Do Games and Art Mix? CLASH Facebook Game Depends On It
Virtual Goods and Currency
Is The Majority of Social Gaming Revenue Coming From Outside Facebook? Report Says Yes.
Just a year ago when people mentioned social games, thoughts of Facebook shuddered the mind. Fast forward today, Viximo’s latest report entitled ‘Beyond Facebook’ claims that all the other social networks, that comprise 70 percent of social networking traffic in the world, bring in more gaming revenue combined.
Mediabistro Events
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.
Use Social Media to Market Your Business
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. Volume11Media CEO Shares Secret To Monetizing Free Users
We know that 0.5% of players statistically account for 75% of a game’s revenue, but is that the upper limit of game monetization? It doesn’t have to be if you adopt casino management techniques for your game portfolio.
Social Gamers Spend 75 Percent Of Social Networking Time Playing Games
Social game developer, RockYou, and the marketing research firm, Interpret, announced the latest findings of their ‘Social Gamer Thought Leadership Study’. The study is the first-of-its-kind as it analyzes behaviors, motivations, and purchase intent among the US social gaming demographic. The results both reaffirm existing assumptions and provide some insightful information about social gamers.
New Service Allows Head-To-Head Wagering in Facebook Games
I had a chance to catch up with Woodrow Levin, Founder and CEO of BringIt, a real-time transactional platform that recently launched head-to-head wagering for Facebook games with mobile games to come.
REPORT: How Free-to-Play iOS Game Developers Thrive in a Market Forecast to Be 200M by 2012
Many of the most successful iOS games are not sold by big name publishers like Electronic Arts. Rather, they’re from smaller developers and are not even sold at all, but given away in the App Store’s Free section, earning their revenue via in-app payments. Flurry, a mobile app analytics company, recently reported that of the Top 100 grossing iOS games this June, 65% were freemium. This analysis is consistent with data samples taken from AppData.com, Inside Network’s service that tracks app and developer leaderboards. On a recent day, for example, 15 of the top 25 grossing iOS apps were free (and 8 of 10 paid apps were just priced at $0.99.)
What’s more, the total market for freemium iOS games is poised to rapidly grow. It’s currently 75-150 million, and forecast to reach 200 million by 2012. That forecast comes from Jeferson Valadares, GM of games, at Flurry. “The total iOS base now exceeds 300M devices,” he explained to SocialTimes Pro. “We assume that at least a quarter to half of those play freemium games, as games are the most popular category on iOS, and freemium games are the most popular form of gaming. If Apple continues to grow daily activations of iOS devices at 350,000 per day (a conservative estimate based on recently released Apple numbers) over the next two years, then they will add approximately 90 million new devices each year for the next two years. If we assume a quarter of those users will play freemium games, then the market will add over 50 million new freemium gamers over the next two years.”
What kind of games are succeeding in this new ecosystem? SocialTimes Pro talked with two leading developers about the secrets behind their high grossing titles:
Reminiscent of FarmVille with strategy elements, in The Playforge’s Zombie Farm, the player must harvest zombies like they were crops, and then send them to attack neighbors. Since launching 17 months ago, the company reports the game has attracted over 12 million downloads and monthly active users in the millions, The Playforge VP and general manager Thomas Chung told us.
The best strategy for increasing in-app purchases? For The Playforge, said Chung, “[it] has been to seed users with virtual currency and tutorializing them how to spend it.” In fact, he told us, the company gives away six times as much virtual currency as they actually sell.
High Noon is an extremely popular iOS game which mixes first-person shooter and MMO elements with innovative gameplay that uses the iPhone’s internal accelerometer. According to the developer, it currently has about 1 million monthly active users and 250,000 daily active users. It’s performed well in many countries and, in 2010, was the top 10 grossing game of the year in 60+ countries, according to Apple Rewind.
Developed by Beijing-based Happylatte, managing director Bjørn Stabell told SocialTimes Pro that social media is not very important to their monetization rates: “We do leverage Facebook Connect and Apple Game Center to find friends,” as Stabell put it, “but the game is mainly viral through word-of-mouth and in the real world; the funky controls for holstering and reloading makes the very act of playing the game essentially an ad for the game and acts as a good conversation starter.”
Read more about monetizing free-to-play iOS games in the latest SocialTimes Pro report.
Do Games and Art Mix? CLASH Facebook Game Depends On It
The digital collectible card game features a completely revised user interface, exciting new content additions, and the introduction of limited edition “Artist Series” cards. CLASH: Rise of Heroes differs from most other online CCG’s in that players are able to battle one another in real-time.
Tapjoy Hits a Milestone With 10,000 Apps
Today Tapjoy has hit a major landmark of attaining over 10,000 apps in its network through its latest partnerships with OMGPOP and Moblyng among others. This milestone is significant because it shows that there are at least that many freemium based apps utilizing virtual currency to monetize their apps.
Virtual Greats CEO Discusses Skechers’ Virtual Shoes Deal
Leading virtual goods agency Virtual Greats recently announced a partnership with SKECHERS to distribute the footwear brand’s items in many online destinations such as Meez.com and WeeWorld. We also had a chance to catch up with Founder and CEO of Virtual Greats, Dan Jansen, about his thoughts on the new deal.
card.io Lets You Scan a Credit Card with a Phone to Make a Payment
Typing a credit card number and other information required for online payments is never an enjoyable task. A startup, card.io, has an idea for a better way to make online credit card payments.
Card.io Lets You Pay on Mobile by Holding a Credit Card Up to the Phone (ReadWrite Mobile)
card.io is offering developers a way to build in a way to get credit card information by simply holding the physical credit card in front of a phone’s camera. card.io does not charge developers monthly fees or require a contract. They do, however, take a 15 cent processing fee for each scan. Developers get $30 free credit (presumably for 200 tests). Non-profit organizations can use card.io’s scanning for free.
card.io’s technique does not require special hardware beyond a camera. This gives it an advantage over NFC (Near Field Communications) which requires NFC hardware in the phone for use. There is the question, however, of how reliable scanning is on various phones. card.io currently has an SDK (Software Development Kit) for iOS (iPhone and iPad) with an Android SDK in development.
Video courtesy of mettler
Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience 2011, Is Here
If 2010 is remembered as the year that games on social networks became a billion dollar business, 2011 is quickly becoming the year that the industry is starting to mature. Facebook is mandating Credits effective July 1st, creating massive changes in the monetization ecosystem, last year’s hit games are fighting for their lives, and new developers and games are climbing the leaderboards. At the same time, larger players are consolidating smaller studios and teams, and large media companies and traditional game developers continue to plot their social gaming strategies.
