RockYou Finds Social Gamers are Flush with Friends and Disposable Income – Social gamers are socially active, increasingly sophisticated, highly suggestible consumers according to a study commissioned by social gaming company RockYou. Some of the highlights of the study included:

• Social gamers spend 13 hours per week on social networks and an average of 9.5 hours per week on social games
• Social gamers have made 20 new friends through social gaming
• 24% of players report they have clicked on an ad in a social game and made an online purchase
• Social gamers make frequent purchases in real life, especially on entertainment

The study was conducted by market research firm Interpret on behalf of RockYou, and polled 2,000 social gamers (60% of whom were female) over the age of 18 who lived in the US and played at least one hour of social games a week.

Chinese Social Game Maker Papaya Finds Women Most Profitable – Beijing based PapayaMobile has found its most profitable gamers are women. According to Papaya, 4% of the players of its social mobile games are “whales” and 69% of those whales are women. Whales are defined as the most enthusiastic and dedicated players, willing to spend more than $100 on a game and responsible for 60% of the company’s revenue. PapayaMobile was last on Inside Social Games in February, when executive Si Shen contributed a guest post about the rise of location-based social games in Asia.

Setgo Teaming with Teepee to Expand Its Gaming Portal – Games discovery portal Teepee is expanding its offerings, partnering with startup developer Setgo to bring its new game Castaways to the platform. Teepee games offers casual gamers a curated experience, giving members access to a selection of games based on their profiles and incorporating the social features of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Both companies are based in the UK.

Facebook Credits Prove Profitable for Double Down – Double Down Interactive is reporting a massive surge in transactions since adopting Facebook credits as its in-game currency. According to a press release from the Seattle developer, revenues are up 50% in since their game Double Down Casino made the switch. On July 1st it became mandatory for all Facebook games with virtual goods to use Facebook credits, a move that was praised by some developers for promoting cross-game liquidity.

Zynga Goes Sequential with Mafia Wars 2 Comic – Zynga is prepping its fans for Mafia Wars 2 with a digital comic that reveals the back story and main cast of the upcoming social game. While larger game studios such as Ubisoft and Capcom have been using comics to promote high profile launches for some time, the move is a first for Zynga. The comic was created in collaboration with UDON, a Canadian art collective specializing in promotional artwork for the entertainment industry.

Real Prizes Coming to Facebook Games – Two new companies are seeing if combining social games, real world prizes and Facebook could be the next big thing in social media advertising. On September 29th Titan Gaming launched a beta version of a new games network on Facebook called Games and Prizes, the same day that startup Dobango released a Facebook version of its game play2Win. While each service is slightly different, play2Win focuses on letting players earn coupons and gift cards with smaller, local retailers, while Games and Prizes focuses on driving user engagement through branded games, the end result is the same — both services give Facebook gamers the chance to earn discounts and real prizes, and both services reward players for referring friends.

Google+ Gets Big Fast – Google+ has seen a huge influx of new users and traffic since entering open beta last week. According to data from analytics firm Experian Hitwise, traffic to the site is up more than 1200%. The total number of users is also likely to have crossed 50,000,000 according to analyst Paul Allen, who estimates the site is gaining 2 million users a day. We covered Google+ this week as social gaming heavyweights Zynga and Kabam brought their popular CityVille and Global Warefare games to the new social network.

EA Moving Into Social Game Marketing With New EA Legend Platform – EA announced this week it has developed a new game marketing platform called EA Legend. The platform was designed to help developers market their mobile, social, online and console games, by giving them access to EA’s existing user base of 300 million people. EA Legend will be officially unveiled on October 4th. In the announcement, EA touted that it had increased its audience by 30% this year, a great deal of that upswing coming from EA new Facebook game The Sims Social, which now has over 60 million monthly active users.

Raptr Finds That Zynga Draws Core and Casual Gamers – Zynga is great at engaging and converting players, and the appeal of their games is increasing even with hard-core gamers, according to a new report. Gaming based social network Raptr surveyed its membership and found that fans of Zynga’s “Ville” series log as much time on the social games as fans of the top core gaming franchises. In addition a third of XBox 360 gamers have played a Zynga game, a 50% increase over last year. The study also found that Zynga players logged in, on average, 8 times a day, and that Zynga games are played for three times longer than the rest of the top 10 social games combined. The full report can be read here.

