Seismic Games opens doors with $2 million in funding for the “next wave” of social games

Los Angeles-based Seismic Games has secured a $2 million first round of funding to put toward reinventing social games. The round was led by DFJ Frontier, venture capitalist Tom Matlack and had participation from a handful of unnamed investors with deep ties to the entertainment industry.

Founded by gaming industry veterans Greg Borrud (Pandemic Studios, EA), Eric Gewirtz (Pandemic Studios, Activision) and Chris Miller (Vivendi Universal), the trio have console hits like Star Wars: Battlefront, F.E.A.R and The Saboteur under their belts and are hoping those successes can be translated to Facebook. The company is one of many social gaming startups founded by former console developers hoping to pivot into social games, and faces competition from the likes of Outplay EntertainmentRow Sham Bow, LootDrop and Rumble, all of whom have AAA console talent and years of industry experience behind them.

Even as the cost of doing business increases on the platform, Seismic’s CEO Greg Borrud is confident that the combination of character driven gameplay and real-world events will make Seismic’s first game a hit when it debuts later this year. Inside Social Games had an opportunity to talk to Borrud, and while he didn’t reveal much about the company’s upcoming first game, he did reveal the development philosophy behind it.

Inside Social Games: You’ve talked a bit about creating the “next” generation of social games. What do you mean by this? 

Greg Borrud (pictured, right): When we first looked at the [social gaming space] we were incredibly excited by what was there. It’s a larger audience than what we’d been making games for previously and social game companies are creating new ways of reaching their audiences and tapping into the free-to-play monetization model.

But, I think we’ve hit a point where there has to be more than analytics-based game design. The Zyngas of the world have perfected this idea of looking at how gamers play and post-launch tweaking the system to get the most out of every single user.  At some point you perfect that so much that you lose the heart and the soul and the entertainment value of the game.

We want to take some of the things we’ve done when we were making console games and marry that with the analytics-based approach to game design to create a hybrid that captures all the viral marketing but gives players something new, fresh and really compelling. I see 2012 as embarking on the second wave of social games that will become deeper and more complex. Our goal is to be part of that conversation.

ISG: The cost per install (CPI) can be quite high on Facebook. What’s your plan to gain traction on the platform?

Borrud: Whenever you’re making a game, you’re thinking about user acquisition. The first thing you’ve got to do make a high quality game. If the game is great on a platform like Facebook, the game is going to spread, so we’ve put a lot of thought into how we can create a game that’s unique, different and compelling — something that people want to play and will encourage others to play. Secondly, we’ve raised some funds so we’re going to advertise. We’re going to go directly to our target audience and pull as many players over as we can with the funds that we’ve got. Lastly, the nature of the product that we’re making allows for a lot of sponsorship opportunities, and that allows us to tap into a lot of what’s happening in the world, and by drawing those things into the product, that allows us to reach new groups through their own viral networks, bringing those users into our network as well.

ISG: Sponsorship opportunities?

Borrud: This ties into our concept of tying the real world with the virtual world. As you get closer to the real world, products fit better and make that virtual world feel more real. As we introduce real-time content, we have an opportunity to grab branded products, sponsorship and promotions and infuse them into the world we’re creating. From the gamer’s perspective, it makes the world we’re creating more alive and more like what they see when they walk out the door.  For sponsors it means deep integration, but not in a forced way like what’s happening in some games now.

ISG: We know you and the other founders have a lot of console experience – how are you applying that experience to social games?

Borrud: We’re trying to avoid being a hardcore product for a small group of people. We want to draw on light RPG elements but it’s from a point of making the game more compelling. We’re surprised that in social games there’s not a lot of character-based games. What we’re talking about is how to get closer to the character and how to add more customization to it so it’s even more unique. It happened in traditional gaming and I think it’s going to happen again in social gaming.

The last thing I want to do is attack a model that’s done incredibly well, but I think there’s an opportunity to take customization even further. There’s a difference between customizing my personal space and building customization around a character. A character is much more personal.

ISG: You’ve also mentioned user generated content, which isn’t something you see all that often in social games. How will this work?

Borrud: This is a cornerstone of what we’re trying to do. Facebook is user generated content and we think the game should be the exact same thing. This has been done before in console and open world games, and we want to give the player those tools so they create something new that they want to share. User generated content will be a reflection of the player into every game we make, not just our first game.

ISG: How do you plan to integrate real-time content into a social game?

Borrud: This is an opportunity we haven’t really had in traditional games, but [with Facebook] we’re communicating with the player constantly. Companies are constantly tweaking their games and we looked at this as an opportunity not only to refine the gameplay dynamic, but to start to blur the lines between what is happening in the real world versus what is happening in the virtual world. Real-time content means something’s just happened in the real world — how can that be reflected tomorrow in the game? That’s an opportunity to do something unique and different and to get players to come back to see how the game and how their character in the game is reacting to it. We’re talking about a “ripped from the headlines” feel to the game.

ISG: That reminds us of sci-fi stories, where you have characters who play online games and the characters they play become extensions of their personality and their real lives.

Borrud: That’s exactly right. People have dabbled in this, but with this audience and Facebook and everything being tweaked post release we saw it as an opportunity to bring the real world into a virtual world.

