Solve Player Retention with the Oldest Trick in the Book « PlotLuck Games. Casual freemium games utilize a variety of game design techniques to encourage free-to-players to stick around and spend money. While many are gamey artifacts of the medium, there’s nothing more old-school and non-techy than good old . As the original form of entertainment, stories tap into a primal psychological way for human beings to relate to each other and to the world around them.
In games, stories provide powerful motivation to keep playing, and therefore the greatest potential for creating long term stickiness and heartfelt virality. With freemium games, the absolutely most important monetization metric is new player retention. You can’t monetize a player who walks through the front door on day one and walks right out again. Yes, many games use a string of quests to give players simple tasks to accomplish, introducing them to various aspects of gameplay. The classic definition (according to Wikipedia ) is: setup, confrontation, resolution. Like this: Be the first to like this. OnLive’s cloud gaming service will be built into Vizio flat-panel TVs. Cloud-gaming service OnLive is announcing today that its top-tier online games will be available on new models of Vizio flat-screen televisions, allowing consumers to play high-end PC games on a TV with no additional hardware purchase.
Vizio will also make the service available on other gadgets, including tablet computers, Blu-ray players and smartphones. If this kind of on-demand service takes off on the computer, OnLive could make a lot of headway in its plans to disrupt the console video game business, as it will eliminate the need to buy a console. OnLive and Vizio, the nation’s largest liquid-crystal display TV vendor, are making the announcement today at the Consumer Electronics Show, the big tech show in Las Vegas this week. Steve Perlman, chief executive of Palo Alto, Calif. “For the first time in the history of video games, consumers will be able to enjoy premium video games directly on a TV, no console or computer needed,” said Perlman. In Fusion’s iPhone games, the climate changes to match your real weather.
Most iPhone games don’t require a lot of cool new technology.
They just need to be fun. But Fusion Creative Studios has come up with a unique technology stunt that gamers may find amusing: real-time weather. A Detailed Look at Christmas in Social Games on Facebook. With Christmas just a few days away, the hype of the holiday is at its peak.
Social game developers are making the most of it with a tremendous influx of specially themed goods, décor, and game mechanics. From snowmen to Santa, the Christmas theme is showing itself to be far greater than Halloween and completely dwarfing the holidays from 2009. A million people have pulled out their virtual wallets in Nexon’s MapleStory online game. When Nexon brought its free-to-play MapleStory online game to the U.S. in 2005, everyone shook their heads.
Everybody was skeptical that American gamers would pay for virtual goods in online games, a business model that Nexon had pioneered in South Korea. But the skeptics have been proven wrong. Nexon announced today that more than a million players in the U.S. have purchased virtual items via microtransactions in the U.S. version of MapleStory. Sibblingz puts social games inside Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Sibblingz, a startup that makes it easy to launch an app across different game platforms, is announcing today it can put social games inside Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
The idea is a novel one and it fits with the notion that social games can be played anywhere that users are, whether that’s on Facebook, on the iPhone, or even while searching the internet. With the addition of Bing, Sibblingz becomes more attractive for developers. Booyah Removes Energy from Nightclub City, Adds More Club Options. Booyah has made a series of changes to its hit Facebook game Nightclub City, with the overall goal of letting users play more and create a wider variety of virtual clubs.
The company is removing Energy, a game mechanic it added in late October that, similar to what you’ll see in games like FrontierVille and It Girl, made all activities cost either time or money. Once a player had used up their Energy for the day, they either had to buy more or wait to recoup their virtual strength. The game grew to a peak of more than 8.58 million monthly active users and 1.27 million daily actives by the middle of December, according to our AppData tracking service, but it has since fallen to 4.92 million MAU and 576,000 DAU.
The decline happened before Energy was introduced, but the mechanic hasn’t helped boost traffic numbers. OpenFeint’s Game Channel Uses The Groupon-Model To Sell Its Mobile Games. The group-buying model that was pioneered by Groupon has entered the world of mobile gaming and apps.
A few months ago Y Combinator-backed TapZilla launched to apply the deal of the day model to paid mobile apps. And today, mobile social gaming platform OpenFeint is joining in with the launch of Game Channel, a group-buying site for mobile gaming apps. Pocket Gems fills its pockets with $5M from Sequoia for iPhone games. Pocket Gems has raised $5 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and other Silicon Valley luminaries as it competes in the crowded iPhone game market.
The small San Francisco company has had five major hits on the iPhone, even though its founders were still in university when they launched their first game a year ago. The funding from venerable venture capital firm Sequoia is a testament to the rapid growth of the iPhone as a viable platform for making money with games. The funding also included Michael Dearing, an eBay veteran and associate professor at the Stanford University Institute of Design, Jeff Fluhr, co-founder and former chief executives of StubHub, and Omar Hamoui, founder of AdMob. Sequoia partner Jim Goetz will join Pocket Gems’ board. Fastest-growing game in history: Zynga’s CityVille hits 26M players in 12 days. Zynga‘s CityVille has become the fastest-growing game in history.
