Margaritaville Online is a new cross-platform game for Facebook and iPad. It was developed by Exploding Barrel Games and published by THQ.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Margaritaville Online currently has 30,000 monthly active users and 20,000 daily active users.

Margaritaville is described as an “everyday escape to a virtual tropical paradise.” The game is inspired by the song “Margaritaville” from singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, and takes the form of a role-playing adventure game. Taking on the role of a custom avatar, players begin in a bookstore on a snowy night and find themselves sucked into the tropical paradise of Margaritaville after finding a dusty old book written by Jimmy Buffett. Once safely on the island, players are then given a series of quests to introduce them to the main gameplay elements — exploring and collecting items; completing tasks for the island’s residents; building up the player’s business, a bar known as The Oasis; and taking part in a variety of minigames.

Rather than taking the form of a 2D citybuilding game, Margaritaville Online takes place on a predefined map, rendered in 3D using the popular Unity game engine. The mobile version is also built in Unity, which a contributing factor in the near-simultaneous launch on Facebook and iPad. An iPhone companion app is soon to follow.

Players explore the game map by clicking or tapping, and can click on various items to interact with them. Progressing through the game’s quests rewards the player with additional tools, which allow them to interact with more diverse objects. Acquiring a hammer, for example, allows the player to break crates and barrels to retrieve the objects inside, while a machete allows for overgrown bamboo to be temporarily cleared, opening up new paths for exploration.

Many areas of the island are initially inaccessible, requiring the player to gather raw materials to rebuild bridges over rivers. As the player explores, they will find more items and characters to interact with, as well as a selection of minigames to play alongside the main exploration gameplay. These include a rhythm-based limbo game; a first-person shooter “pirate attack” game; a Bejeweled-style “match three” puzzler when resting in a hammock; and numerous appropriately-themed challenges. All actions cost Energy to perform, with playing a minigame costing three units at once.

A Facebook account is required to play, even on the iPad version, but this means that a player can start playing on their home computer then take their iPad with them to play on the go. In-game, players will see their friends’ characters wandering around their own Margaritaville island, and interacting with them grants a bonus of coins and items. Friends can also be hired into various positions in the player’s “Oasis” bar business, helping to increase income. There’s also the usual facility to send energy-restoring gifts to one another.

Monetization is largely handled through the sale of the game’s hard currency: Beach Bucks. These can be purchased on Facebook using Facebook Credits; earned using Facebook Offers; or purchased using in-app purchases on the iPad. Beach Bucks can be used for a variety of purposes — acquiring premium avatar customization items; purchasing energy restoration items; or gaining additional soft currency. THQ also offers a premium membership option for the game, known as becoming a “Parrothead,” which provides players with an increased energy limit, a cash bonus, special items and a variety of benefits promised in the future.

THQ’s plans for the future of the game are ambitious, with user acquisition strategies stretching far outside just Facebook and the App Store. Speaking with VentureBeat, THQ’s vice president of global brand management Michael Lustenberger said that the game would be promoted at Jimmy Buffett concerts; on the Las Vegas Strip; various restaurants and resorts; and also through the upcoming iPhone app, which encourages players to share real-world “Margaritaville Moments” in exchange for rewards in the game. A lot is riding on the success of the game for THQ, whose stock price has been plummeting recently thanks to disappointing sales of a number of its key titles in the console market.

You can follow Margaritaville Online’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

Digital Chocolate announced a series of significant executive hires today and revealed its games are coming to Android devices.

According to a Digital Chocolate press release, Nokia’s former head of program management execution, Kaj Häggman, is now Digital Chocolate’s vice president and the general manager of its Helsinki studio. Emmi Kuusikko, the former director of user and market insight at Sulake joins Digital Chocolate as vice president of product management.

Although Digital Chocolate announced the hires today, according to Häggman’s and Kuusikko’s LinkedIn profiles, both executives have been with the company since the tail-end of 2011.

