Call of Duty Elite earns Activision more than $75 million – Despite a rocky start, Activision’s Call of Duty Elite social network has been a massive hit. According to the company’s fourth quarter earnings results, more than 7 million users have signed up for the service and 1.5 million players have chosen to pay for $49.99 annual subscription memberships, translating to $75 million in additional sales for the franchise.

PlayDemand grabbing PopCap’s former Baking Life users for Diner Life – Manchester-based PlayDemand is trying an interesting new user acquisition strategy –  the company offering former players of ZipZapPlay and PopCap’s now-shuttered Baking Life free in-game currency it its game Diner Life.

Wooga sees user growth of 185 percent in 2011 — German social game developer Wooga saw its Facebook user base increase by 185 percent to 40 million players in 2011. According to the company’s founder and CEO Jens Begemann, 5 percent of new users are acquired through advertising, 40 percent through viral features and 55 percent come from cross promotion.

Casino company MGM Resorts to announce social game soon — MGM Resorts’ CEO Jim Murren has told Forbes his company will soon reveal its first social game. The game, which Murren compares to FarmVille, will allowe players to run a casino empire.

Kabam sets up new San Francisco headquarters – Gamasutra is reporting that Kabam has signed a multi-year deal for a new 63,000 square foot office in San Francisco. All of the company’s 450 employees will be housed in the same space.

EA Vancouver confirms layoffs – As multiple news outlets reported this week, EA’s Vancouver studio will be laying off an unspecified number of employees. Although the studio was responsible for hits like FIFA Soccer, the company is restructuring in order to shift focus to digital “high growth formats” according to Develop’s report.

Konami revenues up, social games growing – According to Konami’s latest financial results, the company’s net revenues rose to 194,522 million yen ($2.5 billion) in the nine month period ending on Dec. 31, up 3.3 percent over the same period a year ago. The company has adjusted its earnings outlook for the rest of the financial year upwards, and is now expected to earn 265,000 million yen ($3.4 billion), up from 250,000 million yen ($3.2 billion.) The company’s social games division revenues grew by 1.6 percent.

Nabeel Hyatt Leaves Zynga — Conduit labs co-founder Nabeel Hyatt has left his position as the head of Zynga’s Boston studio. Hyatt joined the company when Zynga bought Conduit in 2010.  Fareed Mosavat is replacing Hyatt.

Disney Interactive reports drop in revenue, bigger year-on-year loss – Disney’s Interactive Media division earned $279 in revenue million during the holiday quarter ending on Dec. 31, 20 percent less than the $349 million it earned in the same period a year ago. Losses were up to $28 million from $15 million the previous year. In related news, Joystiq is reporting that Alex Seropian has left his position as head of game development at the studio.

One Piece social game hits 2 million users in 17 days — Industry watcher Serkan Toto is reporting that Namco Bandai’s One Piece social game on the Mobage network has hit 2 million registered users just 17 days after launching. In other Mobage news, Andriasang is reporting the network will soon be getting a social game based on the popular Japanese character Doraemon.

The Sims Social wins Social Networking Game of the Year Award – EA’s The Sims Social has won the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ award for for Best Social Game of the Year at the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. EA beat Digital Chocolate, Zynga, Disney, and Spry Fox to win the award.

[Launch] Snooki’s Match Game Hits Facebook – Reality TV star Nicole Polizzi has released her first Facebook game. Called Snooki’s Match Game, the title monetizes through advertising. The game was developed by Apps Genius Corp.

[Launch] Akamon Entertainment launches Chinchón — Spanish-based Akamon Entertainment has launched its first Facebook Game, Chinchón. The game is based on a traditional Spanish card game.

[Launch] Popcap Launches Solitaire Blitz — EA PopCap is officially launching its newest game, Solitaire Blitz. The game is going into a gradual beta launch and will be available to all Facebook users by March.

Electronic Arts’ chief financial officer has resigned. According to EA’s most recent SEC filing, Brown tendered his resignation on Feb. 3 and his last day will be Feb. 17. Ken Barker, EA’s chief officer of accounting will serve as interim chief financial officer until EA selects a replacement.

Brown has served as EA’s CFO since April of 2008, but is leaving the company to take on an operations role at Polycom, where he will serve as the the company’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer. When asked for comment, EA directed us to its official blog post, which reads:

[Today] we are announcing that Eric Brown, our CFO, will be leaving EA.  He has decided to join Polycom, a world leader in communications technology.  Eric’s decision was based on his career goal to combine his expertise in Finance with deeper involvement in Operations.  We have begun a search for a new CFO and will consider both internal and external candidates.

