Zynga announced a Hasbro partnership today that grants the merchandise giant the rights to develop toys and games based on Zynga’s games.

Merchandising is one of the key ways social and mobile game developers monetize their brands outside of games. Angry Birds is the most popular example with a wide range of plush toys and t-shirts available at most major retailers. Zynga has experimented with merchandise before via FarmVille plush toys sold at Best Buy stores. At our third annual Inside Social Apps conference, Disney Interactive’s John Spinale hinted that the company may explore similar merchandising around Swampy the Alligator from its popular mobile game, Where’s My Water?

The deal with Hasbro also includes the right to develop co-branded toys or games that combine Zynga and Hasbro IP. This means a branded Monopoly game is likely in the works as that’s the board game Hasbro most often marries to brand partners. The first products from the Zynga-Hasbro deal are expected to hit shelves in fall of 2012.

Chinese developer ELEX wants to expand its social and mobile game business to cross-platform publishing and ramp up its independent games portal in 2012, the company tells Inside Social Games.

The social games industry knows ELEX primarily from farming sim Happy Harvest (開心農場), which is the second-best performing Chinese-language social game on Facebook in terms of daily active users. The Beijing-based developer currently has 300 employees and raised a single $3 million round of funding from Tencent in March 2009. Coming up on its second birthday in February, our AppData traffic tracking service reveals that Happy Harvest still enjoys 2.2 million monthly active users and 860,000 daily active users on Facebook alone with a retention rate at around 40 percent (compared to most games that are lucky to see 20 percent). Worldwide via other social networks, ELEX says that Happy Harvest broke 10 million MAU in December 2011. Across all its games on Facebook, the developer sees 4.4 million MAU and 1.4 million DAU.

ELEX was one of the first Chinese games developers to cash in on the under-served Chinese-speaking Facebook audience in 2009 when the platform was still young and the developer was only a year old. In most cases, we see Chinese developers take an existing game that saw success in local Chinese games networks (e.g. Tencent, RenRen, etc.) and port it to Facebook more or less exactly as it is. This doesn’t always result in a hit game, however, as the Chinese-speaking audience on Facebook is limited and most Facebook-focused publishers won’t pick up Chinese games because they’re hard to localize in a way that appeals to a Western audience. See 6waves Lolapps’ approach to its Smartron5 acquisition as an example.

Though ELEX built up a global audience on social and mobile game networks in Russia, China, Taiwan, the United States, Latin America and Europe over the past two years, the developer wants to focus on its own platform services in 2012. The XingCloud service, first announced in June 2012, is an all-in-one platform for developers to create, publish, localize and distribute games across a variety of platforms — including mobile and PC download.

ELEX CEO Binsen Tang tells us that XingCloud’s real value is in providing developers with data analysis — an area where he thinks most developers make mistakes.

“Data analyzing is different for Chinese developers,” he explains. “The details in games are often unnoticed. [In] the last few years, Chinese developers have focused more on customer experience, and thinking from the point of view of the player. This is why we’re investing a lot in XingCloud.”

The company is also using 2012 to focus on its own games portal, 337.com. This is a move some Western social game developers like Kabam are making, whenever they reach a certain critical mass of users. Though maintaining an independent platform can be expensive — and risky, if their audience will not follow the game off of Facebook onto a new platform — some developers see it as the best way to maximize profit because they don’t have to pay out fees and revenue shares to platform operators.

In ELEX’s case, this is not quite true as its games see the highest average revenue per user rates on Facebook. (For context, Tang tells us that Happy Harvest is its best monetized game at $1 ARPU.) ELEX reports that in the past two years, its signed over 20 publishers to the platform and enjoys over 10 million MAU and 500,000 daily user visits. Tang claims the platform is popular with Latin American and European players thanks in part to its focus on more “hardcore” games like shooters, racing games and action games. Interestingly, the 337.com interface currently looks a lot like Facebook’s canvas app interface:

The largest opportunity for ELEX in 2012, however, may prove to be mobile as the developer is only just getting its footing on iOS and Android with a Happy Harvest sequel and several original titles. Tang says that though Facebook has been a good investment for ELEX, it’s important for all Chinese developers to keep a second eye on the local market, which is continuing to grow.

