Hiring in the social gaming industry was up again this week, with 11 companies reporting 14 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Arkadium and Bossa Studios showed the most activity with a pair of hires each. While hiring activity was up, there were no high profile hires to report this week.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Arkadium

• Grant Reid, Game Design Intern – Arkadium hires a pair of interns this week. Reid is a student at New York University.
• Rebecca Brooker, Game Design Intern – Brooker comes to Arkadium from the University of Toronto.

Bossa Studios

• Joao Martins, Server Developer - Martins comes to Bossa Studios from Escola de Rafting Atlântico.
• Jack Good, 3D Modeler - Good was previously a junior artist at Ideaworks3D.

Digital Chocolate 

• Marta Cortiñas, Producer – Cortiñas moves up from her role as junior producer at Digital Chocolate.

EA Playfish

• Peter Crotty, Software Engineer – Crotty was formerly a system developer at Aquila.

GSN

• Matthew Rockoff, Sales Associate – Rockoff changes jobs this week, moving from a position as an experienced digital/TV sales planner at GSN.

Loot Drop

• Matt Waggle, Artist – Waggle was previously the assistant art director at Reliance Media Works VFX

MegaZebra

• Franz Stradal, Producer – Stradal comes to MegaZebra from Gameforge.

Nordeus

• Nemanja Posrkača, Online Marketing and Customer Relations Manager - Posrkača makes our list with a promotion this week, moving up from his position as an online marketing assistant at Nordeus.

Vostu

• Nicolás Salvia, Email Marketing Analyst – Salvia comes to Vostu from MKT S.A., where he was a research economist.

Wooga

• Robin Pan, Intern iOS Developer – Pan was formerly a technical game designer at the Science Media Centre of Canada.

Zynga

• Ikbhal Basha Shaik, Game Developer – Two hires for Zynga this week. Shaik was a software engineer at Amazon.com
• Zachary Fand, Software Engineer Intern - Finally, Fand comes to Zynga from Northeastern University.

Disney Playdom’s Marvel Avengers Alliance is a turn-based combat game heavily influenced by classic role-playing games.

Playdom acquired the rights to develop the game from Marvel after Marvel was bought by Disney in 2009 but before Disney acquired Playdom in 2010. When the game finally debuts on Facebook in North America, Marvel Avengers Alliance will have been in development for nearly 17 months all told.

All that time has been well-spent according to Michael Rubinelli, Disney Playdom’s VP of studio operations. Not only did the development team at Playdom-acquired Offbeat Creations have plenty of time to collaborate with Marvel on perfecting the IP, but the design of the gameplay deepened over time to reflect a higher degree of polish and layered complexity that Rubinelli deems “future-proof” for social game platforms.

“We are absolutely opposed to cloning,” Rubinelli tells us. “It’s one thing to be influenced by something — but this [game] is very specific to Marvel and it stands on its own.” He believes that because of the depth and because of the Marvel brand, no developer would stand a chance at actually being able to clone the Marvel Avenger Alliance experience.

Rubinelli and Offbeat Creations COO and co-founder Robert Reichner walked us through a hands-off demo of the early and mid-game experience. Players take the role of a S.H.I.E.L.D. trainee in the Marvel universe — an extra-government agency tasked with protecting Earth against terrestrial and extraterrestrial threats. A force from space called Pulse unleashes a chemical called Iso-8 in New York City. As Marvel’s supervillains race to collect it, the player teams up with Marvel superheroes to stop them.

Core gameplay is combat. The player forms a team with their own customizable character and up to two Marvel heroes, each with their own individual stats that can be improved by training, with consumable items during combat, or with Iso-8 upgrades the player earns through gameplay. The player’s team appears on screen against up to three enemy combatants with turn order determined by individual character statistics. Like the classic RPG gameplay made famous by Final Fantasy, players have a range of options to use during a character’s turn — like attack, use item, summon additional hero or a special attack. Some attacks are unlocked only as the player levels up or as that individual superhero levels up. Superheroes each have 12 levels.

Fights themselves are governed by health for each character and by overall stamina that is used by each individual combat action. Players can use health or stamina packs on themselves or on superhero characters. The player can also choose to skip a turn in order to recover lost stamina. If a player’s character is knocked out during a fight, the player can still control the remaining superheroes; but they can no longer use health and stamina packs or any special items that would increase or decrease character stats.

