Inside Social Games

Over a year ago, we saw one of the first 3D games on Facebook, Paradise Paintball. At the time, the game was reminiscent of old PC first-person shooters (FPS) such as Delta Force. However, it was seen more as a proof of concept to the Unity Engine’s 3D capabilities on Facebook, and felt unfinished. Well, the game’s been about for some time now, and Cmune’s paintball FPS looks very different — and better — today. And it’s also available on a wider range of social gaming platforms.

Again, the game is an FPS that pits players into synchronous battles with each other in either team matches or free-for-alls. The idea is to rack up as many “splats” (kills) as you can before time expires. Of course, that’s a game 12 months past, and a little bit has changed since then.

Aside from visuals, such as foliage in the game’s tropical settings, looking significantly better, players have a handful of weapons at their disposal. Like the original version, there is still a pistol, machine gun, grenade launcher, and sniper rifle that all players enter a game with. Some weapons still feel stronger than others, but with five maps, as opposed to the original two, none of the weapons feel that much stronger.

The level design, overall, is not too bad. Most of the levels, save Lost Paradise, are small enough and have enough cover that a sniper can’t often sit unopposed, and a grenadier needs to be a surgeon with their shots lest they end up blowing themselves up. More than this, however, is the introduction of random items and power-ups throughout each world.

There are items floating about the various levels that grant users one of two types of power-ups: Player Power-ups or Weapon Power-ups. The former includes increasing movement speed and jumping height, which, by the way, is very cool, a “secret power up,” the ability to walk on water, and, well, ammunition. Each of these add a nice enhancement to play, and nothing is so powerful that an experienced player cannot handle it.

The latter, the weapon power-ups, are another story. These can be frustrating, and include “Old Man,” which slows you down (not a big deal); “Drunken Master,” which blurs the screen, making it more or less impossible to see; and the coup de grace, “Flipper,” which is quite possible the most obnoxious ability ever conceived. It turns the entire player upside down and puts everything backwards, making it not only dizzying and disorienting, but pretty much guarantees that you’re about to die.

That said, if you’re worried about dying, get used to it. It’s going to happen a lot. Most of the games people play – at least among Facebook’s 48,000, or so, monthly active users – are free-for-all games. These are usually unlimited time, and just meant to be fun, but some of the levels are so small that you’d be lucky to live 30 seconds.

Another change is that players can now improve their avatars Battlefield-Heroes style. Every day the user logs in, they earn 500 points which can be used to buy a handful of items to increase their chances of survival in battle… or just look cooler. Each item can be bought for either one, seven, or 30 days and include everything from a shotgun, to special hair and clothing, to body armor. Every weapon and piece of actual armor costs Credits, a virtual currency, that must be bought via PayPal or Zong, or earned through offers (however, the latter is currently only on Facebook, and an almost unnoticable link next to the giant PayPal buttones). Basically, if you want to spend money, you get rewarded, but not so much if you are loyal and play a lot. Furthermore, a recent study by Offerpal Media and comScore, just last week, showed that only 22.8% of players are willing and able to buy virtual currency or goods, yet 52.3% are likely to complete marketing actions for it. Basically, that means that Paradise Paintball’s monetization methods are limited.

Nevertheless, the game was still fun. Granted, the majority of social network users prefer asynchronous game play – as most do not consider themselves gamers – but Paradise Paintball was good enough to win the award of “Best New MySpace App” during the Game Developer’s Conference, 2010. Furthermore, with the game on Facebook, MySpace, Apple Dashboard, and Cmune’s own game portal, it’s hardly doing bad. Overall, it just needs a few tweaks here and there in the monetization department, but beyond that, if you like free shooters, this isn’t a bad one to try.

Zen Bound 2 Revealed for the iPad – Despite the buzz circling Apple’s new iPad, little has been actually seen regarding games on the coming platform. However, via a post from Kotaku, we’ve been able to catch a glimpse of Secret Exit’s Zen Bound 2, a “sequel and a revision” of the original iPhone application. In a nutshell, the original rendition is about attempting to wrap a rope around an oddly shaped object, with the sequel’s concept being more of the same. However, as you can see, the bigger and more powerful iPad sure does make it look better. A full gallery can be found here.