“Facebook is already a very successful SNS platform,” he says, “but it is still mainly for English speaking countries.”

Zynga is experimenting with a new type of cross-promotion that uses in-game mailbox messages to redirect users to other Zynga games where they have pending notifications or requests.

As seen in CastleVille, the new feature generates inbox messages for other game requests under a heading called Zynga Game Requests. The inbox message clearly indicates that it’s for a game other than the one the user is currently playing through a logo and the name of the game in bold text. Additionally, the button that allows users to interact with the message reads, “Go Accept,” indicating to the user that they will leave the game they are currently viewing to go into another game.

Note that the inbox automatically appears in most games right as the user enters the game. It can also be accessed from a menu bar somewhere on the canvas page.

It’ll be interesting to see how users react to the cross-promotion as many probably click buttons on inbox notifications and requests without reading the text. In games where an inbox item is cleared from the list as soon as the user interacts with it — like in CastleVille — users are probably even less likely to understand that they’re being taken out of the game they came to play and led to a different game.

Seasonal promotions and Christmas campaigns are nothing new to social games, but this year Facebook game developers seem to have invested even more effort into holiday content.

We did a quick survey and found that 21 out of the 25 most popular Facebook games have incorporated holiday themes, items, quests, giveaways and content this year — a massive increase over last year, when we saw less than half the most popular social games put in the effort. Here’s a breakdown of the various ways in which these developers have introduced holiday-related content in the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Timed Holiday Quests

As seen in: Pet Society, CityVille, Animal Town

As most developers are already aware, adding new objectives and goals can maintain or raise retention rates in social games. Christmas offers the perfect excuse to roll out new quests that coincide with the holiday. In previous years, these themed quests had no time limit — but in 2011, most holiday content is now specifically timed to expire if the player doesn’t complete the quests before the holiday itself. These limited time quests may actually produce better retention rates as players feel pressured to log more time to complete the quests. This year we’ve seen games with lighter campaigns, such as Animal Land’s holiday plant and shop quests; and much more engaged campaigns that add to the overall plot of the game, like CityVille’s Holiday Saga.

Themed Decorations

As seen in: The Sims Social, Gardens of Time, The Smurfs & Co.

While social games monetize in a variety of different ways, one of the most common is through the purchase of premium decorations and items. Just as people decorate their homes and workplaces in real life, developers assume that some players won’t mind spending a few extra Facebook Credits on holiday decorations, particularly if the game has already made seasonal cosmetic changes that make those extra items seem even more appropriate and desirable. As with quests, the type of decor a game adds can range from something minimal but Christmas-inspired, like Tetris Battle’s present shaped tetriminos, to The Smufs & Co’s Christmas themed decorations that provide additional bonuses besides looking festive. The Sims Social’s in-game store is so far the only game we’ve seen that offers Hanukkah decor items like dreidels and menorahs.

Cosmetic Changes and Gifts

As seen in: Triple Town, Ravenskye City, Car Town, Bubble Witch Saga

Cosmetic changes and holiday giveaways are probably the lowest impact way for developers to incorporate Christmas into their games. This is a trend we’ve seen far more of this year as mid-market and smaller developers have invested more in art quality and presentation. Gifts are useful because they keep players logging in every day, and we’ve seen quite a few games doing 12 days of Christmas-themed events. However, what might be the most common theme of all this year is snow — a simple decoration that developers can automatically add to games without involving the player. Most cosmetic changes we’ve seen this year have been paired with premium decor items.

Seasonal Sales

As seen in: Tetris Battle, The Sims Social, FarmVille, The Smurfs & Co.

It’s a common practice for retailers to discount items in December to take advantage of relaxed credit card limits and increases in spending behavior, and we’ve seen a lot more developers add seasonal sales this year. Ubisoft has introduced a discounted Christmas decoration kit into The Smurfs & Co. that bundles together a value pack of the game’s new Christmas decor items and buildings, and Tetris Battle and FarmVille are taking an even more straight forward approach, discounting the amount of Facebook credits required to purchase in-game currency until after the holidays. The Sims Social offers less of a discount on holiday items in the Specials section of the store.