Kobojo Commits to Expansion in Latin America – Leading French social games publisher Kobojo is beginning an aggressive international expansion, opening an office in Madrid and bringing on European games industry veteran Nicola Cencherle to oversee operations in Iberia, Italy and Latin America. According to Cencherle, Kobojo’s goal is to localize its games for 10 new languages before the end of the year, expanding that number to 20 by 2012, with a particular focus on Latin American countries. Kobojo recently translated their flagship Facebook game PyramidVille into Portuguese.

[Launch] Tiny Speck Finally Releases Surreal Social Game Glitch – San Francisco/Vancouver based developer Tiny Speck released their long incubating social game Glitch this week. The brain child of Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield, Glitch is a surreal social game that tasks players with expanding and exploring and expanding the Glitch universe. The catch is that the persistent world comes with it’s own highly unique rule set — for example, eggs come from eggplants, and pigs hatch from eggs. Players can do almost anything they want, but the game is designed to be highly social and cooperative.

[Launch] Vostu’s New Social Soccer Game Golmania on Facebook, Orkut – Brazilian social gaming company Vostu unveiled its latest title this week, Golmania, a real-time, multiplayer soccer game that enables players from all over the world to join teams, play in real soccer stadiums and organize private tournaments. The game is available in Portuguese, English and Spanish and utilizes Vostu’s multiplayer engine, which allows players on separate social networks to play and chat with one another.

[Update] Big Bang Theory Facebook Game Sees Solid Growth – The sitcom The Big Bang Theory launched a Facebook tie in game last week called The Big Bang Theory: The Mystic Warlords of Ka’a. The digital card game, based on the character’s favorite game in the show, has seen decent growth since its launch, currently sporting just over 60,000 monthly active users. The game was developed for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment by Dire Wolf Digital.

Showtime Pumping DEXTER Facebook Game With Sweepstakes
Showtime is promoting its new DEXTER Facebook game, Dexter Slice of Life, with a pre-launch sweepstakes that includes weekly prizes of $500 and a grand prize of an all expenses paid trip to Miami.  As we reported earlier, Dexter Slice of Life is being developed by Ecko Code with gameplay directly tied to the plot of the show’s sixth season, and fans of the show can play out the events of each episode the day after it airs. The season premiere of DEXTER is October 2nd, and Dexter Slice of Life launches on Monday, October 3rd.

Adobe Hoping Flash 11 Will Fend off HTML 5
Adobe revealed Flash 11 and the Flash-based AIR 3 to the world this week, placing a lot of emphasis on how the new software can be used by game developers, calling Flash 11 and AIR 3 the “game console for the web.” The new tools have been designed to be easier to install, more powerful and compatible with more systems, working with 64-bit on Windows, Mac and Linux. The move comes at a time when Adobe is looking up to shore up Flash as a development platform in the face of growing competition from HTML 5, the still-evolving development platform championed first by Apple, and now Microsoft, who are building their Windows 8 operating system to use HTML 5, blocking Flash entirely.

Has Facebook Added $15 Billion to the Economy?
A study conducted by the University of Maryland claims that Facebook apps have created an entire new segment of the high-tech industry, adding at least 182,000 jobs in the US alone. According to the findings, the so called “app economy” created by Facebook has lead to  53,000 new jobs specifically in companies that develop applications for the social network, and that has lead to job creation in connected sectors, which has pumped an additional $12.19 billion in wages and benefits into the U.S. economy.  While the claim seems to be good news, tech blog Gigaom is raising doubts and criticizing the report for using too many estimates and not enough hard data. For those interested in the numbers, and the methods used to obtain them, the full report can be found here.

American Express Gets into the Virtual Goods Market
American Express is following in the footsteps of rival Visa with the purchase of virtual currency company Sometrics. The deal, worth $30 million, will expand Amex’s Serve digital payments platform, giving it access to Sometrics’ existing customer base. Before the acquisition, Sometrics’ served 250 million customers. In February, Visa bought game monetization service Playspan for $190 million. According our Inside Virtual Goods Report, the virtual goods market will be worth approximately $1.2 billion in 2011.

Zynga Goes on Defensive Domain Buying Spree
While Zynga was announcing Mafia Wars 2, they were going to great lengths to protect that new IP.  Zynga purchased over 75 web addresses on September 20th, according to information uncovered by Fusible. The addresses cover almost every possible iteration of the Mafia Wars name, from insulting – mafiawars2sucks.com, to fawning – ilovemafiawars2.com, to purposely mistyped – wwwmafiawars2.com. While none of the domains seem to go anywhere yet, the complete list can be found here.