Frosmo Expands to Asia – Frosmo has seen a good deal of success with its tournament and team-based platform of the same name, in terms for social gaming. Already the company has expanded its collection of titles across Europe and into Facebook, but now the Finnish company is expanding into the Asian game market as well. Currently, the company is slated to let 10 different Asian game companies use its tournament system, and be available through 51.com, China.com, Ren Ren, and Mixi.

Platogo Gets Casual Games Facebook Ready – Though third party firms helping developers socialize their titles is nothing new, a social games platform from Austria, Platogo is looking to socially enable casual games directly for Facebook. Dubbed “Platogo Wrapper” this tool allows developers to integrate their games into Facebook withonly a few lines of code. With this new tool,  apps will be able to take advantage of Facebook friend invitations, leaderboards, achievements, and player challenges.

Game Investments Dropped 29% in 2009 – It would seem like the video game industry has seen some hefty decline due to the recession as VentureBeat reports that of 115 game startups, only $663.1 million in funding was raised during 2009 (discounting those with undisclosed amounts). That is 29% lower than the $936.8 million raised in 2008. In fact, had it not been for Zynga’s acquisition of $180 million deal from Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, the year would have been down a depressing 48%.

Tapulous Taps Into Kings of Leon – The popular rhythm-game company for the iPhone, Tapulous, has added another new title to its collection of Tap Tap games. The new app is dubbed Kings Of Leon Revenge, and if you hadn’t guessed already, features, well, the Kings Of Leon. In addition to hosting 10 of the band’s top songs, the new game will also include a curious ”Battle Mode” that will allow users to directly compete with each other using the iPhone’s bluetooth capabilities.

Unity Games Gain a Social Platform Through dimeRocker – More and more frequently, social games empowered with Unity3D are appearing around both Facebook and the web. To that end, Overinteractive Media Inc. has announced the launch of a new social platform, specifically tailored to support Unity enabled games, dubbed dimeRocker. Through the platform, games will be able to support microtransactions, achievements, leaderboards, friend invites, challenges, and be deployable on both the Facebook and MySpace networks. Already, around 150 developers have signed up for the service’s beta stages.

Facebook App Penny Drop Teams Up with Kiva – A simple Facebook application called Penny Drop – powered by CircusPop - is out to help the working poor. The quasi, game-like app consists of players using tokens (earnable through logins every few hours and inviting friends) to drop the price of featured items by one cent until someone purchases it. However, working with Kiva, from March 11th to March 22nd, for every token used in Penny Drop, a penny will be donated to Kiva in order to help poor entrepreneurial individuals and businesses grow.

Gowalla Adds New Platforms & Branded Goods – Location-based iPhone app Gowalla has launched its social game on two new platforms this past week: The Android and Palm’s webOS. In addition to this new support, the game is also bringing branded virtual goods to the table from the Travel Channel’s show, Food Wars. With the new deal, players will be able to earn special badges and virtual items by visiting locals featured during the show.

IMVU adds Voices as a Virtual Good – Popular teen-oriented virtual world IMVU announced a curious partnership with Vivox this Thursday. Now, the virtual world will be capable of integrating voice services, but beyond being just another feature, it will also add a new source of revenue. Currently, 25 different voice styles are being offered for the cost of 990 IMVU Credits.

Sometrics Launches GameCoins.com – Social analytics firm, Sometrics announced the launch of GameCoins.com this week - the company’s first direct-to-consumer play. Game Coins will serve as a community site for gamers, allowing them meet new people as well as participate in forums and blogs that revolve around various social games and virtual worlds. More than this, however, the site, per its name, will also be an online marketplace for virtual goods and currencies. From the portal, players can make use of the Sometrics Offer Solution to complete ad offers and earn goods and currency for their MMO, virtual world, or social game of choice. The company tells us it plans to help grow the community through users discovering relevant content in searches. The idea is that by helping people play these games better, its monetization services will get even more usage.

50% of Gamers Will Earn Virtual Currency – According to a survey performed by comScore for Offerpal Media, and released at the Game Developers Conference this week, alternative payment methods enable greater monetization capabilities that one would think. Derived from comScore and Offerpal’s own monetization analytics, 53.3% of players are “very likely” to complete a marketing actions (i.e. completing a survey, watching a video, or shopping online) in order to earn virtual currency for their favorite games. Conversely, only 22.8% of those surveyed stated they’d be willing and able to buy it.

In fact, 29.7% of social gamers actually don’t have the means to buy virtual currency in the first place; at least not with cash options. Curiously, even among those that could, 34.9% stated that they were “very unlikely” to do so.

