socialgames

CyberAgent’s growing social gaming business has pushed the company’s first fiscal quarter operating profit to a healthy 4.9 billion yen ($63.6 million USD), an increase of 38.1 percent year-over-year.

According to CyberAgent’s holiday quarter results, the company’s social games businesses saw sales increase to 3.2 billion yen ($41.7 million USD), up from the 1.7 billion yen ($22.1 million USD) the company reported in the same quarter a year ago. The unit is made up of eight consolidated subsidiaries with more than 600 employees between them.

Overall the company’s media businesses recorded an operating income of 909 million yes ($11.8 million USD) largely due to the expansion of the company’s social gaming business and CyberAgent’s net income was 2.05 billion yen ($26.68 million USD), up from 1.47 billion yen ($19.1 million USD) year-over-year.

CyberAgent’s social gaming companies make titles for Mobage, Mixi, GREE, Facebook and its own Ameba platform. The company did not report specific results for GCREST or CyberAgentAmerica, makers of the Facebook games TinierMe and Animal Land. According to our traffic tracking service AppData, CyberAgent currently has 757,510 monthly active users and 112,226 daily active users on Facebook.

Playfish’s general manager and vice president of London studios John Earner has left the company to join Accel, where he will be an entrepreneur in residence, according to TechCrunch. Earner joined Playfish in 2008 and lead the company through product development for hit social games like Pet Society, Restaurant City, FIFA Superstars and The Sims Social.

The move is just the latest in series of executive level losses at EA. Earlier in the month EA lost Barry Cottle, its EVP of EA Interactive to Zynga, and Earner’s departure now means most of Playfish’s original executive staff have now moved on to other ventures.

Margaritaville Online is a new cross-platform game for Facebook and iPad. It was developed by Exploding Barrel Games and published by THQ.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Margaritaville Online currently has 30,000 monthly active users and 20,000 daily active users.

Margaritaville is described as an “everyday escape to a virtual tropical paradise.” The game is inspired by the song “Margaritaville” from singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, and takes the form of a role-playing adventure game. Taking on the role of a custom avatar, players begin in a bookstore on a snowy night and find themselves sucked into the tropical paradise of Margaritaville after finding a dusty old book written by Jimmy Buffett. Once safely on the island, players are then given a series of quests to introduce them to the main gameplay elements — exploring and collecting items; completing tasks for the island’s residents; building up the player’s business, a bar known as The Oasis; and taking part in a variety of minigames.

Rather than taking the form of a 2D citybuilding game, Margaritaville Online takes place on a predefined map, rendered in 3D using the popular Unity game engine. The mobile version is also built in Unity, which a contributing factor in the near-simultaneous launch on Facebook and iPad. An iPhone companion app is soon to follow.

Players explore the game map by clicking or tapping, and can click on various items to interact with them. Progressing through the game’s quests rewards the player with additional tools, which allow them to interact with more diverse objects. Acquiring a hammer, for example, allows the player to break crates and barrels to retrieve the objects inside, while a machete allows for overgrown bamboo to be temporarily cleared, opening up new paths for exploration.

Many areas of the island are initially inaccessible, requiring the player to gather raw materials to rebuild bridges over rivers. As the player explores, they will find more items and characters to interact with, as well as a selection of minigames to play alongside the main exploration gameplay. These include a rhythm-based limbo game; a first-person shooter “pirate attack” game; a Bejeweled-style “match three” puzzler when resting in a hammock; and numerous appropriately-themed challenges. All actions cost Energy to perform, with playing a minigame costing three units at once.

A Facebook account is required to play, even on the iPad version, but this means that a player can start playing on their home computer then take their iPad with them to play on the go. In-game, players will see their friends’ characters wandering around their own Margaritaville island, and interacting with them grants a bonus of coins and items. Friends can also be hired into various positions in the player’s “Oasis” bar business, helping to increase income. There’s also the usual facility to send energy-restoring gifts to one another.

Monetization is largely handled through the sale of the game’s hard currency: Beach Bucks. These can be purchased on Facebook using Facebook Credits; earned using Facebook Offers; or purchased using in-app purchases on the iPad. Beach Bucks can be used for a variety of purposes — acquiring premium avatar customization items; purchasing energy restoration items; or gaining additional soft currency. THQ also offers a premium membership option for the game, known as becoming a “Parrothead,” which provides players with an increased energy limit, a cash bonus, special items and a variety of benefits promised in the future.

THQ’s plans for the future of the game are ambitious, with user acquisition strategies stretching far outside just Facebook and the App Store. Speaking with VentureBeat, THQ’s vice president of global brand management Michael Lustenberger said that the game would be promoted at Jimmy Buffett concerts; on the Las Vegas Strip; various restaurants and resorts; and also through the upcoming iPhone app, which encourages players to share real-world “Margaritaville Moments” in exchange for rewards in the game. A lot is riding on the success of the game for THQ, whose stock price has been plummeting recently thanks to disappointing sales of a number of its key titles in the console market.

