Why Casual Game Publisher Arkadium is Doubling Down on Facebook

Yesterday, game publisher Arkadium announced the addition of 20 new employees to its workforce of 80 people. But while Arkadium is usually still identified as a casual gaming company, all 20 will work in social gaming, along with some existing producers who have switched to social. We talked to CEO Kenny Rosenblatt to learn why, when many Facebook developers say they're looking for ways off the platform, Arkadium is looking for ways in. Other casual developers have had trouble on Facebook because they don't fully understand user metrics and the design process, according to Rosenblatt. "The importance of analytics and the notion of games as a service, an ongoing, iterative process of making your games better and better ... a lot of companies didn't realize how important those things were and gave up," Rosenblatt says. Now Arkadium has begun using its existing casual game network of six million users to as a testing ground to find the best candidates for Facebook. To help experienced casual producers understand how to build for Facebook, the company also has an internal "boot camp" that employees who are switching over can enter. Arkadium is also building a platform, Arkadium Connect, to make it easier to place its games on Facebook, with built-in monetization and analytics. Although only for its own games for now, the platform will be opened to outside companies in three to six months, Rosenblatt says. Overall, Arkadium seems happy with its progress so far on Facebook. Its biggest hit so far, the Chinese tile game Mahjongg Dimensions, hit a high of 1.5 million users and has since declined by a third, but Rosenblatt thinks it and similar games can become permanent fixtures on the network. "That's the myth we were looking to bust, that social games need to be built from the ground up to be social. That's true to build a FarmVille, but we do think that popular game mechanics work on every platform," says Rosenblatt. "We have a lot of evergreen games in our library that you can play over and over, and that's what we think really lacks on Facebook right now." And, at the end of the day, Facebook is the place to be, even for avowed casual game companies. "I understand that there's this reliance on Facebook and people are scared of that, but that's where the users are," says Rosenblatt.

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Why Casual Game Publisher Arkadium is Doubling Down on Facebook

Chris Morrison

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Chris Morrison