ISG: Obviously you’re focusing on Facebook, but what are your plans for other platforms?

Borrud: Facebook is a platform for us in the same way the Xbox and the PC are platforms. We develop our games as much as we can to be platform agnostic so it can move from Facebook to Google+ to an iPad with a little bit of work but without having to re-write the whole system. That said, Facebook is the predominant platform and that’s our clear number one focus. It’s got a huge number of users, a great infrastructure, a low barrier of entry and great viral components.

ISG: You mentioned iPads — are you planning to be cross platform at some point?

Borrud: You can’t just port a game over and have it be as successful. You need to think about the platform, the play styles and the play habits of people and design the game in such a way that it enhances the experience and makes sense on the platform. That’s absolutely in our plans for the future, but for a launch strategy, we’re clearly focused on Facebook.

Top Social Games Get Affectionate For Valentine’s Day

One of the biggest commercial holidays of the year is here and social games aren’t going to be left out of the loop. A number of developers are up to something special for Valentine’s Day, so we decided to take a look at some of the top titles.

Here is our roundup of what the top social games on Facebook are doing for the annual day of love, based on their monthly active user rankings on our tracking service, AppData.

CityVille1. CityVille — The largest title on Facebook with nearly 96.3 million MAU, Zynga‘s CityVille is certainly involved in to the Valentine’s scene. However, all that is currently offered, of significance, are some special “Valentine’s Roses” at the cost of five Cash (virtual currency): the vibrantly colored flora does offer significant amounts of Goods for players that plant them.

However, players, at one point, could also create custom virtual cards to send to friends, as Games.com notes. Though the feature appears to no longer be available, users could receive these cards, which would grant them access to various Valentine-themed items. Additionally, to help with the purchases, offers to earn extra City Cash have also been tied to some useful real purchases including savings from ProFlowers and some nifty chocolate covered strawberries from Shari’s Berries.

[image via  Games.com]

FarmVille2. FarmVille — Even if FarmVille is now the second-largest title on Facebook, its veteran team has filled it with a tremendous variety of Valentine’s gifts and goods. Aside from the ability to gift unique Valentine items once a day, for 12 days, for a special bonus prize (all of which can be bought with virtual currency), players may have also noticed a curious new marketing mechanic. Users can actually visit a pre-designed farm that allows them to see all of the new items on display (think furniture showroom) and purchase them with a mere click.

Also of interest, FarmVille is using the special gifted of currency of “Valentines” sent via a special item and uses them to purchase other special goods; the same way it did with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Additionally, for those that might not be into the whole “lovey-dovey” element of the holiday, the game also offers some darker items such as the Black Cherry Horse, Broken Heart Home, or Black Rose Arch. To top it all off, this past weekend, players could purchase Farm Cash at a 20% discount. Also, players can also participate in offers from ProFlowers (as a note, the ProFlowers offer is available for most of the Zynga games) here as well.

3. Texas HoldEm Poker — Sadly, the third-largest game on Facebook, Texas HoldEm (Zynga) Poker, had nothing special for Valentine’s Day that we saw.

FrontierVille4. FrontierVille — FrontierVille actually had one of the more interesting Valentine’s Day mechanics. What better way to get into the holiday then let players play a digital Cupid. Zynga actually incorporated a series of special Valentine’s missions to participate in, but of particular interest are those involving the “Kissing Tree” and a little matchmaking. Building the tree with help from friends, players can actually choose the romantic outcome of the love triangle between the characters of Hank, Fanny Wildcat, and Bess, pairing any two together. After the pairing, extra missions unlocked for bonus experience, coin, and so on.

5. Cafe World — Cafe World actually got into the contests this year with its Valentine’s Day Sweepstakes. Yes, the game has Valentine-themed virtual goods, but along with this, players can participate in an eight part mission series in order to get two characters – “Espresso Joe” and “Lisa Latte” – together. Once completed, either through the help of friends or virtual currency, players are eligible to win some pretty hefty prizes including a Tiffany’s Pendant, an iPad, an iPod Touch, or 50 “Instant Thymes.”

Mafia Wars6. Mafia Wars — Love happens in the criminal underworld too. The Valentine’s implementation here isn’t as involved as the virtual space-oriented Zynga titles, but Mafia Wars players can participate in the mission “Love Is Hard to Find.” By performing jobs, picking fights, robbing players, or gifting, users have a chance to find “Broken Hearts” which can be redeemed for special Valentine-themed armaments.

7. Millionaire City — Though the popular Digital Chocolate title, Millionaire City doesn’t seem to have any direct Valentine influence, we did notice some special offers directly tied to real-world Valentine’s Day gifts. One such offer stems from FTD Flowers in which players can purchase flowers at 20% off and earn 90 Millionaire Gold while doing so.

Treasure Isle8. Treasure Isle — Yes, Valentine virtual goods and gifts are here as well. As it has in past holidays, Treasure Isle comes with some special quests for players to complete. For the most part, it is more of the same, meaning that players collect items from friends, and get help on a daily basis to build or train X, Y, Z (this time a Kissing Booth to collect Valentines from friends that exchange for virtual items and Cupid Monkey). But now there’s a little extra incentive. Players that complete all of the Valentine’s Day tasks will be entered to win 15,000 in the virtual currency, Island Cash.