While Hi5 has increased its amount of rhetoric against Facebook, it has made some precise moves to attract game developers — especially from the Facebook Platform. It’s not clear if the moves will work, in part because Facebook has likely grown by the size of Hi5’s 50 million monthly active users already this year.

Hi5 is continuing to aggressively make the social network more of a gaming destination. Last week, it began supporting Facebook’s platform APIs, meaning developers with Facebook applications can more easily repurpose them to Hi5’s platform. Now, it’s announcing a special “Game Developer Program” intended to give third parties numerous advantages in reaching Hi5 users and making money. The catch is that all developers need to apply (here) to get into the program — a way for Hi5 to maintain quality. The specific benefits of the program include special ways for developers to reach users and make money.

Facebook recently took away notifications, a tool that many apps engaged users. Hi5 says it will give games a special one-click game install interface, access to let them send notifications to users in friend updates, and “un-capped invitations.” The last item means that developers in the program will not have apps limited by, say 30, invites a day — Facebook has made limits to help control spammy behavior. Hi5’s solution is to carefully approve and monitor its game developer partners, presumably kicking them out of the program if they get too spammy. Other special access points include APIs allowing games to add items in to user profiles, including user achievements and high scores.

And, Hi5 is going to be providing free banner ads, special appearances on its Games page (which is linked directly from the homepage) and in its games toolbar, recommend games to users, and more it will announce later. The plan here is to give smaller games a boost in users without having to buy advertising — on-site advertising is an increasingly important way for developers to reach users on Facebook.

Regarding money, some developers have been using Hi5 Coins, the site’s virtual currency, in their own games for many months. Now, anyone in the program will be able to, although it’s not saying what payment cut it’s taking. The currency includes 60 payment methods in 30 currencies. Hi5 also runs premium advertising alongside games, and it will share some of this revenue with games in the program.

So, while Hi5’s application platform will still exist, the program is intended to lure developers in to a tighter relationship with the company. New partners include: Detonator Games, Exponential Entertainment and Immortal Games.

Given its size and mature platform, Facebook is still going to be the priority for many developers. The second-largest social gaming platform, MySpace, has also just made big improvements to attract game developers. Hi5, however, is arguably the social platform most focused on games — specialization is a classic business strategy for a smaller competitor, and given where Hi5 is at, we think it’s making the right moves. We’ll see if it will work.

The number of big social applications that use Facebook’s virtual currency, Credits, continues to rise. The latest is Zynga’s smash hit farming game, FarmVille, the largest application on Facebook with nearly 84 million users a month.

The integration is pretty straightforward, as you can see from the screenshot below. Credits is shown as the first of several payment options — others include direct credit card payments, PayPal, and a variety of other payment services, including prepaid cards and offers.

Zynga has previously been running Credits in some of its smaller Facebook apps, like role-playing game Pirates: Rule the Caribbean. Credits is now also appearing on some of its other big applications, like pet-caring title PetVille. However, it’s not on others, including Café World.

> Continue reading on Inside Facebook.

Monetization service providers that first got traction on Facebook are continuing to diversify, with the latest example being offer company Super Rewards. It has just launched a new version of its offer wall, intended for Flash game developers who distribute their creations across the web. The service is basically the offer wall that Super Rewards already provides, but available for developers to embed within their Flash game interfaces. Advertising offers are performance ads, drawn from various ad networks and advertisers, and users can participate in the ads in exchange for virtual currency in games.

Super Rewards is letting people who play Flash games that use virtual currency take these offers and earn the currency without having to leave the game page. In this example, you can see how it works: Click on “get more coins” and you’ll see the offer window appear overlaying the game. Then you take the offers, get the currency, and buy virtual goods within the game.

While the company offered a way to add offer walls via an XML integration, the new service allows developers to do so in what it says takes less than an hour. Developers can check out the implementation information here. Other companies that provide in-Flash payment services include Jambool and its Social Gold product. We should note that social games on Facebook that use Flash normally include offer walls on separate pages within applications.

Super Rewards, a part of online advertising company Adknowledge, hasn’t announced any developer partners yet. But the service is live, so we expect implementations to start popping up soon.

