For example, I know a “Fairylander” with an enchanted black mushroom has earned 15,000 diamonds from spotting wildlife and has attained Legendary III. At time of writing, Legendary VI is the highest achievement, worth an unheard of 30,000 diamonds.

Why do I still play it?

I’ve played Fairyland for 20 months now. I call it a substitute for a real garden, but I’ve found it’s an uplifting social experience. A regular “Fairylander” leaves a different haiku on my wall each time he waters my plants; general greetings have turned into friendly “back wall” chats; and the first spot of new and rare wildlife is still a triumph, especially in another player’s garden because I feel like I’ve given that player a gift even as I collect the reward for myself.

The game has gotten more complex over time through content updates that introduce additional plant types and creatures. Although I’ve given up on actively trying to attract and spot the very rare wildlife, I occasionally plop the odd $5 in so I can relax in the evenings by visiting gardens, watering at will…. And just so I can have flying pigs in my garden.

Carolyn Koh is a freelance games journalist covering social games, massively multiplayer online games and children’s games. She is also Vice-President & COO of  Genesis Advanced Technologies, Inc. You can read her stories on ISG here.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire is an adaptation of the TV game show of the same name produced by ABC Television Network. The game launched in mid-March, but was taken down for stability issues and re-launched March 29. In April, the game added the ability to advance to Round 2 and not long after, the game broke into our weekly top gainers lists and still remains on it at time of writing.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire on Facebook is a mostly-faithful adaptation of the TV game show. Gameplay is broken into “shows” at a rate of one playable show per day. Shows are played out in two rounds. In Round 1, there are ten players and ten questions, with each question being worth a certain amount of prize money ranging from $100 to $25,000. At the beginning of the round, the prize amounts and the question categories are shown, but both are then randomized as the round starts, so the difficulty of the question is not tied to its value. Players receive two “Life lines,” which are other friends that play the game. Using a “Life line” allows players to skip questions while gaining the prize money and bonuses are given to the fastest answer.

The top three scorers in Round 1 advance to Round 2. In Round 2, players answer four questions with prize amounts increasing from $100,000, to $250,000, to $500,000 and finally to the grand prize of $1,000,000. Players can choose to “walk away” with their winnings by not answering a question. They can also skip a question by “Asking the Audience,” which posts a question on their wall, allowing a friend playing the game to earn a little prize money if they answer the question correctly. An incorrect answer drops the player’s prize money to $25,000 and ends the show.

Where the Facebook game differs from the TV show is in wrong answers. On the show, a wrong answer is an instant loss. The Facebook game instead uses players that give the wrong answer to a question as multipliers for the prize value of the question, which is then applied to all players that answered correctly. This augments the sense of competition between players in a way that sets the Facebook game apart both from its TV show origin and from other TV game show adaptations on Facebook.

The overall appeal of the game seems to be in competition. While inviting friends to the game has benefits, like increasing the chances of gaining additional playable shows and extra prize money, the real thrill comes from beating complete strangers in answering trivia questions. Because players are matched randomly and can only play one show per day, the chance of encountering the same players again and again is very low, making competition feel fresh each day. By limiting gameplay to a single show per day, Who Wants to be a Millionaire also succeeds in luring competitive players back on a daily basis for a chance to hit the million dollar mark.

As an aside, we experienced a severe gameplay upset when internet latency forced our show to freeze. As that was our one playable show for the day, there was no point to reloading the game as we’d lost all our scores within the incomplete show and had to wait for the next day to play again. The single-show limit is actually the key to the game’s monetization. Players can spend Facebook Credits only on additional shows in contrast to other TV game show Facebook games that sell power-ups or hints that directly affect gameplay. Who Wants to be a Millionaire also features a TrialPay offer wall to earn Facebook Credits.

Players can continue to track Who Wants to be a Millionaire on AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

New Boyz: The World is a virtual world social game hybrid built around New Boyz rap duo of Ben-J and Legacy. Launched on May 2 just ahead of the group’s new album release, The World is a promotional vehicle developed by Funtactix in conjunction with Warner Brothers for Facebook.