9. Pet Society — Playfish has entered into the Valentine’s spirit with a range of specially themed items in Pet Society; but, better than that, users can also create some very nice Valentine video cards. Played against a cute, pre-made video, users can input their own messages and send them to their friends. Not enough for you? Well, until the 15th, there is a special offer dubbed “From Playfish With Love” offering 50% extra free Playfish Cash with virtual currency purchases. Furthermore, Playfish has special virtual currency earning offers from ProFlowers, Shari’s Berries, and one extra, Red Envelope. Unfortunately, while the latter offers more unique gifts (aside from candies and flowers), there is no special discounts involved with this offer.

Bejeweled Blitz10. Bejeweled Blitz — Though one probably wouldn’t expect it due to the nature of the game, PopCap‘s Bejeweled Blitz actually did have some Valentine’s implementation. By mousing over a friend that plays, users can hit the “Jabber” button and create simple e-cards to send and share.

11. Ravenwood Fair — You can bet that the LOLapps game Ravenwood Fair is hosting some specials for Valentine’s with a handful of decorations, games, and characters. In terms of the former, players can purchase, for Facebook Credits, items such as the Tunnel of Love, and even “try” it by placing it in their virtual space for a few minutes just to see how it looks. In addition to this, users can buy a handful of new characters to enthrall their guests including Cupid, Eros, and the goddess of love herself, Aphrodite.

It Girl12. It Girl — If you’re looking for something to make him blush, ladies, It Girl from CrowdStar, is the way to go for Valentine’s Day. Though it is technically still virtual goods, the virtual clothing from this game looks straight out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog, as it includes a collection of sultry lingerie and dresses.

Regardless, if this isn’t your style, it’s also possible to participate in a series of Valentine-oriented quests in order to earn a special dress, or if you’ve aquired a digital boyfriend in game (though doesn’t have to be), you can take part in the “7 Days of Kisses.” By digitally kissing a guy each day, from the 8th to the 14th, players could earn a sexy Cupid outfit; complete with wings. If you missed it, you can always make the purchase with Facebook Credits.

13. MindJolt Games — It’s not much of a direct implementation, but MindJolt Games, from MindJolt, has some minor Valentine’s addition in the form of a few themed games as part of its collection. Such titles includes games like Dodge Cupid and My Secret Valentine.

Happy Aquarium14. Happy Aquarium — CrowdStar’s Happy Aquarium is a bit less involved than It Girl, but it isn’t without its feelings of love. This fishy title comes with a number of love-themed animals, decor, and backgrounds for all your Valentine’s needs. Most cost virtual currency or Facebook Credits, but no need to worry, as offers from some of the noted real-world businesses are also available (ProFlowers, Shari’s Berries, etc.) so players can get some of these items, and possibly get out of the dog house if they haven’t bought a gift for that special someone yet.

In addition to this, there are specials for 20% off Love Potions today, that allow for users’ fish to mate more than once a day. All they need now is a little Barry White.

Car Town15. Car Town — Cie Games didn’t do anything noticeable for Valentine’s Day in Car Town, but they did implement some special Valentine offers in order to earn virtual currency. Along with the other noted offers in previously mentioned games, Car Town also incorporated savings on Ghiradelli chocolates.

16. Restaurant City — You’d better believe Playfish has Valentine’s spread throughout Restaurant City. As with Pet Society, the game offers 50% extra Playfish Cash with its “From Playfish with Love” offer,  but in addition to this, provides a whole myriad of new Valentine’s Challenges (which require friends to gift candy hearts to one another), special decorative items, and recipes (which seem to be earned via the gifted candy). As an added bonus, Restaurant City is having a “Clearance Sale” with many of their premium items, including the Valentine’s ones, costing as little as 1 Playfish Cash.

PetVille17. PetVille — As far as PetVille goes, the specials are a little basic, consisting of a large collection of Valentine-themed virtual items costing either in-game or virtual currency. That said, there’s also a nice added feature to create a personal bouquet of flowers and share it with friends. Nevertheless, though it fits well with the holiday, this does not necessarily feel specific to Valentine’s Day. Having the flowers, will attract a “Golden Butterfly” that will give coins daily.

18. Games — Despite being a meta-app comprised of many smaller games, GSN‘s Games title is all alone this Valentine’s Day.

19. Crime City – Looks like Funzio has robbed Crime City of love this year as it has no Valentine’s specials of notice.

Mall World20. Mall World — It Girl predecessor, Mall World, from 50 Cubes is throwing in its lot with Valentine’s Day in a similar fashion, offering its female player base a multitude of themed items, including its own selection of spicy lingerie and dresses for the ladies. Moreover, this app too is offering virtual currency by making use of ProFlowers specials. Oh, and if players are looking to send out some valentines of their own, Mall World also has a nice greeting card creator so users can send them off to all of their friends.

Turpitude Design Tries Giving Away Virtual Currency With Wedding Street on Facebook

Turpitude Design may be a newcomer to Facebook, but its studio members have been on the gaming scene since, well, there has been a scene to be had. Most notable among this small, 10-member team is Stieg Hedlund, creator of such seminal titles as Diablo II and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon.  At first glance, its new title Wedding Street feels like quite a departure from Hedlund’s previous endeavors, but a closer look shows the same originality that have distinguished his previous titles.