Tagged Acquires Startup WeGame to Strengthen Gaming Ties
Social networking service Tagged, which bills itself as the social network for meeting new people, has acquired social gaming service WeGame. While the announcement was short on specifics, the two services essentially serve the same purpose. Tagged allows users to make friends by browsing user profiles, playing games and sharing gifts, and adding WeGame to the mix allows Tagged to offer its user base more gaming focused social discovery tools and more monetization options. In the last year, Tagged has launched a new mobile website and beefed up its in-house game development.

Facebook to Make Big Bank off Credits in 2011
According to a report by eMarketer, Facebook’s revenue from Facebook Credits will top $470 million dollars in 2011, more than three times what it made from credits in 2010. In 2009 credits contributed to 5% of the social network’s revenue; thanks to the growth of social gaming and virtual goods, the currency now makes up 11% of Facebook’s income. According to an eMarketer interview with VentureBeat, one reason for the jump was the July 1st change that made Facebook Credits the mandatory currency for social games, standardizing the Facebook social gaming platform and giving Facebook a 30% cut of every transaction.

Grasshopper Manufacture Partners with DeNA for Social Games
Japanese studio Grasshopper Manufacture, most well known for the surreal titles its CEO Suda51 dreams up, is adding social games to its portfolio. Grasshopper is partnering with DeNA, the Japanese mobile and social gaming juggernaut to bring its games into the smartphone market. In an interview at the Tokyo Game Show, Akira Yamaoka, Grasshopper’s chief creative officer said that Japan’s game industry “absolutely cannot ignore mobile games.” The partnership seems to be a natural move for DeNA, who recently purchased ngmoco:) and Punch Entertainment’s Vietnam studio bolster its Mobage platform.

Sony Unveils a New, Much More Social Home
Sony has unveiled the new look for its integrated social network PlayStation Home. Originally created as a virtual world for hardcore gamers, the new Home, which is currently in closed beta, will have distinct districts that showcase different genres of games, making it easier for Home users to quickly navigate to the kinds of games they want to play. The games will be lighter, more casual and free to play, but supported through virtual goods transactions. Currently 30 developers are creating games for the new version of Home.

EA Aiming to Be the Social Kings in Three Years
According to a speech by CEO John Riccitiello, EA has set a $3 billion goal for online revenue in the next two to three years, with the ultimate goal of surpassing reigning champion Zynga as the biggest social gaming company in the world. Currently the majority of the 100 million people playing EA’s social games are from The Sims Social, which now boasts more than 51 million users. In related news, EA announced that it is creating a spin-off of its NHL franchise for Facebook called NHL Superstars that will launch in October. Meanwhile the gaming giant has signed a distribution agreement with Aeria Games to bring games from its Play4Free division (such as Battlefield Heroes and Need for Speed World) to the 23 million strong gaming network.

MapleStory Adventures Already at Three Million Players
The Facebook version may not be out of beta, but that hasn’t put off fans of the MapleStory franchise. According to Nexon, their first Facebook app MapleStory Adventures has already attracted more than three million users.

Angry Birds + Starbucks = BBFs?
According to report uncovered by Edge, Rovio is in talks to bring Angry Birds to the one of the most ubiquitous franchises in the world, Starbucks. While few details are known, Rovio may be bringing Angry Birds leaderboards into Starbucks as way to encourage people to play the game while they’re getting their daily caffeine fix.

Social Games Can be Hardcore Too
It turns out hardcore social gamers are a lot like regular gamers, according to a study funded by Kabam. In a national research survey, statistics showed that a growing number of young men are “hardcore social gamers” – i.e., they are playing social games from “hardcore” genres like FPS, strategy, RPG or MMO. 82% of hardcore social gamers are also console gamers, and according the study, the lure of the social game experience is siphoning time from consoles. 27% of those surveyed reported a decline in their gameplay on other platforms. The study also showed that the social gaming demographic is growing quickly – 41% of U.S. Internet users reported having played a social game. A full breakdown of the statistics can be found here.

Social Gaming Network Face Up Gaming Goes into Beta
Developer Game Face Gaming is hoping there’s room in the crowded social games landscape for its new online gaming platform, Face Up Gaming. The platform is a non-wagering poker site that combines social networking elements with competitive online gaming. According to CEO Felix Elinson, the goal is to create a global gaming platform that supports cross language play that’s accessible from any internet device. Players will be able to log on, play a game and maintain connections they make with fellow players after the game is over. Face Up Gaming just went into limited beta, with plans to move forward into an expanded beta by October.