Outside of combat, there is a deeper level of strategy involved in forming player teams and training characters. As players progress through the main story of the game, new heroes become available for the player’s team. Heroes are divided into one of five character classes — Blaster, Bruiser, Scrapper, Tactician and Infiltrator — that have a rock-paper-scissors balance of strengths and weaknesses. Aside from the combinations of those classes, players can also tweak their teams through weapon and armor equipment items available in the store or as quest rewards. With the added feature of a “distress call” summon that can bring a Facebook friend’s superhero into combat for a single attack, the customization options for forming the “perfect” team are pretty complex. Leaderboards track players’ high scores as well as which team combinations they prefer to use.

Overall gameplay is governed by various types of currencies. Silver is the soft currency earned in combat or through timed “remote ops” missions that the player can spend on items in the store. S.H.I.E.L.D. Points are a social currency gained by visiting friends and can be spent on unlocking new customization and upgrade options for characters, weapons and armor. Challenge Points are a regenerating currency that is spent only on asynchronous player versus player matches where player teams fight one another. An energy mechanic is applied to each fight encounter in the story mode. The remote ops missions are limited by a staffing mechanic where a player has to recruit friends in order to send heroes out on missions to other cities.

With so much content and so much history behind it, Marvel Avengers Alliance runs the risk of overwhelming new players. Rubinelli and Reichner both feel that the game hits that fine balance between too much and too little exposition on the story side — meaning both Marvel fans and newcomers can easily follow what’s going on. The developer went with modern visualizations of Marvel characters, based in part on the recent run of movies like Thor, Captain America and the upcoming Avengers film, so that characters should be easily recognizable. As for adapting to the combat style, individual matches can be completed in game sessions of no more than 10 minutes, which won’t intimidate the average social game player. We observer that many core video game players will also naturally take to the combat, as it should be familiar from classic Japanese RPGs.

At launch, the game will have 28 hero characters and just over 100 Marvel characters total (counting villains). The opportunities for expansion through characters are wide; especially as certain characters have premium missions that the player can purchase to gain a bit of extra story around their favorites. A partial lineup provided by Disney Playdom includes:

• Human Torch
• The Invisible Woman
• Mr. Fantastic
• The Thing
• Colossus
• Cyclops
• Kitty Pryde
• Nightcrawler
• Phoenix
• Storm

We’ll have a review of the game once it enters open beta in the coming weeks. Marvel Avengers Alliance is still on track to launch on Facebook in Q1 2012. Rubinelli could not confirm a Google+ launch, but Disney Playdom already had a publishing relationship with that platform, so it’s not unreasonable to think the game could find its way there.

ESPN and Disney Social Games have teamed up to bring the ESPN Return Man game to Facebook. The game is still available in its original form at the ESPN Arcade games portal site, but it has been completely revamped with social play in mind for Facebook. It’s an action-based football game, but rather than covering the entire match, it focuses on the efforts of the titular return man to catch the kickoff and return it to the end zone for a touchdown. There is no team management, no complex calling of plays — simply pure, fast-paced arcade football action: catch the ball, and run up the screen to the end zone. It’s a very simple concept, but one that is executed very effectively, creating a naturally compelling and addictive game without having to resort to more manipulative tactics to keep the player engaged.

ESPN Return Man's arcade gameplay is both simple and effective.

Without a few twists, however, this simple concept could very easily get boring. The game regularly mixes things up, not least with the variety of situations the player must navigate in order to get those all-important touchdowns. Some plays may see the return man accompanied by other team members who will barge the opposing players out of the way, others will see the return man faced by a seemingly endless (and probably illegal) swarm of other players with no support. The return man also has a few tricks up his sleeve that come in the form of special moves and boosters, access to both of which is unlocked through a gradual leveling process. Each play also has several instant-effect power-ups scattered over the field, also, allowing the player to acquire score multipliers and quick speed boosts to get out of trouble.

Special moves, which are available in limited quantities and then must be topped up using the game’s soft currency, generally allow the return man to dodge or inconvenience a defender, with more physically-improbable moves being unlocked as the player increases in level. Four moves may be equipped at once, but an individual move may only be used once per play, meaning they’re far from being an “instant win” button. Boosts, meanwhile, must also be refreshed with soft currency when they deplete, but offer more passive bonuses such as increased speed or the ability to run through mud and snow without suffering movement-hampering effects.