Charitable Efforts

As seen in: A Better World, FarmVille

Last but not least is a trend we’ve seen some developers pick up on — converting in-game items and quests into results for real-world charities. While there are a few social games that were created specifically with charity in mind, such as Sojo Studio’s new game WeTopia, this year we’ve seen a couple of games incorporate specific holiday giving campaigns. Toon Ups’ A Better World has challenged its players to perform a million good deeds in real life and report them in the game. If the goal is met by January 31st, the developer will donate $10,000 to Cure.org. Zynga has also incorporated its charitable arm, Zynga.org into FarmVille’s gameplay this year, allowing players to purchase special holiday themed decor items for their farms, the money from which will be given to Save The Children.

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.

Tapjoy, which works with developers to distribute and monetize their apps, is actively exploring a sale, according to several sources with knowledge of the company’s discussions. Possible candidates include Zynga and the Japanese mobile gaming giants GREE and DeNA.

The company’s chief executive Mihir Shah denied that the company was for sale. “I can’t comment on rumors or speculation.”

He added, “We’re at a level of scale and the market opportunity is so large and we’re so clearly in the lead that there isn’t really any direct viable competitor. We just continue to be focused on building this ridiculously exciting business.”

However, sources familiar with the company’s discussions say it has been actively pursuing talks with strategic acquirers like Zynga, Electronic Arts, GREE and DeNA and that it has been filling out its executive ranks ahead of either a sale or a public offering. The company did hire a chief financial officer in July named Al Wood who had led two companies through the IPO process.

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

While The Sims Social has dominated the discussion of branded social games on Facebook, Tetris Battle has quietly — and for the most part, organically — become the second-largest brand-based social game on the platform according to our AppData traffic tracking service.

Tetris Battle arrived on Facebook in July 2010, but it was really only a year after that point that the game began to gain traction. At that time in summer of 2011, the title routinely turned up in our top 20 rankings lists for daily and monthly active users and it had just officially broken 1 million DAU with around 4 million MAU for a very high retention ratio of 25%. That trend continues even now with present-day figures of 2.1 million DAU, 6.5 million MAU and a retention ratio north of 30%.

What’s truly striking about Tetris Battle’s success is that it’s Tetris — a decades-old game that people are still paying for on just about every platform on which the game is available, despite the fact that free versions exist all over the Internet. Even on Facebook, where the game is free-to-play, players still monetize at a healthy rate, according to Tetris Online Inc. VP of Marketing Casey Pelkey. The primary revenue stream seems to be mostly in the energy system where players pay to keep playing more matches — or for passes that allow unlimited play for a day or a week — with secondary revenue streams coming from decoration features and from gameplay customization that allows players more control over the falling Tetriminos.

“Getting people to play the game is easy,” Pelkey tells us. “To the extent that they’re playing Tetris Battle is unprecedented. [Creative Director Eui-Joon "Ace" Youm] is a genius to get you to pay for a 27-year-old game.”

Youm came to Tetris Online Inc. in 2007 from Korean games portal Hangame, where he was actually making a knock-off of the original Tetris. His approach to Tetris Battle for Facebook is to push the gameplay into new directions that still feel like authentic Tetris while at the same time challenging players that have been playing the game for years. A large component of that is the multiplayer, where players compete by speed and score. The better a player is at Tetris, the more “line” obstacles they send to their opponents’ boards during the timed match. The friction between one match and the next is very low, resulting in longer play sessions where players are logging between 15 and 30 games a session for over 25 million games played daily.

Tetris Battle is so compelling that we catch many other social game developers playing it both in their spare time and as a point of study for future games. Even those developing titles that don’t fall under the arcade category feel there is something to learn from Tetris Battle’s monetization and matchmaking techniques. Facebook itself has publicly called attention to the title, circulating a blog article among third party developers that highlight’s Tetris Battle’s take on competitive multiplayer modes. And there’s still the mystery of getting people to pay for a game they’ve already bought before — something branded games struggle to do.

Take, for example, Namco Bandai’s two official Pac-Man games for Facebook. Though both title saw initial traction thanks largely to brand recognition and the faithful recreation of the classic arcade game, each has dropped dramatically in traffic and the developer appears to have backed off on the platform for now. Though we can never know exactly what happened or didn’t happen with Pac-Man, it’s possible that the games were too faithful to the original — causing players to lose interest.