GetGlue Adding Social and Game Elements
GetGlue, the check-in based social network for media, has updated its iPhone app and website to incorporate more social elements. Users now have a conversation stream that shows them check ins from their friends and the general user community. GetGlue has also added leaderboards, which show users which of their friends are checking into the service’s most popular content. GetGlue currently has 1.5 million users.

Hanging With Friends Comes to Android
Zynga has brought the latest offering in its With Friends franchise to Android. Hanging With Friends made its Android debut on September 20th as a free download. As a result of the launch, the game is now cross-platform, allowing users on both iOS and Android to challenge one another in the word guessing game.

Capital One Comes to CityVille
On September 20th Capital One launched a major three-game promotion, adding Capital One branded content to CityVille, FarmVille andPioneer Trail.  This is not the first time Zynga has teamed with Capital One, but it is the first time a company has launched a promotion across multiple Zynga games simultaneously.

[Launch] Big Bang Theory Comes to Facebook with Mystic Warlords of Ka’a
The hit CBS show The Big Bang Theory celebrated the debut of its fifth season with the launch of a new Facebook game called The Big Bang Theory: The Mystic Warlords of Ka’a. Based on the character’s favorite game in the show, The Mystic Warlords of Ka’a is a digital collectible card game, where fans can collect and trade cards with one another, play with characters from the series and challenge their friends to matches. The game was developed for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment by Dire Wolf Digital.

Around the time of the deadline for mandatory migration to Facebook Credits, Facebook quietly added a new “Gamer Status” API that allows developers to identify which of their users monetize the best. Facebook automatically offers these users a 20% discount on Credits purchases, but developers who’ve been whitelisted can use the Gamer Status API to track those users internally or, potentially, offer them targeted experiences.

Prior to the mandatory migration of all Facebook Games to Facebook Credits as their sole payment method, several incentives were offered to encourage developers to switch early and use Credits as their premium in-game currency. These incentives can be accessed by developers whitelisted though Facebook’s Credits Special Incentives program.

Those with access can call $ret = $facebook->api_client->users_getStandardInfo($user_id, array('gamer_status')); to determine a user’s Gamer Status. Those tagged with a Gamer Status > 1 are users that monetize above average, including lucrative whales. The API respects user privacy by not sharing any details about their actual purchase history, just the fact that the make many purchases.

However, Facebook forbids developers from using the Gamer Status API to increase prices above their normal level for high monetizing users. Facebook also explicitly says, “You may not use gamer_status for any purpose other than internal and administrative purposes related to the operation of your game. For example, you may not use this information for marketing purposes.”

Developers could potentially target these high monetizing users with optimized offers or discounts on virtual goods. Because these users also receive discounts on buying Facebook Credits, they’re more likely to have a balance to spend. Developers can test to see whether offering discounts to these users leads to enough sales to offset the reduced prices. If so, Gamer Status can be used to increase revenues.

Gamer Status could also be used to drive retention. If paired with reengagement messages such as emails, developers may be able to lure previous users to start playing their game again with a signficant discount. Once these gamers have begun investing time in a game again, developers can return prices for them to normal. However, it’s currently unclear whether Facebook would allow these types of tactics given their policy statements above.

Segan Files Patent Lawsuit Against Zynga — Another patent lawsuit appears this week as Segan LLC, files a suit against Zynga over a “System for Viewing Content Over A Network and Method Thenrfor.” As noted by TechCrunch, the complaint centers around the association of a user to a character icon as well as how to manage character updates.

It Girl to Expand to Russia — CrowdStar is expanding its popular social title It Girl to Russia. Partnering with Russian distributor 101XP, It Girl will go live on Odnoklassniki.ru, Vkontakte.ru, and Mail.ru in the next two months. The game is also currently available on Odnoklassniki.

Exit Games to Power King’s Bounty: Legions — Earlier this week, we previewed the upcoming title, of King’s Bounty: Legions for Facebook. Only a few days later, Exit Games announced that its network engine, Photon, has been selected to power the network features of the coming game.

RockYou Makes Aktiv APAC Sales Partner – Asia Media Journal reports that social game developer and publisher RockYou has made online media sales house Aktiv an APAC sales partner. The move gives RockYou’s new ad platform distribution in the Asian market.