And based on an interview with a key Zynga executive, that isn’t an accident. The company has all but figured out how to turn its game launches into a science, and that helps them spread to increasingly large audiences on Facebook. The city simulation game has drawn in more than 26 million users since it debuted on Dec. 2. In just 12 days, the Facebook game has broken all previous records, adding 4.5 million users on Tuesday alone. In the past seven days, the game has added 24.9 million users, according to market researcher AppData. “This feels fun,” said Mark Skaggs, the Zynga vice president in charge of CityVille. Angry Birds developer creates a mobile payments piggybank to rake in more dough. The ambitions of Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds, know no boundaries.
The company’s wildly successful Angry Birds game has been downloaded more than 50 million times. But that’s not enough. The Helsinki-based company wants to make it easier to pay for its mobile apps. So it is launching a new mobile payment system that is in keeping with the theme of Angry Birds, where birds slingshot themselves at green pigs who have stolen the birds’ eggs. The Bad Piggy Bank is a system for billing that provides consumers with an easy way to pay for Angry Birds and other mobile games. Rovio is making the announcement with Elisa, the largest network operator in Finland, on the one-year anniversary of the launch of Angry Birds on the iPhone. Born-again startup Xfire launches betting site for gamers.
Xfire went through a whole life cycle as a startup: launching a game business, getting acquired, and then getting shut down. Now the company has been acquired again and it is going to try to make a run as a betting service where you can challenge your friends in arcade-style games and win prizes. Today, the reborn Xfire (which was acquired earlier this year by Titan Gaming, which renamed itself Xfire) is launching Xfire Arcade. Starting with just two games, users will be able to play each other and wager virtual currency. They can win prizes on a daily or weekly basis, depending on how well they do competing against others. MindJolt to feed games to 110M users through deal with local web site aggregator. Social game company MindJolt is expanding its reach to more than 110 million users through a partnership with Broadcast Interactive Media. The deal will give MindJolt the kind of reach it needs to attract better games and become a player in the social game market.
MindJolt operates a social game platform for third-party game developers. Under the deal, MindJolt will distribute hundreds of games to the BIM network of 900 web sites, which reach 110 million unique visitors per month. The hope is to drive up engagement, or the amount of time users spend on the sites, by offering games that typically hold user attention for a longer period of time. BIM’s sites offer local news and entertainment. Next Island launches its time traveler’s virtual world. After more than 2.5 years in the making, Next Island is quietly launching its ambitious virtual world with a time travel theme. The brainchild of serial entrepreneur David Post, the new world is now available for people to visit and is getting a once-over from journalists. By January, Post will trumpet the site to consumers at large.
The enterprise is a test of whether virtual worlds have a place in the modern landscape of gaming, where most of the excitement revolves around social games such as FarmVille, mobile games such as Angry Birds, or traditional console games and PC online titles such as World of Warcraft. A handful of virtual worlds that raised tens of millions of dollars have failed this year.
The victims include There.com, Vivaty, and Metaplace. As we wrote before, Next Island is a sci-fi adventure paradise built on top of infrastructure created by MindArk, which has created the massively multiplayer online virtual universe, Entropia Universe. Zynga launches rewards program with Citi. Zynga has its best launch ever with CityVille social game. Will OnLive squash game retailers with $9.99-a-month online games? How LOLapps Succeeds With Low Price Points and High Engagement. How LOLapps Succeeds With Low Price Points and High Engagement One of the top performing new games in the latter half of 2010 has been LOLapps’ Ravenwood Fair, which is currently building toward 4.5 million monthly active users. While Ravenwood feels similar to FrontierVille in some respects, the title has many other unique features in terms of both game mechanics and theme. Virtual goods and prepaid game card sales show steep rise on Black Friday (exclusive) LOLapps gives an inside look at the success of social game Ravenwood Fair.
ソーシャル(S)は群れるSから多くの「個」が輝くSへ: 次世代Sが成功するための７つの原則. Brazil social game player Vostu raises $30M from Accel and Tiger Global. Vostu, a social game maker focused on the Brazilian market, has raised $30 million from Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management. Vostu, which is based in New York and has offices in São Paulo and Buenos Aires, is slugging it out with rival Mentez to become the Zynga of social games in Brazil. Creating Closure in Social Games. Social Gaming Roundup: Black Friday, RockYou, Layoffs, & More. Black Friday Hits Social Games — It’s the biggest shopping day of the year, and more than just marketers are using Facebook to make a sale.