Offer quality has been an issue for basically all offer providers on Facebook, and Super Rewards has been trying to improve what offers appear where. Here’s what the company tells us about its efforts for Flash developers: “All the functionality of the core SuperRewards product applies to this including the industry’s first white and black listing functionality. We work as closely as we possibly can with both platforms and publishers to ensure that our offers meet both the letter and the spirit of platform guidelines as well as more specific controls that the publisher wishes to apply.”

Over the weekend, popular developer CrowdStar released a brand new Facebook app, Zoo Paradise. However, this one isn’t following the recent trend of city-builders. Rather, it’s an iteration on the “tycoon” concept. After the successes of RockYou’s Zoo World, who could blame the developer, as the zoological wonder not only reached #8 in this past month’s Top 25 Facebook Games, but is one of the contributors to the developer’s current popularity.

Nonetheless, Zoo Paradise is a lot like its predecessor in the core sense. The idea is to build the best looking zoo one can while coaxing the little computer-player patrons to spend as much money as they can.

The game is actually simple enough that there is no real tutorial, merely a giant purple arrow above the “Shop” icon. From here players can purchase animals, habitats, concessions, and decorations for a very reasonable price. However, based on the player level, only a limited number of these (save decorations) can be purchased at any given time.

As for the level itself, it seems that most of the experience needed to increase it is done by buying and placing new items. Periodically, players must also feed their animals and even water certain decorations such as a handful of trees. Also, all habitats and concessions seem to be upgradeable.

Unfortunately, Zoo Paradise is a bit of a slow burner. When first starting the game, players are able to pick up coins that were presumably dropped by customers. Nonetheless, no new ones were ever dropped during play, when we played and not once did a customer buy anything from a concession stand. Likely, since the game is in beta, this is merely a bug, but if it isn’t, then it certainly is a significant turn off to the game.

Thankfully, the lack of new income from the in-game currency (Zoo Coins) wasn’t too terribly hindering, as the game’s decoration’s panel in the shop has a fairly sizable collection of plants, bushes, rocks, and so on, that only cost anywhere from two to 15 coins, making it easy for the player to get started aesthetically.

This is a good thing too, as the game actually looks very nice. Everything has a sort of overly cute and saturated look to it (complete with great big watery eyes for the animals). All the habitats are animated as well as the animals who move about in a fairly believable fashion, for a Flash game anyway).

Of course, all this movement also corresponds to the zoo visitors as well, and while their wandering presence makes the game feel like a bustling park, their pathfinding AI isn’t exactly refined yet. These guys constantly walk out into the middle of nowhere, including through decorations, and at one point, every single one got stuck in the entrance and couldn’t enter. As a side note, multiple animals in a habitat seem to get stuck, too. Again, all are just beta bugs, but something to be aware of nonetheless.

Another curious point, is that this CrowdStar title actually doesn’t use its own virtual currency. Instead, it makes sole use of the Facebook Credits system, directing you to a Credits purchase screen if you try to buy the currency. Only a low percentage of items require Credits currency – about one-third of each section. That said, however, there isn’t exactly a large selection of items yet, so it is currently a bit limiting. For example, there are only three habitats – jungle, savanna, and polar – and the savanna costs 67 Facebook Credits, leaving a player that doesn’t want to spend money with very few style choices.

In regards to social ramifications, the game is typical of about any CrowdStar game, or any other virtual space type of app, for that matter. Players can send each other gifts, publish feeds to adopt rescued animals, send gifts, and visit each other’s zoo (to help out) via a leaderboard system. Nothing out of the ordinary, but why fix what isn’t broken?

Overall, Zoo Paradise isn’t too shabby. Especially considering its traffic — somewhere in the neighborhood of 112,000 monthly active users already. The game looks good, and it plays well (even if it is a bit slow). Moreover, despite its initial bugs, it was actually thoroughly enjoyable. We look forward to seeing a cleaned up version in the near future.

Aurora Feint Generates 5 Million iPhone Game Downloads – Distribution has always been a problem for iPhone developers, but in an effort to improve the odds on this problem, Aurora Feint created a special promotion on its OpenFeint social platform. The experiment was called the “Free Game of the Day Promotion,” and over the past four weeks has generated 5 million free game downloads.

The success has led to the launch of FreeGameoftheDay.com and will put free game offers at the forefront for a stated 15 million users. To draw a parallel on the success, an Aurora Feint partner in this endeavor, Origin8 creator of Space Station: Frontier, saw 160,000 downloads in a single day, and 1 million overall.

iPad Coming in April – We’ve talked a lot about the iPad in recent weeks, but now it looks like the masses will get to check things out for themselves soon enough. Apple announced today that the official launch of it’s new device is scheduled for April 3rd in the United States.

