Twice in the last month, we’ve seen studios come forward to criticize Zynga for being too inspired by their work.

Nimblebit, which recently won Game of the Year from Apple, said a forthcoming Zynga title called Dream Heights unfairly cribs from their hit Tiny Tower. Then this week Buffalo Studios said Zynga copied some user interface and design details from their bingo game.

Frustrating as it may be to indie studios, this has always been part of Zynga’s strategy. It’s almost silly to address it. As long as games from proven genres earn outsized returns compared to ones from unproven categories and the cost of losing or settling lawsuits remains low, developers will keep doing copycat games.

Zynga’s chief executive Mark Pincus even euphemistically referred to the practice in December’s IPO roadshow by saying: “We have a rule of thumb inside Zynga. For any category we launch a game in, we expect it to be three to five times the size of the then category leader.”

He reiterated again in an internal memo this week that:

Google didn’t create the first search engine. Apple didn’t create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn’t create the first social network. But these companies have evolved products and categories in revolutionary ways. They are all internet treasures because they all have specific and broad missions to change the world.

We don’t need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market. There are genres that we’re going to enter because we know our players are interested in them and because we want and need to be where players are. We evolve genres by making games free, social, accessible and highest quality.

Zynga does market research by looking at leading titles, designs similar games that don’t require a learning curve, optimizes them for monetization with its data prowess and then spends and cross-promotes relentlessly.

If Zynga’s titles appear too close to other games, it’s hard to take the company to task because of its deep pockets and fearsomely litigious history. Few small studios have the resources to pay for lawyers, especially against a company that has been so historically eager to sue others for theft of trade secrets and copyright infringement.

It also helps that the intellectual property system is quite fragmented for protecting games. Copyright covers the art and potentially the underlying source code while trademarks covers the brand and logo. Patents, the weakest form of protection for game developers, can cover code and mechanics.

Another factor is that as the gaming industry has moved away from a packaged goods model toward a highly iterative and serviced-based one, it makes less sense to pursue protection like patents. Like in the broader consumer Internet industry, waiting at least two to four years for a patent is absurd considering that a hit game can flame out in months.

The more interesting question to ask here is whether Zynga’s approach can do as well on mobile platforms as it has on Facebook. Zynga does not have an outsized lead on either Android or iOS. It has 13 million daily active users, which is very respectable. But it’s not enough to produce network effects that would shut out rival games from the top 10. Unlike Facebook, which signed a five-year agreement with Zynga, Apple does not have a vested interest in seeing Zynga achieve user growth targets. Smartphones also support more diversity than Facebook. The past month has proved that indie developers like Imangi Studios can nail freemium in more than casual sim or mafia games too.

Here we take a look back at various Zynga social and mobile titles, and whether they worked or not according to AppData statistics and ranking history from App Annie:

Mafia Wars and Mob Wars: Launched in August of 2008, Mafia Wars triggered one of the several lawsuits Zynga went on to become ensnared with. Creator David Maestri and his company Psycho Monkey LLC went onto sue Zynga for infringing on his creation Mob Wars and settled for a reported $7 to 9 million. (But it’s also worth noting that Maestri had to settle with his former employer SGN because he launched the game while working for them when they were called FreeWebs.)

After Zynga launched Mafia Wars, it went on to reach around 10 million monthly active users in about half a year, while Maestri’s game stalled at about 2.5 to 3 million MAU.

PetVille, Happy Pets and Pet Society: Launched in December 2009, PetVille riffed on a long history of casual, animal care-taking games that have existed long before the Facebook platform even launched. It followed Playfish’s Pet Society, which came out more than a year before in the fall of 2008, and Crowdstar’s Happy Pets, which launched the previous month. Both PetVille and Happy Pets saw decent starts but then leveled off while Pet Society kept on growing.

Cafe World and Restaurant City: Zynga’s restaurant sim game Cafe World came out in September 2009 after Playfish’s Restaurant City had accumulated 16 million monthly actives. It added steps by making players chop up or dice ingredients before cooking dishes and requiring users to add friends as neighbors if they wanted to expand their restaurants. Restaurant City actually hit its peak usage two months after Zynga launched its game before it began a slow and steady decline. Cafe World also peaked shortly after at around 32 million monthly actives.

Gardens of Time and Hidden Chronicles: It’s not surprising that Zynga would want to get into the hidden object genre after Disney Playdom’s Gardens of Time topped growth charts for nearly five months in a row. It is a little surprising that it took Zynga so long to do it, however. Hidden object game designer Cara Ely was brought on at Zynga in July — three months after Gardens of Time’s launch — and it wasn’t until January 2012 that Hidden Chronicles saw the light of day. In addition to similar presentation of story elements, Hidden Chronicles also cribs Gardens of Time’s decoration-based progression system.

Mobile has been a more interesting story this past year because Zynga actually started out as the underdog on iOS. Several games like Playforge’s Zombie Farm and Storm8′s Restaurant Story were taking genres that social gaming companies had nailed on Facebook and were executing them well on the iPhone. Nevertheless, Zynga managed to accumulate 13 million daily active users by year-end, largely because of its acquisition of Words With Friends maker Newtoy, but also because it started getting its core franchises right on mobile.

Zynga Poker and Texas Poker:

Poker is a more than 150-year-old game, so it’s hard to say that any company could own it. However, Russian developer Kamagames said Zynga copied user interface details from its hit Texas Poker early last year.

Zynga started fading out non-active players on the board and added a vertical bar to raise and lower bets. Before last year, Texas Poker was trouncing Zynga’s Poker game on the iOS grossing charts and consistently had a top 10 ranking. But in the spring, Zynga Poker began a steady climb and now outranks Kamagames’ title.

Tap Zoo, Tiny Zoo Friends and Dream Zoo: Pocket Gems had an undisputed run as one of the highest-earning developers last year after Tap Zoo held on to a top 10 grossing spot for about a year. Unsurprisingly, Zynga took note and launched Dream Zoo just ahead of Thanksgiving. It took the same zoo concept but added some complexity with feeding and washing games along with more levels for each of the animals. In anticipation of such a move, Pocket Gems phased out its old game Tap Zoo and launched a new version called Tap Zoo 2: World Tour.

None of the games have managed to hold onto a top 10 ranking. In fact, a different zoo game from developer TinyCo is actually the highest ranked one in the genre right now at #17. Dream Zoo remains at #44 and Tap Zoo 2 holds at #77. It looks like all of these companies effectively split the market.

Pocket Gems hasn’t complained, with chief operating officer Ben Liu telling us, “Look. Our games have copied extensively by many, many companies.” He added, “The way we can stay ahead of Zynga is by listening to our users and putting the best features in our game. Consumers are going to judge what’s the best product.” Pocket Gems has been busy launching a number of new games in the last few weeks like Tappily Ever After and Zombie Takeover.

This story originally appeared on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.

While not the largest genre on Facebook, casino games are in the spotlight at the start of 2012 as more companies enter the genre with standalone slots or card games or complete casino simulations. Here are the top five games in the category by traffic as recorded by our AppData service.

Though Facebook doesn’t currently allow real money gambling on its games platform, many social game developers seem eager to cash in either when Facebook changes its policy, or via other social game platforms that don’t ban the practice. Earlier this month, market leader Zynga confirmed it is actively searching for means to add real money gambling into its offerings, while casino gaming company International Game Technology acquired Double Down Interactive, Facebook game developer of DoubleDown Casino for $500 million. Last month, U.S. casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corporation fully acquired Slotomania game developer Playtika, and earlier this month launched a new Facebook game, Caesars Casino. January also saw the closed beta launch of Zynga Bingo, which will likely become a major competitor to Bingo Blitz.

Taken together, our top five casino-themed games account for a total of over 45 million MAU and 10 million DAU.

Texas HoldEm Poker (Zynga): 6.6 million DAU, 31.3 million MAU

Zynga’s Facebook adaption of the popular poker game is also among the longest running games on the platform, having launched in 2008. Along with Zynga’s Words With Friends, it is also among the top Facebook games to enable cross-platform play between the social network, iOS and Android smartphones. After reaching a peak of MAU usage of about 39 million in the summer of 2010, the game lost several million MAU. However, since December 2011 (when it had 28.5 million MAU), the game has seen strong upward growth to its current level.

Over the last three months, its daily active users as a percent of MAU (or DAU/MAU) has fluctuated between 22.5 and 20.5 percent, which reflects relatively strong engagement compared to other social game genres. Helping drive this continued growth and activity is the Poker by Zynga app for iOS, which uses Facebook Connect to help enable play between iOS and Facebook. Launched in 2009, the app still holds a top rank on AppData’s iOS charts, currently number three in the Top Grossing Apps list.

Gameplay: After loading the game, the player is taken into a lobby area densely packed with options and player information. The game’s initial display lists the total number of online players, and an option to choose among the many servers where the game is hosted, listed according to geographic region, which is likely a move by Zynga to reduce latency in live multiplayer games.

Players can find an open poker seat from among the listed tables, or get auto-joined to an open table with a single click. The actual poker game is a faithful recreation of Texas hold ‘em for up to seven players. When it’s a given player’s turn to execute their move, a time meter ticks down over the person’s profile. If not made in time, the player’s turn is forfeited. One unique feature of Texas HoldEm Poker is a “hand strength meter,” which gauges the relative strength of a player’s current hand. (If this feature is enabled, the house takes a cut of any winnings.)