“With brands, it’s easy to get [players], but it’s harder to hold onto them,” Pelkey says. “These legacy games come and go and the tried-and-true gameplay works [on Facebook] to some extent, but if it just feels like a copycat without anything new… It’s not a slam dunk.”

Pelkey tells us that to date, Tetris Online Inc. has only done minimal marketing for Tetris Battle. The developer plans to increase that amount for the coming year, with “sky’s the limit” attitude toward how big the game can get on Facebook. In a follow-up email sent to us for the article, Youm says, “We’re just scratching the surface on what we can do with Tetris Battle. Now the real fun begins.”

Gaia Online’s hit social game Monster Galaxy is expanding again, but not to Google+ or Android. This time, the monster training and collecting franchise is making the leap to the big screen as a feature-length animated movie produced by Radar Pictures.

Gaia Online is not the first developer we’ve seen recently with silver screen aspirations. Rovio is currently working on an Angry Birds movie and Outfit7 have stated they want to turn the Talking Friends series into an entertainment franchise; however, as far as we know, this marks the first time a Facebook game will become a movie.

Monster Galaxy quickly became one of the most popular games on the Facebook platform this year, peaking at just over 19.2 million MAU and 15 million DAU in June. As the game is apparently reaching the end of its lifespan, these figures have fallen more than 80% to its current level of 1.8 million MAU and just under 200,000 DAU according to our AppData traffic tracking service. Gaia Online released a free-to-play spin off of the game on iOS in September, but it hasn’t seen the same level of success as the Facebook version of the game did after it was released. In the last month Monster Galaxy: The Zodiac Islands peaked at the 90 spot on the top grossing apps chart, but has since declined and is currently ranked in the lower 200s.

Gameplay wise, Monster Galaxy takes heavy inspiration from Nintendo’s Pokémon franchise. Much like Pokémon, in the Monster Galaxy games, players start off as a trainer traveling the world to battle and capture intelligent monsters called Moga. Monster Galaxy’s move to the movies also mirrors Pokémon’s development path. Nintendo grew the franchise, which started life as a pair of Game Boy games into a multimedia empire through anime and movie tie ins that promoted the games and their associated products all over the world.

Despite its lagging popularity, where Monster Galaxy has a leg up on Pokémon is in its availability. While it was reported this summer that Nintendo would finally be bringing a Pokémon spin-off title called Pokémon Snap to iOS in Japan, so far Nintendo has been resisting pressure from investors to put any major effort into iOS development, fearing it would cut into the company’s hardware business. In September Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said iOS development was “absolutely not under consideration.”

Incidentally, there are 14 Pokémon movie adaptations to date.

Yesterday, Ubisoft unveiled three new social games based on TV shows in addition to announcing a fourth project with social game developer Loot Drop. Here, we interview Ubisoft VP of Digital Publishing Chris Early on the French video game publisher’s broader social strategy in the next year.

Inside Social Games: You’ve announced three new games based on TV show brands — CSI: Miami, NCIS: Major Crimes, and House, M.D.: Critical Cases. Have you bet big on TV social games because of the past success of CSI: Crime City or because other companies are also entering this genre of game on Facebook?

Chris Early, Ubisoft VP of Digital Publishing: We saw the power of how CSI performed for us. We saw that again with Smurfs, but even long before that we were engaged in signing a bunch of brands because brands are good for us. People know and recognize brands, so it helps with acquisition — you see on Facebook The Smurfs & Co. and “Little Blue Person Village” and which one are you going to play?

ISG: Help us understand how the licensing process works for Facebook games based on TV shows. We know that CSI: Miami is licensed by CBS — but CBS also licenses The Vampire Diaries to Warner Bros. Interactive, which recently launched a game based on the show for Facebook.

Early: I’m sure NBC Universal or CBS has a variety of things that they’re going to license out to different people. The good news for us that we’ve been developing games for licenses for years. We have a reputation for making that kind of IP, and we’ve been a licensee for CSI for almost 10 years now. So for [CBS], it makes sense to talk to us [about CSI], but if we said we weren’t interested, they could easily go and find someone else because their job is to get the most out of their brands.