There is no denying the pace of change at EA is accelerating. The successful launch of blockbusters likeFIFA Soccer 12, Battlefield 3, The Sims Social and Star Wars: The Old Republic; smashing our goal for generating $1B in digital revenue; and the dramatic growth of Origin – each of these is a huge milestone in our digital transformation. EA will exit this fiscal year a profoundly different company than we were at the start.  From here on, change is constant.

Brown’s departure is the latest in a series of high profile departures at the company. Last month, Barry Cottle left his position as the executive vice president of EA Interactive to join Zynga. He became the company’s executive vice president of business and corporate development.

EA also announced that Mark Tonneson has left his position at McAfee to join EA as its chief information officer. Tonnesen will report to EA’s chief technology officer Rajat Taneja. Neither Brown’s nor Tonnesen’s LinkedIn profiles reflect the changes yet.

Closed beta tests and “sneak preview” open beta tests are getting more popular with social game developers on Facebook. Tetris Online Inc. and EA PopCap provide two recent examples with Tetris Stars and Solitaire Blitz.

Betas on Facebook are tricky. Open betas run the risk of “losing” users that have no patience for unfinished games; several developers have told us releasing a game on Facebook before it’s optimized is a death sentence compared to other social networks where you can get away with less-than-perfect. Closed or limited betas, meanwhile, usually can’t be monetized and sometimes aggravate potential users when friends in the beta bombard them with invites that won’t actually get them into the game. Past examples include MetroGames’ Auto Hustle (launched before it was ready), EA2D’s Dragon Age Legends (unstable invite-only beta lost player data) and EA PopCap’s Pig Up! (which doesn’t seem to be going anywhere).

Despite the risks, betas are crucial for social games because they provide early feedback on core gameplay, presentation, monetization and retention. It’s easier for developers to make changes or roll out fixes with a smaller user pool than it is to redo an entire early user experience while serving 100,000+ daily active users. Even without monetization implemented, a beta can buy the developer the time it needs to take a game from mediocre to successful.

Take, for example, Tetris Stars. Developed by Blue Planet Software and published by Tetris Online, the game entered an open “Sneak Peek” beta sometime in winter 2011.The game updates the classic puzzle game with a “digging” feature where each line of the puzzle cleared removes a layer of dirt or rock. The goal is to unearth as many buried Stars and power-up items in 60 seconds with Stars freed and special moves earning the player points. The entire game is controlled via the mouse rather than keyboard buttons.

“We’re doing a fairly quiet release at first so we can work with [Blue Planet Software] to optimize the code and balance the gameplay,” Tetris Online VP of Marketing Casey Pelkey tells us. “We’re also anxious to see how users respond to the mouse controls.”

From what we can see, the mouse controls haven’t changed much in the past two months. We have seen, however, the number and price of power-ups have been adjusted, the flow of gameplay tweaked and bonus time has been added for each Star freed. The overall impact is the game went from being too easy in December to too hard in January. As of now, the game is somewhere between the two points and Tetris Online still isn’t ready to officially launch the game.

EA PopCap’s Solitaire Blitz, meanwhile, is off to a stronger start than Pig Up! Neither title has ever been officially announced by the developer — PopCap only owned up to Pig Up! after it was reviewed by Games.com — although Solitaire Blitz at least has a cross-promotion bar with other EA games on Facebook. It seems like the developer learned from the lack of response to Pig Up!’s bare bones beta, however, as Solitaire Blitz had monetization and viral sharing features up and running when the game entered open beta late last month. We actually found the game entirely through invites.

Solitaire Blitz is a variation on solitaire where players are racing the clock to clear as many columns of cards as possible to uncover treasures hidden underneath each column. An EA PopCap spokesperson declined to comment on the game, but it seems as though gameplay tweaks are still being made.

Electronic Art’s digital revenues — which includes those from social games — came in at $274 million for Q3 FY12, up over 40 percent from the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP digital revenue grew by 79 percent year-over-year, breaking $1 billion before the end of 2011.

EA attributes growth in digital revenues to increased subscriptions, microtransactions and advertising. GAAP net revenue from wireless, advertising, digital distribution and other internet sources was $103 million, up from $16 million at the same time last year.

Mobile revenues, meanwhile, increased to $70 million dollars in company’s third quarter, up from $59 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Though up 19 percent year-over-year, the company’s handheld revenues dropped significantly. Revenue from Nintendo’s DS platform were $15 million, a 69 percent drop from $49 million year-on-year and revenues from Sony’s PSP were $14 million, a 36 percent drop over the same quarter a year earlier. Overall, the company’s total revenue from mobile and handhelds was down 24 percent year-on-year, dropping to $99 million.