Other gameplay modes include one-on-one matches with a Facebook friend and team-based challenges with several friends. There is also a mini-game slot machine which players can play to win chips — given the relatively slim odds of payout, it seems to function mainly as a sink to deplete player chip holdings and nudge them toward monetization.

Viral growth and engagement: To encourage viral user growth, Texas HoldEm players earn more playing chips by successfully inviting friends to play. They can also broadcast their game activity by auto-posting wins and achievements to their Facebook wall. The game has a leveling system incorporated into a competitive leaderboard with the players’ friends.

Socialization seems to be an important feature for increasing engagement and retention in Texas HoldEm. Multiplayer matches not only come with a live, player-to-player chat feature; players can also buy each other virtual drink items and miscellaneous virtual gifts with chips or gold. Further, players can add each other as game buddies (as opposed to Facebook friends), enabling players to develop a mini-social network of people they enjoy playing with. In the game lobby, the game’s socialization aspect is emphasized by an in-game feed depicting friends’ recent game milestones, with an option to send them gifts or congratulation messages.

Monetization: Zynga monetizes Texas HoldEm by selling Chips and Casino Gold for Facebook Credits, with an option to buy via mobile phone. Chips are used for basic gameplay, and Casino Gold to purchase premium items and buy into weekly tournaments. A monetization option window pops up when the player attempts to make a bet or join a table that is more costly than a player’s current holdings.

Slotomania – Slot Machines (Playtika): 1.700,000 million DAU, 5.6 million MAU

Launched in December 2010, Playtika’s Facebook slot machine game enjoyed steady growth through 2011. The game saw a strong spike in July shortly after the company was partially acquired by Harrah’s, a casino brand in the Caesars Entertainment Corporation. In the last three months, the game has seen relatively stable usage of between 5.25 and 5.6 million MAU, and a very strong engagement rate of between 26 and 33 percent DAU/MAU. As previously mentioned, Caesars Entertainment bought out the rest of the company in December 2011.

Gameplay: New users are given a 200 coin welcome bonus, and are then presented a menu of eight different themed slot games to choose from (farm items, pirates, etc) though only the first game is available to play at launch. Basic gameplay is modeled on traditional slot machines, with players paying a number of coins for each spin and payouts awarded based on symbol matches generated randomly from spins. Players can choose how many items they want to match, with larger sets of matches earning a better payout (while costing more coins, with riskier odds). Successfully completing some matches will launch a separate mini-game with the chance of winning play bonuses. For example, spinning to match three or more tractors in a farm-themed slot machine launches a “Beat the Mole” mini-game in which players must choose vegetables from rows of crops while avoiding a mole underneath the garden. Spins that generate other matching items unlock a series of free spins, which in turn sometimes generate even more free spins, creating a long succession of free spins in which the player is largely a passive viewer.

Viral growth and engagement: To foster retention, returning Slotmania players are offered a special bonus every four hours. The game includes a leveling system, with coin bonuses given at level up, which also unlocks new slot game boards. To encourage viral growth, player can post slot game wins to their wall, and are intermittently given the option to send ten free spins to friends. Facebook friends playing Slotomania also compete on a leaderboard.

Monetization: The primary source of revenue for Slotomania is virtual currency which is purchased in batches with Facebook Credits.

Bingo Blitz (Buffalo Studios): 970,000 DAU, 2.9 million MAU

A fast-paced Facebook adaptation of the classic casual casino game, Bingo Blitz launched late in 2010 and had slow but steady growth through most of 2011. It gained faster traction in August of that year before reaching its current, stable player base of between 2.5 and 3 million MAU. In the last three months, DAU/MAU rates have been very strong, fluctuating between 30 and 35 percent.

Gameplay: New players are first invited to play a 30 second tutorial, then given the option of choosing among several open games based on payout rate and player level. These are displayed in the game menu as “cities,” and also list the number of online players currently in session. Once entering a city, players can buy one to four cards with Credits (one of the game’s two currencies), then must wait for the current game to finish before joining the next match. Bingo card numbers are rapidly called out in audio and displayed in an animated row at the top of the screen. When a player earns a bingo on any of their cards, it’s their responsibility to click the “Bingo” button beneath the appropriate card. All winnings are collected at the end of each match.

Bingo Blitz includes a number of features to increase engagement and encourage retention: Clicking a timed power-up button places free squares or bonus items on squares; if they monitor the charge-up timer carefully, players can use this option many times during a match. Bonus squares pay out power-ups and game credits (displayed as treasure chests with game bonuses), and are won regardless of whether a player earns a bingo. Adding a level of suspense and skill to gameplay, it is possible for a player to select incorrect squares on their cards and call out a bad, invalid bingo — if so, the designated card is rendered ineligible for the remainder of the match. In addition, only a select number of winning Bingo cards can be claimed during each match; this is depicted as a countdown display at the top left of the screen, creating further excitement.

Bingo Blitz has a number of features which add a social element to gameplay. Each player has a user profile listing their national origin, game level and other game stats. These profile icons are displayed at the bottom of the match screen. Further, players can live chat with each other during matches.

Viral growth and engagement: New players are offered a game bonus for repeated play in the first two days after installation and there is also a daily credits reward for returning players. Bingo Blitz has a player leveling system, and some cities are locked until a certain level and other game goals are reached. The game also includes achievement badges for gameplay, such as collecting selected game items, and for reaching gameplay milestones. To encourage viral growth, winning bingo matches and other successes can be shared on a player’s Facebook wall. Players can also win extra Credits by inviting friends to install the app.

Monetization: Bingo Blitz has two currencies, Coins and Credits, which can be converted between each other. Coins can be spent to complete game collections (which in turn earn Credits), customizations for player cards, game power-ups, and “keys” which unlock bonus prizes. Extra Credits can be bought with Facebook Credits. Bingo Blitz also monetizes through a slot machine mini-game, in which players can spin to win Credits; these spins are bought with directly with Facebook Credits.

DoubleDown Casino – Free Slots, Blackjack & Poker (DoubleDown Interactive, LLC.): 1.3 million DAU, 4.7 million MAU

Launched in early 2010, DoubleDown Casino began steady growth in the fall of that year, then gained momentum through most of 2011. In the last three months, growth stabilized at around 4.5 million MAU, with an engagement rate in a range of 30 percent DAU/MAU, a level consistent with high monetization rates.

Gameplay: At game launch, the player is presented with several variety of casino-style games: video poker, blackjack, slots, tournaments and roulette. Most are single-player, but blackjack is live, with up to six competing against the AI dealer. To leverage the live multiplayer gameplay, blackjack includes a player-to-player chat feature, and a timer which requires each player to make bets, request hits, etc. within a few seconds, or risk forfeiting their turn. Blackjack play includes high roller options with large buy-in levels which restrict play to high level or highly monetized players. Roulette games, also in real time, come with similar multiplayer functions.

Viral growth: Viral user growth and engagement in DoubleDown Casino is encouraged with a number of features. A player can earn more play chips for sending game invites to friends or by adding friends and can win chip bonuses by returning everyday to do a “daily spin.” Players can also compete with each other on the game’s leaderboards and direct their gameplay to earn achievement badges for various game successes. Earning these badges also win the player chip bonuses. Players also have the option to share individual game victories with friends on wall posts.

Monetization: New players are given a free number of set playing chips to start with, and can buy more through Facebook Credit purchases. Along with appearing when a player attempts to make a bet which exceeds their current chip holdings, the purchase option payment window is displayed immediately at launch of game. This monetization method is more in line with real world casinos, which typically demand an up-front chip buy-in before play.

JackpotJoy Slot Machines (iwi): 380,000 DAU, 1.8 million MAU

Launched in mid-2011, the slot machine game saw strong growth for most of that year, then stabilized to around its current traffic level in October. In the last three months, its DAU/MAU rate has fluctuated between 20 and 27 percent — a good level of engagement, though somewhat less than category leader Slotomania (see above).

Gameplay: Similar to Slotomania, new users of Jackpot Joy are given 200 coins as a welcome bonus and sent to a lobby of eight slot games with different themes, only one of which is available to play at first. Gameplay is modeled on real life slot machines, with players able to bet a range of coins for each spin and payouts awarded based on matching selected patterns of symbols. Successfully spinning some matches launches a mini-game with the chance of winning game bonuses. Players can win awards for special symbol matches, and win achievements for game milestones. Jackpot Joy comes with a multiplayer tournament mode with high buy-in and large prize rewards.

Viral growth and engagement: Players can share 250 free coins with ten friends, share coins with friends already playing and ask friends for coins by posting the request on their Facebook wall. JackpotJoy has leaderboard, leveling and achievement systems. To encourage retention, coin bonuses are given out every four hours. Further, early on in gameplay, players are encouraged to play the game in full screen mode — selecting this option reveals a robust and active player-to-player chat system, and the option to play mini-games.

Monetization: Game coins are bought through Facebook Credits for cash payments between $5 and $200.

Note: Since it is localized only in Turkish, gambling game Mynet Çanak Okey was not included in this report. It currently sees 520,000 DAU and 2.4 million MAU.

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.

2011 saw a growing diversity in social games with new genre and gameplay types emerging on Facebook, such as hidden object games, racing games, and strategy combat titles with real time multiplayer modes. Based on data collected from AppData, our data tracking service, here are the most popular genres for successful Facebook games this year.