As part of the announcement, Digital Chocolate also revealed Army Attack would be joining Zombie Lane on iOS, and that both games would be making their way to Android, tablets and other browser channels. The press release did not indicate if the mobile version of Army Attack would be cross platform, or if it would be a stand-alone game like the mobile version of Zombie Lane. The company also revealed that its new St. Petersburg and Seattle Studios are working on games for “new genres and platforms,” but did not give any further information.

As part of the changes, Digital Chocolate also promoted Edmund Chui to VP platform engineering, Jerome Collin to VP product management and Sean Dornan-Fish to VP game design. In Finland the company promoted Marko Lastikka to VP production and Miikka Kukkosuo to VP regional sales.

In February the company raised $12 million in Series D funding in a round lead by Intel Capital.

Grave Maker is an upcoming social game for Facebook, iOS and Android, set to launch in February 2012 and currently undergoing beta testing on its own dedicated site. The game has been built entirely using YoYo Games’ own Game Maker product, and is intended at least in part as a demonstration of Game Maker’s application in making cross-platform social games as well as more traditional interactive entertainment.

The game casts players in the role of a graveyard keeper, and tasks them with defending the graveyard against frequent attacks from disgruntled locals. This is achieved by sending undead minions into battle to confront the locals, and gradually building up the graveyard with useful structures, crops and decorations.

Gameplay blends several popular social and casual game styles together into one coherent experience. Sending minions into battle is somewhat similar to the “tower defense” genre, where enemy forces approach the player’s base along a predetermined path, and the player must deploy defenses (in this case, minions) to deal with them as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the building and crop harvesting is similar to city-building and farming games, with actions taking time to perform, and crops ripening and spoiling over time. In an interesting twist, the player acquires new troops with which to defend their graveyard by planting them just like normal crops. Finally, the combat involves elements of role-playing and strategy combat games, with both player minions and enemies having varying strength levels, and some working better than others against one another.

Since the game is currently limited to a ten-level beta demo on its own website, social and monetization features have not yet been implemented, nor can it be tracked via our traffic tracking application AppData. Planned social features include a “fear factor” rating for players’ graveyards, where friends will be able to compare what is effectively the “net worth” of their land of horrors. There will also be the facility for players to send gifts to one another.

Meanwhile, monetization will be accomplished through use of the game’s hard currency of skulls. The current version doesn’t give any specific indication of what players can expect to purchase using skulls, but the placeholder menu promises “special items, structures and creatures.”

When the game launches in February, however, it will be simultaneously released on Facebook, iOS and Android. This is made possible by the  HTML5 and cross-platform export support found in YoYo Games’ newest Game Maker product, Game Maker Studio, set to release shortly after Grave Maker’s launch. Game Maker Studio’s export pipeline means that the game can be made once and easily deployed to multiple platforms rather than having to go through a lengthy and complex porting process. The multiplatform support also allows one game account to be used across all three versions, meaning a game can be started on Facebook and later picked up on the go via an iOS or Android portable device.

“Grave Maker is a huge project for YoYo Games and in many ways, it represents the culmination of everything we’ve been working towards with the Game Maker package,” says Stuart Poole, head of publishing at YoYo Games. “Grave Maker is every bit a modern social game, but its cross-platform abilities and the power of GameMaker’s HTML5 support means that the player gets the same gameplay experience across all three platforms, with the game in play accessible from any of them, at any time.”

Scotland-based newcomer Outplay Entertainment enters the social and mobile game market this month with two games launched on Facebook that will eventually become cross-platform experiences on iOS and Android in the first quarter of 2012.

The term “cross-platform” has been used a lot by developers in the last year as Facebook-spawned devs make their first attempts at mobile games and mobile developers attempt to migrate their apps to Facebook and other social networks. It can mean two completely unrelated games that share a common theme, like CrowdStar’s It Girl for Facebook and Top Girl for mobile. It can mean a game that is identical across all platforms, but not connected by platforms, such as Rovio’s Angry Birds on G+ versus Angry Birds on just about every other device under the sun. It can also mean games that are the same game no matter what device the player users, like Zynga’s Words With Friends — which is what many developers term “true” cross-platform play.