Wedding Planner might have been a more apt title for the mix of wedding-related tasks: players will variously be a baker, seamstress, reception organizer, and florist (calligrapher to come). As the planner, players will choose up to five weddings to manage.

Each wedding has five characteristics to consider: length, budget, theme, color, and style. The length determines how long the player has to complete the wedding (one, three, or five days) and how many activities must be completed, as shorter weddings have fewer activities. Budget determines how much the player can spend on the wedding. An experienced player quickly learns that a big budget can just as detrimental as a small budget. The bride will become unhappy when a budget is woefully underspent, and some tastes are just difficult to spend.

Theme, color and style determine what the wedding will look like, and a player’s breadth of selection in each will come into consideration when choosing a wedding (or mission). Themes range from Rock’n’Roll, to Casablanca, to roses. Brides have a preferred color, but a range within that color is available – multiple reds, greens, neutrals, or browns. Styles are less specific but no less important, including laid-back, traditional, chic, eclectic, and formal.

The result of this is one of two of Weddings Street’s unique strengths: a tremendous capacity for user-generated content. Using only the default options for shape, a single pattern, one type of edging, one decoration, and a single topper, there are more than 53 billion combinations. Floral bouquets become even more unique as flower placement is freeform, creating a 3D presentation on a 2D frame.

Wedding Streets’ virtual currency system is its second strength. The basic outline looks pretty standard. Additional options for each creation must be purchased with the in-game currency, Honeys. Temporary boosts and permanent upgrades are available for each shop to speed the process, reduce costs, or increase the happiness of the couple. A single job – one cake, one dress – can be sped up and completed for two honeys regardless of whether 14 hours or 14 minutes remain, or all outstanding jobs can be completed for 20 Honeys.

The dependency on premium currency is moderated by the ability for players to earn an unlimited quantity of Honeys each day, beginning with sending coffee to friends. Coffee, of which 22 can be earned per day, speeds up jobs by 20 minutes each, while creating items for friends to use in weddings or to sell in shops earns an additional 22 Honeys per day. Sending friends wedding trivia from throughout the world can earn an unlimited amount of currency. Finally, friends can request that a help completing a wedding once per day; each request earns another honey. The only limitation is that no more than five Honeys per friend can be part of the player’s currency pool at any time – and the “friend” Honeys are spent first.

When asked about the monetization design, Hedlund remarked, “We wanted players to work together so we built in a reward system to encourage it. This allows payers access to a sort of middle-tier of virtual goods. Though it may appear that we are giving away items and losing money, we’ve found that players are more willing to purchase currency.  Research leads us to believe we have a really high monetization rate, approximately three times the norm.”

In other words, impatience and a need to use more expensive items to meet the criteria of a larger variety of weddings encourages the player to purchase the currency.

Some features — upgrades, new design options, and some cosmetic options for the shops — cost only Honeys. On the other hand, boosts and shop managers require the use of coin, which is difficult to obtain in significant quantities without exceptional micro-management. The only way to “purchase” coin is to trade 300 Honeys for 25,000 coin.

A last important component of Wedding Street is sharing. “When it comes to UGC, we think along the lines of ‘make and share’ and our goal was to make it possible for players to create items they wanted show off to their friends,” says Hedlund. “The standard Facebook icon is tiny, and some people don’t want to give permissions to a new game; we wanted people to be able to show their creations from the game without going to the game.”

A lot of care and attention went into the design of Wedding Street. For example, the cityscape changes from day to night with the player’s time zone; the tutorial guide changes clothes periodically; and care was taken to include wedding traditions from throughout the world. But it’s the ability to be creative in a way not previously available as well as a monetization system that truly sets Wedding Street apart.

Ngmoco Expands its “We” Franchise with We Doodle

We DoodleRecently acquired mobile and social developer Ngmoco is expanding its “We” series this week with a new release called We Doodle for both the iPhone and iPad. A Pictionary-style game, the release follows on the heels of We City, but brings a less common genre of game to the Apple platforms.

Some mobile gamers may remember the Pictionary premise was used by Charadium, another game published by ngmoco. We Doodle is definitely an improvement on the concept (and according to the folks over at Slide-to-Play, a direct upgrade from Charadium, though that title still appears to be available for iPhone) and while the core game-play is the same, We Doodle comes with stronger monetization opportunities and plenty of extra enhancements.

Because We Doodle is so similar to Charadium, we took a look at the iPad version, which was not available for Charadium — though besides providing much more room to create, the iPad rendition isn’t significantly different from the iPhone version. In either, you’re given something to draw and you sketch it with your finger while other players try to guess what it is before time runs out.

Live PlayWe Doodle improves on social play from Charadium with both synchronous and asynchronous game play. You are still able to join games with random people — similar to the classic Pictionary game. However, Ngmoco has also incorporated a turn based system with no time limit.

Now, you can now join turn-based games with both random players and friends from within the Plus+ network, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. The app informs you whether it is your turn to draw or guess, so you can play for a few minutes at a time at  your convenience.

Beyond the basic Pictionary rules and new, turn-based play, ngmoco included some bonuses in an in-game store. As you play, you earn experience towards levels and coins. Based on level, you can purchase items to “improve” your drawing skills.