AT&T & ngmoco Bring Mobage to Android — Last week, ngmoco and DeNA brought the Mobage social gaming platform to Android Market. This week, AT&T and ngmoco announced a new agreement stating that Mobage will act as a hub for AT&T Android users to discover and play games as well as connect with other global users.

Blizzard to Use Real Currency for Virtual Goods Transactions — Blizzard Entertainment announced earlier this week that its upcoming Diablo III online game will allow the sale of virtual items via both in-game and real world currencies. For real money trades, Blizzard will take a small transaction fee.

[Announcement] MyTown Expands to Japan — Earlier this week, social and mobile apps developer Booyah and YUMEMI announced a partnership that will bring the location-based iOS title of MyTown to Japan as a new product for iOS, Android, and other feature phone platforms this Fall.

[Announcement] RockYou Updates Gourmet Ranch with New Content — RockYou Playdemic released a new content update for its title, Gourmet Ranch. Over the course of the next few weeks, players will gain access to the “Fun Fair,” and with it, new limited edition ingredients, quests, and rewards.

[Announcement] iWin & Sony Pictures to Bring The $100,000 Pyramid to Facebook — Family Feud developer iWin announced a new licensing deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment that will bring TV game show The $100,000 Pyramid to Facebook later this summer.

Facebook users in Europe will soon have the opportunity to earn Facebook Credits by completing hard offers through the offer walls of social games. Facebook today announced partnerships with SupersonicAds from the United Kingdom and Deal United from Germany to let European users buy magazine subscriptions, online movie rentals, and more to earn Facebook’s virtual currency.

Facebook will only allow Credits to be distributed through offers by approved providers once the July 1st deadline passes and all games to switch to Credits as their payment method. Therefore, attaining approved offers coverage in Europe through these deals is important so developers can still monetize users in the region who won’t pay for Credits directly.

Currently, game developers often work with offer providers like SupersonicAds and Deal United to give users their proprietary premium in-game currency in exchange for making purchases — sometimes known as completing hard offers. Direct response advertisers aggregated by the offer providers earn money from the purchases, and pay out to the game developers for bringing them customers and to cover the cost of the currency.

> Continue reading on Inside Facebook.

[Editor's note: Charles Hudson is a co-author of our Inside Virtual Goods industry research report series, 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.]

In May 2011, the Inside Virtual Goods team conducted our second annual survey of social games players. Yesterday we released the findings of the report, “Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Habits of the Social Gaming Audience 2011.” Today’s post is intended give you a sense for some of the more interesting findings in the report.

The 2011 survey, which reached out to nearly 2,000 active social games players on Facebook, covers a wide variety of topics, including how players discover games, how players spend their time and money across games, and a deeper dive on the spending and gameplay habits of “whales” — the top spenders in the social gaming ecosystem.

With the impending mandatory implementation of Facebook Credits coming on July 1st, 2011, we wanted to get a sense for how familiar the most engaged social games player were with Facebook Credits. As part of this year’s survey, we asked players a number of questions about their familiarity with and usage of Facebook Credits to date so as to have a baseline prior to the switch. Here’s more on what we found.

The first question we asked the survey respondents was whether they had heard of Facebook Credits. Keep in mind that the survey population here was people who are generally active social games players, playing multiple games on a daily basis:

Roughly two thirds of the audience we surveyed was familiar with Facebook Credits, which seems appropriate given that Facebook Credits are available in a number of games but are not yet mandatory across the Facebook social games landscape.

Slicing the data a bit further, we were able to get a sense for how Facebook Credits awareness varies by geography. Not surprisingly, Facebook Credits has the greatest awareness in North America by a fairly significant margin.

Of those who mentioned familiarity with Facebook Credits, we asked them a follow-up question as to whether they had actually made a purchase using Facebook Credits. Of those who were familiar with Facebook Credits, nearly half of them reported having actually used Facebook Credits to actually make a purchase:

Again, we took a look at the data on a regional basis and found that North America once again was the dominant region in which we found users who had used Facebook Credits to make a purchase in a game. Results show that Facebook Credits is beginning to get a good beachhead in North America, with less traction in the other major geographies around the globe.