The Wi-Fi only model will be available first, with the 3G added later in the month. However, both will be eligible for pre-order come March 12th, with a cost ranging from $499 to $629, respectively for the 16GB version and $699 to $829 for the 64GB version.

Kwedit Raises $3.3 Million – Kwedit, the virtual goods payment site that allows users, 13 and up, to borrow money for virtual items and pay it back later, has, according to TechCrunch, gained another $3.3 million in a second round of funding led by Maveron. The company says it has signed six new merchants including VoIP provider, PokeTalk, an unnamed MMO, a test prep service, and a credit record protection service.

Peanut Labs Gets New Partners – Earlier this week, ad offer network Peanut Labs announced not one, but three new partnerships including the virtual world Meez, massively multiplayer online game publisher IGG, and virtual currency payment service Zeevex.  Each of the three are slated to integrate the networks collection of products in the near future.

Meez Promotes the Red Cross – One of Peanut Labs new partners, Meez, had news of its own, as the browser-based virtual world announced its promotion of the Red Cross throughout the month of March. The teen-oriented realm incorporates a virtual blood bank where avatars can visit and donate virtual blood in order to receive a limited edition Red Cross t-shirt in-game. Within the digital donation destination, however, will be links to the Red Cross website where they can learn more and even find out how to make real donations.

Assassin’s Creed II Multiplayer Comes to iPhone – Previewed, briefly, in early February, Ubisoft has finally released, according to appadvice, Assassin’s Creed II Multiplayer for the iPhone. Essentially a game of deadly hide-and-go-seek, players sneak about trying to kill each other over a Wi-Fi connection. Sadly, this means the game is not 3G compatible (yet), but as a launch promotion, the game is currently free, so that is quickly forgiven. The promotion was only slated at 48 hours and the game was released early in the week and is still free as of Friday. So… yeah, download it for free now while you can, as it will cost $2.99 soon enough.

Lord of the Rings Online Links Up to Facebook – Looks like the MMO Lord of the Rings Online is following World of Warcraft’s footsteps out of Middle Earth and into Facebook. Through a basic Facebook application, LOTRO Player Feed, users will be able to sign in using their My LOTRO account information and track/publish accomplishments to their feeds. This includes level ups, rank ups, quest counts, deed counts, and so on. It even tracks when you log on and off (don’t worry, it waits a while after each as to avoid spam). Also, all of the automatic publishing for each in-game achievement can be toggled on or off.

Exponential Entertainment Raises Funding for Hollywood Games – Earlier this week, Exponential Entertainment raised a round of funding from angel investors totaling $700,000, VentureBeat reports. This amount is in addition to another $1 million in convertible debt, but according to to Chief Executive Dave Long, the company is already in talks to raise a total of $3.25 million. Already, the company has Hollywood trivia games on HollywoodPlayer.com, Facebook, and the iPhone.

Heatwave Experiments with Platinum Life - Heatwave Interactive launched and interesting beta test on Facebook Wednesday. The game is called Platinum Life Web Edition and incorporates the music life into a role-playing title where players move from a nobody to a platinum hip-hop star. However, according to Anthony Castoro, the end goal is to create a massively multiplayer online version of the game with the ideas and lessons earned through the social network – and later MySpace and Twitter as well – being applied to the final rendition.

Booyah Introduces Location-Based Virtual Goods – Location-based iPhone app MyTown, from Booyah, has seen a tremendous amount of check-ins and claims more registered users than its competitors. Now it’s partnering with the Swedish clothing chain H&M, and it will be offering users location-sensitive virtual goods. When a users is near an H&M store, they will not only be able to buy unique virtual goods in the MyTown Store, but if they check-in, they’ll even get discounts and promotions for the actual items on sale in the store.

[via VentureBeat]

Although the vast majority of Facebook’s user growth has occurred outside the United States over the last couple of years, one of the most notable countries where it hasn’t grown is China. Access to Facebook within China is largely blocked by the Chinese government, as is the case with many other western websites. But while most Chinese Internet users can’t access Facebook and vice versa, that isn’t stopping social game developers and publishers in China and North America from eyeing – and moving into – each other’s markets.