New Boyz: The World asks players to create human avatars inside a modern-themed setting where they can interact with other fans via chat or with animated emotes, like dancing. Beyond that, players get simple delivery and collection quests from the rap duo (as non-player characters), play mini-games, watch music videos and get a chance to preview soon-to-be-released music. Players will also get a chance to chat with Ben-J and Legacy during live events.

New Boyz: The World monetizes with the sale of premium currency, New Boyz cash, which is used to buy clothing for your avatar and a premium dance move. Whatever you can’t buy with New Boyz cash in-game is free. As players explore the world or play mini-games, they are also treated to New Boyz music as a sort of soft currency. Additionally, mini-games are themed to New Boyz music; such as Piggy Bank Smash, where players click on targets to smash a piggy bank while New Boyz single “Break My Bank” plays in the background.

The interesting concept New Boys: The World introduces to Facebook is the exclusive digital release of albums in-game. Funtactix and Warner Bros. announced the exclusive release of Too Cool To Care in New Boyz: The World less than a week after the game went live, so it’s difficult to determine how much of the first week growth in monthly active users can be attributed to the album itself. Furthermore, we’re not sure how many users the game will direct to physical purchases of the album outside of the game. New Boyz: The World currently has 20,000 MAU while the New Boyz official fan page has over 2 million Likes. For the time being, the in-game album feature is the only way fans can act as consumers of the album. Players who preview the album in-game receive New Boyz cash to customize their characters.

New Boyz’ Too Cool to Care is on sale in physical form as of today. You can track New Boyz: The World’s progress on AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Miner Speed is the first of King.com’s games to receive the cross-platform treatment from the developer on iOS. The match-3 title has grown steadily in the last 30 days to a high of over 1.3 million monthly active users and its numbers continue to climb.

Gameplay adheres to the match-3 formula of switching two tiles to create a match of three or more of the same color gems in a row. This game is played on an eight by eight board with a sixty second timer. Players can see where they rank on three different leader boards that are reset each week; their standing among their friends, their country and across all Facebook players that play the game. Friends can gift each other a bomb boost that clears the board completely and inform their friends when they surpass their scores by posting a message on their wall in a little friendly “trash talk” not unlike Bejeweled Blitz’s Jabber.

Players earn coins with each game they play with scores also earning experience points, and badges are awarded for high scores. With coins, players buy boosts which are unlocked by consecutive days playing the game. The final two boost types are earned by inviting friends to play the game.

The game monetizes via Facebook Credits which is used to buy coins and also to unlock a permanent fourth booster slot so that four boosters may be used at a time. Players can also spin a wheel to win a number of coins after watching a promotional video at the beginning of the game.

Because Miner Speed maintains a shallow mechanic and quick pace well-suited to mobile players, the game was a natural choice for King.com’s cross-platform strategy. At present, the only things that are shared between the Facebook game and the iOS game are top scores, which the iOS app tracks by syncing players with Facebook Connect. Wallets of coins are kept completely separate.

Miner Speed is a very fast game compared to other match-3 games like Poseidon’s Realm by Reiner Knizia, which is a decidedly deliberate game. It is also faster than Bejeweled Blitz or Fortune Stones’ Frenzy mode. The blasting and swooshing sound effects and upbeat music are also unique style choices, evoking images of classic cartoon shows like Looney Toons. This and a user base already familiar with King.com’s games likely contribute to the rapid growth of the game in an increasingly crowded match 3 space.

Readers can continue to follow the growth of these games on our data tracking service, AppData.

Atakama Labs’ Little Cave Hero is a city building game that stands out on Facebook with a retro 8-bit art style and humorous quest text. The game launched April 14 after a short beta period, which began March 24.

The game blends RPG elements by sending the player’s little hero out into the caves to complete missions. Tongue-in-cheek, the game informs players that their existing town was destroyed and that they need to rebuild it. Players can construct farms, quarries and carpentries, as well as social buildings like a town square. The social element to gameplay comes from an invite system where players’ friends can populate farms and assist the king in a number of quests.

Core gameplay comes from exploring caves that are arranged by grids of squares. Clicking a square clears that portion of the cave, netting the player experience points and in-game currency at the cost of the player’s energy per square clicked. Caves also feature monsters and a single treasure chest. The “trick” is to reach the treasure chest using the least amount of energy. The treasure chest provides you a score card and rewards you on your performance. Caves become increasingly complex as players unlock new ones to explore by completing simple “rescue the princess” or “find the treasure” quests.