Finally, we asked those survey respondents who had familiarity with Facebook Credits whether the Facebook Credits system made it easier to buy things in games:

In addition to the question, we also gave them the opportunity to provide us with some free-response feedback on whether they’ve used Facebook Credits and whether they think Facebook Credits make it easier to make purchases. We’ve included some of the more interesting free-response quotes below:

“Yes, because with FB Credits, it’s a lot easier to buy things in different games without having to buy cash to each game individually: it’s more practical, and economical.” – Male, 13-18, Portugal

“I prefer to use the [company-specific] game cards. It’s just easier for me personally.” – Female, 37-42, United States

“I only use Facebook Credits: I wont give my credit card info to individual game companies. If they don’t allow FB credits, I won’t buy” – Female, 37-42, United States

“Only did it once, because I got the credits free. Would not spend money on them.” – Female, 43-48, United States

“The first time I used them it was a bit confusing on how to start the process. Once I figured it out, it was pretty easy. I doubt I will purchase them however.” – Female, 37-42, United States

In addition to the quotes above, there was a steady stream of people who used the free-response section to make it very clear that they were happy to use the Facebook Credits that they were given for free but they either didn’t have the means to pay for additional credits or they didn’t have any interest in actually paying for things in Facebook games, no matter how easy and seamless the process might be.

Overall, the core value proposition for Facebook Credits is that it should improve conversions and monetization for developers by standardizing on a platform-wide payment system common to all games. Based on the results of our survey, it’s clear that we are still in the early stages of Facebook Credits awareness and adoption among active social games players.

The complete results of our study are available in the full report, Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience 2011.

About the Report

Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience 2011 gives you an inside view of the market at this critical juncture in the intersection of social networking and online games.

We have surveyed nearly 2,000 players of social games on Facebook from around the world and across the demographic spectrum. Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience 2011 is the most in-depth independent survey of player behavior and spending patterns in the social gaming market.

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 AppData service, 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.

Uno Boost is a single player variant of the popular family card game from Mattel developed by GameHouse for Facebook. The game is enjoying steady growth, with a monthly active users north of 1.1 million and daily active users at 110,000, according to our traffic tracking service AppData. GameHouse credits the game’s rapid growth to fully embracing Facebook Credits.

Gameplay in Uno Boost is similar to GameHouse’s companion title, Uno, which we reviewed back in 2009 when the title launched as “Live Uno” or “Uno Live.” Play follows the traditional color or number matching rules of the Uno card game, with the exception of “Boost” cards, a limited resource which can be substituted for cards in the player’s hand at any time when they’re in a tough spot. This keeps play flowing quickly and smoothly, and most games are over in a matter of minutes, if not less. Uno Boost focuses on solo play against computer opponents rather than multiplayer action.

“Uno Boost is in a unique place,” says GameHouse Director of Business Development, Braden Moulton. “In terms of product quality, we benchmark against games like Bejeweled Blitz. While the game is different, the notion of providing a fun, concise experience to our users is similar.”

The game is monetized primarily through the sale of the aforementioned Boost cards, which can be purchased individually or in “packs” using either Facebook Credits or in-game currency. Certain packs are only available using Facebook Credits. There’s also an offer wall powered by TrialPay and a video ad service powered by Live Gamer that nets players individual Boost cards per viewing in exchange for viewing video advertisements.

“Facebook Credits is the hard currency within Uno Boost,” says Moulton. “We are fully embracing Credits and since launching them in Uno Boost in March, we have seen significant improvements in conversion and monetization. [...] We’ll continue to evolve our monetization strategy in parallel with our partners at Facebook.”

Going forward, the developer plans to roll out additional gameplay features planned in collaboration with Mattel over the next four months. Ian Fliflet, Director of Social Strategy at GameHouse, tells us that we can expect player achievement awards in the next month or two. He also says that GameHouse is looking to capitalize on new Facebook viral measures, though he declined to elaborate on what those might be. We know that the developer could implement the Buy With Friends viral discount feature, because the game uses Credits as in-game currency.

GameHouse currently enjoys a total MAU of 3.9 million and 538,000 DAU across all 23 of its Facebook apps. Fliflet tells us that the company has more titles in development that span both original intellectual property and licensed IP. GameHouse recently announced a partnership with Fremantle to bring CBS game show Let’s Make A Deal to Facebook.

You can follow Uno Boost’s progress on Facebook with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Tomorrow, April 12th at 11am PST, Facebook will stream a webinar explaining why developers should migrate to Facebook Credits as their payment method, and featuring a technical demo of how to handle the migration. For those few developer who are not familiar, Facebook is requiring all apps using paid currency to make Credits the exclusive option by July 1st, 2011. As the event tomorrow shows, the company is trying to get as many developers as possible to migrate early to ensure a smooth transition this summer.