ISG: How much of the development on your TV games is being done in house?

Early: We do about 40% of all our social development externally. We just announced Loot Drop as a partner on an undisclosed title. We did Area Code with CSI: Crime City — and then they got acquired. Smurfs was internal for us. CSI: Miami is also being developed internally [by Ubisoft Shanghai and Ubisoft San Francisco].

Editor’s Note: The press release announcing Ubisoft’s new TV games also names Method as a developer, but does not indicate to which games the independent studio is assigned.

ISG: What about your newest companion Facebook game, Ghost Recon Commander? Is that also being done exclusively in-house?

Early: The console game is being done internally both in Paris and at Red Storm in North Carolina studios. Ghost Recon Online is being worked on in our Singapore studio and Ghost Recon Commander is being worked on out of [the San Francisco] office.

ISG: So all of these games are being made internally with 40% influence from an outside developer…?

Early: It’s really a mix. Especially on Commander and House and on our other Facebook titles we haven’t announced yet, we’re not talking about who worked on those [outside of Ubisoft] until the release gets closer.

Editor’s Note: The implication here is that these unnamed developers might be acquired by a competitor if Ubisoft draws attention to them — much like Area Code was bought by Zynga four months after launching CSI: Crime City with Ubisoft.

ISG: A couple of months ago, you talked with us about the deeper level of content unlocks and integration between this game and its console and PC siblings. You had hinted at a mechanic where Ghost Recon Commander players on Facebook could somehow contribute content unlocks or bonuses to their friends that play Ghost Recon: Future Soldier on consoles — without themselves having to play the console game. Is that feature a reality or just an idea?

Early: That’s actually the main feature of Ghost Recon Commander — building a support team. For example, you’re a Ghost Recon Online player. You can have a [network] of friends that earn consumables for you to use from their play in Ghost Recon Commander.

ISG: You seem pretty confident on Facebook these days between CSI and Smurfs. Does this mean you’re ready to try other social network platforms again? We know CSI: Crime City launched on Orkut and heard it didn’t go very well…

Early: We’re going to see. It was an experiment with Orkut and we learned some things. It’s not doing the best that it could do. But, like, if we were to launch CSI for Facebook again now — it would be better than we did when we launched it a year ago. It’s going to be an evolution; we’re not a one-platform publisher.

ISG: What about Google+’s games platform? Have you looked into that?

Early: The biggest challenge for them is going to build a recurring traffic pattern. A bunch of people flooded in, tried it, and then haven’t gone back. To be a good gaming platform, regardless of whether it’s Google+ or anything else, you have to [draw] audiences on a regular basis. That’s what we’d need.

ISG: Speaking of audiences — we saw your female-oriented massively multiplayer online game, Imagine Town, today. That title is a fashion game built entirely in Flash; so why isn’t that on Facebook with all the other fashion games that draw a large female audience.

Early: Because it targets girls younger than 13.

ISG: Wow, that was easy for you. Let’s try something harder: With more Ubisoft brands aiming for annual releases on console, can we expect to see a larger number of branded companion games on Facebook?

Early: By the time we came out with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Project Legacy [for Facebook] and we saw the results of that last November, we ran out of time in our development cycle to do more games for this season. We did it with Ghost Recon because we started early. So keep an eye out next year.

ISG: Still too easy. Let’s talk about revenues. Will Ubisoft differentiate between the different types of social games it published? Like will Ghost Recon Commander be broken out with console and PC titles with its siblings while the TV games are lumped into a digital revenues category?

Early: First of all, I can’t talk about financial numbers because we’re in a quiet period. Second, I can’t talk about them because I actually don’t know. I know how we look at it internally — we see each game as something that needs to be profitable [on its own]. But I’m not sure how we report that… I probably should.

ISG: You should. The timing of releases can have a significant impact on revenue cycles, especially with social games where the first few months show the best traffic and the next six have the users with the highest lifetime value. How do you plan your release schedule for social games?