One of the most interesting features Little Cave Hero offers players is a design studio where players can customize their own 8-bit decorations, or design them from templates. Only two “custom” items can be saved to a player’s game at one time, but the player may build as many of the custom decorations in their village as they like without having to spend in-game currency on the construction.

So far the design studio doesn’t feature any monetization. Little Cave Hero monetizes by selling a premium in-game currency, crowns. Crowns buy equipment that also can be produced in game, single use “super” equipment for clearing out rocks in caves as well as additional energy packs, resources for building and production as well as decorative items.

The social aspect of Little Cave Hero is set to develop beyond building farms and inviting friends to inhabit them. Atakama tells us that it’s tweaking the feature so that friend population affects production time, which will encourage players to invite others to play. Players can also visit and assist each other in the clean up their cities of blocks that respawn in the town like trees do in Ravenwood Fair. Keys to treasure boxes that spawn in town are also obtained by visiting friends.

You can follow Little Cave Hero’s progress on AppData, our data tracking service for social games and developers.

Backyard Monster developer The Casual Collective is re-branding itself as Kixeye as part of its strategy to refocus on Facebook game development and establish itself as a developer of “core” games.

Founded in 2008, Casual Collective was a casual Flash game developer and publisher known best for distributing the award-winning puzzle game, Desktop Tower Defense. In addition to acting as a games porta, Casual Collective was also a social networking hub where players could create and join clubs, participate forums and chat rooms. The company brought Desktop Tower Defense to Facebook in 2009 as Desktop Defender and then created another game of the same genre for Facebook, Backyard Monsters.

Will Harbin, CEO of the newly-named Kixeye, explains what the company plans to do under its new brand.

Inside Social Games: The Casual Collective is a recognizable name in Flash gaming. Why the name change?

Will Harbin: Well, we had a full refocus of the company on core games on Facebook over a year ago and we are only just catching up with changing the name of the company. It was due, as we are no longer a casual game company.

We’ve proven to ourselves that there are core gamers on Facebook that are seeking more than just a simple tower defense game. Backyard Monsters has over a million daily active users and the number is still growing steadily as we continue to re-vitalize the game with new art and new content. Monetization has been excellent and there has been renewed interest since our last major update which allows players to expand their “backyards” by defeating and claiming adjoining hexes on the new world map. Player feedback has us developing new monsters and we are currently in the early development of a customizable “Godzilla” which will be a guardian for the player’s base.

We basically validated our new approach and are now finally changing our name to reflect our new direction.

Inside Social Games: What will happen to the gaming portal and all its old games now that you’re so deeply committed to Facebook?

Harbin: They are still there. We relaunched our website in February, but the old website is only a click away from the landing page. Our focus now is on designing and supporting core games on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean we are dumping our beginnings. We still have loyal players of our casual games.

Inside Social Games: What are you working on then, to support or add to your cadre of games on Facebook?

Will Harbin: Backyard Monsters is our most popular game on Facebook right now and we are working hard on an alliance feature. This feature will be one that will eventually work across all our Facebook games, creating a network for Facebook friends that play our games. We are also just formally launching Battle Pirates, which is a fully synchronous multiplayer game. A game [that], if I might say, is monetizing extremely well at this early stage.

Inside Social Games: Are you at all worried about cannibalizing the Backyard Monsters player base by releasing games so similar in genre?

Harbin: We are measuring both games and testing some re-marketing. There are some that are playing both games, but we believe that the market is big enough to build a new user base. At the same time, the games are different enough that they will also attract different players. There are certainly more casual aspects to Backyard Monsters but Facebook is a wide open market for core gamers, and games will go where the gamers are.

Inside Social Games: What’s next after Battle Pirates? Zombies and ninjas?

Harbin: [Laughs] Actually, we’ve got a full scale military combat game in the works that we believe will resonate well with the traditional games market. We’re doing very well now and Kixeye is expanding and we’re hiring. We’ve got 50 positions open right now so if you have any interested readers, send them on over.

Be sure to read our reviews of Backyard Monsters and Battle Pirates.