Posts Tagged ‘games’

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Non-gamers, here’s why you should care about games

venerdì, aprile 27th, 2012

As an early investor in social gaming, I’m often speaking on panels to audiences of gamers, investors, and game company execs. At one such event —  the Future of Media conference hosted by Stanford’s Graduate School of Business — the opening question was why gaming is relevant to people who are not gamers. The panelists — folks from IGN, Activision, GaiKai, and Riot Games as well as myself — gave some interesting reasons for why non-gamers should care about the game market:

Gaming has gone mainstream: Many sub-two-year-olds have played with a touch screen, and games are the No. 1 form of entertainment for the under-25 crowd.

Discoverability is still elusive: There is at least one game that is relevant to each of us, whether Call of Duty, League of Legends, Words with Friends, or whatever your taste might be. And many of the hidden gems on platforms like social, browser, and mobile are still hard to find.

Gaming has become a conversation: With the onset of cloud gaming, the activity has gone beyond an isolated, immersive experience to a dialogue between players themselves, as well as between the player and the game developer/publisher (with ongoing content and item additions as iterative weekly “expansion packs,” as well as games operators studying emergent player behavior and quickly productizing around unexpected use cases). The freemium business model accelerates the need to shift from a priced, pre-packaged offering to a free2play service that’s server-driven, and terrific companies like Gaikai, Riot Games, and Kixeye have taken established genres and evolved them with new formats (in-browser, on Facebook, digital download) and new business models.

Mobile is the new creative playground: With consoles, TVs and set-top boxes opening up platform and network APIs and becoming increasingly cloud-connected, and with the ubiquity of mobile devices, gaming can still create “indie” sleeper hits vs. the Hollywood model of four dominant studios with a handful of tentpole blockbuster franchises – look at the success of Angry Birds as a starting point. Tablets are especially ripe for richer game experiences, including “midcore” gaming with RTS and RPG genres.

Gaming pushes the boundaries of technology and spurs innovation: The gaming industry has piloted tech innovations like IM, gesture control, and 3D graphics, which are being used by mainstream consumers. One of our companies, Couchbase, recently provided the noSQL database platform that supported the rapid growth of OMGPOP’s Draw Something from zero-25 million users in six weeks.

Gamification – leveraging game mechanics for non-game purposes — will disrupt many industries: The era of gamification tools, such as badges, leaderboards, levels, “missions,” and scores, is going to turbocharge end-user acquisition, onboarding, engagement, retention, and conversion in fields ranging from health, wellness, fitness, and nutrition to financial services, HR, and customer support work. And gamification will provide game designers with new professional opportunities and creative outlets to make a big impact by applying their gaming chops outside of the games industry. As an investor, I’m excited about the potential of learning from gaming to design microtransactions and freemium conversion models (leveraging behavioral economics, social psychology, and the 7 Deadly Sins as a design framework) that help us monetize other media like movies and music. This is what led me to invest in enterprise gamification companies like Badgeville, which is killing it as a SaaS company (much like Salesforce.com did for CRM systems, Omniture for basic web analytics, and Mayfield SaaS portfolio companies Gigya and Marketo are doing for social infrastructure and marketing automation, respectively).

Tim Chang is an investor with the Mayfield Fund, whose past investments include ngMoco (acquired by DENA), Playdom (acquired by Disney), Lumos Labs, and Badgeville.  His current superpowers include gamification, quantified self and the art of the freemium business model. Couchbase,  Gigya and Marketo are Mayfield Fund investments. Chang will be a speaker at our upcoming GamesBeat 2012 conference.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.


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iPhone app downloads plummeted in March while marketing costs held steady

venerdì, aprile 27th, 2012

The number of iPhone app downloads crashed in March, but the cost of marketing those apps held steady according to the latest Fiksu index report.

Mobile app downloads fell by 30 percent, or 2 million downloads, in March and returned to pre-iPhone 4S-launch levels. The cost of acquiring a loyal user (one who opens an app three times) fell slightly from $1.31 per user in February to $1.30 per user in March. That is a surprise since Japan’s new market entrant Gree supposedly spent heavily (a force that could driving marketing costs up) during March when it revealed its first U.S.-made apps.