You can follow Margaritaville Online’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

EA’s Risk: Factions remains in the top spot on our list of emerging Facebook games this week by nearly doubling its monthly active users.

World Mysteries, Miscrits and Bingo Bash meanwhile, have all slowed in growth as they edge closer to breaking 1 million MAU. It’ll be interesting to see if Zynga Bingo‘s closed beta and impending wide release impact Bingo Bash’s growth in the short run.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	RISK: Factions	650,000	+280,000	+ 91%
2.	World Mysteries	680,000	+130,000	+ 24%
3.	11×11 – Online Football Manager	430,000	+120,000	+ 39%
4.	Fruit Ninja Frenzy	850,000	+100,000	+ 15%
5.	松崗遊戲登入	330,000	+100,000	+ 43%
6.	麻將─神來也麻將	710,000	+90,000	+ 15%
7.	GameGround	760,000	+80,000	+ 12%
8.	Press Your Luck	240,000	+80,000	+ 50%
9.	Miscrits of Volcano Island	940,000	+70,000	+ 9%
10.	Atlantis Fantasy	230,000	+60,000	+ 35%
11.	Clickfun Casino	390,000	+60,000	+ 18%
12.	Go Fishing	440,000	+60,000	+ 16%
13.	Triviador Mundo	740,000	+60,000	+ 9%
14.	Wild West Town	440,000	+60,000	+ 16%
15.	Zombie Island	900,000	+60,000	+ 7%
16.	Bingo Bash	940,000	+50,000	+ 6%
17.	Pirates Poker	210,000	+50,000	+ 31%
18.	Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy	490,000	+50,000	+ 14%
19.	War Commander	690,000	+50,000	+ 8%
20.	麻將─新明星3缺1網頁遊戲 免費的麻將遊戲	300,000	+50,000	+ 20%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Come back next week for our top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, our daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Social game developer Kabam announced the acquisition of Fearless Studios this morning, scoring ex-LucasArts developers and Fearless founders Haden Blackman (pictured, left) and Cedrick Collomb (pictured, right) as part of the deal.

Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed. The entire Fearless team now joins the Kabam workforce in its San Francisco office. Kabam CEO Kevin Chou indicates in a press release statement that the team will be introducing 3D technology to Kabam’s games lineup.

“Their skills in game design, emerging technologies and proficiency in making the transition from 2D to 3D on consoles mesh perfectly with Kabam’s strategy,” his statement reads. “We’ll significantly strengthen our industry leadership as the online gaming market transitions to higher fidelity, 3D gameplay with our acquisition of Fearless Studios.”

Kabam’s VP of Brand Marketing and Communications, Ted Simon, clarifies that the team will be introducing streaming 3D to new titles and possibly to existing IP. As for branching out to new platforms, Simon says there are no plans to get into consoles — where Blackman and Collomb have a great deal of experience — but that Kabam is looking to go beyond Facebook and Google+ to international SNS platforms like Hives and VZNet with 3D games.

Fearless Studios was founded in October 2010, not long after Haden Blackman departed LucasArts and just months before the release of The Force Unleashed 2. Though the developer at one point had up to six projects in development, including a horror title, no games were ever released. Simon tells us that Kabam has not picked up the horror project. Fearless Studios last made the news in June 2011, when the developer was quoted in an HP press release, singing the praises of the TouchPad and the webOS platform.

Facebook now displays genre categories below game names in News Feed stories.

The change is mostly a cosmetic one as there is no way to view Facebook games by category. Even so, just seeing the word “Puzzle” below a game may help users navigate toward new games that they have a higher chance of liking because they know what to expect from it.

Game genres are a tough subject for some game developers as some descriptions are too broad to accurately target a game at its intended audience. For example, in the screen above, both CastleVille and Zoo World are tagged as “Simulation” — but the two games play very differently, to the point where it might make more sense to call the former a role-playing game and the latter a simulation. Another challenge is that some games fall under more than one genre; like how Zuma Blitz is both an arcade game (because it’s based on speed of reaction) and a puzzle game (because players have to match colors).

Hiring in the social gaming industry was up again this week, with 10 companies reporting 11 recent hires. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Zynga had this week’s highest profile hire, bringing on Ken Weber to lead its charitable Zynga.org arm as executive director.

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.

Cie Games

• David Bresson, Systems Engineer – A single hire at Cie Games begins our roundup this week. Bresson was previously a systems engineer at Disney Interactive Media Group.

Disney Playdom 

• Faiz Kamarul Baharin, Lead Concept and Production Artist - A single move for Disney Playdom this week, which promotes on Baharin to lead concept and production artist.

EA Playfish

• Ke Ren, Technical Lead – Ren makes our roundup with a promotion from his position as server developer.
• Tom Pearson, Lead Platform Developer – Pearson moves from an executive level position at Morgan Stanley to join Playfish’s UK team.

GSN

• Maneka Mahajan, Administrative Assistant – Mahajan was previously a business analysis intern at the American Institute of Physics.

Kabam

• Kevin Ligon, UI Artist – Ligon was formerly a graphic designer at Cardinal Health.