Though not broken out on the balance sheet, EA reports that its PopCap Games studio posted 30 percent growth in revenues on a trailing-twelve-month basis. EA bought the Zuma Blitz developer in the summer; its newest Facebook title, Solitaire Blitz, is currently in open beta.

During its earnings call, EA mentioned that a planned social game release would be moved from Q4 FY12 to Q1 FY13. It looks like EA is experimenting with optimal launch windows for social games, as most games earn their best money not at launch but after the first 30 days on the Facebook platform. EA CFO Eric Brown confirmed the strategy behind the move, saying the release would shore up expected performance from the 2013 lineup of social games. The latest game from its Playfish studio, Risk: Factions, went live earlier this month and is still on a growth trend. Note that the publisher doesn’t detail social or mobile game releases in its earnings releases in the same way it does with console and PC game releases due the risk of being beaten to market by a copycat game.

Brown went on to say that FY 2012 digital revenue growth the hit $1.2 billion and that calendar 2013 would have a lighter game release schedule overall. Detailed guidance for FY 2013 will be provided in EA’s next earnings report.

More details on EA’s social games calendar came out during the Q&A portion of the call: Five new games based on established IP are currently in development. A big social game launch is planned for May. Aside from the strategic decision behind moving the mystery 2013 social game back, the publisher also says that there are issues with the game’s social and monetization features. EA also says that a significant majority of digital revenue comes from EA’s own IP, not from PopCap and Playfish. The FIFA game launched with Gree for social and mobile networks in Japan was a particularly inspiring launch for EA and they’re exploring similar game launches on global networks. No mention was made of a Mass Effect 3 social game.

Tagged sunsetting hi5’s gaming network – Social network Tagged has revealed what it will be doing with hi5, the rival social network it acquired in December. According to an interview on TechCrunch, the company will be sunsetting hi5’s gaming platform and replacing it with games developed by the Tagged team.

Zynga to release fourth quarter results on Valentines Day – Zynga has announced it will hold its first earnings call as a public company on Tuesday, February 14th. The company will discuss its financial results for the full year of 2011 and its fourth quarter. The call is scheduled for 2:00 pm pacific, after the close of the stock market.

Amazon still hiring for mobile, social gaming - Amazon is ramping up its hiring of game developers for both mobile and social games, according to job postings spotted by Xconomy. The company’s a2z arm has positions open for mobile game developers, and in Seattle the company is recruiting specifically for social game positions. Last May Amazon posted a job for a game designer to lead the company in creating mobile and social games, which lead to the hiring of game industry vet Jonathan Tweet. While Amazon has been working on its gaming project for a number of months, so far no details have emerged.

Social game school opening in Japan – Japan is getting a school specifically designed to help developers create social games according to Japanese industry watcher Serkan Toto. The aptly named Social Game Academy will open in April in Tokyo’s trendy Roppongi Hills district.

The Sims Social is surprisingly sexy – According to some fun statistics released by EA, since the Sims Social debuted on Facebook, more than 11 million dirty jokes have been told and more than 70 million love confessions have been made. EA also noted that Sims in the game ‘woohoo’ more than 680,000 times a day.

Konami releasing Star Wars social game – Siliconera is reporting Konami will be releasing a social game based on the Star Wars franchise, but only in Japan. The game will be called Star Wars Collection and will be on GREE’s mobile social network.

Virgin Gaming platform now has 1 million members – According to Virgin, the company’s foray into a social gaming with its VirginGaming.com platform has paid off. The service has gathered more than 1 million members since it launched in June 2010.

Google+ now allowing nicknames and online handles – Google+ has added support for alternate nicknames to its service. While it will still require users to register their real names, alternate names will now appear alongside a user’s name.

DeNA partnering with Mixi to open virtual shopping mall - Mobile social games company DeNA has signed a partnership with Japanese social network Mixi to open an online shopping mall on the Mixi platform. Penn Olson is reporting the virtual mall will open in late march.

Andreessen Horowitz looking for $1.5 billion more for VC funds – The New York Times is reporting that Marc Andreessen is raising $1.5 billion to fuel two new funds at his high-profile venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The firm currently holds stakes in a number of well known social and mobile companies such as Zynga and Instagram.

EA PopCap has chosen to sunset ZipZapPlay’s Baking Life, announcing to players that the game will go offline on January 31.

The move is not surprising — while at one point Baking Life had been one of the bigger hits on Facebook, peaking with more than 6.7 million monthly active users in August 2010, traffic for the game has been in slow decline ever since. When PopCap acquired ZipZapPlay last April, the future of the game was still being decided, even though it had more than 2.2 million MAU at the time. It’s unknown at this point if EA’s acquisition of PopCap in July had any effect on the decision to sunset the game.