It’s been well documented that much of what is happening today in the West in terms of the proliferation of virtual goods-based free-to-play business models has actually been around in Asia for a while. Historically, however, these markets have generally been led by local players. In 2010, we’re beginning to see what could become a larger and quite interesting trend: Chinese developers moving into western markets via Facebook, and even some western Facebook game developers beginning to move into China. The trade routes for virtual goods exports are picking up.

> Continue reading on Inside Facebook.

Hello Kitty Online Players Donate to Help Haiti – As more and more people send their help to Haiti, the folks over in Sanrio Land are doing their part as well with an event called Food for Friends 2 hosted by Sanrio Digital and Aeria Games within the Hello Kitty Online MMO. For each of the in-game items players donated to Aeria Games, the company would then donate to the Haiti relief efforts. Aeria has not released their total donations yet, but it did receive 534,358 donated items from players on their servers. Sanrio servers, however, garnered over 1.2 million donated items and donated US$ 18,038.30 to Doctors Without Borders.

gWallet Brings Virtual Offers & Currency to the Front Page – Social media monetization firm, gWallet, announced the introduction of the gWallet Brand Bar. Rather than bury potential offers in the back pages of social games, the Brand Bar’s intention is to allow social gaming offers to appear at the top of game screens on all pages, displaying offers the user can participate in, in order to earn virtual currency for their current game.

Playfish Sells 60M Pet Society Virtual Goods – This week, we caught a glimpse at how effective holiday virtual goods can become as Electronic Arts Vice President of Business Developments and Strategic Partnerships, Sebastien de Halleux, stated in Forbes that Playfish’s Pet Society had sold over 60 million virtual goods in the two weeks prior to Valentine’s Day.

Furthermore, it was noted that “tens of thousands” of flower bouquets were purchased through Valentine’s promotions (sponsored by ProFlowers) that earned players the game’s virtual currency. In fact, it was stated that half of all revenue generated in the said two weeks were from the bouquet sales, with total sales being 20% higher than February of 2009.

hi5 to Unveil New Game Developer Program at GDC – Described by the company as a “fundamentally different model for social games,” hi5’s Game Developer Program is something of an enigma. However, it does incorporate elements such as free marketing and promotion across the hi5 network, revenue share through both advertising and hi5 Coins (its virtual currency) usage, automatic game installs, and “super-charged” social channels with a dedicated game portal and promotional area for discovery.

Clarity is coming as President and CTO of hi5, Alex St. John has announced that details will finally be unveiled at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco on March 10, 4:15 – 5:15pm. The one hour session will be at the Moscone Center, Room 122, North Hall and open to all GDC pass holders, save student and audio passes.

Strategic Design Network Aquires Payout Hub – While the price and structure of the acquisition was not announced, social gaming startup, Strategic Design Network (SDN) has acquired the cash tournament company, Payout Hub. Now, the service that allows players to participate in skill-based tournaments for cash prizes (gambling, by some definitions) will be available for the coming line up of SDN titles.

In fact, SDN is already making use of Payout Hub’s capabilities with a new Payout Hub API for the iPhone. Installable in less than an hour, the integration of this API allows iPhone developers to quickly and easily incorporate cash tournament capabilities into their game, and allows users to effectively find all the tournaments currently running.

Chris DeWolfe is Going Shopping – Though virtually nothing is known at the moment, word on the street, via Gawker.com, is that MySpace co-creator and former CEO, Chris DeWolfe is going shopping — a rumor we heard something about last fall. However, this is no mere trip to the market, as he may be looking to buy a “social gaming platform play.” The time frame? It could be this weekend.

FarmVille on Android – While last week was host to Android’s new Flash 10.1 support, this week, the Android phones (Nexus One, to be precise) can now play the #1 Facebook title: Zynga’s FarmVille. A video of the FarmVille demo, in all it’s farming glory, can be found at Redmond Pie.

Hooked Media Launches Social Gaming Platform – In other social gaming news, startup Hooked Media announced it’s own social gaming launch: A social gaming platform dubbed Yoo-Mee. Through the platform, developers will be able socialize their games and embed them into a myriad of sites and devices (similarly to how Flash works). The new platform will fully support Facebook Connect, Twitter, and MySpace as well as two types of currency: Tokens, which are earned through play, and Gold, which must be bought.

eGames Sign License Agreement With Sonico.com – As of the 24th, PC, console, and web games developer eGames Inc. announced the signing of a content license agreement with Sonico.com, a Latin American social network. Evidently, it is a partnership that will bring social gaming to the network’s target audience with the first announced social game being a title called Burger Island(R).

