Backyard Monsters: A Social Game For Gamers Who Hate Social Games

Backyard Monsters, from Casual Collective, is the social game for gamers who usually hate social games. Mixing real-time strategy gaming with offbeat visual cuteness, it plays like a slow motion version of Starcraft crossed with a Pixar movie, and while most of the biggest social games have recently hit a growth plateau, Backyard Monsters has been growing quickly since July. It now boasts nearly 900K monthly active users, and CEO Will Harbin told me it should reach a million monthlies in a couple weeks. Given current trends, Harbin believes Monsters could ultimately grow to 15-20 million monthly actives; even more impressive, Harbin says the game is already cash flow positive. So its success is proof positive a relatively complex "gamer's game" can work on a social network, and offers a bunch of interesting takeaways for developers and gamers alike: Developed by Casual Collective's David Scott and Paul Preece, who also created the fiendishly viral Flash game Desktop Tower Defense a few years ago, Backyard Monsters is a resource management strategy game where you build a miniature fortress of defensive towers, walls, and monster-making factories in your backyard, while defending and attacking neighbors. (You launch assaults by flinging your monsters from a catapult.) As Harbin tells it, the company was driven to make a social game that they themselves would like to play: "We're all gamers here," he told me, "and we've been kind of disappointed at the quality of [social] games launched... FarmVille doesn't appeal to someone like me. " The game went live this April, and has been growing slowly but steadily through viral recommendations; the company started Facebook ad buys in July, strongly increasing that growth. (Half the game's users now come from paid acquisition.) And while Casual Collective was targeting males aged 20-40, they've been surprised to find their RTS relatively popular with women, too: 30% of the active userbase is female, Harbin tells me. Another surprise: Harbin estimates that 20% of their players don't attack others, preferring to spend all their time building. "They just want to build a big pretty base," as he puts it. (Backyard Monsters' Facebook fanpage regularly features screenshots of bases the proud owners have turned into amazing garden sculptures of all shapes and variety.) Rather than force these happy builders into combat, the developers are tweaking the game to make it possible for them to keep tinkering in peace. And unlike most social games, Backyard Monsters encourages players to interact with others outside their social graph, such as visiting strangers' bases, or sending a neighborly assault wave. Harbin says 90% of their players do just that. As a result of all this enthusiastic player engagement, Harbin reports the game's monetization rate is above industry averages (though he declines to give specific numbers.) The most popular virtual item purchase are Speedups, which decrease the time to build/upgrade resources. However, Harbin says it's important that more casual players don't feel overly pressured to monetize: "There's a lot of competition out there... so you still have to offer a good free-to-play experience." Since the company's happy with Backyard Monsters' monetization, Harbin says they're focused on scaling the game, and adding more elements to keep existing players engaged. In the next few weeks, look for more damage and upgrade visuals, leaderboards, and an alliance/guild system. Backyard Monsters' success points to a market that's been ignored by social game developers obsessed with acquisition and marketing, in a largely futile chase after FarmVille numbers. "Everyone else is fighting for the same piece of the pie," as Will Harbin puts it, "and a lot of gamers have been abandoned by this latest social gaming craze, including me." To win them over, his advice is refreshingly old school: "Just make a fun game that you would like to play."

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Backyard Monsters: A Social Game For Gamers Who Hate Social Games

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