Migrating to Facebook Credits for Developers will air on the Facebook Live Page, and then be archived on the Page for future viewing. Developers can submit questions to the webinar’s Facebook Event ahead of time, or use the Livestream-powered app’s question interface to pose questions during the session.

Facebook announced in January that developers would have to migrate to Credits as their exclusive payment platform by July. 22 of the top 25 game developers have already migrated, including Zynga, Disney/Playdom, and EA/Playfish. To encourage hold-outs concerned with the 30% cost, Facebook launched a page of statistics and testimonials recently that touts increased revenue and decreased costs as reasons why the migration will be good for developers. Facebook also announced a new set of rules surrounding in-game offers and rewards that will go into effect alongside the migration.

Developers who use use Facebook Credits as their premium in-game currency rather than requiring users to buy proprietary premium in-game currency with Credits can access a number of special incentives including Frictionless Payments, Buy With Friends, and the getBalance API. These allow developers to earn more money through quick, small transactions and group deals for virtual goods, as well as learn how many Credits a user currently has in the account.

Navigating these rules and incentives can be tricky, so rather than wait until the deadline when delays can cost developers money, Facebook is seeking to address questions now. By signing major developers early and assisting attentive developers with this “Migrating to Facebook Credits for Developers” webinar, Facebook should receive fewer frantic support emails or claims of negligence come late June.

Having begun life as a photo-sharing app on MySpace in the middle of last decade, RockYou rose to become one of the largest app developers on Facebook in the early years of the platform, before being overtaken by Zynga and other social game developers.

Meanwhile, the company has widened the scope of its business, launching an advertising network and a subsidiary in Asia.

Following this range of efforts and mixed results, the company is now refocusing all parts of its business around social games.

Lisa Marino is leading the transition. A revenue development executive who joined the company in 2008, she has moved up over the years, serving as RockYou’s chief revenue officer where she managed its media business, before taking the chief operating officer role last year. Yesterday she was named the company’s new chief executive. It’s now her job to make all the pieces fit together, a challenge we explore in the interview below.

Inside Social Games: You’ve been with RockYou since 2008, and you’ve been heading up operations since last August. Walk me through the transition process that brought you to today.

Lisa Marino: I became COO in August. At that time, our games and ad businesses both reported to me. We had a lot of work to get done in terms of bringing in new talent that would allow us to build games effectively.

First, We brought in Jonathan Knight [from EA] in October, and he’s been the lynchpin of rebuilding our games. Lance [Tokuda] chose to step down in late September.

Shortly after Lance stepped down, we made a lot of tough decisions to get the business on track and focused on social games. Then, we cut cash burn by 60% at the end of last year, which put us in a situation from a cash perspective where we had 2 to 2.5 year run-rate. After that, we went after some big problems that had been low-hanging fruit. For instance, JK cancelled the games pipeline, because they weren’t going to be successful, and instead started a new games pipeline from scratch. Last, we also completed two acquisitions in Q4 — Tirnua and Playdemic — which brought us terrific gaming talent as well as a live game.

Additionally, we continued hiring more creative gaming leaders with much more traditional gaming DNA. JK and his team have been able to attract a pretty experienced group — Steve Cartwright, a 30 year gaming veteran, and John Yoo from Zynga were early key hires.

Then in Q1 we started rebuilding the executive team, which has been in place for the last 5-6 weeks. We brought on Julie Shumaker, our GM of Media, who has been in media gaming for a very long time and Katrina Osio, SVP of Marketing, another gaming and media vet.

Our tough decisions taken recently have yielded quick results. We ended up beating revenue Q4 2010 revenue projections by 40%, and at this point the gaming investments we made are near launch — including Zoo World 2 coming out in May.

ISG: That’s a whole new game, right? Not just an expansion?

LM: Definitely a new game — new art, simplified mechanics and a revamped economy. There are some screenshots and forums and fan pages. We’re super excited. The focus groups have been pretty positive so far. [The official Page is here.]

ISG: And you have a Loot Drop game coming?

LM: Yes, we have [John] Romero’s game. We’ve worked really hard to build a quality games pipeline and partnering with proven game makers was part of a strategy where we evaluate content more broadly.

Besides Zoo and Loot Drop, we are more generally a two-studio company now — the Playdemic team in the UK and our headquarters here in Redwood City.

ISG: You’ve repositioned to social gaming, but you’re keeping your ad business. Can you tell me more about how the pieces of the company fit together at this point?

LM: We’re the only company that can combine the ability to make gaming content as well with the very powerful incremental monetization that our media business brings.

