This week we had a chance to interview Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts and Digital Chocolate about his new NanoStar platform, Nick wrote a report from SXSW about the economics of Facebook Games, we looked at 3 ways social gaming is mimicking the Atari games revolution, we reviewed Gangster City and Friends for Sale and published a report that suggests Users Buy More Virtual Goods on New Years and Valentines Day Than Christmas.
As soon as a game like Cafe World gains a certain amount of popularity, Youtube comedian Tobuscus never fails to put together a hilarious parody commercial about the game. The latest video highlights the fact that mothers are choosing Cafe World over making real dinners, which is worthwhile for those looking to mimic starving models. It’s at 200,000 views and quickly growing. Check it out below!
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If you’ve ever played a Facebook game, dreamed of making one, or just wanted to name one, you have got to try the “Facebook Game Idea Generator”. It’s a tongue-in-cheek application that presents you with a series of Facebook game ideas one after another, probably by randomizing the most popular elements of existing social games. It’s more of a name generator than anything else, but it’s worth a laugh.
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It’s surprising, but when you look at Facebook game rating boards, you may observe that most players that submit Facebook game ratings have secret agendas to get more friends, advertise their business or express their artistic tastes. Now we all understand that people who play Farmville occasionally feel the need to express strong feelings, but why in the world are they flocking in droves to the Facebook game rating board? I spent some time digging around and found for you, the reader, 10 strange, humorous and misused Facebook game ratings.
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Nintendo is using a Facebook Application to promote their upcoming release of the double-sized DSi XL device. The application, called “What Would You Like 93% Bigger” is a simple interactive question-and-answer that humorously looks at what would happen if various things were 93% bigger. The 93% is a reference to the upgraded size of the new DS screens.
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Yahoo today announced that they are acquiring Citizen Sports, a company that creates fantasy sports leagues for Facebook, iPhone, Android and other devices. The acquisition is meant to enhance Yahoo’s position in social games and fantasy sports, and “strengthen Yahoo!’s social strategy of enriching, aggregating and distributing social content from across the entire Web, and offering a highly customizable social experience.”
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The massively popular Facebook game, Farmville, is now even more popular. Farmville is about to surpass 80 million monthly active users, up from 70 million active monthly users in December 2009 and 60 million active monthly users in October 2009. If you look at these stats, it seems that the game is gaining 10 million users every other month.
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Seattle’s Big Fish Games is bringing Faunasphere, its flagship MMO, to Facebook. This marks the first Facebook game launch for Big Fish Games, and the game will be completely interoperable with the version of the game available at the Faunasphere home page. This is being launched as part of Big Fish Games “New Game Every Day!” strategy, where a new game is released daily. It is the first Facebook release in the series.
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In the leadup to this week’s launch of Dante’s Inferno for XBox 360, Playstation 3 and the upcoming launch of the PSP version, EA partnered with Lolapps to successfully launch the Dante’s Inferno Facebook game. Looking at the numbers, the game has accumulated 4 million Monthly Active Users since its launch, and had had 1 million users in the week first week of the release of the Facebook Application. Lolapps was most famous for their Band of Heroes game, a Mafia Wars-style RPG with over 1,000,000 MAUs and a strong story component, but this has been eclipsed by the success of Dante’s Inferno, and represents a step forward for the company. We’ve been able to get some key statistics about the game from Lolapps, and share them here.
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Whenever I discuss virtual goods and the Facebook revenue model with people outside the industry, the first thing they ask me is: do people actually care for virtual goods? My answer is always the same: while the goods have no actual physical presence, their context on a social network means their value is social and emotional. And if that doesn’t sell the point, I just point to Zynga. Well, chock up another data node for my point of view: FarmVille players have already sent more valentines in 18 hours than all the 152 million Valentines Day cards exchanged all year according to Hallmark.
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