When asked about the decision, Garth Chouteau, PopCap’s VP of communications sent this statement to Inside Social Games: “Unfortunately, we had to make a very difficult decision to shut down the game. The Baking Life player numbers have dropped in such a way that Baking Life is no longer performing well enough to justify continued support. As such, we are reallocating resources to games that we are developing for future release.”

It’s pretty much the same story ZipZapPlay has told before when sharing its previous experiences on the Facebook platform in trying to balance a game’s lifetime value of users (LTV) against cost per install (CPI). For EA PopCap, however, the decision puts PopCap in an awkward position with regards to its social games portfolio. Although Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz have done well, they are both based on existing PopCap franchises. Development on PopCap’s Pig Up! has been frozen and ZipZapPlay has not released any new titles since its acquisition, so its not clear what the company’s next move on Facebook will be.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Baking Life currently has 760,000 MAU and 100,000 DAU. Although the game’s user base has declined significantly, it still enjoys retention above 13 percent.

Risk: Factions is a new social game published by EA in collaboration with Hasbro, the rights holder to the Risk board game.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Risk: Factions currently has 30,000 monthly active users and 9,000 daily active users.

Risk: Factions was originally released as a standalone, downloadable title for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games consoles in 2010. A Windows PC version followed in early 2011, published through Valve’s Steam digital distribution network. The Facebook version is a fundamental re-imagining of the game for the social network, while maintaining many of the aspects which made the console version popular. Inside Social Games spoke to Spencer Brooks from EA regarding the move to Facebook earlier this week.

There are two main parts to Risk: Factions — base building and missions. Base building plays out similarly to established games in the same genre with an important distinction: many buildings have a practical game function beyond simply providing the player with an income stream. Specifically, many buildings train troops over time, which are the resource the player needs to complete the second part of the game: the missions. Without troops, a player won’t be able to play until their base has produced more, so in some senses, they act similarly to an energy bar.

Missions play out similarly to the board game version of Risk. Taking place on one of several maps, players take it in turns to deploy troops to various territories and then use them to attack enemy-held areas. Combat is resolved through dice throws, so there’s an element of random chance, though brute-forcing your way through with a large force gives a greater chance of success in the long term. Control of larger numbers of territories means the player has more troops to deploy at the start of their turn, and players can also collect cards to allow them to make use of special weapons.

Social features for the game include the ability to add friends as allies, allowing you to visit their base and “boost” a building’s production; compete against friends and random strangers in multiplayer matches; and send gifts to allies. Players also earn Skill Points by winning matches, which enables them to upgrade their faction’s technologies — and further factions can be unlocked through leveling up.

The game’s monetization is handled through the hard currency of Stars. These are purchased using Facebook Credits and offer walls. Stars can be used to purchase the special weapons used in a match — though these weapons still require the collection of cards to use — as well as special buildings for bases. There are also a number of booster items on offer, including the facility to immediately purchase extra troops for the “supply” from which a player’s forces are drawn during play. Production of troops from a base’s buildings can also be “rushed” using Stars, enabling quick production of troops for the player’s stockpile.

Risk: Factions is already a complete and satisfying game, offering some genuinely strategic gameplay alongside the more casual, light base building elements. Over time, the game will offer more maps on which players can battle — at this time, only three of the five factions’ worlds are represented, with only three out of what looks like a proposed five individual maps per world on offer for players to clash over. Further game modes, many of which are designed for quicker play, are also in the works. The game will also offer more in the way of premium items and special weapons to purchase over time, as the offerings in the store are currently quite limited.

You’ll be able to track Risk: Factions’ progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

EA’s Barry Cottle has left the company to take a position at Zynga as executive vice president of business and corporate development.

Cottle follows a similar path taken by fellow EA alum John Schappert, who jumped ship for Zynga last April. We’ve seen several other ex-EA employees below the corporate level also migrate, suggesting a significant level of compatibility between the two corporate cultures. Though at EA since 2007, Cottle barely spent six months in the role as EVP of EA Interactive – Social, Mobile and Online Gaming, which he took over when EA shuffled its executives in August 2011.

Zynga expressed excitement at the hire in statements provided in a press release. EA hasn’t responded to request for comment as of press time. At this point, it’s unclear who will fill Cottle’s shoes at EA.

