Inside Social Games

Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft has dominated the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game market for more than four years now. During the course of its existence, the game has exceeded anyone’s expectations. Globally, it has more than 11.5 million users, and is available in five languages.

So can someone overtake Blizzard’s record breaking game? In a recent interview with VideoGamer.com, Ryan Barker, the lead designer of Warcraft forefather Everquest, gives his opinions on the matter.

Barker strongly believes the power of social networking — and Facebook in particular — could create an MMO like no other. One of the issues with Warcraft: As the game’s life goes on, it becomes harder for new players to catch up, which leads to a lack of new accounts. Despite efforts to mitigate the issue, it is a barrier that eventually all MMOs succumb to in their lifetime.

Barker feels an MMO on Facebook could ease this problem.

“Facebook doesn’t care how long you’ve been on Facebook,” says Barker. “You’re still going to go on and be just as much of a part of the community right away at day one and day 200.”

In the end, it’s the community and content that make MMOs so addictive. Granted, any game that has some form of individual character progression will experience similar problems (for example, in traditional MMOs a level 10 player cannot help a level 70 player, and in the reverse, the level 70 has no challenge when helping the level 10). However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It merely requires designers to think of new ideas that are different from the standard experience.

While World of Warcraft is tremendously popular, Barker does not feel that it is untouchable. He feels that a Facebook MMO will take what Blizzard started and run much further.

“At some point someone’s going to do an MMO that really caters to that group [Facebook users],” he says. “And [they are] going to have a billion subscribers or whatever.”

An MMO on par with Warcraft, Everquest, or an older title like Ultima Online that makes use of Facebook could raise the bar in the market and surpass Blizzard.

Presentation still matters, however. The aforementioned games have an incredible style to them, both in terms of game play and visual effects. That said,  we do not expect any Facebook games currently available to be a WoW-killer just yet.

Thus far, some of the highest quality games have come from Playfish, Large Animal Games, and a few others. They all lack the production value needed to make Barker’s theories a reality. This isn’t to say it will not happen in the future, but we will likely have to wait awhile.

Internet security has always been a major issue for e-commerce. Often, it feels like it’s getting worse, as more and more hackers wage digital war on both organizations and individuals. Many users remain unprepared; they see hacking as something that will never happen to them.

According to an article by the Washington Post, the use of virtual goods is one of the highest security risks out there. In fact, the Post calls virtual goods one of “the most sought-after commodities in the general hacking scene.”

It’s true that there are some significant security challenges at hand for virtual goods merchants. Scores of malware is in use to acquire digital goods unscrupulously. Many hackers can acquire your passwords, license keys, user names, and other pieces of important data. Attacks have been built for thousands of different online games. The illicit acquisition of virtual goods and accounts has turned into a “multi-billion dollar market.”

While merchants are always fighting to preserve the integrity of their virtual economies and currencies, some do look the other way when it comes to how the goods were acquired. The recent court case that came out of China earlier this month serves as an example. A man was sentenced to three years in prison for the extortion of approximately $15,000 in virtual goods. If he hadn’t been caught, those goods most likely would have been resold.

Despite the danger, the situation could improve in the future with better user education. Many people lack firewalls, updated software, or even virus protection “because they find them inconvenient,” according to the Post. These “internet security best practices” alone are enough to deter most hackers.

As always, consumers should remember best practices like these to keep themselves safe:

• Install and use a firewall.
• Use up to date antivirus software and virus definitions.
• Keep secure and updated passwords.
• Update your computer with the latest security patches.
• Don’t open emails or download files from suspicious or unknown sources.
• Use anti-spyware software.
• Periodically back up your data.

[image via The Washington Post]

Not too long ago former Facebook director of business development Netanel “Net” Jacobsson joined the advisory board at OpenFeint.

For those unfamiliar with the company, OpenFeint is a social gaming toolkit that was launched for the iPhone back in March of this year by Aurora Feint (makers of the mobile MMOs Aurora Feint I & II). The platform is intended to provide iPhone developers with a quick and easy means to enable the sharing to Facebook and Twitter accounts from their mobile applications and games. It also for easy integration of social features such as leaderboards, events, and in-game chat.