Outplay Entertainment currently falls toward the Words With Friends end of the spectrum with its two games, Booty Quest and Word Trick. When the mobile versions launch, players will be able to initiate games on Facebook and then have that same game immediately available to them on iPhone or Android if they switch devices. For future projects, the developer may lean more toward CrowdStar’s cross-platform model where one platform has the “main” gameplay experience while another platform provides supplemental elements. Similar to what Ubisoft has planned for its upcoming Ghost Recon games, this could take the form of a mobile companion game generating additional currency or experience points for the Facebook main game.

For now, though, Outplay is focused on getting its foot in the social-mobile games door and scaling quickly. Though there is some skepticism that developers cannot use Facebook as a sustainable starting point on which to build a business, the developer feels it has an edge by virtue of experience, compelling gameplay, and ample resources to direct toward marketing. The company was founded by brothers Richard and Doug Hare, two video game industry veterans that have come a long way from 1997 when they first founded a development studio focused on porting Windows games to the PlayStation console. In the following interview, the brothers outline Outplay’s approach to the rapidly shifting market:

Inside Social Games: How two brothers can work together without killing each other?

Richard Hare, Outplay Entertainment Co-Founder (pictured right): It’s probably the fact that we grew up playing games together. It’s been a hobby and then it became a common interest. The first company of scale we created was The Collective, which we formed in 1997 with one other business partner, and focused on console development. We grew that over the course of eight years to 150 people, then we merged with Backbone Entertainment in 2005.

Doug Hare, Outplay Entertainment Co-Founder (pictured right, with child): We merged the companies, created Foundation 9 Entertainment, and then sold the majority of it in 2006. As a result of that investment, we grew to about 800 people in 11 different studios. That’s when we started [researching] Facebook as a platform and at the same time saw the [rise] of Apple with the launch of the App Store. It was difficult to go after those markets from within our company, so it ended up being easier to start a new company. We’re still substantial individual shareholders at Foundation 9, but we have no operational involvement.

ISG: How did you end up back in your native country, Scotland? What’s the development culture like there?

Doug: We started with the idea of doing Outplay in the states as a very virtualized company with lots of different individuals collaborating on the product — after 800 people, we were drawn to the idea of a small company. As we refined our view of the market, it became apparent that games were services rather than products you could fire [off] and forget, so we started realizing that we needed a fairly substantial internal capacity. We started looking at various locations where we could set that up, and [chose] Scotland. We came to that realization around April or May of last year and came back in September to start meeting with VCs and angels investors. We officially opened our doors in April 2011.

We can’t claim to be experts, but a lot of stuff happened while we were away [from Scotland]. But one of the surprising things [about] Scotland is that it’s the home of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto. Those games originated here and Grand Theft Auto is still developed here. [Video games] is not a huge industry in terms of headcount, but in terms of the size of the country — five million people — the amount of relevance is amazing for such a small country.

ISG: We’ve heard some people say that Facebook isn’t the best place to launch a studio anymore now that Zynga dominates the market and cost per install (CPI) is really high. Where do you see opportunity on the platform?

Doug: It’s a question of having the type of product people want to play. Whether it’s the App Store, the Android Market, Facebook, or Xbox Live, they have the same challenges around discoverability — grabbing people’s attention so that they come back. [The opportunity] comes from the quality of the product that we create, the genres that we select, and the part where we can direct a reasonable amount of marketing toward [the games] to get traction. We’re not trying to be Zynga, we’re not trying to compete for the same audience. They’re an atypical outlying phenomenon. We’re making different types of games that will ultimately attract a different audience.

ISG: Booty Quest is a match-3 game and Word Trick is more like more like Scrabble, both very casual older female-skewing genres. Is that the demographic you’re primarily focused on?