UPDATE: EA has updated its corporate roster with Playfish founder Kristian Segerstrale as EVP of Digital. In an Action letter to employees filed today, EA CEO John Riccitiello says that the company will now fold EA Interactive into all its divisions in a restructuring effort to be detailed at a Town Hall meeting on February 2. Frank Gibeau and Peter Moore retain their positions as president of EA Labels and COO, respectively, with Moore taking on leadership of a new Customer Experience Group. Rajat Taneja remains CTO with an emphasis on building up EA’s proprietary platform, Origin.

“This reflects our new reality,” Riccitiello’s statement reads, “everyone and everything is digital.”

UPDATE 2: An EA spokesperson clarifies that the new structure of EAi is not hinged on Cottle’s departure and Segerstrale’s new role is significantly different than the one Cottle left behind. “In fact,” says the spokesperson, ” it further reflects the changing structure that as the parts of EAi integrate into other areas of EA, Segerstrale is focused on a wide-reaching new role that helps to define parts of our new digital business.”

Tetris Battle started out in 2010 as a quiet attempt to bring a classic video game brand to Facebook. Now, just over a year later, the game is on track to compete with the very biggest Facebook games from giants like Zynga and EA.

Already ranked among the top ten most popular games on Facebook as recorded by our AppData traffic tracking service, Tetris Battle currently enjoys about 3.1 million daily active users with 2 million of them arriving in the game within the last two months alone. Honolulu-based developer Tetris Online Inc. has set the sky as the limit for the game’s growth in 2012, hoping to grow the total player base of Tetris Battle to between 5 and 10 million DAU this year. If successful, this would place Tetris Battles in serious competition for the top spot of most popular Facebook game overall.

In this report, Tetris Online VP of Marketing Casey Pelkey and VP of Game Design & Executive Producer Eui-Joon “Ace” Youm share the design and deployment decisions that make the game an ongoing success, their monetization strategies, other Tetris Online games and future plans for Tetris Battle expansion Tetris Arena.

Tetris Battle gameplay: Variations of multiplayer

Tetris Battle’s basic gameplay is similar to the original arcade version, except played in several varieties of multiplayer with enhanced competitive aspects. In “Sprint” mode, players race to be the first to create 40 lines the fastest; in “Battle” modes, when a player forms one or more lines on their board, obstacles and hazards are sent onto the playing field of her competitors.

Gameplay makes use of both synchronous and asynchronous multiplayer competition. The developer prefers not to publicize the specific deployment method used in Tetris Battle, except to say that its goal is to make gameplay feel the same in both synchronous and asynchronous matches. Players are pit against competitors of a similar level and when competing in real time, they will see their competitors’ actual gameplay depicted onscreen. When playing the game with Facebook friends, matches are entirely synchronous and feature a live user-to-user chat feature. The company intentionally throttles live play connections to maintain good performance, but Pelkey says it still represents “a significant percentage of total games played each day.”

Tetris Online incorporates a number of mechanics to encourage continued engagement, including a leveling system which is used to match players with similar playing abilities, and to unlock new game modes. As with many social games, Tetris Battle also has an energy meter which is drained during play, but replenished over time or via monetization. A “Daily Bonus Spin” encourages regular play by offering players special items for playing the game over consecutive days.

Growth and usage: 80 percent word-of-mouth installs

Unlike many Facebook games, Tetris Battle does not employ a mandatory friend-adding mechanic in which a player cannot progress further unless they send game installation invites to their friends. Instead, says Youm, “We focus on the core gameplay… our core belief is if [players] enjoy the game and stay there, they will invite their friends.”

This partly explains the game’s relatively slow growth rates in its first 6-8 months. Initially launched in July 2010, it first had slow growth and low engagement rates, fluctuating between 7 and 15 percent of DAU as a percent of MAU (or DAU/MAU). Technical issues were also a culprit.

The game’s slow growth was also due in part to a lower install rate: Only 55 percent of players would go from launching the app to completing their first game. The reason for this, the developer believes, is that many Facebook gamers were unaccustomed to Tetris’ keyboard-driven gameplay, since nearly all games on the social network platform are mouse-driven. To address this challenge, Youm and his team put the game’s keyboard instructions in the first loading screen and focused players on only using the game’s main key controls for the initial game. As a result, Tetris Battle’s install-to-play rate increased to 80 percent.

The results of this design and layout change became quite evident in April 2011. According to AppData, the DAU/MAU rate then leaped from 20 to about 27 percent, and then began trending toward 35 percent. (Engagement rates of 20 percent DAU/MAU or higher are extremely good for a Facebook game.) Youm also believes that by April 2011, Tetris Battle had reached sufficient critical mass (then about 500,000 DAU) that word of mouth began to drive strong adoption rates, with current players actively inviting their friends to play. According to Youm, installations based on word of mouth are “at least 80 percent… and the funny thing is, it’s increasing.”