Kixeye

• Maximilian Herkender, Flash Engineer – Herkender comes to Kixeye from 6waves Lolapps, where he was a software engineer.

Nordeus

• Jasmina Jović, Customer Support Specialist - Jović starts her career at Nordeus this week.

Peak Games

• Can Ozcer, Assistant Intelligence Analyst – Peak brings on Ozcer from Esit Electronic where he was an R&D intern.

Tetris Online

• David Veltri, Legal Extern – Tetris Online makes a rare appearance this week. Veltri completed his education at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Zynga

• Ken Weber, Executive Director, Zynga.org – Finally Zynga snags this week’s highest profile hire, appointing Weber as the head of Zynga.org. Weber was previously the chief operating officer at The ONE Campaign.

Galactic Allies is the latest offering from Australian development studio 3 Blokes, who were acquired by RockYou last June. 3 Blokes were brought on board to the RockYou family to produce Facebook-based strategy combat titles that would appeal to the core gamer market, as well as offer some competition to other combat-heavy games such as Zynga’s Empires and Allies.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Galactic Allies currently has 30,000 monthly active users and 1,000 daily active users.

Galactic Allies is, in 3 Blokes’ words, a casual take on the real-time strategy genre popular among core gamers, and an episodic story-based experience. Players follow an unfolding plot concerning humanity’s struggle against a mysterious alien race, and must gather allies from around the galaxy, build up their forces and engage in combat against both the computer-controlled enemies and other players.

Players control their fleet of ships in combat by clicking on them and directing them to attack specific enemies. Ships can be moved in formation or directed individually, allowing for either concerted efforts to attack strong enemies or splitting up to deal with lesser threats. Different styles of ships are better against certain other types in a “rock, paper, scissors” arrangement, and the key to success in combat lies both in understanding this system and keeping ships upgraded with the latest technology.

Alongside combat and ship upgrading, players can also explore the galaxy, sending mining probes down to planet surfaces to collect resources. This provides players with soft currency, items for trade and experience points.

Social features for the game are varied. There’s the usual facility to visit friends’ bases and earn bonus energy, but there’s also a trading system where players can put various resources up for sale as well as create a “wish list” of items. Alongside this, players can compete against one another for ranking on the Combat Leaderboard in asynchronous combat — the computer takes control of a player’s fleet on their behalf when someone challenges them.

Monetization is handled through the sale of the game’s hard currency, Galactic Points. These are purchased using Facebook Credits and can be exchanged for additional soft currency, used to bribe enemies (effectively skipping combat sequences), used to acquire Research Keys (used for upgrading the player’s ships), exchanged for Energy (used for mining and other actions such as exploration) or used to purchase Power Cells (required to enter into combat sequences).

Galactic Allies launched into open beta last September. Its MAU figures have been declining over the course of the last month, but its DAU took a sharp upswing in early January 2012 that lasted almost an entire week. There hasn’t been any official communication from RockYou on the game’s official Facebook page since November, so it’s not entirely clear what has caused this slight upswing in users. The player community appears to be somewhat disgruntled with the relatively recent addition of the Power Cells mechanic, and some blame the decline of users on this along with what they see as a lack of communication with the developer.

Exactly what the future has in store for the game isn’t clear at this time, then, as the official communication channels have been silent since last November. We’ve contacted representatives for RockYou to find out what the long-term plan for the game is, and will update this story accordingly when we get a response.

Zynga kicks off a closed beta today for the next title in its Casino franchise, Zynga Bingo.

The game is a recreation of the classic gambling game where players receive cards with numbers placed along a grid and each column is identified by letter. A “caller” draws numbers at random from a pile, calling out the letter and number while players search for the corresponding spot on their cards. Should a player find the number called, they place a “dauber” token on the number; if they fill an entire line of numbers with daubers, they have a “bingo” and can claim a prize. Other winning conditions include filling up an entire card with daubers, placing daubers on each of the four corners of the card or completing specific number sequences that have been marked for prizes by the organizers.

Zynga’s main update to the game comes from power-up and bonus items, which are either bought, earned or gifted from friends. The power-ups are unlocked and used during the actual game of bingo; a boost bar fills up with each play, and once full, the player can click it to activate whatever power-up item they have queued. The power-ups available at launch are limited to placing down a dauber on certain numbers as if they had been called in normal play or increasing the number of bonus items received at the end of a game. Bonus items include soft currency, tickets (which are used to purchase bingo cards), mystery crates and keys to unlock said crates. The crates can contain power-ups, soft currency or tickets.

Other features in Zynga Bingo include real time chat, themed rooms that sometimes draw from Zynga’s own games and a Zynga Casino navigation bar above the canvas that presumably allows players to jump easily from Zynga Bingo to Texas HoldEm Poker or other Zynga Casino games as they are released. During a press demo, a Zynga spokesperson declined to discuss any upcoming features related to the Zynga Casino interface beyond what had already been revealed at Zynga’s 2011 Unleashed preview event.