Early: We don’t want to release any bad games — so first it needs to be done. And then it needs to be done in a sensible manner. So when we launched Project Legacy six weeks out from Brotherhood, it was awesome because people were able to build up a starting advantage in Brotherhood [from playing Legacy]. If that game had been late for some reason, would we have not launched it? No, I don’t think so — we just wouldn’t have had the optimal [time frame] for the player.

ISG: For the TV games, aren’t you more vulnerable to time because the shows adhere to a season and interest wanes when the show stops airing?

Early: You know, I thought so — but I don’t think so anymore. We launched CSI last year to coincide with the start of the new season. But what we found was it didn’t really matter. We actually experienced more growth after the season ended. I don’t know if people were [missing] the TV show or what. But I thought the [show] would generate more buzz for the game, but it didn’t. Then you look at Smurfs where we timed it to the release of the movie — and it did really great. But I think we drove more traffic to the movie site than the movie site drove to us. Maybe that helped the buzz overall, but we continue to have a fairly strong growth and the movie is gone at this point.

ISG: And you still haven’t spent anything on user acquisition for Smurfs & Co.?

Early: We’ve been doing a little bit of experimenting with tens of thousands — just to see where we’re getting responsiveness and testing out some of our ads. I expect we will [spend on user acquisition] at some time to keep the growth going, but not really significant yet.

ISG: And the DVD is coming out soon, so you’re expecting that to drive some growth?

Early: Yes. I hope we’ll get more from the DVD sales. But I think what’s most interesting is when we’ve been able to actually link them together in some meaningful fashion. For example, when you look at Smurfs, we gave people a movie theater to put in their village if they watched the trailer and liked the movie. Awesome results. We also did something in CSI for sweeps week where the writers — we have the writers for the show write for the game — wrote cases for us that related to [the plot] of CSI the show that week. Our case was kind of the backstory of something going on in the show — so you wanted [people] to play the game at kind of the same time. We had unlocks in the Facebook game based on questions we asked where you had to watch the show to get the answer. It did work out well. People were watching the show with their laptops out.

ISG: Will you do that for House?

Early: I can’t see why we wouldn’t do it for everything. It’s kind of up to the license holder to agree to do it with us. They have to trust us to let us know things about the show ahead of [the air date] — but I think we’re long past that point with our license holders.

Fall is a make or break time for TV shows where new shows need to quickly make an impression and old shows have to fight to maintain their market share. TV networks are increasingly focusing their marketing budgets on Facebook and social game tie-ins in order to engage viewers even after they’ve left the couch.

Whether you prefer comedy, drama, reality, fantasy or game shows, there is probably a Facebook game for you. Join us for a quick look at the titles that tie into this fall TV season.

2 Broke Girls – Based on CBS’ new comedy about two poor waitresses working in a Brooklyn diner to make ends meet, the Facebook version of 2 Broke Girls takes its lead from Diner Dash, asking players to control the main character Max as she buses tables, pours coffee and racks up tips. Players earn points they can use to upgrade their equipment and menus, allowing them to earn even more during their shifts. 2 Broke Girls currently has just over 4,000 monthly active users and was developed for CBS by Game Salad.

The Big Bang Theory: Mystic Warlords of Ka’a – A collectible card game in the vein of Magic: The Gathering, Mystic Warlords of Ka’a gives fans of The Big Bang Theory a chance to play the same game the show’s main characters enjoy. Featuring many of the cards mentioned on the show, Mystic Warlords of Ka’a is a strategy game where players attempt to win a game by out maneuvering their opponents in card duels and battles. While the game is a light take on collectible card games with simplified rules, players can still customize their decks by trading for and purchasing new cards. The Big Bang Theory: Mystic Warlords of Ka’a currently has more than 80,000 MAU and was developed by Dire Wolf Digital. Read our review.

CSI: Crime City - One of the most popular TV related games on Facebook, CSI: Crime City still boasts more than 1.7 million MAU just under a year after it launched. Developed by Ubisoft and Area/Code (now Zynga New York), the game challenges players to solve murder mysteries by gathering evidence and getting it back to the lab for analysis. Players can purchases their own lab equipment, or use equipment their friends own, which adds a cooperative element to the game. Read our review.