There’s no obligation to spend any money on ESPN Return Man, but those willing to drop some Facebook Credits on the game will find they have access to a number of options which make the challenging gameplay a little easier. Additional blocking players can be purchased, for example, and certain boosts may only be purchased with hard currency. Players may also pay to unlock content before reaching the experience level at which it is normally unlocked for free, and those who wish to play more per day can pay for energy refills.

Unlike many Facebook games, failure is an option here, encouraging players to develop their own skills.

One of the particularly noteworthy things about the game is that it is possible to win without the use of any special moves or boosts — and in fact, players are rewarded for doing so with higher score bonuses at the end of a play. Given the game’s strong focus on topping the leaderboards against Facebook friends, this means that players are encouraged to develop their skills and become better at the game rather than simply unlocking as much content as possible through repeated play.

ESPN Return Man is an excellent, simple sports game perfectly designed for short gaming sessions Facebook users typically prefer. It’s made better by the tension that comes from the fact it is possible to “fail” a game and have to try again from the first play. This fact alone will attract both fans of the drama of sport and the core gamer market, the latter of which often finds itself frustrated and dissatisfied by social games which are either far too easy or impossible to fail at. Sports fans, meanwhile, will appreciate the little touches such as the ability to listen to ESPN Radio during play and the inclusion of the likenesses of ESPN’s Herm Edwards and Trey Wingo in the game. The ESPN branding lends the game a feeling of authenticity and credibility and, if past ESPN-branded titles are anything to go by, will likely see a large initial spike in traffic thanks to the recognizable name.

ESPN Return Man currently has 70,000 monthly active users and 5,000 daily active users. Want to track its progress? Check out AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

Play

A simple but effective sports game that deserves to see success among fans of football and arcade games alike.

Revenues from Zynga games accounted for 12 percent of Facebook’s 2011 revenues, the social network’s S-1 filing reveals. No other customer represented more than 10 percent of total revenue in 2009 or 2010. Facebook reports that social game devs — most of all Zynga — are currently responsible for almost all revenue derived from Payments.

Aside from in-game transactions conducted with Facebook Credits — of which Facebook gets up to a 30 percent cut as part of a special agreement with the social game giant — and ads bought by Zynga, the CityVille developer also generates a large chunk of pages where Facebook displays ads. While Zynga is locked into Facebook Credits until May 2015, Facebook points out that any trouble in paradise with its biggest game developer could harm its bottom line.

Be sure to follow our sister site, Inside Facebook, for full coverage of Facebook’s initial public offering.

Electronic Art’s digital revenues — which includes those from social games — came in at $274 million for Q3 FY12, up over 40 percent from the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP digital revenue grew by 79 percent year-over-year, breaking $1 billion before the end of 2011.

EA attributes growth in digital revenues to increased subscriptions, microtransactions and advertising. GAAP net revenue from wireless, advertising, digital distribution and other internet sources was $103 million, up from $16 million at the same time last year.

Mobile revenues, meanwhile, increased to $70 million dollars in company’s third quarter, up from $59 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Though up 19 percent year-over-year, the company’s handheld revenues dropped significantly. Revenue from Nintendo’s DS platform were $15 million, a 69 percent drop from $49 million year-on-year and revenues from Sony’s PSP were $14 million, a 36 percent drop over the same quarter a year earlier. Overall, the company’s total revenue from mobile and handhelds was down 24 percent year-on-year, dropping to $99 million.

Though not broken out on the balance sheet, EA reports that its PopCap Games studio posted 30 percent growth in revenues on a trailing-twelve-month basis. EA bought the Zuma Blitz developer in the summer; its newest Facebook title, Solitaire Blitz, is currently in open beta.

During its earnings call, EA mentioned that a planned social game release would be moved from Q4 FY12 to Q1 FY13. It looks like EA is experimenting with optimal launch windows for social games, as most games earn their best money not at launch but after the first 30 days on the Facebook platform. EA CFO Eric Brown confirmed the strategy behind the move, saying the release would shore up expected performance from the 2013 lineup of social games. The latest game from its Playfish studio, Risk: Factions, went live earlier this month and is still on a growth trend. Note that the publisher doesn’t detail social or mobile game releases in its earnings releases in the same way it does with console and PC game releases due the risk of being beaten to market by a copycat game.