Among social games, bingo has been slower to catch on than other casino titles like poker or video slots. It wasn’t until the beginning of 2011 that Buffalo Studios’ Bingo Blitz began to gain traction, hitting 2.8 million monthly active users and 930,000 daily active users before the end of the year. Other bingo games have since launched on Facebook to more modest success and some virtual casinos have added it to their lineup of games.

Zynga Bingo is the developer’s second Facebook title of 2012. Its first 2012 game, Hidden Chronicles, launched in the first week of January and currently enjoys 12.5 million MAU and 6.1 million DAU as recorded by our AppData traffic tracking service.

Galaxy Life is a new space strategy combat game from Digital Chocolate. It launched on Facebook at the end of November 2011 and has seen steady growth in both MAU and DAU since then.

According to our traffic tracking application AppData, Galaxy Life currently has 290,000 daily active users and 1,500,000 monthly active users.

Gameplay in Galaxy Life revolves around the player acting as a protector for a band of small, cute creatures known as Starlings after their planet was destroyed. Tasks the player must take on include building up a base and its defenses; defending against attacks from rival players and enemy non-player characters; and attacking and looting rival bases.

The style of play is somewhat similar to Kixeye’s popular Backyard Monsters title. Players can upgrade buildings on their base, which in turn allows them to store more resources and currency, eventually enabling them to construct stronger and stronger fortifications. Like many other games of this type, the player is provided with a seven day grace period in which they cannot be attacked by other players, giving them a chance to thoroughly get to grips with the game mechanics and prepare their base for potential assault.

Social features in the game include a real-time chat facility, the opportunity to spy on or attack other players and the ability to form alliances with other players to cooperate. Posting game events to their Facebook wall allows players to share free resources and currency with friends, assisting with the viral promotion of the game.

Monetization comes through the sale of the game’s hard currency, known as Galaxy Chips. These can be spent on purchasing additional resources or soft currency, speeding up time-consuming construction projects, or on purchasing special “collection” items. The latter items, which can also be found by clearing debris from the play area and exploring, can be used to craft special weapons with which to assault other players’ bases, bonus experience point and coin packages and special decorative items.

So far, the AppData figures for Galaxy Life indicate strong, steady growth, with no signs of slowing down. Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins attributes the success of his company’s games, including Galaxy Life, to his belief in what he refers to as the “discovery business model,” offering a compelling experience to players for free with a robust monetization infrastructure underpinning it.

“New creations that have relevance will develop brand power at blinding speed,” said Hawkins, writing on his blog for Digital Chocolate in December. “As an illustration, when a great Digital Chocolate game like Tower Bloxx was only available on feature phones through the primitive merchandise systems known as the carrier decks, you could do a Google search for that game and would only get 10,000 page hits. Then we put out a free browser version of the game and later adapted it to Facebook and today it has over 2,900,000 page hits. That’s a brand. Our new game, Galaxy Life, is only a few days old and it has 270,000 page hits already.”

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 TubeMogul, Inc., IMVU, Addmired, 6 Waves/Lolapps, Funcom Games Canada, Identified, Plumbee, Mobile Deluxe, Game Show Network, Stealth Mobile Startup, Tapjoy, LolGames, GREE International, Inc. and Spooky Cool Labs.

• Sr Java Developer
• Systems Operations Engineer

• Senior Software Engineer

• 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

• Senior UI Designer
• UI Vector Artist
• Interaction Designer

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

• Core Software Engineer

• Head of Mobile/Senior Mobile Producer

• Art Director
• Senior Programmer

• Senior QA Engineer-Mobile Games

Stealth Mobile Startup

• Senior Android Engineer

• Inside Sales Representative

• Social Media Business Development Lead / Internet Guru

• Director of Business Development

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

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.

Miscrits of Volcano Island is a new Facebook game from Broken Bulb Game Studios. It launched in mid-December of 2011, following its predecessor Miscrits of Sunfall Kingdom, which launched a year earlier in December 2010. It placed third in our list of emerging Facebook games for last week, and has been enjoying such strong growth since launch that it is almost at the same MAU figure as its year-old predecessor.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Miscrits of Volcano Island currently has 930,000 monthly active users and 130,000 daily active users.

The Miscrits series takes its cues from Nintendo’s popular range of handheld Pokémon games. The player takes on the role of a Battlemaster, a character who roams the lands collecting teams of creatures (the titular Miscrits) and sending them into battle against one another. Structurally and graphically, the game is almost identical to Miscrits of Sunfall Kingdom, albeit with a different setting and different Miscrits to collect. If the player has started playing one game, their character will carry across to the other, though their team of Miscrits will not.

Gameplay has two main parts — exploring Volcano Island and battling Miscrits. Exploration is a simple cast of clicking wherever the player would like their customized hero to walk, and clicking on objects to search for hidden Miscrits. Upon successfully searching an object, the player will either be rewarded with currency and items or be thrown into a battle against a Miscrit.

Battles are resolved similar to most roleplaying games. Two Miscrits face off against each other and take it in turns to unleash their special abilities. Each Miscrit has a particular element associated with it, making it stronger or weaker against others — Fire-type Miscrits are particularly strong against Nature-type opponents, for example, dealing more damage and receiving less damage. A large part of the strategy of the game revolves around knowing which Miscrit to use for each situation.