Note: For the purposes of this report, “successful” is defined by games with over 100,000 monthly active users and current retention rates (daily active users as a percent of monthly active users) of 20% or higher. Because many Facebook games (especially those from top publishers) enjoy artificially high usage rates in their first three months, this list only includes games that were launched and reviewed by Inside Social Games between January and September 2011.

1) Arcade — 14.2 million MAU
Three games with the fast casual action of the arcade genre gained strong traffic in 2011: Wooga’s Diamond Dash (11,600,000 MAU), PlayQ’s HotShot (1.4 Million MAU), and GameHouse’s Collapse! Blast (1.2 million MAU). Notably, all three have similar gameplay of matching (or destroying) three like objects for points.

2) Word — 13.8 million MAU
Since launching in July, Words With Friends, Zynga’s Scrabble-like board game, has enjoyed consistently strong growth and engagement rates. It’s the only 2011 game in this genre to reach extremely large user numbers.

Words With Friends’ success is probably due both to its heavy resemblance to Scrabble and its cross-platform feature, which allows Facebook users to play with others both on desktop and mobile. Because Scrabble-type games typically focus on asynchronous play with simple graphics, they’re well-suited to the Facebook platform. Indeed, Electronic Arts’ official Scrabble game for Facebook attracts heavy engagement (if less users, with just 1 million MAU), as does Lexulous, an independently-produced Facebook game once called “Scrabulous” before Scrabble rights owners demanded a name change.

3) Casino — 13.24 million MAU
Led by Playtika’s Slotomania (5.5 million MAU), DoubleDown Interactive’s DoubleDown Casino (4.5 million MAU), and Buffalo Studios’ Bingo Blitz (2.8 million MAU), the gambling-themed casino genre games of 2011 attracted high traffic and heavy engagement. Notably, each of these games currently has very high DAU/MAU rates of over 30%. While the top spot in this genre remains Zynga’s Texas HoldEm Poker, Slotomania and DoubleDown now hold the second and third positions, supplanting other slot machine and card games with a gambling aspect.

4) Hidden Object — 10 million MAU
Disney Playdom’s time travel-themed Gardens of Time (8.3 million MAU) leads this genre, in which players must find valuable game objects cleverly hidden within a graphically dense image. Also gaining heavy traffic is Mystery Manor (1.7 million MAU), developed by Game Insight and published by 6waves Lolapps. Both were launched during March/April, reached a peak of users in September (17 million MAU and 3.75 million MAU, respectively), and have shed users since then, while still maintaining strong DAU/MAU rates. Gardens of Time and Mystery Manor both arrived on iPad this month, but it appears as thoughonly Gardens of Time features Facebook Connect — which could lead to an increase in traffic for the parent game as mobile logins are counted toward its MAU and DAU. Despite the early success of these two games, it’s notable that these were the only 2011 entries in the genre tracked by Inside Social Games throughout this year.

5) City-Building — 4.3 million MAU
A genre in which players get to customize, develop, and manage the economy, infrastructure, and social aspects of their own unique city, 2011 saw the successful launch of Wooga’s Magic Land (2.7 million MAU) followed by Disney Playdom’s Gnome Town 1.6 million MAU). It’s interesting that both games merge city building with a fantasy theme, as do two games launched after September — Zynga’s CastleVille and 6waves Lolapps’ Ravenskye City. This represents a new trend in city-building games, as compared to market leader Zynga’s CityVille (launched in 2010), which has a realistic, modern day city theme.

6) Role-Playing Games — 2.5 million MAU
In a role-playing game (RPG), players customize and enhance their own unique game character, and use it to progress through a series of game challenges and objectives, in a variety of environments and themes. Led by Digital Chocolate’s undead-themed Zombie Lane, the RPG genre added a number of new entries in 2011. The Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In — based on the TV show of the same name — has 300,000 MAU, while the dungeon crawler-type Hello Adventure has about 100,000 MAU. This year saw the launch of over three dozen RPG games, most of which have lower traffic or engagement rates than these three. For instance, Zygna’s Mafia Wars 2 still has 6.1 million MAU, but less than 10% DAU/MAU, and EA Playfish’s The Sims Social, has 27.2 million MAU but less than 20% DAU/MAU (and trending downward), as does Coco Girl, a fashion-themed RPG (3 million MAU) launched in October. Zynga’s CastleVille, which launched late in 2011, has both strong city building elements (see above) and RPG features.

7) Strategy & Combat — 1.86 million MAU
Three entries in the military and battle-themed genre of strategy & combat maintain high engagement rates: Kixeye’s Battle Pirates (720,000 MAU) and War Commander (530,000 MAU), with Kabam’s Edgeworld between both with 610,000 MAU. Zynga’s Empires & Allies still maintains a large base of players (15.6 million MAU), as does Social Point’s Social Empires (4.9 million MAU), but have seen engagement rates fall below 20% DAU/MAU in December. Their overall size should also be considered as an indicator of the genre’s popularity, however, and we anticipate seeing more entries in strategy & combat throughout the end of the year and into 2012.

8) Game Show — 1.06 million MAU
Led by Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader (650,000 MAU) and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (410,000 MAU), game show-themed trivia games have over a million players on Facebook. Both are licensed from popular TV game show franchises. New entries in 2011 like Jeopardy! have gained smaller, but very engaged audiences. Three other 2011 game show games — Deal or No Deal, $100,000 Pyramid, and 1 vs 100 — have not done as well, however, which leads us to question just how easily a game show’s TV audience is translated to Facebook.

Going into 2012, we expect to see more entries in the casino, arcade, and strategy-combat categories as new developers experiment with the genres. Hidden object games may also see some growth in the new year as Zynga attempts to replicate the success of Garndes of Time with its own entry, Hidden Chronicles. In contrast, the city-building and RPG genres seem to be saturated, though it’s possible that a hybrid of the two genres — say, Zynga’s CastleVille — may still have room to grow.

Zynga’s CastleVille launched on Facebook a little over a month ago and continues to grow. The game is now entering a critical period, however, where traffic may already begin to decline as several of Zynga’s more recent games have done.

Early Growth Slowing Down

Though CastleVille took off like a shot in the first 10 days of launch, we observed at the time that several of Zynga’s more recent launches have “burnt out” after only a short period of growth on the platform. In some cases, we’re beginning to see signs of recovery — such as a recent resurgence in monthly active users for Adventure World — but most of the games launched from Empires & Allies onward have experienced loss of users after about a month. This doesn’t necessarily mean that these titles have “failed,” as we know that games tend to see higher average revenue per users after early (non-paying) adopters drop out. A consistent decline in traffic across multiple new games, however, could indicate that Zynga is struggling to attract new users while longtime users continue to lapse.

According to our AppData traffic tracking service, CastleVille’s growth is slowing down. In its first 10 days, the game reached nearly 10 million monthly active users and almost 6 million daily active users. For the next 10, it grew 120% in MAU to around 22 million MAU and a more modest 26% in DAU to 7.6 million. For the 10 days after that period, growth slowed to 50% in MAU and just under 12% in DAU. In the last eight days, CastleVille has grown 15% in MAU and has lost 1% of DAU.

Gameplay Gives Players Lots to Do Early On

At launch, CastleVille provided players with a larger landscape that any other Zynga game (save perhaps for Adventure World) with familiar gameplay mechanics to get them started on opening up new areas of the playable map. There are 81 sections of land on a 9×9 grid that the player can only unlock by first having a minimum “castle level” (determined by what structures the player has built in their town), then by having a certain number of Exploration Crystals (which are crafted by gifted materials after the player has built a workshop), and lastly by spending a fixed amount of coins. Some sections of land contain bonus items like free structures or animals, a few have new non-playable characters that provide players with new quests, while others contain only new resources to be harvested.

Cast in the role of a medieval settler, players begin the game by meeting two non-playable characters that provide them with their first quests that involve clearing land and building structures. As players complete these quests and unlock new areas of the map, a main storyline guides them toward a search for the source of “Beastie” enemies that periodically show up as the player is completing everyday game tasks (e.g. harvesting crops or collecting money from structures). Certain “coming soon” structures discovered on the map (see below) imply that the player will be able to leave their map to explore some other terrain — much like the new gameplay mode Pioneer Trail expansion introduced to FrontierVille.

Where CastleVille differs from other social games is primarily in presentation and the amount of virtual items available at launch. The game has a rich art style and very high graphics quality and a soundtrack provided by a full orchestra. Aside from those features, most of the game’s core elements — farming, building, visiting friends, crafting, character and building customization — had previously been implemented in other Zynga Facebook games. CastleVille notably ditches the Collections system introduced first in FrontierVille, instead incorporating the collection element into the crafting system.

Scaling the Walls with New Features and Cross-Promotion

In the 40 days since launch, the developer has added decoration content packs and some minor tools to make the game more manageable (e.g. adjusting the crafting menu to display the last page the player viewed rather than starting at the very top of the list). It’s also now possible to sell most items in a player’s inventory, although the game still hasn’t introduced the item trading feature highlighted during CastleVille previews. Special holiday-themed quests and content have also appeared in the game within the last two weeks as we move closer to December 25th.

In general, we do not see decoration content packs kickstarting growth rates among games — particularly those that are still in their first three months on Facebook. Holiday content also doesn’t generate much growth as most players take a break from social games for at least a few days of the holiday season, which can bring down overall growth. More complex content updates that add new modes, however, may show traffic increases — and Zynga has been able to spike growth for some of its titles using cross-promotion between games.

