RockYou's Galactic Allies shows declining MAU despite strong core gamer strategy action

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. "In general, the decline of Galactic Allies' user base came as we paused our standard user acquisition efforts while in development on game changes," explained RockYou's senior vice president of publishing Josh Grant when we asked him about the fluctuating numbers. "Reduced acquisition efforts on top of natural attrition will find a game at lower user levels." There hasn't been any official communication from RockYou on the game's official Facebook page since November, but Grant attributes the increase in daily users this month to "exploratory testing of new features in the game," meaning that new player acquisition had been opened up for a brief period. Judging from comments left on the official page, 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. "RockYou continues to be excited about our entry into the mid-core genre of social gaming," says Grant in response. "We expect Galactic Allies to play a significant part in this channel. We are currently undergoing development changes that will drive a more robust combat and strategy game." Exactly what the future has in store for the game isn't clear at this time, then, but despite the silence on the official channels, it sounds like RockYou and developer 3 Blokes have a long-term plan in mind for the game. "At this time, 3 Blokes is solely focused on making a best of breed real time strategy game out of Galactic Allies," explained Grant. He did not, however, elaborate on the specifics of exactly how this would be achieved.

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RockYou's Galactic Allies shows declining MAU despite strong core gamer strategy action

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