StencilsYou can buy different types of brushes, ink colors, backgrounds and stencils. These not only make the game easier for the artist, thus easing the core play mechanic, but really let you get creative and digitally finger paint. Stencils consist of houses, people, trees and various shapes, but before you start thinking that this takes away from the Pictionary concept, don’t worry. You’ll still be tasked with drawing words as shapeless as ever. For example, how do you draw autumn?

Many of the items require high levels and many more an almost absurd amount of coin. You have to either fork out real cash for some tools, or play for quite a long time.

Stencils or not, many people still have little artistic talent, so the game also has a nice new feature called “Doodle Assist.” Long story short, it’s an optional mechanic that automatically improves the quality of your work. It cleans up lines and curves and even does a little bit of shading here and there. It’s not perfect, but it still does a nice job improving scribbly drawings.

Doodle AssistThe number one complaint from virtually everyone playing We Doodle is the intrusive presence of ads. As a free-to-play title, advertising is understandable, but these aren’t out-of-the way banners. They are giant, full-blown ads that pop up between turns and sit there for a long time before you can skip them. Oh, and the “skip” button is conveniently placed right below the button to show more about the ad — so, have fun if you have big fingers.

Other than the ads, We Doodle doesn’t have significant flaws. Even with the advertisements, it’s a fun game to play, and a good upgrade from Charadium, which was high quality to begin with. That in mind, between the iPhone and iPad versions, the iPad lends itself much better to this kind of game — the bigger canvas really improves the experience.

How ZipZapPlay Saved Itself With a Hit Facebook Game

[Curt Bererton is the CEO and co-founder, with Mathilde Pignol, of social game developer ZipZapPlay. Their company recently came to prominence with a social game called Baking Life, a bakery sim that grew to a peak of 6.7 million monthly active users in just three months.

The below story is an "as told to" monologue, drawn from a recent Inside Social Games interview with Bererton.]

ZipZapPlay started up in late 2007 to build PlayCrafter, which is still active. The short and slightly sad story about PlayCrafter is that it’s one of the better, if not the best game creation platforms that has been made. The idea was to make it as easy to create a game as it is to write a book. If Mozart needed to write a book, code a game and create music all at once, you wouldn’t have these great masterpieces. Game design is like that because you need to know multiple fields.

But the core flaw for PlayCrafter was the business model and the youth of the target audience, which inherently meant they didn’t monetize as well. It broke our hearts a bit that it didn’t totally take off and make us a bunch of money, because that meant we had to leave it behind and move on to another space.

So to some extent that was the origin – starting with something very hard and learning some hard business lessons. In retrospect it was our own naivete to assume we could do PlayCrafter when there wasn’t an industry around that concept. LittleBigPlanet should have been a sign for us to stop sooner. That was supposed to be the platform example, but its sales were not as high as Sony had hoped.

When we started to look at Facebook, the first game we built was called Cat’s Cove, in August 2009. You had these cat pirates, and they would attack each other in turn-based combat. Really the point was, we’re gonna build this Facebook game and get it out the door really fast, because we know we’re gonna screw it up. When we built that game it was about learning technology, what processes worked and what didn’t and doing a lot of split tests.

We did a lot of things wrong there. But the one thing we learned from PlayCrafter after working on it for so long, was if it’s not working out, you need to kill things and move on. And even at that time, the money was getting tighter. Lack of money is a significant motivator.

After Cat’s Cove we started seeing the world in a different way, which now is part of how we think. There’s a spectrum from pure innovation to low-risk products. I’d say PlayCrafter was way over on the hisk risk side, just short of crazy indie games. Zynga is on the other side — they almost exclusively place smart bets now, and they clearly have a recipe that works. Baking Life is more on the conservative end of the spectrum. Part of the reason was that we needed a win, otherwise we were going to sell the company.

But we always need to do something new that hasn’t been done before — it’s part of our DNA. So how do you balance the risk without dying? Baking Life, we felt, was a good compromise. We did a bunch of testing of various themes. Baking did fairly well, and we knew Restaurant City and Cafe World had done fairly well. So we changed the core mechanic to be more of a retail store with cashiers and customers that waited in front of them, and we did our new viral design based on user-generated content. Those things combined to make what we felt was a relatively smart bet.

We also knew that baking was popular outside this space, but hadn’t been done on Facebook (at least to our knowledge). Even if you think about Hollywood blockbusters, if it’s similar but different in some way, people will still like the next blockbuster. To use a hardcore gaming metaphor, people loved Quake, but then also loved Halo and Half Life. We’ll be adding new things based on successful core pieces.

What I hope to see is us moving towards more and more innovation, but as a small company, if we start way over here in crazy town, we might be successful, or we might crash and burn. I believe the best approach is to build revenue with smart bets and then use that revenue to fund the cool innovative ideas that could change the way social games are made and experienced.

Having built several things before, we knew fairly quickly, based on the metrics, that Baking Life would probably do pretty well. We didn’t know that it was going to do as well as it did. I like to believe that when you’re making any game, there’s a combination of skill and luck. So I think there was a fair amount of skill because of what we’d learned from previous games, but there was some luck as well. Who knows, maybe the retail store mechanic could have been boring and people wouldn’t have liked it at all, or creating cupcakes and baking wouldn’t be interesting or fun.