However, the company’s recently launched version 2.0 aims at solving the problem of social discovery. As has been stated many times before, distribution has always been a critical issue when it comes to developing on the iPhone due to the thousands of apps currently in circulation. Nonetheless, through use of the social graph, the new OpenFeint will be more similar to the new Facebook application directory in the sense that it will show users what their friends are playing.

As stated by Jacobbsen in his blog, “the developers of Aurora Feint [have] taken every piece of OpenFeint and injected a healthy dose of Friends into it. Every page you look at, from a game’s iPromote page to your achievements list, has a social context.”

Seeing as how Jacobbsen all ready has significant experience talking with partners about Facebook Connect, he should be able to help OpenFeint right off the bat. Facebook Connect has already had significant impact on many iPhone apps and games. Thus far, over 3 million users have joined OpenFeint.

[image via Net Jacobbsen Blog]

Social game developers Hive7 and Socialsoft have paired up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world’s largest breast cancer organization, with their latest Facebook game, Zen Garden.

Akin to many of the other recent titles that have players managing their own unique real estate, Zen Garden however takes a more realistic-looking approach. Users are able to create their own gardens atop rooftops or backyards and tailor them to the themes of their choosing. Currently, the game has over 75 forms of flora and decorations coming from all over the world, with more to be added in time.

Each day, players receive in-game currency, Zennies, to spend within the game’s market. Other game items can be purchased for anywhere from $0.10 to $1.00. Furthermore, the game has added social features allowing players to acquire what are called “birthstones” from their friends and trade those in for various garden products.

As the game is also connected to Komen, donations are also highly encouraged. Players that donate are granted a pink ribbon, which in time will be redeemable for weekly rewards. For now, players are simply featured as Top Contributors.

Thus far, the game has acquired $5,000 from donations towards its $10,000 goal, so it looks like they are off to a good start. Hive7 producer Rob Carroll says Hive7 and Socialsoft “will donate 10% of the retail price of all in-game money sold, with a guaranteed minimum donation of $25,000.00.”

However, we do have a few minor complaints. The placement of items is often awkward, and it can be difficult to select smaller objects when larger ones are about (especially floor tiles next to hedges), as you constantly select and move the bigger ones. A simple locking mechanism would be ideal in this case. Also, you can’t really place items all the way to the edge of the screen, so you end up with some unwanted empty space, but this too is an easy change.

Beyond these usability gripes, the only other issue we found is load time. Every single time you select an item to place it takes a few seconds to have it become movable. In a decorating themed app like this, it should be instant. In an app in which you place dozens, if not hundreds, of items for a design, even three seconds is too long. If you look at the image above, that garden is probably close to 100 items.

Nonetheless, the issues with Zen Garden as a game are more or less nitpicks. It is actually a pretty good looking game. It certainly has a lot of room to grow, but Hive7 and Socialsoft are off to a great start.

Cloning games has been a standard practice in the industry ever since Munch-Man started nibbling at Pac-Man’s power pills. But in the world of social, where the simple game dynamics, and high level development tools lend themselves to rapid cloning, it’s not only easy to make copies of other people’s games, it’s also easier to make different versions of your own games. If you had a popular game about organized crime, for example, you might consider making variants of that game using Vampires, Pirates, Fashion, and Street Racing…

And it isn’t just in the virtual world that you can get away with re-theming. Pepsi Corp owns KFC, Pizza Hut, A&W, and Taco Bell, and there are big savings to be had by dishing up different flavors of fast-food along with your soda. But it isn’t the only way.

Take a look at McDonalds. They may have flirted with some other restaurants here and there, but they also recognize that there’s a clear advantage in dominating the landscape. And if people are looking want a salad, some ice cream, or a decent cup of coffee, then they’ll serve it all under one roof.

The problem is that when you send your audience off to a new experience there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get them to ever come back. Worse yet, there’s no guarantee that they’ll even get to your new experience at all, especially as the other guys clones may be a lot like yours.

Inside the X-Wars games especially, trying something new seems antithetical to the core social elements of the game. After demanding that the user spam their friends, grind for in-game reputation, and spend actual currency to get an in-game advantage it seems like pushing them into another game, especially when the theme isn’t really different enough to generate a new demographic—the way that a game about sororities might, for example.

The other option is to go deep, and add more and more times to you menu. Expanding the choices that exist under the same roof may not only keep your audience coming back for more, but could also make them increasingly comfortable with the idea of opening up their wallets.