Some of Tetris Battle’s growth is also attributable to a viral mechanism involving tetrimino blocks, which can be combined and redeemed for additional energy. A player who invites Facebook users gets more chances to win tetriminos. Players who are Facebook friends with each other can give each other their tetriminos, which creates incentive for friend invites. Tetris Battle also sees significant growth via updates on friends’ Facebook walls, where news on winning games and other Tetris Battle successes can be posted. (As a skill-based game, Youm speculates that players feel more encouraged to share Tetris Battle victories with friends, than non-skill game updates.) Further, the developer reports that players who come to Tetris Battle via friend requests are more likely to put a full effort into the initial on-ramping experience, and are therefore more likely to convert.

In more recent months, Tetris Battle has seen noticeable growth through Facebook’s launch of the canvas app ticker, which amplified the game’s viral word of mouth. The developer hopes that Facebook makes it possible for users to immediately join friends in a multiplayer session, just by clicking on the relevant app ticker update. Doing this, they believe, would increase general growth of multiplayer games on Facebook.

According to the developer, the game now enjoys a peak concurrency of nearly 200,000 players, and routinely averages about 100,000 players throughout the day. Twenty percent of the total playerbase is classified as core players, defined as those who play over an hour a day. As noted, the game has an energy system, which kicks in after 30 minutes; at that point, a player must wait for an hour to refill their energy (i.e. playing time), or purchase extra energy. Core players are therefore playing at least twice a day and/or monetizing.

Monetization and demographics

The developer reports that Tetris Battle earns close to the puzzle game average of 1 to 2 cents in average revenue per daily active user, or ARPDAU. (Tetris Online declines to state specific ARPDAU for their game.) That monetization rate is typical for the game’s US audience, they say, with other English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, the UK) also earning good monetization. At this range and at a conservative estimate, revenue for Tetris Battle probably exceeds $1 million per month.

Tetris Battle’s monetization options center around energy, decorations, and functional items, such as “armor,” which protects a player’s rank on the game’s leaderboard from decreasing whenever a player loses a match. Overall, functional goods that improve a player’s gameplay, such as speeding up the movement of their game pieces, monetize best. For the game’s 20 percent core users, a “fast speed drop” of incoming blocks is the most popular monetized item. Special discount sales of goods also increase monetization rates, as does localization of the game. Tetris Battle was also recently localized in Chinese, which resulted in a revenue increase among Chinese-speaking players.

Demographically, Tetris Battle players are roughly split 50/50 by gender, and retention tends to skew younger; in this case, meaning players in the 20-40 range. Core gamers (those playing for over an hour a day) are more male. In terms of players by country, the game reportedly grows in tandem with Facebook’s expansion into the international market. (Players from Denmark, for unknown reasons, comprise a disproportionately large percentage of the user base.)

Leveraging and protecting the Tetris brand on Facebook

According to Pelkey, the Tetris brand name has been an important draw for first-time players; however, retention depends not on the brand, but gameplay and user experience. He applies this lesson in general advice to Facebook game developers involved with other well-known brands and franchises: “You have to deliver a great game, period,” he says. And that includes adding features to the game that leverage all of the platform’s social components: “In Facebook, you better deliver [a game] that has something extra, and not only engages the player, but engages their friends as well.” So far, Tetris Battle is among the rare examples of games from the arcade era to succeed on Facebook.

Given that, and the continued growth of Tetris Battle, some might wonder if it will face copy-cat competitors which frequently beset successful Facebook games. In this case, Tetris’ holding company, Blue Planet Software, has a history of successfully protecting the Tetris brand from imitators in the legal arena. While games in themselves cannot be copyrighted, elements of a game can be trademarked; in this case, the Tetris logo, Tetris theme song, and tetrimino playing pieces enjoy that legal protection. As an example of Blue Planet’s protection strategy, a Facebook game called Blockstar, which had a striking resemblance to Tetris, was legally acquired and co-opted by the company in 2007. This move contrasts the fate of Scrabulous, a Facebook imitator of Scrabble that was shut down by the board game’s rights holder.

Instead of doing that, says Pelkey, “To help reduce the amount of time our legal team spent on shutting this particular game mode down, we were fortunate to befriend the individual who programmed [Blockstar]”. The company went on to “embrace it as an official game mode, making it a part of the Tetris history.” It’s still available within Tetris Friends, with 350,000 MAU. (Before joining Tetris Online, Youm himself was developing a knock-off of the original Tetris for an Asian developer.)