The issue here is that the strongest cross-promotion comes from similar games and CastleVille could be missing out on that. For example, a CityVille cross-promotion in Mafia Wars did trigger a sharp climb in MAU and DAU for the latter — but nearly all the new DAU in Mafia Wars disappeared within the week likely because CityVille players found the text-based crime sim to be too different from city-building. In contrast, promoting Empires & Allies within CityVille in the first month of the former’s launch helped drive in early users as the games feature identical city-building mechanics. CastleVille is enough like FrontierVille to where one game could support the other with cross-promotion, but FrontierVille has suffered a serious decline after the launch of its Pioneer Trail expansion failed to migrate all FrontierVille users to the new app.

Storming the Castle in 2012

Based on the behavior we’ve seen from social game players on Facebook in the 2010 holiday season, we expect to see slowed growth or decline in traffic across most games in the last week of December continuing possibly into the first week of January 2012. A notable exception to this behavior is CityVille, which beat out the holiday slump in 2010 to become the largest Facebook app of all time in early January 2011. At this point, with growth slowing as it is, we do not expect CastleVille avoid this sluggish period. The game could, however, bounce back in early 2012 depending on Zynga’s cross-promotion strategy and on any major content updates the developer might make to CastleVille. New game releases — such as the upcoming Hidden Chronicles — could also trigger growth if those games are successful in attracting users new to Zynga games.

As for whether or not CastleVille will pass CityVille on our AppData traffic tracking leaderboards, we can only say it is possible — as the latter game continues to decline — but not likely to occur for another month or so.

With shares dipping 5%, Zynga’s $1 billion initial public offering Friday shows that there’s still a long way to go for the company that legitimized free-to-play social games in Western markets.

Following South Korea’s Nexon, Zynga is the second initial public offering from a gaming company in the last week that has seen its shares dip below the initial price. Unlike coupon site Groupon, which is still trading above its offer price, both Zynga and Nexon have comparable publicly-traded companies like video game publishers Activision, EA, and Ubisoft, against which revenue and profit multiples can be benchmarked. (Nevermind the fact that Zynga is profitable and Groupon is not.) Given that those companies have struggled to maintain investor in the last three years as confidence as mortar-and-brick retail sales dip, it’s easier to understand how Zynga is facing skepticism over more than just its free-to-play model. On top of that, uncertainty about the stability of the European Union has rattled investors in broader equity markets.

The consolation from Zynga’s day-one performance may be that the developer and its underwriters priced the offering effectively enough that the company didn’t leave money on the table for investors to pocket by immediately turning around and selling shares.

The real question is, where to next? The key to life after IPO for Zynga will be growth — on mobile, in international markets, and on alternative social game platforms outside of Facebook.

Mobile: Will There Be a Zynga of iOS or Android?

The most promising opportunity for independence from Facebook lies on iOS and Android, where Google and Apple have built attractive, fast-growing ecosystems for the same kind of games that are the heart of Zynga’s original business. Zynga started the year as an underdog with Storm8′s Farm Story and Playforge’s Zombie Farm beating the companion to its blowout hit FarmVille and a group of Siberian developers running circles around their poker app.

But with gradual optimization, a savvy and cheap acquisition of Words With Friends-maker Newtoy, and a promising launch in Dream Zoo have helped Zynga come around. It has 13 million daily actives on Android and iOS — a number that is sure to grow with the fracas around Alec Baldwin’s addiction to Words With Friends. Although there is no data to know for sure, Zynga probably has more daily active users on mobile devices than any other developer except for Rovio Mobile, which says it has 30 million daily actives across all platforms.

In 2012, we’ll find out if that becomes a big enough business to help the company diversify outside of Facebook in a meaningful way.

Ballpark figures have us putting high-grossing iOS games at between $1 and 3 million a month and there are several publicly traded mobile gaming companies that pulled in between $7 and 19 million in the quarter ending in September. That gives us a handful of privately-held companies with similarly-ranked games that are likely bringing in between $50 and 100 million in annualized revenue.

At this point with six titles in the iOS top grossing 100 in the U.S., Zynga is probably one of those. Then you have to consider that Android and iOS may be poised to have a larger combined footprint than Facebook in the next 12 months. The two platforms have 450 million cumulative device activations or sales behind them. (That number doesn’t deduplicate consumers who have replacement devices.)

One drawback, however, with mobile platforms is that neither Android or iOS seems structured to produce a winner-take-all environment in the way that Facebook has been. Apple certainly isn’t going to sign a five-year agreement guaranteeing Zynga the same kinds of advantages and growth targets that Facebook has. Plus, a variety of games can flourish on the iPhone from casual, resource management games to console-quality RPGs and first-person shooters.

International: Looking Toward Asia

Zynga is also starting to experiment with pushing its titles abroad into Asia. But those markets are extraordinarily competitive with homegrown incumbents and very different rules and regulations. This is especially true in China, where Facebook is banned and Zynga has had to go with Tencent instead. (Not that Tencent is unattractive –  its network of platforms boasts 700 million monthly actives to Facebook’s 850 million and the company told us in September that its top title is earning $1.6 million per month.) Sina Weibo, the new social networking darling that has quickly captured China’s white collar and college educated class the way Facebook originally did, is only just beginning to build its third-party platform.

South Korea and Japan also have a very mature social and mobile games industry. To succeed there, Zynga will need local studios and hyper-localized versions of its core franchises. It may even need to launch completely new franchises, as Zynga’s current wheelhouse of games covers genres that are already saturated on Asian networks like city-building and farming. Other Zynga games, like FrontierVille (a.k.a. Pioneer Trail) or CastleVille, would probably be too hard to adapt to an Asian audience given the heavy Western cultural influences in both games.

So far, Zynga has established studios in Europe and Asia but we still see the company relying primarily on Facebook for distribution. For example, the developer’s last three major launches — CastleVille, Mafia Wars 2, Empires & Allies — were all localized in more than 10 languages on Facebook from day one. Meanwhile, social networks in Asia are only just now getting releases of older Zynga games and in some cases, those games are failing.

Case in point: Zynga Japan — currently led by former Tecmo Koei CEO Kenji Matsubara — reportedly sunsetted both FarmVille (Farmvillage) and Treasure Isle (Treasure Island) on Japan’s Mixi social network and has yet to make any major game announcements for networks other than Facebook. In China, where Zynga has a studio in Beijing, the developer launched a version of CityVille called Zynga City on Tencent’s Open Platform, first with the Pengyou and Q-Zone game networks. But this game is one among many city-building games. Zynga’s Beijing studio, formed through the acquisition of XPD Media, is also more Western-facing for now.

As far as we know, Zynga has made no moves onto other international social game networks like Orkut or VK.net. The developer has made acquisitions in Europe, but hasn’t formally announced a regional office to oversee expansion in the region.

Alternative Platforms: Will Google+ Work?

The third area of new growth could be on alternative platforms like Google+. While early Facebook rivals like MySpace have declined so much so that Zynga has pulled its games off those platforms, other networks have been gaining traction. For example, Google+ already has two of Zynga’s larger franchises — Texas HoldEm Poker and CityVille. We don’t have any data though on how well those games are actually doing compared to Facebook, but the increasing number of social game developers launching on the platform suggests that G+ may be viable.

Zynga is also trying to grow its own platform off Facebook by launching a games platform, Zynga Direct (also called Project Z or Z-Live). But we see Facebook’s influence there too, as Zynga made an effort to point out the service’s integration with Facebook Connect at its Unleashed event this fall. However, it may be possible to play Zynga games on Zynga Direct without a Facebook account, which would be another step toward independence. The success of an independent Zynga platform depends on how much of its existing Facebook and mobile audience the developer can take with it when the service launches — and we don’t even know if that will be in 2012.

Facebook: Is it Still Possible to Grow?

Facebook — Zynga’s greatest ally and number one weakness — is the one place where future growth is largely out of Zynga’s control. As a games platform, the social network no longer provides developers an ecosystem that can consistently sustain rapid growth. Though new social games still continue to launch on the platform, we’re not seeing the kinds of traffic Zynga enjoyed on Facebook in 2008 and 2009. Rising costs in development and user acquisition have led some to believe that the platform is no longer a place where new developers can find success by copying what Zynga has done in the past.

Developers’ strategies on the platform are starting to adapt to these changes, which could open up new growth areas. For example, Zynga rivals EA and Ubisoft have used it to leverage major video game franchises by creating companion and standalone social games married to those franchises (e.g. The Sims Social, Ghost Recon Commander, etc.). Ubisoft and others are exploring licensed media properties like TV shows as means of generating traction for new social games. Lastly, mid-market and small developers are producing niche genre social games with very loyal audiences and much higher monetization rates than Zynga’s games.

Zynga has explored all three of these areas with its game releases in the last year: The company has used the Words With Friends franchise to launch a growing companion social game. It also experimented with content releases for major media brands and celebrities to drive engagement in its existing games. Zynga has also launched some games in new genres, like strategy combat game Empires & Allies. Zynga will likely experiment more with these approaches in 2012, perhaps even migrating new users gained in mobile and international markets back to Facebook or onto its own games platform.

With Facebook’s star game developer Zynga in the middle of its IPO process, some speculate that the Facebook games market has reached its peak and is no longer showing enough growth to justify betting on launching new social games for the platform.