The Fiksu App Store Competitive Index (which measures the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps) dropped from 6.35 million downloads in February to 4.45 million in February. That’s a little alarming since Apple is a leader in the app market.

“With the novelty factor of the iPhone 4S launch and the holidays well behind us, and no other events in March to spark discovery, March’s download dip was expected,” said Micah Adler, chief executive of Fiksu. “An unexpected contributing factor could be the decline in the use of robotic install tactics by app marketers responding to Apple’s new policy.”

Apple announced in February that it would enforce an existing guideline that prohibited the use of bots to market apps and would frown upon other forms of chart manipulation.

Adler said that the “decline in competition and steady costs definitely presented app marketers with a ranking opportunity in March, driven largely through the cost-effective conversion of organic users into loyal users.”

Fiksu, based on Boston, sourced its data from more than 21 billion mobile app actions.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.


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Two Angry Birds leaders leave the nest to start Boomlagoon (exclusive)

venerdì, aprile 27th, 2012

Angry Birds has become a worldwide phenomenon with more than 700 million downloads. So it’s no small event when two of the leaders who created the mobile game leave the nest at Rovio to form their own game studio.

Antti Stén (pictured left), the lead server architect for the original Angry Birds, and Tuomas Erikoinen (pictured right), lead artist, have left Rovio to create a new game studio called Boomlagoon. Successful creators striking out on their own and trying to do some original work doesn’t seem surprising, especially when their former employer seems content to continue to exploit an existing franchise.

“We know a thing or two about successful games and high volumes, and we’ll use this knowledge to spawn something very cool and new,” Stén said.

Stén is chief executive while Erikoinen is chief creative officer. Both men played important parts in the creation of Angry Birds. Stén was responsible for building the server infrastructure to support millions of mobile users. Erikoinen was the lead artist for Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio, and he supervised the production of Angry Birds Space. During the time they worked on the projects together, Rovio grew from 12 people to more than 300.

They’ve dreamed about running their own company for a long time. The idea started during a poker game, and they discussed it once again over a drink. So far, the team consists of just the pair of founders, but they plan to hire more people. Stén refers to himself as Mr. Plan and to Erikoinen as Mr. Action. They want to create “convivial and intriguing” games.

“Through our experience of seeing multiple startups, we’ve gained the necessary skill set for founding and running a company with high values on all departments of the company,” Stén said. “Our core skills are in game development, but we’ve also had the opportunity to study fields such as PR, branding, recruitment, business negotiations, leading teams, HR, and networking.”

Their goal will be to create games for just about any device, both for the web and for mobile platforms. They will start with HTML5, the new lingua franca (working language) for the web. Their studio will be in Helsinki, and they have not raised any money yet. They are looking for potential investors.

“If we play our cards right, we just might end up with the next Angry Birds,” Stén said.

[Photo credit: Boomlagoon]


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Zynga earnings call: three key wins in mobile, social and diversification

giovedì, aprile 26th, 2012


Zynga said in its earnings call with analysts today that it had “three key wins” in the first quarter: expansion into new social game genres, strong mobile growth, and diversification to its Zynga.com and Zynga partners platforms.

The social gaming giant managed to grow its business in the first quarter thanks to the launch of Hidden Chronicles, which is now the largest hidden object game on Facebook, with 7 million daily active users, and the launch of Zynga Slingo, an arcade-like game with 4 million daily active users.

Mark Pincus, chief executive of San Francisco-based Zynga, said in a conference call with analysts that the company gained 11 million daily active users with the $183 million acquisition of OMGPOP and its Draw Something game. But that deal happened late in the quarter and did not affect overall growth much. Not counting the impact of Draw Something, Zynga has 22 million DAU on mobile, compared with 12 million DAU in the previous quarter.

“We have been able to dramatically increase the size of our mobile network,” Pincus said.  ”It’s very early days on mobile. We are focused on getting the product experience right, building out network, distribution, and bringing hits to market in a repeatable way.”

He said he hopes that mobile ads will become much more engaging and monetization and engagement will follow. Zynga raised its guidance for the year because of the acquisition of OMGPOP.