Future plans: Tetris Arena, localization and beyond Tetris Battle

In the second quarter of 2012, Facebook should see the launch of Tetris Arena, a gameplay mode in Tetris Battle that’s now in closed beta. Aimed at the core gamer market, Tetris Arena focuses on multiplayer, synchronous play, in which players compete live using the same playing pieces.

Given that focus, it will also come with a global ranking system — the first Tetris title to have one. For this reason, Tetris Online believes that the Arena mode will draw core players hungry to prove that they’re among the very best at the game overall. Also reflecting the developer’s goal to present Tetris as a competitive sport, Arena will also come with a spectator mode. The company has been testing it on gamers by publishing the Arena game mode’s unlock code on Twitter. Since starting this activity, the Tetris Battle Twitter account has gained 260,000 followers within two months. The Arena game mode is entirely live play, but since it’s still in closed beta, it represents a smaller percentage of the daily games played; the company expects this to grow as the game is opened to more players.

Monetization for Tetris Arena will vary from the main Tetris Battle game, with more functional consumable items. Since the game exists within the main app, the company plans to focus early launch on in-game cross-promotion.

As noted, Tetris Online recently launched a Chinese-localized version of Tetris Battle, garnering improved monetization in Chinese-speaking countries. In 2012, the company also plans to release localizations of the game in Spanish, French, Italian and German, with one new language deployed each month. All these versions will exist within the same Tetris Battle app ID, which will therefore enjoy any growth these additions are likely to attract. The developer notes that the game tends to gain growth momentum when it’s made available in a given country, and word of mouth kicks in; localization should further drive this growth.

Tetris Online also plans to launch a second product in 2012, a head-to-head multiplayer game, which will not be Tetris branded. Another game, Tetris Stars, which combines mouse-driven gameplay with a more casual variation of Tetris, is currently in open beta; the developer is still developing its Q1 2012 plans for that title.

Facebook games in 2012: Words With Friends vs. Tetris Online

At the start of 2012, several top Facebook games shared some common traits with Tetris Battle. Among these are Words With Friends (with 7.9 million DAU, 16 million MAU), Bubble Witch Saga (4 million DAU, 11 million MAU), and Bejeweled Blitz (3.1 million DAU, 9.2 million MAU). All currently enjoy strong growth, especially as compared to other games now topping the popularity charts, such as CityVille and The Sims Social, which have comparatively flat growth. Given these trends, it’s likely that puzzle/arcade games will emerge as 2012’s leaders on the Facebook platform.

For the part of Tetris Online, they consider Tetris Battle’s most direct competitor in the coming year to be Zynga’s Words With Friends. From Youm’s perspective, Words has the advantage of mobile connectivity and cross-platform play. By contrast, competitive Tetris games are difficult to deploy on phones, especially smartphones with touch screens. Additionally, EA holds the rights to mobile versions of Tetris and would need to be brought on as a partner for any mobile deployment of Tetris Online games. However, Youm argues that Tetris Battle has a more global reach than Words With Friends, with the Scrabble-like game probably limited in appeal to regions where English or Romance languages predominate.

These strategic assumptions will be tested as Tetris Online rolls out localized versions of Tetris Battle in 2012, aiming to cater more directly to European and Spanish-speaking countries. In any case, the company sees this year as an opportunity to transform the Facebook platform’s competitive space. Youm argues that multiplayer competitive games are more sustainable for developers, because unlike most other genres, there’s no clear end point where all the game’s content has been enjoyed. Just as Tetris the brand continues to thrive nearly three decades after launch, he believes multiplayer games on Facebook can thrive as long as people are interested in playing them against each other.

“The success of puzzle games gives people something to think about,” as Pelkey puts it. ”At the end of 2012, maybe there’s a different face of gaming in Facebook.”

Full Disclosure: In 2010, the author briefly consulted for Avatar Reality, an unrelated 3D virtual
world developer founded by Henk Rogers, president of Blue Planet Software.

EA’s follow-up to runaway Facebook hit The Sims Social, Risk: Factions, launches today on the social network. The game faces a two-front battle in trying capture a dedicated niche audience while also keeping up EA’s momentum in the social games space.

Despite being named after a board game like EA’s Monopoly Millionaires, Risk: Factions actually has more in common with The Sims Social as it’s based on an existing video game franchise. The original Risk: Factions is a downloadable title for Xbox Live and PlayStation Network where players choose one of several “factions” and play against other players or computer-controlled opponents in the classic turn-based strategy game of Risk, which has players attempting to take over an entire world map.

In making the jump to social, EA has adapted the title for speedier play and more engaging multiplayer. Aside from the usual social game “hooks,” such as harvesting resources or matching games for bonus items, the developer has also added features and factions to create what amounts to an entirely new game experience under the same franchise. EA Producer and Risk: Factions designer Spencer Brooks walks us through what’s different and how the game’s older social siblings influenced development.