Richard: There’s a multitude of reasons why we led with those genres. From our perspective, they’re great games. It’s a style of casual game that we enjoy playing. And because we’re forming a new team in a new country, we wanted smaller scale products with a relatively constrained and focused style of developing. From a market analysis standpoint, they seemed like logical bets to start with [because] even though there are many match-3 games, there’s a large appetite for that style of entertainment. We also felt we could create something that was innovative within those [genres]. These are an exercise in proving out the team and proving out our product. As we move into next year, you’re going to see more complexity in content types and development.

ISG: How do you offset CPI on new games, being such a new studio? Is it all in the marketing or will you integrate an ad platform or hot new viral mechanic no one’s thought of yet?

Doug: We’re moving rapidly and beyond simple raw marketing. We have other secret sauce as to how we [attract] audiences that we’ll be rolling out next year. It’s something along the lines of what you mentioned — only it’s saucier and more secret.

ISG: On the cross-platform side, what’s your approach? Are you using HTML5 or building native apps by platform?

Doug: We built our own technology for cross-platform development. HTML5 is interesting, but the experience that we have on mobile devices is just not something that you’d be able to get on HTML5 right now.

Word Trick and Booty Quest exist very happily on [PC or mobile]; the experience is satisfying regardless of the platform. However, that’s [not the case] for most types of games. Taking another type of game and making the same experience [on multiple platforms], one of them is going to be a pure experience on one of the platforms whether you like it or not. We’re not going to make the games identical all the time; we’re going to have games that you want to play on Facebook, on PC. And then we’ll have another game that’s a different experience [but related to the Facebook game] on a different platform. The two games are standalone, but if you play both, you’ll move faster through the experience. It’ll be a better experience overall.

There are other companies that are doing this. But there will be a change in the patterns that people play [by] and we want to have an approach to where we’ll be there whenever [the player] want us, no matter what the device.

Richard: The key is being sensitive to the context of the platform you’re playing on. There’s certain things that work extremely well or are only possible on mobile. We want to make sure it’s not going to be an exercise in porting between desktop and mobile, but trying to recognize the true experience based on the context. We’re not going to do, “Here’s the Facebook game,” and then a few months later, “Here’s the mobile game.”

ISG: You define your games as “skill-based,” even though they’re not actually related to the concept of gambling — where players compete against one another to earn prizes relative to their skill. What does the term “skill-based” mean in the context of your games?

Richard: One way of looking at it would be that there’s always a level of challenge that can be worked and mastered. That’s something that has a natural appeal and draw over time because it’s not too easy. With gameplay mechanics, we want to make sure that it’s always rewarding and satisfying. It’s finding the right level of skill or challenge. That will be based on the style of product — [Booty Quest] is more reaction-based while [Word Trick] challenges your vocabulary.

Doug: Both games require you to develop [a skill]. It’s rewarding to see your development of that skill, more fundamentally satisfying than games that are based on patience. The term “skill-based” reflects casino gaming, but the idea is really that you’re demonstrating a skill and the evolution of that skill is underpinning the overall enjoyment. There are a lot of games on Facebook that don’t have the requirements for what [we define as] skill. They have behaviors that can be rewarded, but there’s no change in behavior.

ISG: What does the road ahead look like for you, beyond launching new products? Are you in the process of raising funding?
Doug: We raised our seed funding at the start of the year, so we’re not raising money right now. When we pitched the company as an investment opportunity, the idea was that we were going into it [with] the functionality a publisher would have — dedicated community management, dedicated quality assurance, marketing, and public relations. We’re at 32 people right now — we started with two in April — and we grew ourselves in the space of three-and-a-half months. We’ve built these games and mobile versions that are nearly complete. What we’ve accomplished, when you think about it, is quite a lot.

Social gaming giant Zynga has released its latest game for iOS, Mafia Wars Shakedown. The free title is a spin-off of Zynga’s Mafia Wars and Mafia Wars 2, which have seen tremendous success on Facebook.