Andrew Mayer is a Social Gaming and User Experience Consultant with over seventeen years of experience in the games industry.

Competition continues to increase in the iPhone and iPod Touch app monetization space, and ad network optimization service AdWhirl recently announced that it secured $1 million in financing in a seed round led by Foundation Capital. Founded in April of this year, AdWhirl has become very popular in a short span of time. More than 1,000 iPhone and iPod Touch developers use the service, which servers over 1 billion impressions per month across 160 countries.

While the recession has been tough on online advertising, investors seem confident in the mobile advertising market.  Charles Moldow, General Partner at Foundation Capital, says that “mobile advertising has seen tremendous growth as more and more advertisers are discovering how to leverage the mobile medium. With AdWhirl’s unique mobile platform and growing lead in publisher adoption, we’re excited that AdWhirl will be well-positioned to lead the way as the mobile ad market continues to explode.”

According to statements from AdWhirl, there are currently more than 270 million mobile subscriptions and 224 million mobile phone subscribers in the US. Furthermore, based on data from Magna’s Interpublic Group, US advertisers are expected to spend around $229 million on mobile media during the course of 2009, a 26 percent increase from 2008.

In order to help developers, AdWhirl provides a platform that can manage ads from networks like AdMob, Quattro Wireless, Videoegg, and Jumptap. In addition, the company plans to add support for Millenial Media and Google AdSense. The platform also allows for the cross-promotion of apps with free custom ads in order to increase distribution and boost paid app sales.

“Our goal as a platform has always been to give developers full control over their ad space,” said Ra Roath, Co-Founder of AdWhirl. “In addition to adding new advertisers and optimizing ad revenues for developers, we intend to expand to other ad solutions such as offer-based rewards, so that developers have the flexibility to maximize revenues through multiple channels.”

Only three months since its inception, the ad platform is doing well. The company is looking to reach potential customers beyong Apple devices with the new funding as well. The company says it will be expanding soon to Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre devices too.

As the iPhone platform grows, leading social game developer Zynga has made a number of its popular Facebook and MySpace titles available for the Apple device. These include Live Poker, Mafia Wars, Vampires: Bloodlust, and Scramble Live. Of the four, only the latter does not utilize a business model based on virtual currencies and goods.

However, during a recent interview with PocketGamer, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus expressed disappointment at what the platform has yielded monetarily so far.

“We’re super excited about the platform for its ability to get a whole group of consumers who we might not get to through the web and social networks,” he says. “But the part that’s below my expectations so far is that monetizing the platform effectively is still elusive.”

Prior to the release of OS 3.0, there wasn’t support for in-app microtransactions on the iPhone. This forced many games that would utilize these elements to sell multiple SKUs at different prices, compensating for the inability to sell directly to the consumer. With the new OS comes the long-needed micropayment support. As a result, iPhone app developers are hopeful for better monetization opportunities.

For his part, Pincus doesn’t believe that this will serve as a complete solution to the problem, however. In the interview, he points out another (and perhaps more prominent) issue plaguing iPhone developers today: distribution. While there are thousands of apps within the App Store, the basic directory navigation for iTunes makes it hard for users to discover games unless they know what they are looking for. This begs the question: How can a brand new game thrive, especially one created by a brand new start-up? The game could be worthy of awards, yet it will be lost in a sea of mediocre titles.

Pincus says Apple should make better use of the Facebook social graph to combat the problem, suggesting a more baked-in integration of Facebook Connect. This would allow for a greater outreach amongst the millions of Facebook users. It would also enable social developers like Zynga to send users back and forth more easily between its web and mobile versions.

Nonetheless, 3.0 is a step in the right direction. The support for in-app micropayments alone should do wonders for many of the applications currently in circulation. It is likely that Apple will see the need for greater social integration as well. Should such upgrades occur in the future, the monetization opportunities ought to increase significantly.

[via Virtual Goods News]

Virtual currency platforms have become one of the most common ways for social network application developers to monetize their apps on social networks. However, now that text-based RPGs are making their way from MySpace and Facebook on to Twitter, it would only make sense that the virtual currency platforms would follow. Today, Super Rewards is announcing a partnership with Twitter game 140 Mafia that does just that.