Deadliest Catch The Social Game – Reality TV is also well represented in the TV tie-in Facebook game genre. Discovery’s Deadliest Catch The Social Game puts players in charge of their own boats, sailing the dangerous Bearing Sea in a quest for crabs, dollars and domination of the game’s leader board. Players can either upgrade their boats, equipment and staff the hard way – catching and selling crabs – or by using real money to buy Crab Coins, a premium currency that unlocks specialty items and deckhands from the show. Deadliest Catch was developed by Hive Media and currently has just over 47,000 MAU.

Dexter: Slice of Life - Unlike many of the TV tie-in games on Facebook, Ecko Code’s Dexter: Slice of Life stands apart from the field, thanks to its stealthy gameplay and close ties to the TV show. Each Monday the Facebook game updates with new content based on the episodes that aired on Sunday night, allowing players not only to recreate the events of the episode, but to explore them in even more detail. Currently Dexter: Slice of Life has just under 100,000 MAU. Read our review.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Game – Fans of Extreme Makeover who have always dreamed of designing a home for a family in need can finally get in on the action, with the Facebook version of Extreme Makeover. The game ties directly into the show, allowing players to build the a dream house for both virtual and real families. The focus of the game is clearly on the act of designing a virtual house — everything from the floor plan to the kind of furnishings can be customized. Premium decorations can be bought with Facebook Credits. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Game currently has 168,000 MAU and was developed by Quebec based Frima Studio. Read our review.

Jersey Shore - Anyone who has ever wanted a taste of the hard-partying G.T.L (gym, tan, laundry) lifestyle espoused on MTV’s popular reality TV show Jersey Shore are no doubt big fans of Jersey Shore for Facebook. The game lets players live out their trashiest fantasies by completing missions based on events from the TV show and fighting other players for control of the boardwalk. The Jersey Shore game allows players to purchase clothing, accessories and energy drinks for their virtual guidos and guidettes. While the game’s user base is dropping from the 1.7 MAU it boasted this March, more than 360,000 people still log in every month.

Pawn Stars: The Game – The History Channel has also jumped into the Facebook game arena, releasing Pawn Stars: The Game as a promotion for their popular reality TV show Pawn Stars. The game lets players set up their own pawn shop, and allows them to haggle, bribe and negotiate with customers in order to get the best deal they can. Players can use Facebook credits to purchase premium appraisal services, which offer more information than ones purchased with the free in-game currency. Pawn Stars has reached nearly 900,000 MAU. Read our review.

Spartacus: Gods of the Arena – One of the older TV games on Facebook, cable network Starz launched Spartacus: Gods of the Arena in January to promote the six episode prequel series of its show Spartacus: Blood and Sand. While based on gladiatorial combat, the game is actually a management sim. Players train and equip their own stable of gladiators, and then send them into battle. Players can’t control combat or the outcome, but they can cheer for their gladiators (and boo the competition), which may help convince the crowd to spare a defeated gladiator. An important distinction, because if a gladiator is killed in the game he remains dead. The game can be rigged in the player’s favor by using Influence, which can be bought for Facebook credits. Spartacus: Gods of the Arena was created by Large Animal Games and currently has more than 450,000 MAU.

Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In - One of the newest TV games on Facebook, The Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In casts players as a new high school student in the strange town of Mystic Falls. Players help out characters from the show and uncover the town’s mysteries by finding objects, completing mini-games and answering trivia about the show. The game was developed for Warner Bros by Arkadium and while still in beta has still racked up an impressive 118,000 MAU. Read our review.

Weeds Social Club – Last but not least is Like Showtime’s other Facebook game,  Weeds Social Club. The game was also developed by Ecko Code along with Mytopia but is much less connected to the plot of the game, instead following the lead set by other TV social games and bringing in subtle connections to the series. The the game, players are brought into the “business” by Andy Botwin and must learn the ins-and-outs of marijuana, collecting different strains, raising crops and then selling them on the black market. Weeds social club currently has more than 147,000 MAU. Read our review.

Did we miss a game? Let us know in the comments with a link so that we can play it for ourselves. And keep an eye out for “TV & Film in the Age of the Social Game,” a panel we hope to share with you at SXSW 2012.