It did work out pretty well, and looking at our metrics, we’d already worked out a process by which we could improve them. Are people finishing the tutorial? If not, where are they dropping off? There’s a general philosophy — we look at metrics a lot, but don’t make decisions solely off them. They should influence design, but not drive the design, because you’ll end only being able to optimize or split test your way up to a certain point, past which you can’t make a big step over to a new idea.

Why is Baking Life successful? The art style, people like to bake, a solid tech stack, tasty cupcakes — there are a lot of pieces that came together to make it popular, and a lot of lessons that came back on what did and didn’t work about the tutorial, architecture, etc. With features like the CupCake Creator, we were trying to bring a little bit of our user-generated content flavor to something we think is important in the social space: the viral aspect, making something more directly meaningful to the person you’re sending it to. We like that idea, that UGC can be powerful, but we learned some hard lessons about how not to do it early on. Now we still like to include that flavor, but you can’t make the whole thing about it.

We could have a 10 hour conversation on what did and didn’t work. One thing people underestimate is that social games look simple, but they’re actually pretty hard. On the technical side alone, if you’re not moving fast you’ll lose users to people like Zynga, who have it down. We think the production values are only going to go up, and that’s where we want to be.

The success was to some extent a pleasant surprise, and we didn’t have a lot of money, so we didn’t have a big team to start chugging away on the next game. The big problem was getting the right people in place, and we set a pretty high bar for who we hired. If we were another company, we’d be at 30 people right now. Instead we’re 10, and may be 12 or 13 soon. We set a high bar not just for skill, but for personality.

Our philosophy is that we aren’t looking for prima donnas or drama queens, just smart and cool people who love games and get things done. Turns out this combination is pretty hard to find. Probably the most significant factor in our success is the people I work with: my co-founder Mathilde and our awesome team of great people. Having fun, highly skilled people without egos working together means you can move quickly without getting bogged down in drama or politics. Speed is the probably the most important factor in the success in almost any business, and this is doubly true in social games. I’m just happy to go to work every day and make great games happen.

Now that we have the revenue, we’re hiring. With social games you can’t just let the ball drop – we’ve been down a bit lately because we’ve focused on hiring, but we’re getting good people on board and getting up to speed quickly and getting to where the next game can pick up more steam.

The other thing is that it’s much easier to recruit technical people because there’s often a right answer. Designers and producers are harder, mostly because there isn’t a “right answer” you can test them for, rather you have to look for great organization and deep understanding of design. But at the end of the day, it has to be a company that I would want to work at too. I didn’t put in three years of startup level effort to hate coming into work.

I also know how much we’re making, so even if you look at some of the acquisition prices in terms of dollars per MAU or DAU, Playdom got a pretty nice number, but to some extent we know that’s based on real revenue. At minimum, a social game should have half a cent per DAU, up to 10 cents per DAU or higher.

If we can show that we aren’t a one-hit wonder, I’d say our story is, we tried one thing and it totally didn’t work, learned from our mistakes, tried another and it worked better and kept on trying and learning until we got something pretty great. We’ve learned a lot that makes me think that the probability of doing it again is much better now than it ever was before. Eric Ries is on our board of advisors and influenced us a lot with his ideas of a lean startup, although we think about a minimum viable game instead of a minimum viable product.

It’s about design know-how and knowing what features you can cut while still leaving something appealing to players. Keeping only the core features allows you to build and test your game with the real market as fast as possible, the beauty of social gaming (and the online space in general) is that you can always change it later via smart design or smart A/B testing.

I think at the end of the day, if you know what you’re doing, you can make something successful on Facebook. It’s still an order of magnitude better than other platforms for getting your game in front of a large audience and its great communication channels.

Maybe we’re a counter-example, but we built and maintained Baking Life with just six people up until the last few months. At least a few small companies have figured out how to do it. Either they got really lucky, or they figured something out.

London Goes to Hell-In-A-Hand-Basket with Echo Bazaar on Twitter

Echo BazaarIt has been some time since we looked at anything making use of Twitter as a social gaming platform, but the browser-based role-playing title Echo Bazaar is doing just that. Developed by London-based Failbetter Games the title first got our attention when it was announced that it would be coming to Facebook. It doesn’t look to have done so yet, but the browser-based app is still available through Twitter login credentials.

Though it is a role-playing game, Echo Bazaar shares little in common with other social titles of the genre. While many found on networks such as Facebook do have story, few have the level of storytelling that Echo brings to the table. Built in a choose-your-own-adventure style it’s a game that evolves based on player choices, allowing them to tailor their virtual selves around more than just attack power, defense, and mafia size.

The premise of the game is an alternative history type of concept where players find themselves in a faux-Victorian London that is all sorts of messed up. A mile beneath the earth, the world is dark, bizarre, and full of strange people and creatures including hedonists, devils, and squid-men. Oh, and the player starts off in prison.

Choose Your PathThis is where the game begins taking shape, as players are given choices to make their escape using Dangerous, Persuasive, Shadowy, or Watchful abilities. These become the primary character stats in the game, and based on what the player chooses, different story paths will unfold.