This conclusion is generally based on three types of assumptions. The first is that games are now too expensive to make for Facebook to bring in healthy profit given that the level of quality in art and design has risen along with user acquisition costs, plus a 30% fee taken out of Facebook Credits transactions. The second is that games only have a window of two months to hit a peak reach with users before an inevitable decline begins, which leads many to believe that all a game’s resources and pre-loaded marketing are banking on a single point in time. The third is that all Facebook games must have a predetermined set of features in order to appeal both to the broader market — which is perceived in the coarsest terms as a “35-year-old housewife” — and to the unpredictable whales (players who spend hundreds of dollars in-game per month as opposed to just a few dollars at most).

The first can be backed up by some examples from the 2011 season of social games — which included high production value titles like The Sims Social, CastleVille and Gardens of Time — as well as by the fact that Facebook cut back on the viral channels that made early games grow so quickly, thus forcing developers to rely more on advertising now than they did in 2009. This creates a situation where developers spend more now on creating games and advertising them than they previously needed to, which eats into profits. The second and third assumptions, however, are harder to substantiate with empirical evidence.

We know based on data collected by Inside Virtual Goods and multiple case studies of traffic patterns in our AppData traffic tracking service, for example, that many social games do see the most growth in their first three months. We also have, however, notable cases where that initial growth period exceeded three months or the initial growth period didn’t begin until well after the game had launched. We also know based on data collected by Facebook and by several game developers in self-funded surveys that the primary audience for social games isn’t necessarily women 35 and older, but men and women from 18 to 35.

In short, yes, there are higher barriers to entry on the Facebook games platform now than there were a year ago. But that doesn’t mean the market for social games has stopped growing.

Why We Can’t All Be Zynga

Zynga is a developer that had the right idea at the right time with the right set of favorable circumstances to produce massive viral growth on the Facebook platform. The developer built its empire on simple, compelling game mechanics like harvesting crops or playing poker and then set about acquiring talent and intellectual property at a rapid rate to sustain that growth with new game releases and technology upgrades to improve the user experience.

But it’s not 2009 anymore and the Facebook platform has changed. For one thing, there’s less access to viral channels for social game developers. For another, Facebook is expanding in international markets where the potential audience for social games already has expectations of quality, content, and monetization practices. Lastly, there is more competition both on the Facebook platform and off now than there ever has been for free-to-play game developers.

Two years ago, a potential Zynga rival could release a city-building game or a restaurant industry sim within weeks of Zynga’s own entries into those genres and both games would experience growth (Zynga usually seeing quite a bit more thanks to its extensive cross-promotion network and possibly some help from Facebook). This is no longer a viable growth strategy for social games as many of the major Facebook genres — farming, city-building, crime, pets, and restaurants — are well and thoroughly saturated. This also goes for companies that make “reskin” versions of their own game, changing the setting or characters of a game that is still the same game concept underneath the hood.

How We Still Make Money

While developers can’t expect to grow like Zynga, they can at least hope to monetize like Zynga and potentially even monetize better. Whether it’s Zynga or not, a developer is always looking at the core equation: User Lifetime Value (LTV) > cost per install (CPI) = profitable game. While CPI is largely out of the developer’s control because virality and advertising depends on what channels Facebook makes available, the LTV of a user is something that developers can impact directly by monetizing their games in ways that differ from what Zynga has done.

Based on regulatory filings, we know that Zynga made over 5 cents in “average bookings per user,” which is the amount of virtual currency purchased by a user in a day, in the financial quarter ended in September. Most of Zynga’s virtual goods sales in the bulk of its games are based on premium decoration items and components for completing quests or building objects. These items go for anywhere from one or two premium currency units to 50 at between 10 and 14 cents per currency unit.

Note: Zynga also has a low CPI because they’ve already amassed a large network of players and don’t need to spend money to gain more.

As we say, however, the market is changing. There are game types out there, like the strategy combat genre, where users are paying for item types that provide protection from other users, or a distinct combat advantage (e.g. speeding up repair times on structures that produce combat units). In these games, the price of the item is more expensive than Zynga’s average item price (maybe $7 for a turret compared to $5 for a decorative banner), but players are more compelled to spend it based on the nature of the game itself. Monetization in these games is particularly compelling in cases where a player’s base can be completely destroyed, but instantly rebuilt for a small fee (say, 30 cents) at multiple re-builds a day. Even casual and sim titles are experimenting with new virtual good types that add game modes or interactions — like game tickets that allow for a week’s worth of unlimited play in Tetris Battle for $5 or Sims Social bed items for sleep and sexual interactions that go for $12 or more.

At rates like these, it’s not hard to imagine that there are games on Facebook right now that regularly make around or just above $1 per user per day — and many of these with more than 100,000 daily active users. The big question is, how high is the CPI variable in the profit equation?

Facebook’s First Role: Keeping Down Costs

Facebook is well aware that it’s responsible for the success of social games on the platform more so than the developers themselves. Aside from creating and maintaining the platform itself, Facebook is also the primary arbiter of discovery and growth for new games and now it has the added responsibility of preserving game economies through the strength of its platform currency, Facebook Credits. Based on Facebook Credits revenue gained via in-game transactions and Facebook ads purchased by game developers, social games could make up a significant portion of Facebook’s revenue.

Note: Facebook couldn’t be reached for comment on the breakdown of revenue, but for the sake of a rough sketch, assuming that Facebook Credits revenue hits $1.2 billion this year and 30% of that was collected from social games (even though Credits wasn’t officially mandated until July) and that Facebook hits the estimated $4 billion in revenue, that’s $360 million — or 9% of revenue just from in-game transactions. 

Facebook is also aware that it created a monster by allowing social game developers near complete freedom in the early days of the platform, once opened to third party developers. Spam apps and abusive use of the viral channels led Facebook to cut back on those tools dramatically in 2009 and 2010. This led to consternation in the developer community, which only swelled when Facebook made Credits integration mandatory across all apps. Facebook has tried to smooth things over through developer outreach programs and restoring some of that lost virality through features like the canvas app ticker and via new algorithmic discovery that sometimes surfaces social game activity to non-gamers in the site-wide live app ticker.

As for future growth on the platform, Facebook seems to understand that it needs to do more to produce growth for social games both through ads and organic means. On the ad side, Facebook recently increased the total number of display ads on pages from four to six and has introduced sponsored ads and recommendation surveys into the canvas app ticker. As for organic growth and discovery, former Inside Network Editor Eric Eldon points out over on TechCrunch that Facebook has been making changes that expose a higher volume of social game notifications than we saw over the summer and fall of 2011. The social network also seems to be experimenting with exposing new games based on players’ current game preferences — for example, showing us a friend’s arcade puzzle game activity when we frequently play a particular puzzle game instead of showing that same friend’s strategy combat story. Lastly, by launching a mobile platform that allows for cross-device play between smartphones and PCs, Facebook has made it easier for developers to enter the mobile market and find more growth there.

On their own, these changes might not be enough to get new social games to that arbitrary 100,000 daily active user mark mentioned above without developers having to spend on ads. But Facebook still wants to social games to succeed, we can expect to see it doing more in 2012 to spark organic growth, which in turn offsets the cost of user acquisition.

Facebook’s Second Role: Supporting New Game Types

As for what Facebook can do for games themselves, it’s all about improving the tool set available to developers. This means both cosmetic and small-scale features, like achievements and highly detailed game story content, as well as larger infrastructure changes that can support new game types, hyper-localized versions of games, and games that run off-platform while leveraging a deep Facebook Connect integration. For example, two years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine Facebook supporting a synchronous competitive multiplayer game. Now, we have those and first-person shooters, and even rudimentary racing games. We also see support for apps in new emerging languages that goes beyond mere translation and into actual game adaptation. In the next year or so, it looks like Facebook could even support large-scale synchronous MMO role-playing and combat games, which are both proven free-to-play genres in international markets like Asia and Europe. We also expect Facebook Connect integrations to become more sophisticated in a way that allows developers to simultaneously launch games both on Facebook and on their own sites — similar to what it sounds like Zynga is planning with Project Z (a.k.a. Zynga Direct).

Where Does the Growth Go? To the Right

As the social games industry matures, we’ll see fewer growth trajectories like this:

And hopefully begin to see more like this:

A sustainable social games business that hinges largely on Facebook is indeed still possible, but it depends on the ability of the developer to conceive, launch, and monetize a game on a reasonable budget and on the evolving nature of the Facebook platform itself. We can’t all be Zynga, but that’s probably the best news of all. A private developer has more freedom to try new things in an emerging market than a publicly traded one.

This year, as many of the most popular Facebook games reached a mature stage in their development cycle, the social network saw the launch of more sequels and expansions than any other year in the platform’s history. This report will consider the challenges inherent in doing this successfully, and then analyze the performance of three recent sequels/expansions: Pioneer Trail (an expansion to FrontierVille), Mafia Wars 2, and Zoo World 2.

Challenges of Launching a Facebook Game Sequel/Expansion: Audience Appeal, Transition Friction, App ID Considerations

In theory, creating a sequel or expansion to a Facebook game with strong engagement rates is an obvious revenue opportunity. The developer can transition existing players to the spinoff game by adding information, links, and installation incentives in the original game, while also creating a new audience drawn to the promise of new and enhanced features.