New Miscrits can be captured by weakening them in combat, but not killing them. A “Capture” button then becomes available for the player to acquire and, if they desire, rename their new Miscrit. Unlike the Pokémon series, players don’t need a special item with which to capture the creatures. There are 22 Miscrits to capture in the wild, and each can be evolved into more powerful forms three times by leveling them up enough or by spending hard currency.

Like Pokémon, Miscrits is built for social play. Adding friends as “teammates” allows the player to duel their battle team of Miscrits, to send them gifts and visit their house. There is also a Battle Arena for players to pit their teams against other players from around the world, including a special Platinum Arena for high level players where hard currency can be won in large quantities by skilled Battlemasters.

Monetization is handled largely through the sales of the game’s hard and soft currencies — Platinum and Gold, respectively. Platinum can be earned through gameplay and through an offer wall or simply purchased via Facebook Credits. It is then used for a variety of purposes — leveling up Miscrits without having to battle them; evolving them without having to level them; and purchasing certain premium items. Meanwhile, Facebook Credits can be used directly to purchase certain items and even Miscrits from the in-game store, and is also used to restore the player’s “Virtue” statistic, ten points of which are spent any time a team of Miscrits is healed fully. Virtue restores to a maximum of ten points over time, but instant restoration items can be purchased from the store or sent by teammates. The Virtue statistic carries across between both Miscrits games.

The future of the game holds more Miscrits for players to uncover and additional areas to explore. Broken Bulb keeps players up to date via their official website and forums, and seems committed to communication and interaction with its player base.

You can follow Miscrits of Volcano Island’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

After almost a year of anticipation, Angry Birds may finally be making its Facebook debut on Valentines Day.

According to an interview Penn Olson conducted with Rovio’s mighty eagle Peter Vesterbacka and senior vice president of Asia Henri Holm, the company will hold a launch event for the long-awaited Facebook version of the physics-based puzzle game on Feb. 14 in Jakarta, Indonesia

Angry Birds is already available a multitude of platforms including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Google Chrome, Google+, Symbian, Bada and even Sony’s Playstation 3 and Playstation Portable consoles, but the one platform where it has been notoriously absent is Facebook.

Inside Mobile Apps first reported Rovio would be bringing Angry Birds to Facebook in March of 2011 with a launch expected sometime in the spring. When Vesterbacka announced the Chrome Web Store launch of Angry Birds in May 2011, the Facebook launch date had been pushed back to “later in 2011”. Then in June, The Telegraph reported Vesterbacka had said Angry Birds would be live on Facebook within the next three months. Although Penn Olsen did not report any details about the launch except Angry Birds for Facebook would be released worldwide on Feb. 14, the announcement of a firm launch-date seems to indicate the long-delayed port will finally see the light of day.

Although the move to launch the game in Jakarta may surprise some, Indonesia is Facebook’s second largest market after the US. According to an interview Facebook’s vice president for mobile partnerships and corporate development Vaughan Smith gave in November, Indonesia currently has 45 million Facebook users and according to comScore, Facebook reaches 86.7 percent of all online users in Indonesia.

While the game is not officially active on Facebook (except for a Fan Page, which has more than 12.9 million likes) there are plenty of fake versions of Angry Birds already on Facebook. According to our traffic tracking service AppData, there are over 20 fake versions of Angry Birds on the platform.

Vesterbacka also revealed the Angry Birds franchise has now racked up more than 700 million downloads. In December the company reported Angry Birds had passed 600 million total downloads.

Parallel Kingdom from developer PerBlue has been available for iOS and Android devices since 2009, but more recently launched a Web-based version. The game has arrived on Facebook as of January, featuring full integration with the Facebook Games Ticker and support for existing accounts which players might have from the mobile or Web versions.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Parallel Kingdom currently has 4,000 monthly active users and 200 daily active users.

Parallel Kingdom is a location-based massively multiplayer online RPG which overlays a virtual world on top of the Google Map of the player’s current location. Through planting flags on the map, players are able to claim territory, travel further afield, battle monsters, find treasures, wage war and build cities. It’s a complex game with a considerable amount of depth which was previously limited to GPS-enabled iOS and Android devices. On computers without GPS equipment, the Web and Facebook versions use coarse location tracking to determine a player’s approximate location using their network address rather than direct pinpointing of their location. The developer is keen to stress that although players can see each other’s avatars on the map, it doesn’t necessarily indicate exactly where a player is physically, since avatars are able to travel further afield in order to claim territory.

Players have a wide variety of options during gameplay. They can explore the land and attempt to claim as much as possible. They can collect resources through mining and hunting. They can collaborate with other players to build cities, which feature special buildings that are able to produce items. Or they can compete against other players and wage war against rival cities. Rather than the relatively linear structure of many massively multiplayer online RPGs, Parallel Kingdom is kept relatively freeform throughout. Players are assigned a human “mentor” upon entering the game, and this person will walk new players through the basics of the game if they so desire.