Inside Social Games: Fill us in on the background of the original Risk: Factions on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. Was the game a success on those platforms?

Spencer Brooks: It was definitely a success in every measure. It riffed off of some of the changes Hasbro made in the 2008 rules and we used that as a springboard and added a bunch of our features to that. Brand expectations, gameplay, just everything — that game raised the bar for [Risk].

So in 2008, [Hasbro] re-released the game and it wasn’t just world conquest, it was objective-based rules. You could take over the map and you win, but if you played with objectives, it’s better because you start with eight or six [players] and the first one who gets three [objectives] wins the game. It did two things — it sped up the game enormously and it allowed everybody to stay in the game even at the end. You could all be playing the game and then there would be a winner. It codified the need for the game [to go faster and keep people playing].

[The social game] is more or less a hybrid of the XBLA version. We made the factions play differently while in the XBLA and PSN version, the factions were basically a skin. For the social game, we’ve got the concept of special weapon, [where] each faction has its own sort of power up that you can put on the map and they give each faction a different play style. We have multiple maps like we did in the original — we’re launching with nine maps and we’ll release more every so often. We haven’t added all the features [of the original], but we’ve created new ones.

ISG: Like the Headquarters area? It seems a lot like the farm or the homestead setting in other social games where you go to collect resources…

Brooks: The headquarters is meant to do a few things. Yes, I think there’s an appointment mechanic going on in the headquarters right now because you need to check back and harvest your troops and collect your special weapons. But headquarters is almost meant to show a persistence and progression of you leveling up, then unlocking new factions and leveling each of those up. It’s your main resource generator and a progression indicator.

ISG: We notice that in the closed beta version of the game, you also implemented an energy meter that limited the number of games we could play per day. Now that the game is live, it looks like you’ve subtracted that feature. Energy meters are pretty standard for most social games — what made you decide to leave it out?

Brooks: This gets into a religious debate among designers and producers and product managers. My personal preference is that I like to play and play and play. There’s a monetization component to all these games, but I wanted to see — just over the holidays — what the feedback was of the players if we just took off the energy cap. Both from a data standpoint and a qualitative player feedback point-of-view, did that make the game better? It’s something we’re still evaluating.

What I really like about this game and what I tried to deliver on is that I wanted a game that had a [player versus player] element with a winner and a loser. There are no big strategy games out there that have a winner and a loser. It’s risky because it’s instance-based PvP, but there’s something about Risk that is very competitive; if you can’t rub your friend’s nose in a humiliating defeat, then we didn’t do the game justice. You get surprisingly addicted to it — you want your player rating to go up and every win is much more emotional because if you fail, it’s really you. It’s not like you’re playing an abstraction of a person, you’re playing a person. I don’t think social games do enough of that. We’re all hoping that that’s received well, especially by more core gamers used to more competitive experiences.

ISG: It sounds like rankings will be an important social hook, then. What sort of tools will you use to sort player rankings and organize matches? Is it just going to be a big free-for-all, or can we only challenge our Facebook friends?

Brooks: We’re using a modified true skill system. Everybody has a numeric rating between 0 and 10000. We factor in the delta between players to determine rank change and there are diminishing returns [for attacking low-level players]. That’s a gross exaggeration of the math, but you get the basics.

Initially, for the first few weeks, everyone can play each other because we have to feed the [leaderboards]. Once we have enough spread among players, we’re going to do it a little more intelligently than that. One is level of engagement — players who play a lot, very active players will play very active players. Initially by engagement and frequency. After that, you’re put in other buckets — like how close are you [in player level]. We will do some intelligent matchmaking [between similar level and similar engagement].

ISG: Speaking of competition, how much pressure do you feel having to follow on the heels of The Sims Social? Yes, it’s like comparing apples to oranges in terms of game type and intended audience, but even so, it’s a tough act to follow.

Brooks: I want to steer away from comparing Risk: Factions to The Sims Social because they’re very different games that will attract very different players. For the audience we are attracting — which is more male and more competitive and they like strategy — it’s going to do very well.

ISG: Now that the game is live, what are you plans for future content expansions?

Brooks: There will be many more factions following after launch. We’ll have new gameplay modes as well; we’ve already designed several modes that make the game go faster than it does. We wanted to keep classic world conquest because there’s the expectation of that — but the game will be evolving and we’ve got two other factions that we’re finished with and some new mechanics as well as more maps and more modes that are pretty slick. We wanted to get the initial one out and gauge user feedback and make sure we have everything prioritized correctly.