However, a number of concerns still loom. A key consideration is whether the sequel/expansion will run on the same app ID as the original. If that’s the case, difficulties with transitioning users to a new app can be alleviated, but this strategy comes with its own challenges: According to Facebook’s app policies, a developer may not make updates to an app which significantly changes its original gamplay experience. So while a game’s sequel may exist in the same app ID, Facebook’s policy precludes the kinds of enhancements (such as new gameplay and expanded content) that typically increase new user growth and engagement.

Another point of risk is that the potential audience for a sequel may not be as large as the original, and the existing audience may resist installing and staying engaged with a second app. Fans of the original may consider the follow-up’s gameplay to be too different, for instance, or a distraction from their progress in the original. In a worst case scenario, the transition may cannibalize players away from the first game, who then engage even less with the sequel.

A cannibalization effect seems to have occured, by example, in Playdom’s role-playing game franchise Mobsters. As recorded by our AppData traffic tracking service, the original game enjoyed over 1 million monthly active users and just over 120,000 daily active users going into August 2009. In that same month, Playdom launched Mobsters 2: Vendetta, which added a deeper story-line and themed missions set in numerous locations, among other enhancements to the original. At first, the sequel showed growth rates, exceeding 5 million MAU toward the end of 2009 with about 400,000 DAU. While the sequel grew, Mobsters saw a rapid drop in MAU, presumably as players of that game transitioned to the sequel, falling below 100,000 as it went into 2010. Four months after launch, however, Mobsters 2 also experienced sharp user drop, falling close to 1 million MAU by June of 2010. At the moment, the original Mobsters game has just 6,000 MAU and 200 DAU, and the sequel, just 190,000 MAU and 30,000 DAU.

With these considerations in mind, here’s a brief review of three prominent sequels/expansions released in 2011:

From FrontierVille to Pioneer Trail – Zynga

Launched in June 2010, Zynga’s FrontierVille combined farm sim gameplay with RPG and adventure game elements. By the beginning of 2011, the game had upwards of 30 million MAU and 6 million DAU. After this apex, user activity began a slow decline, and by August of this year, when Pioneer Trail launched, had declined to about 12 million MAU. The sequel continued FrontierVille’s general theme of wildness homesteading, with gameplay reminiscent of the classic adventure title Oregon Trail. (Indeed, the original game included an “Oregon Trail” sign, creating user expectation that the sequel finally fulfilled.) In contrast to FrontierVille, Pioneer Trail’s gameplay was focused more on exploration and adventure, where the player commands a party of four characters with a unique role, who must complete a series of story-driven quests to progress.

To transition FrontierVille players into this expansion, Zynga added a link to Pioneer Trail in the original game, and encouraged players to install the new app, explaining in the user forums that Pioneer Trail represented “two games in one.” When FrontierVille players installed the Pioneer Trail app, their progress in the first game (FrontierVille homestead, completed quests, inventory, etc.) was migrated over to the new app. If the player clicked the game’s “Return to Homestead” option, they were sent not to their original homestead in the FrontierVille app, but to a copy of it housed in the Pioneer Trail app. Shortly after launch, Zynga made the redirection from FrontierVille to Pioneer Trail mandatory, so that users attempting to search or access FrontierVille would instead be taken directly to Pioneer Trail.

In the months after Pioneer Trail’s September launch, the game attracted about 22 million MAU before it began losing users. At the moment, it has just 5.5 million MAU and 1.7 million DAU, albeit with very strong engagement rates: Over the last 30 days, DAU as a percent of MAU has fluctuated between 30-35%. (As supported by data from Inside Virtual Goods, games with a DAU/MAU of 20% or higher have strong user retention and monetization rates.) Meanwhile, FrontierVille continues to shed users; the app currently enjoys 1.4 million MAU and 260,000 DAU, for a 19% DAU/MAU ratio. While Pioneer Trail approached FrontierVille’s high of 30 million MAU at launch, it is now under a fifth of that number. While the user transition rate from FrontierVille to Pioneer Trail was not one-to-one, it’s still fair to say that most FrontierVille users who tried Pioneer Trail did not continue playing it — and that most did not continue playing FrontierVille, either. From that perspective, the move from FrontierVille to Pioneer Trail has been at best a very limited success for Zynga.

From Zoo World to Zoo World 2 – RockYou!

RockYou’s animal raising sim Zoo World 2 was launched this June within the original Zoo World app ID. While most of the gameplay remained the same (as required by Facebook to maintain the same ID), the developers added zoo customization and building elements, which were integrated into the animal care aspect of the game. For example, adding decorations influences the well-being of the zoo animals, which is the Zoo World franchise’s core gameplay element.

Since Zoo World 2 runs in the original Zoo World’s app ID, it is difficult to form an early picture of the app’s growth. In addition, the company at first gave the game a “toggle” option, so longtime players could switch from the sequel to the original game. We can see clearly, though, that in the six months leading up to Zoo World 2′s launch, usage had trended downward from about 9 million MAU and 700,000 DAU to about 2 million MAU and 200,000 DAU. With the launch of Zoo World 2, user growth returned, reaching 8-9 million MAU for the months of August and September. However, during this same period, DAU/MAU remained low, trending downward between 15% and 5%. This user activity pattern is suggestive of one-time installs or plays (presumably as new and returning users checked out the game’s updates).

The company attributes this waning usage in part to difficulties with a new ad platform that were addressed in September, and reports that despite the declining user numbers, has more than doubled the game’s average revenue per user in October. To further complicate analysis of Zoo World 2, RockYou laid off half its staff in November, which may have impeded updates and maintenance to the game. The game now has a MAU of 1,7 million and a DAU/MAU that’s fluctuated between 12 to 16% over the last 30 days. While the sequel helped drive user growth for about three months, it could not regain the numbers it enjoyed at peak in Spring 2010 (about 20 million MAU, 275,000 DAU). However, by retaining a relatively large audience while earning a reported profit, the sequel might be described as a modest success.

From Mafia Wars to Mafia Wars 2 – Zynga

The most recent sequel in this report, Mafia Wars 2, is the successor to one of Zynga’s very oldest social games, dating back to 2008 on Facebook. The original is a turn-based role-playing game, and as of today, the game still maintains a relatively large and engaged user base, with 3.1 million MAU and 640,000 DAU, for a 21% DAU/MAU ratio.

While the first game has very simple gameplay (outcomes to player moves are generally resolved by a single click and depicted in terms of static illustrations and player stat updates), Mafia Wars 2 is a vastly re-imagined version of the franchise, with 2.5D graphics in an expansive gameplay world, sim-type “empire” construction and maintenance similar to Zynga’s CityVille, and combat visually depicted in animated sequences. Zynga launched Mafia Wars 2 in mid-October with a large press and publicity campaign, along with heavy cross-promotion to its existing users.

However, Zynga still faced a challenge of transitioning players of the original game to this sequel that features very different gameplay. Throughout October and November, the MAU of the original Mafia Wars fluctuated between 3.25 million and 3.5 million MAU, while the sequel, which reached a peak of almost 17 million MAU in late October, began losing users through November, and now has just 10 million MAU. More concerning, DAU/MAU also dropped below 10% by mid November, and currently stands at 8%. This activity pattern is consistent with a low monetized game with light engagement rates. It appears that players of the original Mafia Wars, which still maintains much higher engagement rates, did not take to the sequel, at least with the same degree of interest as they do the first game.

It may be too early to write off Mafia Wars 2 as an ineffective sequel, however. While Zynga has devoted far more promotional energies to its new game CastleVille in recent weeks, it’s possible the company many soon try to boost user and engagement rates of Mafia Wars 2 with new content, offers, and promotions, especially in the run-up to its IPO. At the moment, however, it’s also fair to conclude that the game offers a cautionary example of the difficulty in launching a successful Facebook game sequel.

Despite the ambivalent results of sequels and expansions like these in 2011, it’s likely that the new year will see additions to The Sims Social, It Girl, and CityVille, among many other popular titles. Whatever games do get the sequel treatment in 2012, one hopes that developers will better avoid the shortcomings they often faced in 2011.

While farming games no longer dominate the Facebook gaming platform as they once did in previous years, they still retain a very large userbase. Join us for a look at the top six farming games by traffic, as recorded by our traffic tracking service, AppData.

Beyond FarmVille, the leading five farm games have over 13 million total monthly active users (MAU), spread across a demographically diverse userbase, much of whom are Arab, Turkish, and Chinese speaking Facebook users. Many of these top farm games boast engagement rates over 20%, which is considered high based on data collected in Inside Virtual Goods. This report will briefly review each of these games’ core gameplay loops and monetization features.

[Editor's Note: For the purposes of this report, “farming game” is defined as a simulation where the act of farming forms the core gameplay loop. This list also excludes games where  farming mechanics such as harvesting and planting are used to collect non-farm resources -- monsters, zombies, marijuana, etc.]

Farmville – Zynga

Launched in the Summer of 2009 and reaching a peak of of nearly 60 million MAU in December 2010, FarmVille’s userbase is now roughly half that number, with a downward trend that continued into May 2011. At that point, Zynga launched a branded FarmVille ad campaign linked to pop star Lady Gaga that created a short-term increase in DAU and MAU; a complete expansion launched in September also temporarily increased MAU, but not DAU. Since November, FarmVille has seen a recent drop of DAU as a percent of MAU, falling from 28% in mid-October to 23% now as MAU continues to rise while DAU falls.