Our media business is still incredibly large: 300M impressions a day on our ad network, 170M uniques a month — it’s a great engine for user acquisition. We also do brand sales, including ad integrations into games.

We’re able to increase ARPU 25% to 30% every single month because of our brand sales initiatives — when we’re buying users on Facebook, that makes a lot of difference for life time value. [Ed. You can check out RockYou traffic data on AppData, our tracking service for top apps and developers on Facebook.]

As a social gaming company, that doesn’t mean we just make games. We focus on games, how they’re built, distributed, and monetized.

ISG: Can you explain more what you’re providing to other developers now?

LM: We’re still selling installs for other developers. The inventory of ad network is almost all Facebook — it’s app inventory, games, quiz apps, video apps, poking apps.

The core of our business is not necessarily to take the app ad network and grow it to compete with Lifestreet. It’s really about leveraging the asset for distribution, as well as monetization within those apps.

We’re building out our brand team to really boost up monetization within games. Ad content for us doesn’t necessarily mean we’re just selling for games that we build at RockYou. It may mean that we sell brand ads for other developers’ games.

ISG: Are you moving more into publishing as well?

LM: The Romero deal is a very classic old-school gaming publishing deal. We own the IP when the game launches.

We’re having lots of conversations about publishing other peoples’ games — it’s something we’re starting to look at more seriously.

ISG: Can you tell me more about how your brand ad sales work?

LM: When we think about brand side, we don’t run a lot on our ad network. It’s more more ad units within a handful of partner games; our deal of the day unit is terrific and as of 15 months ago WAS industry leading for in-game innovation.

We do a lot of other types of brand ads — page takeovers, branded virtual items, or other custom branded experiences.

When you think of the value brands add in a game, one must remember that 1% to 2% of users actually pay, but everyone wants to level up.

ISG: As a social game developer, you’re competing with Zynga and everyone else. But who do you see as your competitors in the publishing and cross-promotion parts of the ecosystem — would you consider 6 Waves a competitor, for example?

LM: We think of publishing in a very different way from 6 Waves. We only want to be supporting 4 to 7 titles at a time as a company. This includes our owned and operated games. Think of us publishing a game as one of our main shots on goal for the quarter — we’d just take on 1-2 per quarter. It’d be targeted, opportunistic and because we love the game and fits in to portfolio.

For the brand ad network, it’s separate from our publishing operations. But just as we’d be incredibly targeted and focused on a game we might publish, we’d also be that way about who we sell brand ads for.

ISG: You also have RockYou Asia, and co-founder Jia Shen is heading it up — how is that organization fitting in with everything else you’re doing?

LM: RockYou Asia is majority owned subsidiary. We launched it a couple years ago. We’re excited about what Jia is working on. RockYou Asia is focused on mobile, particularly in Japan but Asia more broadly as well. Jia and his team are a main part of RY family. He and I connect regularly as to what’s going on, although they’re independent. We have supported it with funding, coordinating around image, marketing, and brand presence.

There’s a fair amount of cross-pollination, but we’re much more Facebook focused, while they’re much more mobile.

We’re looking forward to next the few months, as he gets more launches under his belt, and as he and the rest of us learn more about what works in Asia.

ISG: How are you looking at mobile within the main RockYou business?

LM: We don’t think social gaming is defined just as Facebook any longer. For anyone, mobile needs to be part of the business. I think that within 12 to 18 months, there’ll be one or two more venues — platforms that we can be on as well.

During Q2 we will flesh out our mobile strategy, but honestly, my number one goal is to continue growing and expanding our Facebook presence. We’ve done a lot in last 60 days in terms of rising through rankings. On the MAU side, before we were 14 or 18. We’re number seven in MAU and are about 4 million away from the number four spot on game launches.

ISG: Circling back to your RockYou’s nearer term social gaming plans, what are you seeing in the industry now.

LM: Production quality on Facebook games is going to keep going up in the next 12 to 18 months. There are new demographics, more hardcore gamers coming on. We’re still bullish on the platform.

In terms of current games, although costs have gone up for CPI over the last few months, we’re buying profitably on Gourmet Ranch.

We’re also moving on to Facebook Credits. For us, Credits have been neutral or a net positive on Gourmet. The demand that Facebook has talked about for awhile is starting to play itself out. At the end of the day, you have to have good games in order to positively arbitrage. Otherwise you won’t make it.

You need to have a mix of cash, cross-selling, and a good game.