Players who have already been enjoying the mobile version are able to use their existing accounts to log into the Web and Facebook versions, though this process seemed to have a few glitches at the time of testing, with the game sometimes complaining that a “character does not exist on this world”. New players, conversely, are presented with a simple tutorial outlining the very basics of play before being thrust into the real world and introduced to their mentor.

The game is free to play but uses a resource known as Food as one of its currencies. Food is used for a variety of purposes — crafting, trading and leveling up — and can be earned through play, but can also be purchased for real money. Sales of Food provide the game’s main monetization strategy, but it’s not all about profit — in 2011 PerBlue collaborated with SOS Children to fund around 2,500 meal vouchers for children in Kenya through in-game purchases of Food.

“People want to play games in the environment they are most comfortable with, be that mobile, the Web, Kongregate, or Facebook,” said Justin Beck, co-founder and CEO of developer PerBlue, speaking with our affiliate blog, All Facebook, regarding the move from GPS-enabled smartphones to the Web and Facebook. ”We don’t want to make people jump over fences to enjoy Parallel Kingdom, and that means meeting our players where they are. Thousands of users have already joined during beta, and since launching on these new platforms, the community is growing quickly.”

BMW xDrive Challenge is a new Facebook-based driving game developed by game.punks and designed as a promotional tool for the motor company’s series of xDrive-powered four wheel drive cars. The game launched into a public beta in November of 2011 and saw its official release as a full scale game with competitions and prizes on December 15, 2011.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, BMW xDrive Challenge peaked at 90,000 monthly active users and 9,000 daily active users.

The game gives players the chance to drive several vehicles in the BMW X series, beginning with the X1 and progressing through the increasingly powerful X3, X5 and X6 models.

Players are able to drive freely around the game’s area for as long as they like to get a feel for the cars, and can engage in races by stopping at the start line of the game’s various racing environments, which include Road, Dirt, Ice and River. Players can either challenge their friends to a race, take on computer-controlled opponents or enter daily, weekly and monthly championships, with prizes provided by the game’s sponsors.

Rather than providing real-time racing, BMW xDrive Challenge takes an asynchronous approach, with players recording their best lap times with which to challenge their friends. When racing, a “ghost car” can be seen showing the route the opponent took, but there are no collisions between vehicles. The same is true for the championship races, with the only difference being that opponents are pulled from all over Facebook rather than the player’s friends list.

Completing races awards players with BMW Credits, Race Credits and experience points. BMW Credits are used to refuel and repair the player’s car and purchase new vehicles. Experience points, which are awarded not only for completing the race but also for driving stylishly and accurately, are required alongside BMW Credits to unlock the different vehicles. Race Credits, meanwhile, are used to access championship races.

The game is graphically intensive and as such requires a relatively powerful computer to enjoy to its fullest. The developer recommends an Intel Core 2-powered PC or Mac with a Shader Model 3 graphics card as a minimum. There appear to be a few technical issues at the time of writing — when tested, the game ran consistently well in Mozilla Firefox but sometimes refused to start at all in Google Chrome, giving an error message complaining of “too many players.” The developer does, however, claim to have tested the game on six browsers across PC and Mac, so results may vary.

As an advergame, the game is sponsored by K2, Bang & Olufsen, Deluxe Music, Rauch and BMW itself. The sponsors’ involvement extends not only to having their names on the game’s introductory screens, but also in providing prizes for the championship races. At the time of writing, for example, K2 is offering a prize of some BMW-branded skis for the best drivers on the icy track.

The game has been primarily marketed towards selected countries in the central-eastern European markets (specifically  Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia), and promoted heavily via local BMW Facebook fan pages in those regions. The game has also grown organically through its “friend racing” mechanic as well as Facebook’s usual Like and Share systems. AppData shows relatively steady growth since launch, but it’s still early days for the game, and the team at game.punks is thinking long-term.

“Currently the game is growing, and we are hosting daily, weekly and monthly competitions with prizes from the sponsors,” explained Marco Höglinger, managing director of developer game.punks. “As the game goes into this year, we will look at the options for increasing the number of cars in the game and adding a new game mode to encourage off-road driving.

“[We currently have] no plans to launch on G+,” added Höglinger, on the subject of potential expansion to other platforms alongside Facebook. “It would be an interesting experiment to launch on a mobile market, and also on gaming networks such as BigPoint and Steam. This would need to be negotiated with the brand holder, though.”

It’s Hidden Chronicles again at the top of this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users. Tetris Battle and Words With Friends complete the top three.