Each time a path unlocks, different tasks will become available and grant experience towards a particular stat. Typically, this is the stat(s) that the player is best at, meaning that if they initially chose the Shadowy path, more of these will be presented. As the story advances, more advanced story tasks will appear as a skill is leveled. However, these are unlocked with a minimum required level of a skill, so the lower it is, the greater the chance of failure, forcing the player to skill up through the repetition of older, repeatable tasks.

What makes failing costly is that the player can only perform 10 actions at any given time. This works like energy in mafia-style RPGs, and regenerates over time, but only so many, in total, can be done in any 24 hour period. When a task is failed, it seems that players garner less reward, but the big detriment is not being able to progress in the story.

Another element of the game that uses up actions are what are dubbed “Opportunity Cards.” Every couple of minutes, new cards are added to a deck. Interestingly enough, these may not have much to do with the main plot line, so they are more along the lines of side quests. However, many have unique rewards that one may not find in the story as well as opportunities to level up different skill sets.

Shadowy TasksRewards (items) in general, earned through both opportunities and story, are quite important. There are many situations in the story where the player must accomplish some specific task(s) in order to reach new chapters (so-to-speak) such as finding a home. What is curious is that there are different means of doing so. If one is Shadowy, there are spy-like tasks to find information and pay bribes. High Persuasive skills might be used to  convince someone to let them stay in their home. Or, if money is no object, then a direct purchase may be in order.

Unfortunately, cash is a bit tough to come by. The game isn’t completely clear on how to earn it, but the main currency is called Echos. The only evident way to earn it is through selling tangible items one finds in the world, but most, at least early on, only sell for a fraction of an Echo, called Pennies. All the same, it is needed to buy new equipment and items that can enhance the various skill sets of the player.

As for social elements, these are tied directly into both the story and Twitter. With each task, a new aspect of the story is unlocked and players can Echo the short “storylet” on their feed. What is more interesting, is any Twitter friends that plays can have their story viewed in-game as well. Other than that, the sharing of stories doesn’t do much. However, it does refill one’s energy once a day.

MysteriesThe other social mechanic is a battle system called “The Game of Knife & Candle.” Players have to actually sign up for it to attack other users or be attacked themselves, but it is not recommended for new players. The reason is that the game states that the Dangerous skill is the most important for it and should be at least at level 25. This does create a bit of an issue for some players though, as if they choose a different skill set in the story, it can be a bit difficult to raise this statistic quickly, leaving them to rely on randomly drawn opportunity cards most of the time.

The last element worth mentioning is a pretty cool Mysteries section that has a series of questions about the storyline. Should the player input the right answer, they could win some virtual currency called Fate, that is used for little things like refilling actions or getting more opportunity cards. It seems that they are limited in time (more are likely released on a regular basis), so it’s prudent to answer as soon as possible. What’s nice, though, is that users can see what other players think the answer might be as well.

Overall, Echo Bazaar is a curious little title, with a more interesting story to it than most browser-based RPGs. Its best elements are the more engrossing element of choosing one’s own story and customizing it based on a specific skill set. At the same time, however, choosing certain skill sets can slow the player down in their ability to effectively participate in the battle system, though at the very least they still have the social aspect of seeing friends’ stories and what they are doing. It’s probably not a game for everyone, as many social RPG players do like the player versus player aspect, and here, it just feels overshadowed. Regardless, if one is an advocate of story, then Echo Bazaar is worth a look; with any luck, it that will appear on Facebook sooner, rather than later.

A Look at Depict 1.6 on the iPhone

DepictThough Depict was released on the iPhone back in December by MakeShift Games, the game has shown staying power, recently being recognized as an OpenFeint Gold game, meaning that it’s a title showing “exceptional” uses of OpenFeint’s social features.

Depict is essentially a slight variation of Pictionary, in which players try to guess words based on each other’s drawings. Instead of typing in random answers, Depict takes a multiple-choice approach, thus alleviating the hopelessness of figuring out a bad drawing. That’s a good thing, since the iPhone itself is a bit clunky to draw on, with a setup similar to the pencil tool in Microsoft Paint.

The game comes with two major play modes, consisting of Classic and Lightning game-types with limited time rounds. The former is the most like Pictionary in that players use their finger to draw a random object using a simple pencil tool and a basic palette of colors. On the other side, the guessers are granted a handful of possible answers of what the drawer could be drawing and must select the correct one. Sometimes they might be easy, like a “blue whale,” while other times they may become more challenging with phrases like “half full.”

GuessingThe winner is the person who scores the highest number of points by the end of the game, with the drawer earning one point for drawing and one more for the total number of points earned by the guessers. The guessers earn one point for guessing correctly and one extra for each other guesser they beat to the punch (be aware that players get one guess).

As players are playing, each drawing appears to be saved and can be rated by the users in the game from one to five stars. These drawings are then used again in the Lightning mode of play which consists of only the guessers. Again, users can rate drawings here too, but they never actually draw.

In each mode, there are also three different ways to start a game. If one is looking for a quick fix, they can enter a Quickmatch and play with random individuals, or invite OpenFeint friends to join in a game. Of course, if the user isn’t feeling particularly social, they can always not invite friends to play, and opt for a simple solo game.

Adding FriendsSince Depict is a game that utilizes user generated content, which obviously comes with a level of anonymity, there is always the concern of obscene and offensive content. It goes without saying, that if one delves into random matches, this is an inevitable eventuality. All the same, users do get the ability to police themselves by being able to “blow the whistle” (literally, it’s a whistle button) on any user who is drawing something offensive.