Shakedown sees players assuming the role of a mobster, with the goal of committing crimes, defeating boss characters, and stealing from other players. Gameplay is divided into two main types: jobs and stealing. Jobs are single-player focused, and task the player with robbing jewelry stores, intercepting shipments, blackmailing and other generally sketchy missions.

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

Adobe confirmed today that it is no longer adapting its Flash Player to newer mobile devices, instead guiding developers to package native apps with Adobe Air or build cross-platform applications in HTML5.

The move indicates just how badly Apple’s ban of Flash hurt Adobe in terms of getting traction with mobile developers. Apple frequently called out the inefficiency of the Flash platform on mobile devices, most recently in an April 2011 blog post from the late Steve Jobs. A ZDNet report came out last night, breaking news of Adobe’s decision.

There were a handful of apps (e.g. iSwifter) that could more or less convert or run Flash apps on iOS devices, but this doesn’t seem to have been a long-term solution for most game developers looking to take their Flash-based games cross-platform. This leaves Flash-loyal game developers with two options: write native apps for each mobile device, or explore alternatives that can produce a single product that runs on various devices.

With a big push from industry giants like Google and Facebook, HTML5 has emerged as an alternative to writing native applications, despite frame-rate issues that present challenges for game developers. Facebook recently launched its own mobile platform with support for HTML5 games from a test pool of established mobile and social game developers.

A handful of indie developers are currently launching HTML5-based arcade and board game titles on Facebook, iOS and Android. Though some of these titles are experiencing growing pains in their early days, they are functional on both web and mobile. Most developers have told us, however, that it’ll be at least another year before HTML5 comes into its own for game development.

Adobe says that it will now take a larger role in contributing to HTLM5 development both through investment and by working with Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM. Hopefully this will yield better HTML5 tools more quickly than a year out from now, as Adobe’s strength has always been tools.

The rest of its mobile work will focus on native app packaging with Adobe Air and the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. The developer will also supply bug fixes and security updates for existing Flash mobile apps. Adobe Flash Player 11 and Air 3 launched in October with a keen emphasis on high-end gaming graphics and HD video for PCs; Adobe says it’s already at work on Flash Player 12.

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

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

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

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

After acquiring OpenFeint for $104 million and then bringing in new leadership to run the company, Japanese gaming company GREE says it will launch an entirely new mobile-social gaming platform next year.

The goal is to combine the best parts of the GREE platform in Japan with those of OpenFeint and built a single network that reaches more than 1 billion Asian and Western users. It’s slated to launch by the middle of next year.

GREE, which originally said it would keep its Japanese platform and its Western-oriented side separate, says it’s not taking cues from rival DeNA in building a unified global gaming network.

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

Russian developer Game Insight is exploring new platforms with old games by launching Resort World on Google+’s games platform and prepping Mystery Manor for iPad later this month.

Resort World first launched on Orkut in February 2010 before migrating to Facebook in June through a publishing agreement with 6waves (now 6waves Lolapps). The beach resort industry sim is now available on 15 different social networks, including G+, and is Game Insight’s third-largest title on Facebook behind Big Business and Mystery Manor. Resort World is self-published on G+ by Game Insight.

Speaking to Inside Social Games, Game Insight VP of Business Development Darya Trushkina explains that G+ looks like it could be the next big platform for social games if growth increases and the Games platform finds traction.

“Google+ is a big deal right now in the market from our perspective,” she says. “ From what I know, it’s the fastest growing platform and hopefully it will remain on that path and become a competitor to Facebook.”

The key difference between Facebook and G+ Games at this point is in virality. Facebook relies on social discovery of new games via News feeds and the App Ticker and Games Ticker features while G+ breaks games off into its destination tab that encompasses all game-related invites and notifications as well as the games themselves. Neither Facebook nor G+ have publicly released data that could tell us how the different approaches do or do not user affect acquisition and retention.

“It’s a good filter for spamming,” Trushkina says. “From the virality point of view, that’s probably not the best for developers, but from the end user perspective, it’s a great thing because now you have this perfect environment where you can go choose from good games — because Google is very picky [during the submissions process]. So I can go there and I know that I don’t have to go through thousands of games to find something that I love.”