Toward the bottom of the list, we see some older games like Wild Ones and FIFA Superstars making small DAU gains in the past week. It’s too soon to tell if this is organic growth or the result of user acquisition spending. Surprisingly, EA’s Madden NFL Superstars hasn’t gotten any sort of lift from the current season as it approaches its climax.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Hidden Chronicles	5,900,000	+5,110,000	+ 647%
2.	Tetris Battle	3,400,000	+400,000	+ 3%
3.	Words With Friends	8,700,000	+300,000	+ 4%
4.	Bubble Witch Saga	4,200,000	+100,000	+ 2%
5.	المزرعة السعيدة	1,900,000	+100,000	+ 12%
6.	Pool Live Tour	1,000,000	+50,000	+ 5%
7.	Car Town	820,000	+40,000	+ 5%
8.	Fruit Ninja Frenzy	140,000	+40,000	+ 27%
9.	Galaxy Life	290,000	+30,000	+ 4%
10.	Happy Pets	200,000	+30,000	+ 15%
11.	Men vs Women	260,000	+30,000	+ 12%
12.	Okey	560,000	+30,000	+ 6%
13.	RISK: Factions	110,000	+30,000	+ 22%
14.	Social Empires	960,000	+30,000	+ 3%
15.	Wild Ones	430,000	+30,000	+ 8%
16.	Akvaryum	100,000	+20,000	+ 25%
17.	Bingo Bash	200,000	+20,000	+ 11%
18.	EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars: Real football & soccer!	290,000	+20,000	+ 4%
19.	FantaBook	60,000	+20,000	+ 50%
20.	Fashion Designer	130,000	+20,000	+ 15%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Read our reviews of…

• Hidden Chronicles
• Tetris Battle
• Words With Friends
• Bubble Witch Saga
• Car Town
• Fruit Ninja Frenzy
• Happy Pets
• Men vs. Women
• Risk: Factions
• Social Empires
• Wild Ones
• Bingo Bash
• FIFA Superstars
• Fashion Designer

Developer King.com continues its cross-platform mission today with a Google+ launch of its top-trafficking Facebook game, Bubble Witch Saga.

Speaking to Inside Social Games, King.com Chief Marketing Officer Alex Dale explains how the emerging social games platform fits into the company’s overall cross-platform goals, despite the fact that the G+ Bubble Witch Saga isn’t at all linked to the Facebook version. He also confirms that mobile versions of more of its Facebook games are due out in the next few months.

Inside Social Games: What convinced you to branch to G+?  

Alex Dale, chief marketing officer, King.com: As a part of our multi-platform strategy, we aim to make our games available across a broad range of platforms — Google + was the natural progression within this strategy [because it's] a rapidly growing network and, with Google’s backing, is highly likely to be a huge platform in the long-term.

ISG: Do you expect to see better conversion rates and monetization on G+ compared to Facebook? How about G+ compared to mobile?

Dale: We are looking forward to seeing how G+ converts — we are now on day two, so we’ll have more feedback in the coming months. In terms of audience, our expectation is that the G+ players are younger and more male compared to the Facebook audience. Bringing Bubble Witch Saga to G+ could hopefully help Google [attract] more women to their platform, since we’ve had great success in attracting female gamers to the Facebook version of Bubble Witch Saga.

ISG: Can we expect to see the Facebook-based King.com games portal app make the jump as well?

Dale: Several of the King.com skill games are already featured on Google’s Chrome Web Store, so it would be an easy implementation for us to make if we chose to also publish them on G+. Our skill games site www.king.com is both a successful business in its own right and a test bed for games that could be socialized for Facebook and G+.

ISG: How does G+ curate apps?

Dale: We are working with G+ on different promotional opportunities for Bubble Witch Saga. It’s just speculation on our part, but we’d like to think that their editors select the highest-quality games and try to make them readily available for the G+ players.

ISG: Do you think the competition will continue between King.com and its nearest Facebook competitors or is the ecosystem ripe enough to produce new rivalries with other developers?  

Dale: Wooga is our closest competitor at the moment, both in terms of overall daily and monthly active users [and] also in terms of the types of games that we make. I think that we’ve shown that the ocean of players is vast, and there’s definitely enough room for several apps in the same category on Facebook. For example, Bubble Witch Saga, the sixth-largest game in terms of DAU on FB and wooga’s Bubble Island, the thirteenth-largest game, are obviously both very successful at the same time.

ISG: King.com’s push in 2011 was to go cross-platform with an emphasis on mobile. What do you wish you’d known a year ago to help you meet that goal?

Dale: What we know now is that Facebook can play a major role in application discovery due to the huge impact of the Facebook HTML5-app with Facebook->Mobile app discovery, which was launched in November. The logic is to build an audience on Facebook first and then release to mobile.

World Mysteries from Brazilian developer Vostu is a new hidden object game for Facebook. It came in second place on our emerging Facebook games chart late last week, and has been showing healthy growth since its launch in late December, with numbers really starting to pick up in early January.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, World Mysteries currently has 630,000 monthly active users and 80,000 daily active users.

World Mysteries is a hidden object game that bears more than a passing resemblance to Zynga’s recently-released Hidden Chronicles. Both see the player investigating the disappearance of their uncle under mysterious circumstances, both revolve around restoring the mansion to unlock access to additional scenes and both feature an attractive female “guide” character to talk players through the early scenes.