Beyond FarmVille, however, activity rates for the top farming games are often quite different:

المزرعة السعيدة (Arabic, Happy Land) – Peak Games & Halfquest

A farming game aimed at Arabic-speaking Facebook users, Happy Land contains art assets targeting that demographic; for instance, the player’s advisor character wears a keffiyeh headdress. In the core gameplay loop, the player harvests farm resources which can be used to feed livestock, or processed, and then sold at market. Players can customize the look of their farm, and compete with other players to gain the most wealth and experience points for developing them. Monetization is through Ranch Cash (purchased with Facebook Credits) used for buying equipment upgrades, special items, and farming power-ups.

Clockwise from top left: Happy Land (Arabic), Happy Land (English), Country Life, and Our Farm (Turkish)

Note that publisher Peak Games also has a Turkish language version of the game called Bizim Çiftlik that enjoys 980,000 MAU and 26% DAU/MAU in addition to an English language version of the game called Happy Land, which now sees 500,000 MAU and 23% DAU/MAU. There also appears to be second English language version of the game, Country Life, with 1,100,000 MAU and 19% DAU/MAU, but as of press time Peak Games has not responded to request to clarify whether or not this game published by it or was perhaps created by developer Halfquest independently of its publishing agreement with Peak Games.

開心農場 (Chinese, Happy Farm) – ELEX


A farming game aimed at Chinese-speaking Facebook users, Happy Farm’s core gameplay loop centers around a 4×7 farming grid, where crops can be planted and harvested. Players have some customization options for the look of their farm, and a ranking system enables competition between friends playing the game. Monetization is built on special Happy Farm currency, purchasable with Facebook Credits, which can then be used to purchase special seeds, plants, equipment, livestock, and special enhanced farm layouts with different backgrounds (such as a fantasy or island theme). Happy Farm enjoys very high engagement rates, with over 40% of its users playing on a daily basis.

Komşu Çiftlik (Turkish, Barn Buddy) – TheBroth & Peak Games

The Turkish language version of TheBroth’s Barn Buddy farm game far outpaces its English language original in MAU (2.1 million versus 1.6 million), but arrives at roughly the same DAU/MAU around 20%. In the core gameplay loop, players tend a field by removing dead plants, spraying for bugs and weeds, planting and watering new crops, and then harvesting and selling them at market for the game’s currencies, Coins and Credits. As with many other farm games, players of Barn Buddy can visit their friends’ farms to help care for their crops and livestock. However, they also have an option to sabotage friends’ farms by adding bugs and weeds, or even steal their crops. This component adds an extra layer of competitiveness to the game’s leaderboards.

Monetization comes through Facebook Credits purchased to buy farm animals, which earn the player extra currency and experience points. This includes guard dogs, which protect against player-to-player crop theft. Among the animals that can be purchased in Barn Buddy is a branded virtual good: Domo, the popular Japanese television character — who also has his own Facebook game developed by TheBroth. Facebook Credits can also be earned in the game by watching embedded commercials.

Farm Town – Slashkey

Among the very first Facebook farm sim games to gain a large number of players back in 2009, Farm Town still maintains a relatively large and active userbase. Players customize and control an avatar, and use him or her to grow and harvest crops, sell them at market, and then use the profits to develop and expand their farm property. In the marketplace, players’ avatars can interact with each other in real time, and earn bonuses for cooperating with each other on their respective farm tasks. (The game has live chat and player-to-player messaging features for this purpose.)

As for monetization, players can also customize many aspects of their farm, adding factories and other buildings, along with livestock. To purchase in-game items, such as seeds, trees, flowers, animals, buildings, additional land, and furniture, players spend Coins (which can be earned with in-game activity or purchased with Facebook Credits) or FarmCash, which are only available for Facebook Credits, or by fulfilling advertiser offers.

Gourmet Ranch – Playdemic & RockYou

In Gourmet Ranch’s core gameplay, players expand and customize their farm, which is attached to an organic restaurant. Commands are directed through a customizable avatar. As with the other farming games in this list, the player must grow, tend, and harvest crops/livestock. Unlike these other games, this harvest is used to bake products served in the player’s restaurant. These harvested goods (along with cooked products) can be sold to other players. Earnings from these sales can be spent to purchase higher quality farm products, to bake more expensive restaurant items, and to develop the farm and restaurant.

Monetization comes via the game’s official currency, GR Coins and Cash, both buyable with Facebook Credits, used to purchase farm and restaurant items. Keys, which unlock game content, and Speedups, which automatically hasten game goals, can also be purchased with GR Cash.

Note that Gourmet Ranch developer Playdemic was purchased by publisher RockYou in January 2011, causing the game to grow steadily as the publisher integrated its ad platform within the game while the developer continued to release content. RockYou recently underwent dramatic restructuring, ultimately selling Playdemic back to its founders along with Gourmet Ranch, which may explain the decline in MAU and DAU reflected in the chart above.

“Strategy & Combat” is a new sub-category leaderboard on AppData, tracking the most popular Facebook games from multiple genres which emphasize physical fighting. Here, we analyze the top five games in the player-versus-player strategy sub-genre, which enjoys overall strong engagement rates and now attracts an audience of over 30 million monthly active users.

For the purposes of this analysis, “strategy” is defined as combat and resource-management games with military themes and conceits, played out on a map-like field, while “player-versus-player” refers to direct combat between two or more players. By that definition, here are the top five by monthly active users (or MAU) and daily active users (or DAU) and DAU as percent of MAU (or DAU/MAU) as of November 23:

Top PvP Strategy Games by Traffic

UPDATE, 12/1: Due to a mis-categorization, Social Empires was previously left off this list.

In general, a game with a strong DAU/MAU correlates to strong user retention and regular monetization. Based on this trend, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the top Facebook strategy games enjoy more robust monetization compared to other game genres on the platform.

Does PvP Increase Engagement in Strategy Games?

As noted above, the top Facebook strategy games with PvP likely enjoy higher monetization rates than other genres based on their strong engagement rates. But does the PvP feature in itself influence engagement? While it’s difficult to isolate that element (especially since Backyard Monsters, Dragons of Atlantis, and Battle Pirates launched with PvP), it’s possible to make some tentative assessments:

In mid-September, when Zynga introduced “Battle Blitz” PvP to Empires & Allies, the game’s DAU as a percent of MAU was at 15% and trending downward. Within a week of introducing the new PvP mode, however, the DAU/MAU climbed, reaching 16% by 9/25, and by the first week of October, reaching 19%.

Army Attack did not launch with a PvP mode, but added that feature in mid-September, when the game’s DAU as a percent of MAU was at a low and flat 12%. After adding PvP, however, DAU/MAU began trending upward, and by mid-October, had reached 14%.

In early June, Backyard Monsters was under 20% and trending downward. That month, however, Kixeye added “Champion Monsters” for use in PvP combat, and changed the artwork to emphasize violent, graphic combat that would appeal to the core market (see below.) Total MAU dropped considerably in the months after this update (perhaps because many players disliked the new art style), but at the same time, daily engagement by percentage increased. By mid-July, DAU/MAU had grown to over 25%.

In each of these examples, the rise in engagement levels does not definitively prove PvP increases user activity. (And in the particular case of Army Attack, PvP was added after a period of little or no content updates.) However, it is fair to say the addition of PvP tends to correlate with rising user engagement, which, in turn, could signal an increase in monetization.

Facebook Strategy Games from Casual to Core

Facebook’s most popular strategy games range from casual to core in terms of tone and gameplay experience. For the purposes of this analysis, assume that a casual title uses cartoon-inspired art direction and simplified gameplay intended for broad audience appeal. A core title, by contrast, is often characterized by realistic, visceral graphics and complex gameplay intended for a specific young male demographic that also enjoys console and PC games. “Mid-core,” as the name suggests, are games which aim to strike a balance between these two audience poles, in the hopes of appealing to both.

Zynga’s Empires & Allies falls on the casual side of the PvP spectrum, with comic book-inspired art direction and simple combat mechanics. In the game, players build and maintain cities (which include military units and resources), extend their territory, and increase their player levels by defeating enemies.

To the left of Empires & Allies is Army Attack, which also features cartoon artwork and humorous elements intended to keep the overall tone light. For instance, the commando units have dialog segments that parody Arnold Schwarzenegger’s action movie characters. In this game, the player expands their territory by defeating a series of enemies and liberating innocent cities featured in a single-player campaign. Unlike Empires & Allies, there’s little or no emphasis on city building and maintenance. Instead, the players only builds and maintains military resources such as troop barracks, defensive barriers, and missile/airbases.

Toward the middle of the spectrum is Kixeye’s Backyard Monsters, which was first launched as a casual game with cartoonish combat units and an emphasis on custom building and decoration. In June 2011, however, the developer altered much of the game’s artwork to make the monsters appear more violent and grotesque, while increasing the game’s combat options — changes intended to better appeal to a core market.

Following Backyard Monsters’ shift toward the core market is Kixeye’s somewhat newer PvP title, Battle Pirates. This game is firmly to the right of casual PvP title, given the game’s dark, industrial-themed artwork, realistic explosions, and combat animations. In Battle Pirates, the player expands their territory from a home base island by sending war vessels to battle and loot opponents’ island bases.

At the right-most position on this spectrum is Kabam’s Dragons of Atlantis, with complex gameplay and user interface. In the game, players build cities and expand their territory to create an empire, battling fantasy-themed monsters and competing players along the way, while raising dragons to defend their cities and outposts.

