This Week In Social Games

This week in social games we started off with an interview with David Marcus of Zong who explained virtual currencies and mobile payments. We saw Zynga acquire social gaming company Conduit Labs, the upcoming launch of Space Empires franchise on the iPad, Scoreloop's plans to bring social gaming infrastructure to a large Taiwanese mobile operator, an interview with the CRO of OMGPOP about their deal with myYearbook, the introduction of our premium SocialTimes PRO service and an introduction to a new social game called Backyard Monsters. Zong Founder David Marcus Explains Mobile Payments, Virtual Currencies and International Pricing [Video] At this year's Social Gaming Summit, I had the chance to sit down with David Marcus, the CEO and founder of Zong, a leading mobile payment provider. In short, they allow players to pay for virtual goods online by simply entering their mobile phone number and having the charges added to their mobile phone bill. They've been making waves by working directly with Facebook on several initiatives, including being one of the first to test their Facebook Credits platform, and have spread out to reach 176 carriers in 40 countries with their services. David had a lot of interesting insights about the burgeoning social games and virtual currency market. Zynga Boston is Born Through Acquisition of Social Music Gamers Conduit Labs Zynga, on a roll with their latest investments from Google, their appointment of Owen Van Natta as EVP of Business, their announcement to distribute across Yahoo and more, have acquired Boston's Conduit Labs social games company. We covered Conduit Labs many times in the past, as they created awesome music games like Music Pets and LoudCrowd. The Conduit Labs will become Zynga Boston, and the studio will focus on product development. Conduit's CEO becomes the head of the studio, and it looks like Zynga's acquisition methods have grown into a template, as the acquisition is reminiscent of their acquisition of Challenge Games (now Zynga Austin). Space Empires To Colonize iPhone and iPad Game publishers are looking to expand to mobile and tablet platforms such as Android and iOS enabled devices to gain exposure to wider gaming audiences. Two notable gaming companies, Nvinium Games and Strategy First, are bringing the Space Empires franchise to the iPhone and iPad with Space Empires: Battle For Supremacy. The game series has done well since its debut in 1993 for the PC and looking to see the same success on iOS devices. Scoreloop To Bring Social Gaming To Taiwanese Mobile Operator Social and mobile gaming operators are constantly improving on the social features and payment options their games offer. Scoreloop, one of the social gaming infrastructure providers, recently announced that it will be working with Chunghwa Telecom and Spring House Entertainment to bring next-generation mobile games to Taiwan. Chungwa Telecom is one of Taiwan's leading mobile operators and will use a customized Scoreloop SDK to power its developers with cross promotions, social discovery, and virtual goods integration etc Interview: Wilson Kriegel, Chief Revenue Officer with OMGPOP, Discusses Their Distribution Deal with myYearbook We've been fans of the multiplayer casual games portal OMGPOP for years, even when it was called "ImInLikeWithYou.com". The company recently surprised many industry analysts by announcing that they would be distributing their key games across the myYearbook platform, after years of avoiding platform distribution plays like Facebook or MySpace. We had a chance to discuss the new moves, and the OMGPOP strategy in general, with Wilson Kriegel, Chief Revenue Officer with OMGPOP. Wilson makes some interesting points about how the OMGPOP currency relates to the myYearbook currency, and speaks to the the general opportunity for games makers to work with existing platforms. Introducing Social Times PRO: Detailed Virtual Goods and Social Games Reports and Conference Access Over the last year, Social Times has been undergoing quite the transformation: We've grown our roster of contributors to 10 talented writers, we've made updates to our statistics technology and we've welcomed an unprecedented number of new readers. With this continued success, we've refined our goals and one of our main goals is to deliver insight and value to our readers. For that reason, I'm proud to introduce Social Times PRO, a new service dedicated to providing readers with insightful research reports on social games, virtual goods and Facebook, but the service also gives you access to all of our Social Times conferences and events. 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.

Social Pro Daily

This Week In Social Games - Aug 16, 2010

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Azam Khan

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Azam Khan