There are two main parts to World Mysteries, as with Hidden Chronicles: the restoration of the mansion — though in this case the player is restoring the interior, not the exterior — and the search for the titular mysteries. Said mysteries lead to the truth behind the disappearance of the player’s uncle. Purchasing objects to decorate the mansion earns Mystery Points, which in turn unlock access to further scenes in the second part of the game: the search for hidden objects in various locations around the world.

In these scenes, players are challenged to locate a list of objects scattered throughout a static image. In order to complete many of the game’s quests, it is necessary to revisit these locations several times in order to earn additional trophies. Each time the scene is replayed, the image and object locations are the same, but the list of objects to locate is randomized. This means that over time, players will learn the location of specific items in the scene and be able to quickly find them all for a much higher score. Bonuses are provided for quickly finding objects in rapid succession, and bonuses are given once all objects have been found depending on how much time was taken to complete the scene. As with most hidden object games, the objects the player is tasked with finding typically have little to no relevance to the narrative reasons for being in the location, and are frequently presented in physically-improbable situations — a scarf wrapped around the Eiffel Tower in Paris, for example.

The game’s social features primarily revolve around visiting friends’ mansions to leave them gifts, and also in comparing scores on the leaderboards for each stage.

Monetization for the game is handled through the sale of both hard and soft currency in exchange for Facebook Credits, though prices in the app are listed directly in U.S. dollars rather than in Credits. Hard currency may be used to purchase premium items to decorate the mansion. These items typically carry a much higher Mystery Points value than those bought with soft currency, so progression through the different scenes of the game is quicker when spending money. Hard currency may also be spent on energy-restoring items and hints for use in the hidden object scenes. Certain objects also require the player to acquire specific building materials to construct them, and hard currency may be spent on immediately acquiring these rather than finding them through normal gameplay.

The popularity of the hidden object genre on Facebook is such that World Mysteries is seeing slow and steady growth in user numbers even though Zynga’s Hidden Chronicles has approximately fifteen times more monthly active users. So long as the users keep coming, Vostu will keep expanding the game with additional cases and scenes to explore, and a “Collections” feature along with two additional types of hint are set for inclusion in an upcoming update — at this time, they’re marked on the interface, but blocked by a “Soon” banner.

Future development on the game will also hopefully include some improved translation from the original Portuguese — some messages are riddled with spelling and grammar errors, and the icon which indicates the game is loading still says “Carregando.”

You can follow World Mysteries’ progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.

February 8 – 9, 2012 | San Francisco

Inside Social Apps 2012 will be here in San Francisco in just two weeks! 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 January 31st, so we encourage you to 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 January 31st.

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 January 31st. 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!

Trivia Adventure from Austin-based Steel Penny Games is a new Facebook game featuring elements of role-playing, quiz and board games. It launched on January 16 and is gradually picking up steam as users discover its intriguing blend of genres.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Trivia Adventure currently has 2,000 monthly active users and 400 daily active users.

Trivia Adventure is primarily a role-playing game. Players design a character of either gender, name them, choose a character class to enjoy an initial bonus to one of their statistics and are then thrown into a short tutorial introducing them to the game’s basic rules.

The majority of the player’s time in Trivia Adventure is spent exploring dungeons and wilderness areas. Movement around these areas is handled in a board game-like manner. Players draw one of three cards, each of which shows how many spaces they can move. It’s possible to spend soft currency to reveal all three cards if there’s a specific space the player wants to try and land on — for example, one which holds treasure, which can take the form of either items or soft currency.

On certain spaces, the player is required to engage in combat. This is handled in a turn-based manner, with the player usually attacking first. Upon clicking the “Attack” button, a trivia question pops up on screen.  Answering the question correctly gives the player a bonus to the damage they inflict on the enemy they are fighting, while answering incorrectly still allows the player to inflict damage, but also means they receive a greater amount of injury from their opponent.

All actions, whether they are movement or attacking, cost Momentum, the game’s version of energy. Momentum completely refills upon gaining a level, and also gradually tops up over time. Players can also receive Momentum bonuses by sharing their activities to their Facebook walls — there are benefits for friends also playing the game here, too, as players can share questions to their walls, with experience bonuses on offer to those who answer correctly.

Social features for the game include the aforementioned sharing mechanic along with the usual facility to send gifts to friends. A competitive element is also added, as each player’s run through a dungeon is scored according to how much they explored, how much loot they found, questions they answered correctly and streaks of correct answers. Leaderboards are displayed upon each dungeon delve, and players can replay past areas to improve their score.

The game’s monetization is primarily handled through the sale of hard currency, here known as Steel Pennies. These can be purchased with Facebook Credits and then used to top up Momentum; add soft currency; refill health; purchase premium items from stores; and add benefits to the character, including additional inventory slots or companion pets. Facebook Credits can be bought directly or earned via offer wall.

Trivia Adventure has showed slow but steady growth since its launch in mid-January. The game has already received several updates to improve gameplay, but we’re waiting to hear back from the developer on what its long-term plans for the game are. In time we’ll see if the blending of these disparate genres proves to be a lucrative one.

You can follow Trivia Adventure’s progress with AppData, our traffic tracking application for social games and developers.