Forms of PvP in the top Facebook Strategy Games

Empires & Allies (Zynga)

In Empires & Allies, players must build up an island city and defend it with military units. In the core gameplay loop, players send some of these units to combat non-playable enemy characters or other players, earning resources if they are victorious, which can then be spent to construct new buildings and combat units. Monetization includes resources or premium combat units, energy refill items, and battle power-ups.

The PvP element of the game resembles CityVille’s visiting mechanic, in which players can visit their friends’ cities, interact with their buildings, and harvest some of their resources. In Empires & Allies PvP, however, players can choose instead to invade friends’ cities, clicking an area of a selected friend’s city to invade. Battles between attacking and defending units is resolved with turn-based asynchronous combat. (Empires & Allies’ Battle Blitz mode allows for PvP between strangers.) As with the core campaign mode gameplay, the player has a set number of units they can deploy in a specific arena (land, air, or sea) and combat consists of the player first clicking the unit they want to attack, and then the target unit. Once an attack is launched, the game’s artificial intelligence retaliates and combat ends when all attacking or all defending units are destroyed.

Befitting its design as a casual strategy game, combat in Empires & Allies features and easy-to-understand combat design. For instance, when selecting units to use in a battle, icons inform the player which type of unit is best deployed against units on the opposing side. The results of PvP combat, however, can be punishing for both the invader and the defender: All units destroyed while attacking or defending are permanently lost, and must be replaced. When a player’s city has been invaded by a friend, the player must engage the attacker, to repel them — but if they fail to do so, the invader remains in the player’s city, incurring a resource gathering penalty in the occupied sector. As of this writing, Empires & Allies has no play balancing to account for players of uneven levels; in practice, this means a lower level player can be dominated by a more experienced player, who is able to invade with units that have far more hit points than the lower level player’s units. Because of this mismatch, an out-ranked defender may have to sacrifice a high number of units, to finally repel the invasion. (Unless, that is, the player purchases monetized elite units and power-ups.)

Backyard Monsters and Battle Pirates (Kixeye)

In both Backyard Monsters and Battle Pirates, players build and enhance their home base while defending it from attack by invaders (both non-player characters and other players), and launching attacks of their own. In the core gameplay loop, players harvest resources from their base’s production facilities, and use these resources to build and upgrade new base structures, and create new combat units. According to Kixeye, the most popular PvP monetization options for both games are base upgrades which increase their attack capability (such as elite battle units), and power-ups which decrease the time required to make attacks.

To launch PvP in both games, players click on opponents’ bases from the game’s overhead map. Players in Kixeye’s games have a high degree of attack options, from choosing the units to be deployed, selecting areas of the base that they’ll begin to attack, and directing long range strikes at designated portions of the enemy base. With Backyard Monsters, deployment choices must be made with extreme strategic care, because once sent into battle, a player’s monsters operate autonomously.

Battle Pirates differs in that the combat can be performed synchronously in real-time. This game is the first prominent title to achieve this kind of PvP play on the Facebook platform. Players can choose to attack another player from the strategic map, and if the defender is online during the invasion, both sides are able to move and control their units to influence the battle’s outcome in real time. (If the defending player is offline during an invasion, the game’s AI controls their defense.) Unlike Battle Monsters, the Battle Pirates player also enjoys discrete control of their units throughout the attack, and can adjust the units’ position or target. In both games, an invader may make multiple attacks on the same target, but after the defending base is heavily damaged, the game prohibits further attacks for an extended “cool down” period.

In both Backyard Monsters and Battle Pirates, the risks and rewards for PvP are relatively heavy. If successful, the attacking player collects all game resources destroyed in the attack. However, any attacking unit killed during the battle is lost to the player, and must be replaced, along with any resources used to raise the attacking army. This is a time-consuming process, and if a player’s initial invasion is unsuccessful, they have a strong incentive to purchase monetized speed-ups to hasten resource/army production to launch another attack. For the defender, damaged buildings and defending units must be repaired and rebuilt, also incurring a time and resource penalty. At this point in gameplay, many players monetize, Kixeye reports, buying speed-ups and production boosters, so they can launch a powerful retaliatory attack against their invader.

Army Attack (Digital Chocolate)

In Army Attack, players must liberate cities from enemy units and invade enemy territory while building defenses and other military resources (such as money, energy, and fuel) from the areas under their control. In the core gameplay loop, the player harvests resources, uses them to repair damaged units, and also build new units. The player must also launches attacks against non-player characters and accomplish other objectives to complete the single-player campaign. PvP monetization options in Army Attack include unit health, range, damage boosters, and elite units, all of which increase chances for victory, and can be purchased for Facebook Credits.

In PvP mode, called “Versus”, players battle other Army Attack players in skirmishes that require energy and supplies to launch. A player can choose to fight either strangers in the game, or Facebook friends who have become the player’s Allies. Versus combat is resolved on a smaller version of the Army Attack strategy map, with units chosen by the player beforehand; the player clicks a unit, then sends it to another location on the map within its movement range. If an enemy unit comes within its attack range, the player can click on it to order an attack. There are also healing and attack bonuses located at random around the map, usable by the first side to reach them. As with Empires & Allies, the opponent’s units are controlled by the AI. The winning player claims in-game currency, Prestige experience points, and game power-ups.

The PvP mode includes a Weekly Tournament, in which players compete to claim in-game boosters, energy, and elite units by winning the most Versus matches,. Army Attack’s Versus mode also rewards players with collection items for the campaign game, and a specific item needed for the game’s new “research facility” building. Risks for losing in PvP, by contrast, are relatively mild compared to the other games in this report. If a player loses a skirmish (either as an attacker or a defender), their units are not permanently lost in the main game. The only direct cost to PvP are the Energy points and Supplies needed to engage in “Versus” battles.

Dragons of Atlantis (Kabam)

In Dragons of Atlantis, players expand their territory to create and maintain an empire. The core gameplay loop involves harvesting resources and building up the player’s kingdom (both the main city and surrounding area), raising dragons to defend this territory, and exploring the wilderness map area, which contains resources, monster habitats, and other players’ kingdoms, which can be invaded. PvP monetization options include boosts to a player’s attack and defense capabilities, special items for elite units, and “Speed ups” that shorten the time to create, train, and march new troops into battle.

To initiate PvP combat, a player clicks on an opponent’s territory from the wilderness map. Doing this sends a “Sentinel” warning to the defender’s inbox, giving them the option to repel the attack, withdraw, or hide the troops in that territory. To increase the odds of victory, a player can customize and balance their armies with various troop types that come with unique strengths and weaknesses. Players can also send their powerful dragons, which usually guard a player’s cities and outposts, into PvP battle. If the defender chooses to fight, the battle’s outcome is automatically determined by the game, based on the total unit strength of the opposing sides. The results of the subsequent battle are sent to both the attacker’s and defender’s inbox.

If the invading player is successful, they win looted resources from the defeated defender. But the consequences of losing an invasion are relatively punishing: If the invasion fails, the player permanently loses their attacking units, along with the resources and time that were required to raise this army. If the invading player sends one of their dragons into the invasion, they gain an attack bonus; if the invasion fails, however, the defeating dragon must heal, leaving the territory it was defending vulnerable to attack. The defending player also risks permanently losing defeated units, along with territory and resources. Opting out of a PvP battle comes with its own risks: If the defender chooses to hide from an incoming invasion, no troops are lost, but the player’s resources are looted, and the player’s dragon defending the invaded territory is injured, and will require time to heal before it can attack or defend again.

New Entries in the PvP Strategy Market

A number of new Facebook strategy games with PvP have entered the market in recent months:

• Kabam’s latest game, Edgeworld, features sci-fi combat and base building resource management and PvP combat similar to Kixeye’s Backyard Monsters. (In fact, Kixeye has accused Kabam of copying its game.) However, Edgeworld’s art and themes are more directly aimed at the core audience.
• Kixeye’s latest title, War Commander, a sci-fi military game aimed at the core market, features PvP base battles similar to Backyard Monsters and Battle Pirates, but with additional PvP gameplay features. For instance, players can send offline commands to individual units when their base is under attack. The company also plans to add a tournament system for massively massively multiplayer combat between players.
• Crowdstar’s Wasteland Empires, launched in late October, is also a sci-fi themed resource management game aimed at the core market, in which the player builds and expand their territory in a post-apocalyptic wasteland by attacking opponents (NPCs and players), in asynchronous combat where the player controls individual units against the game’s AI.

Core PvP Strategy: A Subgenre With Promise — But Many Unknowns for Future Growth

As suggested by the new games noted above, the competitive field for PvP strategy games is expanding. With these new entries, game developers are targeting the core market in particular, which typically monetizes at higher rates than more casual segments.

However, it may be difficult to grow this core market rapidly: By their very nature, core strategy games demand more from a user, in terms of engagement and playing time. By contrast, Facebook is more conducive to lighter, shorter, “lunch break” gameplay sessions. Further, it’s not clear that the market for core is growing. With the exception of Empires & Allies (which enjoys the cross-promotional advantage of Zynga’s massive userbase), the strategy games released this year have not come close to reaching the popularity of that game, let alone 2010’s Backyard Monsters.

It will be interesting to see whether these new entries grow the market — or end up fighting the current champions for their audience’s eyeballs and dollars.