Brown went on to say that FY 2012 digital revenue growth the hit $1.2 billion and that calendar 2013 would have a lighter game release schedule overall. Detailed guidance for FY 2013 will be provided in EA’s next earnings report.

More details on EA’s social games calendar came out during the Q&A portion of the call: Five new games based on established IP are currently in development. A big social game launch is planned for May. Aside from the strategic decision behind moving the mystery 2013 social game back, the publisher also says that there are issues with the game’s social and monetization features. EA also says that a significant majority of digital revenue comes from EA’s own IP, not from PopCap and Playfish. The FIFA game launched with Gree for social and mobile networks in Japan was a particularly inspiring launch for EA and they’re exploring similar game launches on global networks. No mention was made of a Mass Effect 3 social game.

Inside Social Games is changing its reviews policy today to include a three-point ratings scale organized by three simple words: Play, Skip and Wait.

What It Looks Like

The scale is based on time. The most important piece of information ISG can provide is whether or not a game is worth a reader’s time. It takes time to get into a new social game — setting up the permissions, going through the tutorial, adding friends, etc. Even the simplest games with the cleanest interfaces and shortest tutorials take a good five minutes from first click to actual gameplay — and with so many social games launching on Facebook and Google+, that might be time our readers don’t have.

A Play rating means it’s worth the reader’s time to play the game.

A Skip rating means that a game isn’t worth the reader’s time.

A Wait rating indicates that the game might not be worth the reader’s time right now, but it has the potential to grow into a game that earns a Play rating.

Our reviews will still provide gameplay analysis, screenshots, currently monthly and daily active user totals as tracked by our AppData traffic monitoring service and any context the developer can provide if we’re able to reach them. As almost all games now monetize in the same ways and leverage the same social features, we won’t make mention of these components unless a game does something new or interesting with them. We will share a bit of opinion on a game based on our personal response to it — but our reviews are intended as interpretive analysis rather than stand-up comedy.

How It Works

How we pick a rating for a game is based on our approach to social games overall. In contrast to consumer-facing video game publications like Games.com or Gamezebo, we’re analysts that cater to an audience of developers, investors and other industry insiders that need information to make informed decisions — not just about what they’ll play for fun, but what they’ll do with their own companies.

From this perspective, we judge social games based on one question: “Will this work?” That can mean several things for a game: It monetizes, it finds traction on its platform, or the developer is supporting a game so thoroughly that we can expect to see it everywhere for the next year. Notice that we don’t bother to say that a game is “good;” that term is too subjective to have any meaning to our readers. We’ve seen plenty of “good” games on Facebook fail to monetize, fail to attract an audience or go offline after barely six months. Being “good” isn’t a guarantee that a game will work.

The flip side of that is that we won’t tell you a game is “bad” based on the fact that we don’t like it. Plenty of games do things we don’t like such as spamming us, hitting us with pay walls right after the tutorial, playing repetitive sounds, cloning a different game we’ve already spent months playing, etc. Games may also just fail to appeal to us because of art style or genre. None of these things would necessarily stop a game from working, however, unless something is bad enough to be distracting or damaging to the core gameplay experience.

We will tell you when a game isn’t ready. Many times in 2010, our reviewers would encounter games in the early beta stage where graphics are missing, social features aren’t optimized and sometimes monetization isn’t even implemented yet. In 2011, Zynga started providing hands-off press demos of new games just days before launch, sometimes with content that we couldn’t expect to see when the game went live because the developer would decide to cut it based on early user feedback. We could wait these games out and return to them when we think they might be ready — like when a developer “officially” launches the game or once it hits a certain number of monthly active users. But so many games get lost in the shuffle as new titles launch that this approach is sloppy. It’s better we see the game in the conditions we found it (via social discovery, word-of-mouth or sudden spike in AppData activity) and report back to the readers in a timely fashion.

Why We’re Doing It

We’ve gone back and forth over the concept of scoring games since the blog launched in 2008. At first, we used a 10-point scale derived from scores in sub-categories like “graphics” or “sound” that resembles the old methods used by traditional video games press. Sometime in 2009, the then-lead writer scrapped scores after deciding that the practice didn’t make much sense because most of the leading games came from the same pool of developers and each had relatively similar themes and standards of quality. We brought it back briefly at the end of 2011 in the short-lived “What we’re playing” articles; but these pieces lacked context and focus.