Along with the sales noted yesterday in City of Wonder and It Girl, companies such as Playdom, CrowdStar, RockYou, Zynga, and Nexon have announced more. Many other Playdom games, such as Social City, are having 50 percent off sales on virtual currency; CrowdStar is hosting half-off many virtual items in games such as Zoo Paradise; RockYou is running Flash Deals all day for Zoo World, offering up to 80% specific items; Zynga has specials such as The Black Friday Raid, in Mafia Wars, where players will receive discounts in the Marketplace on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday; and according to Engage Digital, Nexon is hosting specials for Maple Story, Mabinogi, and Dungeon Fighter Online with discounts ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent off. Holiday Specials, Virtual Goods & Features Continue for Thanksgiving. If Halloweeen showed us anything, it was that the holidays are taking the social gaming world by storm. Stewart Buttefield built Flickr into a mass market tool. Can he be a success in online games?
Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake built Flickr into the first great photo-sharing site on the web. Teen virtual world Gaia Online lays off 15 to 20 staffers. Tiny Speck reveals a glimpse of its zany Glitch video game. Badgeville raises $2.5M to spread game mechanics across the web. OpenFeint finds a way to co-exist with Apple’s Game Center for the iPhone. Cracking the Mainstream: Why Social Gaming Is More Than Just a Fad. Wooga: Virality is Dead, Long Live Engagement. OnLive starts pre-sales for MicroConsole aimed at eliminating game consoles.
MindJolt releases money-making tools for third party social game developers. Steering clear of Zynga, Big Fish Games goes global with casual game expansion. Scoreloop. PapayaMobile releases tools to help developers create Android mobile games. GameGround raises $5.3M for gamer social networking app. 1,700万人が楽しむ！「restaurant city」を教材にソーシャルゲームを学ぼう / ソーシャルウェブ活用のヒント - japan.internet.com コラム. 月間MAUが3000万人超のFacebookアプリ「FarmVille」はここが優れている. FacebookやMySpaceで屈指の人気を誇るソーシャルゲーム「Mafia Wars」徹底レビュー. Free-to-play games creep closer to killing monthly subscriptions. Does Art Quality Matter in Social Games? Hip Venture abandons virtual world to pivot into social games (exclusive) Money for nothing: Free apps pay off for 1 out of 3 top iPhone developers. Dbros Looks for Social Games to Publish in South Korea. Online game firm Gazillion raises $60M. MocoSpace says its new social game platform already has its first hit. Social game company Summerlight comes out of stealth (exclusive)
Tapjoy Acquires Appstrip, a Cross-Promotion Service for Facebook Games. iPhone and iPad Development GUI Kits, Stencils and Icons. EA buys Angry Birds publisher Chillingo. Actionable Analytics at Zynga: Leveraging Big Data to Make Online Games More Fun and Social. Social Game Universe launches cross-promotion tool on Facebook (exclusive) Sibblingz takes CrowdStar’s It Girl game to all the hot platforms. Following in FarmVille’s footsteps, LOLapps takes a game beyond Facebook. Intel and The9 invest $8M in social game platform Aurora Feint. BringIt raises $1.5M, helps RockYou generate revenue by putting a game inside a game. Intel and The9 invest $8M in social game platform Aurora Feint. Casual-game maker OMGPOP pulls in funding; proves social games are still hot. OpenTable Seated 15.4 Million Diners in Q3 2010. Halloween Guide for FarmVille, Mafia Wars, FrontierVille & more - Games.com - The Blog.
Manga Castle Revolutionizes Manga Through Social Gaming. [jp]グリーがシンガポールに拠点を置く携帯SNSのmig33に出資――初の海外投資案件に. Is Zynga Trying To Patent Virtual Currency? Zynga expands into Europe via its new German base, goes on hiring drive. [jp] アンドロイドは爆発寸前ーーGMOインターネットがゲーム特化マーケット@GMOゲームセンター発表. KAYAC DESIGNER'S BLOG - カヤックの意匠部によるデザインやマークアップの話. 6 ways iPhone and Android users differ. January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report ? AdMob Metrics. Inside Social Games - Tracking Innovation at the Convergence of Games and Social Platforms. It Girl, FarmVille Show Growing Social Gaming Trend: Avatar Customization. This Year’s Halloween Virtual Goods in Social Games Trump 2009: What the Big Four Are Doing. Mertado Takes Facebook Games Beyond Virtual Goods to Real-Life Retail Sales. With Addition of CrowdStar, WildTangent Looks Toward 100M Users for Video Ads. TeamLava Adds Restaurants to its Story Collection. ゴミ箱にちり紙を投げる無料iPhoneゲーム、月に50万ドルを稼ぐ. 7 Social Game Design Lessons from Playdom’s Steve Meretzky, VP Game Design « Strategic Synergy.
Strategic Synergy. Microsoft to Launch Browser-based Game Store.