[Editor's Note: Bobby McFarland of Super Rewards, part of Adknowledge, provides some tips on techniques for making money through virtual currencies in social games.]

Discount pricing programs have been used for years by online and brick-and-mortar businesses to acquire customers, promote products, drive brand loyalty, and materially increase profits. Similar programs have been proven to work extremely well for virtual currency and goods inside social games. Below are some discount pricing tips that social game publishers can use to maximize ROI and more deeply engage their players.

1. Tier Discounts for Virtual Currency

Creating different tiers or levels of discounts is a proven way to keep users engaged, especially for “hardcore” gamers. The Facebook game Country Life does a good job at this: gamers can pay $5 for 50 coins, $10 for 105 coins, $20 for 220 coins, etc. But once these direct pay ratios (or exchange rates) are set, it’s difficult to change them without irritating users who’ve grown accustomed to the pricing. One concern is that players will spend less when they get more. But this is a well-debunked myth. People will buy more than they need today, have a flush account, and then spend it all much more quickly than they intended. Brick-and-mortar stores have been proving this for years with massive bags of tube socks and ‘family-sized’ portions. Super Rewards provides simple tools for building these types of dynamic ratios.

It’s also very important to balance the payouts received from direct payments with those received from advertising offers to avoid cannibalizing offer revenue. For example, it would not make much sense to offer 100 coins for $10 via direct pay if the payout from a Netflix offer is $20 for 100 coins. Also, note that will cause some currency inflation as now you may have on average 125 coins going into your system for every dollar a user spends instead of your expected ratio of 100 points per dollar.

2. Set Proper Exchange Rates

Publishers and developers are increasingly using multivariate and A/B testing to help set their discount levels and currency exchange rates. Super Rewards is working with developers to help them set up accurate testing models to better understand user behavior in various scenarios. We encourage developers to build testing technology into their game designs to continually improve user experience and to maximize ROI. Many game developers have a ‘set it and forget it’ mentality when it comes to their exchange rate and use a number that they initially ‘felt’ was right. Virtual currencies are a science: go with facts not feelings. The Super Rewards Game Advisory Team or even our Account Managers can help with this, in addition to A/B testing tools.

3. Reduce Inflation with Dual Currencies

But over time, even smart discounts and exchange rates cannot completely escape inflation, which is the main reason why some games have developed two currencies (more details, here). The model works because it motivates both new and aggressive gamers to continue buying currency as they climb different levels. The model also improves user retention rates, enhances the overall game experience, and drives sustainable revenue for publishers. Mob Wars is a good example of the dual currency model in action. A user at level one will happily buy 10,000 coins for $10. A user at level 30, for example, may earn 100,000 coins a day on their farm. Make sure there is a compelling value proposition for all levels of players. This is where a dual currency easily allows you to offer more coins for the same price.

4. Tie Currency Discounts to Holidays & Special Events

Virtual currency discounts (e.g., a 20 percent off “across the board”) are also effective, particularly for casual gamers. While these “across the board” discounts are more volatile than the tiered discounts above, they can produce significant revenue spikes. Holidays (e.g., Christmas, Black Friday, Easter, 4th of July) and special events are good opportunities for publishers to offer this type of discount. For example, Galacticos Football has tied its discounts around World Cup soccer events, generally for one to two days. A pitfall to watch out for here is having players “wait” for a sale. If they know every Sunday is discount day, they will wait until Sunday to buy. Mix up the discount percentages and their frequency. You don’t want to be predictable. Having a sale will likely cause a dip in revenues as people ‘stock up’ on sale day, but the dip is always much less than the spike.

5. Discounted or Limited Time Virtual Goods

Finally, another simple but effective way to engage gamers is to discount virtual goods for short periods of time, usually one to two days or even for a few hours. This is most effective for role-playing games like World of Warcraft, or games where the goal is to accrue goods over time, such as Pet Society and FarmVille. In FooPets, you can find discounted water bowls or leashes for your favorite virtual pet. Having an ultra-rare item that is only available for a few days and then is no longer available or expires can often see spikes in revenue of 3-4x your usual daily rates with little residual revenue down turn effects in the following days.