140 Mafia is a Mafia Wars style RPG that ties in various player actions with Twitter updates. Like other mafia games, players fight, level up, garner new equipment, and grow their mob with Twitter friends - all of which is optionally broadcast via tweets. This, in turn, has allowed for dramatic viral growth of the game (especially because the Tweeting options are incentivized - players earn 1% extra income for each type of action they tweet). Super Rewards CEO Jason Bailey says the partnership will make the game the first “proven profitable” app for Twitter.

Currently, some estimates say 140 Mafia will reach 1 million players in a couple of months. We wouldn’t be surprised to see other popular Twitter games like  Spymaster follow suit in exploring virtual currency monetization opportunities. Twitter as a gaming platform is no Facebook (yet), but things are certainly growing at an impressive rate.

Today at the Social Gaming Summit, Siqi Chen (Serious Business) and David King (Lil Green Patch) shared a lot of interesting metrics and data (some for the first time) on developing and optimizing social games. Check out the full slides below:

Good morning from Social Gaming Summit 2009, a one day conference on games and the social web. This year’s focus is on “helping social games developers build, monetize, and grow their social games.” Check out the day’s agenda here, and we’ll be live blogging on select panels throughout the day beginning with the 10:00 am panel session on Building Social Games at Scale. On the panel are:

• Mark Pincus, Zynga
• John Pleasants, Playdom
• Sebastien de Halleux, Playfish
• Moderator: Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Jeremy: How do you deal with new successful games (like Farm Town) and gaming companies that come out of the blue and are a hit?

Mark: While it’s true that some games have come out of the blue, this is a new market that’s expanding. In social gaming, where it’s free, people can play many games. We welcome the Farm Town’s of the world because they introduce new people to social gaming.

Sebastien: A new trend in the world of social gaming is that users are responsible for distribution. On Facebook, quality drives distribution. A newcomer in a crowded field can come in and create a #1 hit. Users win in the social gaming proposition. From a business perspective, you need to create a business, not just one game and work hard to create and put together creative studios that generate multiple hits.

John: What’s cool about social gaming is that it’s not just about the IP or the game itself, but about the way users interact with games and the ability of companies to nail virality, engagement, and monetization.

Jeremy: Do companies that have scale have an added advantage of launching new games because of cross promotion?

Sebastian: Not necessarily. Five weeks ago, we launched Restaurant City with no cross promotion and grew to five million users. In the long-term, it’s not about how quickly you acquire users, but if you can capture their imagination and provide value to them and their friends.

Mark: Before launching a new game, we test our games and look for success metrics around virality and retention. Fortunately, we killed a few games that most have never heard of. We’ve invested $2 million in a game before, but didn’t see the metrics come through. When they do, we’ll promote the game heavily.

Jeremy: What are metrics do you use as a gauge before pulling promotional muscle?

Sebastien: At Playfish, we focus on fun. When the majority of our company can’t do anything but play the game and is so engrossed in the game, that’s the litmus test. We design games as objects of social interaction.

Jeremy: To what extent are games truly social versus being accessed on a social network for distribution purposes?

Sebastien: The reason why we’re focused on bringing friends into games is because creating games is about generating emotions. Social games allow emotions to be maximized (e.g., when your sister beats your high score), so engagement is naturally higher.

Mark: Successful social games need to build three legs: 1) feeling that playing with real friends; 2) a way to express yourself; 3) give players the opportunity to invest in the game over time - social capital.

John: I agree with the idea of social gaming becoming something where friends and family can interact with each other. In my personal life, connection points with my children are much higher because I can do something with them besides email when I’m traveling. The industry is at an interesting part of the curve.

Question from the audience: How are games developed in the context of evolving human relationships?

Sebastien: As an example, around Christmas time, we sold 20 million virtual trees. People are spending more money on virtual currency than in real life because only a few of your friends can see your real tree, but all your Facebook friends can see virtual ones.

John: In playing social games with my colleagues, my relationships with them have changed, and I’ve been able to develop entirely different relationships this way. It’s like a parallel universe that expands my understanding of the people I work closely with.

Up next, expert talks from Siqi Chen (Serious Business) on “Viral Metrics In Action - Building a Killer Testing and Metrics Infrastructure” and David King, (Lil Green Patch) on “Getting the Most Out of Your IP: Extend or Prepare to be Cloned.” Stay tuned!