We’re trying it again because we feel social games deserve recognition beyond what they can earn for themselves in terms of traffic. The quality bar is higher now for social games than it was just 18 months ago and barriers to entry are rising on Facebook and Google+. While most of the leading game developers still hold top spots in traffic, some developers are taking risks in game design instead of just following whatever trend is hot right now (today, it’s casino games — this time last year it was citybuilders). There are also games that will never break the top 25 in MAU or DAU but can still be counted as successes because they find their audiences and monetize them well. Even without investor funding or hope of a successful exit, a game might still be “worth it” to our readers and a score the easiest way for us to help readers find those games.

The decision to avoid numbered scores reflects an overall attitude in video games journalism — numbers stopped having meaning when journalists stopped using all points on the scale. Score aggregators like Metacritic further obfuscate the actual quality of a game as it relates to the score. Also, as we’ve said before, social games change rapidly and a numbered score can’t possibly keep pace.

Scored reviews will start appearing on ISG today. There are currently no plans to apply the scoring system to mobile games on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps. As always, we invite reader feedback in the comments or via email at mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at IMVU, Stealth Mobile Startup, XMG Studio, FashionPlaytes, Inc. 6 Waves/Lolapps, Funcom Games Canada, Addmired, Identified, Spooky Cool Labs, King.com, Mobile Deluxe,  Game Show Network, Plumbee, GREE International, Inc., Tapjoy and LolGames.

• Senior Software Engineer

Stealth Mobile Startup

• Senior Android Engineer

• Data Jockey

• Social Game Designer

• Senior UI Designer
• UI Vector Artist
• Interaction Designer

• Senior Java Programmer
• Senior GUI / Flash Developer Social Games
• Lead Designer Social Games

• Technical Recruiter
• Senior Operations Engineer
• Acquisition Manager/Mobile Ad Buyer
• Business Intelligence Analyst
• 3D (Isometric) Environment Artist
• 2D Digital Painter/Illustrator
• 3D (Isometric) Character Artist – Modeler/Animator
• Build/Release Engineer
• Tools Engineer
• Scalability Engineer
• Erlang Infrastructure Developer
• C/C++ Game Developer
• UX Artist

• Core Software Engineer

• Marketing Director
• Software Engineer – Games Front End / Unity

• 3D Artist
• IT Support Engineer
• Game Developer – Social and Mobile Games

• Senior QA Engineer-Mobile Games

• Art Director
• Senior Programmer

• Head of Mobile/Senior Mobile Producer

• Director of Business Development

• Inside Sales Representative

• Social Media Business Development Lead / Internet Guru

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

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

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

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

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

He reiterated again in an internal memo this week that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zynga Poker and Texas Poker:

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 8 – 9, 2012 | San Francisco

Inside Social Apps 2012 will be here in San Francisco in just one week!

Early registration is $549, and good through February 1st only (on-site passes are $799).

Register Here

Join us as we host the industry’s leading developers for two days of panels, discussions, and networking around the social and mobile app ecosystem.

We’ve recently finalized our event agenda that looks at this industry’s biggest questions from the perspectives of those who are shaping it every day. View the full agenda here.

Register

Early registration pricing is $549 (on-site price is $799) and effective through February 1st. The event is just a week away, so register now.

Who’s Speaking?

We’re excited to present the following 44 confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps 2012:

	Jens Begemann Founder and CEO, wooga		John Earner GM European Studios, EA / Playfish
	Paul Bettner GM, Zynga With Friends		Kevin Chou Co-founder and CEO, Kabam
	John Spinale Senior Vice President, Social Games, Disney Interactive Media Group		Barry Cottle Executive Vice President, EA Interactive
	Dennis Ryan EVP Worldwide Publishing, PopCap		Will Harbin Chairman and CEO, Kixeye
	Carl Sjogreen Director of Product Management, Facebook		Cory Ondrejka Director of Engineering, Facebook
	Russ Heddleston Product Manager, Facebook		David Glazer Engineering Director, Google+
	Arjun Sethi CEO, 6waves Lolapps		Brenda Garno COO & Game Designer, Loot Drop
	Mario Schlosser Chief Scientist, Vostu		Jeff Tseng CEO and Co-Founder, Kontagent
	Anil Dharni Co-founder, Funzio; Founder, Storm8		Mike Sego CEO, Gaia Interactive
	Tim Chang Managing Director, Mayfield Fund		Bill Jackson Creative Director, CastleVille, Zynga
	Haining Wang CEO, Happy Elements		Sho Masuda VP Marketing, Social Games, GREE
	Clara Shih Founder and CEO, Hearsay Labs		Mike Ouye Founder and CEO, Red Robot Labs
	Daniel Terry Co-founder & CEO, Pocket Gems		Perry Tam CEO, Storm8
	Rick Thompson Co-Founder, Playdom, and Investor		Riz Virk Co-founder and CEO, Gameview Studios
	Charles Hudson Co-founder and CEO, Bionic Panda Games		Lee Linden Founder, Karma Science
	Suleman Ali Co-founder and CEO, TinyCo		Eric Goldberg Managing Director, Crossover Technologies
	Clay Kellogg Head of App Dev. Sales, AdMob		Terry Angelos Co-Founder and CPO, TrialPay
	David Katz VP of Digital Media, Starz		Suchit Dash Co-founder and VP of Product, Ifeelgoods
	Atul Bagga Senior Analyst – Video Games & China Internet, Lazard Capital Markets		Peter Farago VP Marketing, Flurry
	Hussein Fazal CEO & Co-founder, AdParlor		Micah Adler Founder & CEO, Fiksu
	Mihir Shah President & CEO, TapJoy		Lisa Marino CEO, RockYou
	Carla Bourque SVP, Buddy Media		Simon Mansell CEO, TBG Digital

Registration

Our limited $549 Early Registration pricing for the full 2-day conference pass for Inside Social Apps 2012, available until February 1st.

Previous Inside Social Apps conferences have sold out in advance of event day, so we strongly encourage you to register now.

About Inside Social Apps

Inside Social Apps 2012 will explore new opportunities, as well as emerging risks, in the development, distribution and monetization of social and mobile applications. Inside Social Apps 2012 will span February 8 – 9, and will bring together the world’s leading social and mobile developers and investors for critical discussion and analysis.

Registration

Early registration tickets are available at $549 through February 1st. Past events have sold out in advance, so we strongly encourage you to register now.

From all of us at Inside Network, we look forward to seeing you on February 8 and 9 in San Francisco!

New York-based Funtactix brings The Hunger Games to Facebook next month with a new social game, Hunger Games Adventures, timed to launch Mar. 23, the same day the highly anticipated film adaptation hits theaters.

Hunger Games Adventures comes five months after the release of Funtactix’s previous movie-based Facebook title, Mission: Impossible. That game was also directly tied to a film, released to coincide with Paramount Pictures’ debut of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Our AppData traffic tracking service shows that Mission: Impossible peaked with 600,000 monthly active users in early January, but has since dropped off to 260,000 MAU and 8,000 daily active users. For Hunger Games Adventures, Funtactix partners with Lions Gate Entertainment.

The Hunger Games Adventures is set in Panem — the post-apocalyptic world in which the Hunger Games fiction is set. Players will be able to explore District 12 and other areas from the movie while interacting with characters from the film early in the game, a lesson Funtactix learned its work on Mission: Impossible. According to Funtactix CEO Sam Glassenberg, the company finds introducing iconic characters early helps to immerse players and significantly improves conversion rates.

While working from an extremely popular series like The Hunger Games may seem like an easy way to create a popular game, Glassenberg says it also puts the developer in a delicate position. He stresses that The Hunger Games Adventures will not be an what he calls an advergame: “Our focus on creating games based on AAA films provides us with a great community to tap into, but also creates a tremendous responsibility for us to create an experience that is authentic to the worlds that fans love,” he explains. “If a game lacks authenticity, the fans realize it in a second.”

Although the source material for The Hunger Games Adventures is a series of young adult novels, Glassenberg is confident about game’s monetization and growth prospects.  “When it comes to viral growth, our team has a great deal of experience tapping into an existing fanbase to drive growth,” he says. “The fans already congregate and share around the common interest of the books [and] film. The Hunger Games Adventures is designed to be a natural extension of that phenomenon.”

Fans of The Hunger Games will also be interested to note that official map of Panem will finally be unveiled in The Hunger Games Adventures, a responsibility that Glassenberg describes as “humbling and awesome.”

“We know that our primary responsibility is to create a version of Panem that fans can jump into and explore. When we make the hardcore fans happy we know we’ve succeeded,” he says.