Curiously, the ban of drawing offensive content is actually a written rule in the game. However, this runs strictly on the honor system. The same goes with another rule that states that users cannot use letters or numbers while drawing. Since these are drawings, the system cannot identify them as such, so on some of the harder ones like “oval,” many people still just draw the oval then write “oval” when people don’t get it. In cases like this, breaking the rule may be justified, but it kills the game when people do it for something easier, like a fish. Still, there weren’t a terribly high number of these situations.

Other social elements worth mentioning are the integration of a handful of achievements and leaderboards through OpenFeint. Interestingly enough, Depict also gives players customizable avatars to play and identify themselves with. It’s not so much like traditional avatars (e.g. a person), but players actually get to draw them themselves. Moreover, they can draw a good number of them to pick and choose from as well.

Depict AvatarSadly, since Depict is basically Paint, the level of artistic value is very low. Everything has a pixelated look, which will be hit or miss with many potential players. The real complaint is that it’s a bit tough to draw well on the iPhone with your finger, as it is hard to see what you’re doing on such a small space (this is especially bad if you happen to have big fingers). Thankfully, the game also works on the iPad, so the latter may be a better choice.

Overall, Depict is a pretty nice social game for the iDevice family. It’s simple enough to be fun, and is very enjoyable if you have multiple friends playing with you. Of course, if you don’t have friends with an iDevice, the Quickmatches are an almost equally good way to have some fun. All the same, the fact that it does use user generated content does mean it runs the risk of housing offensive content, leaving users on the honor system to report it, and hopefully, clean it up. Nevertheless, it’s a risk coupled with anything that uses the internet, and all in all, Depict is a good title to kill some time with.

Dumping Twitter Friends with iPhone App Chump Dump

Chump DumpThere have only been a few games made for Twitter, and they haven’t gotten far. There was the iPhone app, Tweet Defense, and before that, the re-release of the World of Blood games back in summer of 2009. Now, a group called Big Kitty Labs is taking a rather… different… approach to utilizing the social network in its new iPhone and Android game, Chump Dump!

Let’s face it, a wide margin of social networking users – be they Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter – have more friends than they can handle. Thousands. It’s because most social games create an added benefit to having more friends that play with you (e.g. Mafia Wars). But this smartphone app rewards the player for actually dropping those superfluous “friends.”

The game can be best described as a lottery type of game with a bit of user-generated content mixed in. When users log in, the app presents them with a daily lottery – a “winner,” as it were, among the user’s “friends.” Once they’ve been pulled up, Chump Dump! digs through about a month’s worth of tweets and activities this person has been up to. This includes information such as whether or not they follow the user, how many times they’ve replied to them, number of tweets, followers, and followies, etc.

Twitter DataFrom here, the player has two choices to make: Save or Dump! Should the user Dump the individual, they will earn a set amount of points, dubbed “Karma.” If they save them, they’ll still earn Karma, but it will be a lesser amount. Additionally, once a dumping has occurred, the player gets an opportunity to earn additional Karma by giving a reason.

This is, obviously, the user-generated element of the game, and comes off as amusing (some of the time). Granted, as with all user-generated content, a good deal of it is likely pretty lame, but a few reasons are pretty good. As of July 12th, in fact, Big Kitty Labs actually posted the Top 5 reasons, which includes “Dude, it’s my BOSS!” Yeah…. In most cases, that may not be a good one to keep.

Obviously, this is the premise behind the Chump Dump’s other major social mechanic: leaderboards. Really, that’s where the user’s drive in playing comes from. That said, there is the concern of getting fewer points if you save a person. What if said person is an actual friend? Moreover, with purchasable vouchers that let users Save or Dump more than one person a day, it’s easy to earn more points more quickly.

Regardless, while the concept is quite creative, it doesn’t seem entertaining enough to warrant the noted virtual goods purchases (thus the previous concern is more or less moot); which is why the iPhone app has advertisements and the Android version, ChumpDump Unlimited is $1.99.

DumpedIf users do wish to earn extra points, for free, however, they can pick up dumped individuals in the form of “adoption.” Granted, it is a bit counterintuitive to the app’s overall premise, but the concept is kind of funny. It’s almost like a hall of shame.

In addition to adoption, Chump Dump! further enhances itself with the addition of badges (achievements). Like most mobile games to make use of this traditional social mechanic, they’re nothing terribly extravagant, but they do add a little something extra in the form of longevity and “bragging rights” as players earn them through methods such as Dumping, Saving, or Adopting a set number of individuals.

As simple as the game may be, Chump Dump! is certainly a wonderful addition for the iPhone if you have a bit too many “friends” on your Twitter account. It makes for a great means to clean things out a bit, and as a free app, it’s certainly worth a download. That said, it’s difficult to judge if the Android price tag is worth it or not. True, $2 isn’t a lot, but if you’re not heavy into Twitter, it’s hardly worth it. In the end, it’s a game with a few kinks, here and there, but one with a truly unique idea behind it. We look forward to what new developments come out of Big Kitty Labs, as well as what curious machinations will utilize Twitter, as a whole, in the future.

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