Not much has been said about how Google works with developers to launch social games. From what we and Game Insight both understand, the APIs are open to developers to experiment with — after which point, a developer can approach Google about launching a game for G+ Games.

“From what I know, Google choose the games that will be the most complimentary to their platform,” Trushkina explains. “We just pitched them with Resort World because there is no game like it there yet. It’s actually perfect because we can test the social network and see how it actually performs.”

Mystery Manor also would have been a good fit Google+ given the lack of competing hidden object games on the platform, she says. That game’s development team, however, is very focused on launching an iPad version before the end of November. After that point, G+ and perhaps an Android tablets maybe the next two markets Game Insight targets with the title. This comes as something of a surprise as Game Insight was previously exploring an Android-only mobile strategy when we last spoke with them. Trushkina says that although the developer continues to see success on Android with new games, Mystery Manor on iOS just seemed more attractive.

Interestingly, Trushkina explains that some platforms make for safe “test” environments before rolling a game onto a new platform. For social games, Game Insight uses VK.com as its guinea pig social network because the developer has a very clear understanding of the platform and its audience — which makes it easier to integrate player feedback in the first few weeks of launch. For mobile games, iOS maybe the safer route because the Apple approvals process buys the developer more time to polish the product.

“It makes it easier for us to fix bugs, see what people like and don’t like in terms of new features,” she says. “So we always release our games there first and then on Facebook and then on other social networks. On VK, you can polish a game [over time], where on Facebook it would fail right away. It’s the same with Android. On Android, it needs to be a perfect game because users get discouraged so easily and so fast, they almost never go back to a game even if you make it the best game on Earth after [launch]. The iOS approvals process helps out with this, but it makes [development cycles] a little different. Here you have up to three weeks to polish the product.”

As for future games, Game Insight is already testing Lords of Atlantis on VK with a possible Facebook launch in the works. Trushkina says it will be a couple more weeks before Game Insight makes a final decision on launching more titles for G+ — but a key component of that decision is whether or not the developer has games that Google wants on its platform. It’s also too soon to tell, she says, how average revenues per user stacks up on G+ compared to social networks.

San Francisco-based startup Swrve is ready to exit beta today with its cloud-based feedback and testing tool of the same name. The graduation comes a little over a month after the company netted $2.7 million in seed funding to put toward developing its service and hiring new staff.

Swrve is a tool that creates multiple split tests within a game where developer can try, fine-tune and deploy changes live. Company CEO Hugh Reynolds explains that the service isn’t an analytics platform like Kontagent or its competitors, but rather a component that allows developers to see and act on feedback collected from split tests conducted in-game. As an example, he says a card game developer can deploy five versions of the same piece of art for one card type in-game, interpret which performs best among its demographic breakdown, and push the one art piece that performs the best live. Or, Reynolds says, a developer could even consider deploying more than one art piece for the card in-game that varies depending on the user’s demographic.

“People look at it and say it’s more like a game editor than analytics tool,” he says. “It’s something that ‘regular people’ that don’t have a PhD in analytics can use day-to-day to guide development.”

Swrve is now launching version 2 of its server architecture, allowing the service to scale to a larger pool of developers. One of its earliest clients is Facebook social game developer 5th Planet Games; Reynolds tells us that about 18 more customers across mobile, social and open web game developers are also evaluating the product. Swrve uses a business model similar to a phone bill where customers have a low point of entry and then pay for usage with no lock-in agreement. It’s possible to use the service on a month-to-month basis, but there are incentives for quarterly or annual subscriptions.

As an interesting aside, Reynolds and Swrve CTO Dr. Steven Collins are known in the video game industry as the creators of the cross-platform Havok physics engine, which powers games like Fallout 3, L.A. Noire, and Dead Rising. Havok sold to Intel in 2007 and Reynolds and Collins went on to found Swrve in 2010.