Zynga.com represents Zynga’s attempt to appeal to its hardcore users and diversify beyond Facebook. The beta version of the site now has more than 350,000 daily active users. Later this quarter, Zynga plans to turn up its marketing cross-promotions, Pincus said. The reception to Zynga.com has been very strong, and Zynga has six companies that want to publish their own tiltes, including Konami and Rebellion.

John Schappert, president and chief operating officer, said that Zynga is expanding advertising in games. It tested the use of ads in FarmVille, where it gives virtual currency to users who view ads. That will roll out to more games, helping Zynga improve the monetization of its existing Facebook games. Zynga added new advertisers such as Match.com and Scott Miracle Grow in the quarter. First quarter ad partnership revenues doubled to $28 million, compared to a year ago.

Games such as Zynga Poker and CastleVille saw record bookings in the quarter. Zynga said that 1.9 percent of users converted to paid play, while 98.1 percent play games for free. That ratio was stable. The company said quarterly bookings grew for the third straight quarter.

Schappert said FarmVille is nearing its third year and that, “we expect good things from FarmVille for the remainder of the year.”

Zynga has $1.5 billion in cash, down from $1.9 billion in the previous quarter. The amount was lower because of the $183 million acquisition of OMGPOP and $234 million for the company’s new headquarters expansion.

Zynga now has 2,916 employees, up 2 percent from a year ago. Pincus declined to comment on whether Zynga is working on FarmVille 2.

“I don’t want to steal the thunder from our upcoming Zynga Unleashed” event, he said.


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Zynga beats Q1 earnings estimates

giovedì, aprile 26th, 2012

Zynga reported first quarter earnings of 6 cents a share, beating analyst estimates for the social game company’s second-ever earnings announcement.

The publisher of social games such as FarmVille reported non-GAAP net income of $47 million on revenues of $321 million, compared with net income of $75 million on revenues of $242 million a year earlier. The company foresees 2012 earnings per share of 23 cents to 29 cents a share.

Zynga’s stock price has been falling in recent days in advance of the company’s first quarter earnings report today. Analysts expected the company to report earnings of 5 cents a share on revenue of $316.8 million for the first quarter ended March 31. On AppData, Zynga has 281.6 million monthly active users and all five of the top five games.

Bookings for the quarter were $329 million, up 15 percent from a year ago and up 7 percent from the previous quarter. On a GAAP basis, Zynga reported a net loss of $85 million, compared with net income of $16.7 million a year ago. The loss was due to stock-based expenses.

In after-hours trading, Zynga’s stock is flat at $9.42 a share. Earlier in the day, the stock rose 3.4 percent.

During the quarter, Zynga grew both daily active and monthly active users. It has eight of the top 10 games on Facebook and leads in two new genres, hidden object games and arcade games, with Hidden Chronicles and Slingo, respectively. Mobile games grew due to strength in Zynga Poker, Draw Something, and Scramble with Friends.

Monthly active users were 292 million users, up 24 percent from 236 million a year ago. Daily active users were 65 million, up from 62 million a year ago. Monthly unique users were 182 million, up from 146 million a year ago. Daily average bookings per average DAU were 5.5 cents in the first quarter, compared with 5.1 cents a year ago. Unique monthly payers were 3.5 million, up from 2.9 million in the previous quarter.

Zynga launched six games in the quarter: Hidden Chronicles, Zynga Slingo, Scramble With Friends on mobile, Dream PetHouse on mobile, Dream Heights on mobile, and Draw Something (acquired along with OMGPOP for$180 million-plus). Zynga raised $1 billion in a December initial public offering and has lessened its dependence on Facebook with the launch of Zynga.com.

Zynga projected that 2012 bookings will be $1.425 billion to $1.5 billion, with growth weighted to the second half of the year. Adjusted earnings before income, tax, and depreciation expense is expected to be $400 million to $450 million. Stock-based expense is expected to be $420 million to $445 million. Capital expenses are expected to be $390 million to $410 million, including the purchase in April of the company’s corporate headquarters. Non-GAAP earnings per share are expected to be 23 cents to 29 cents.

Here’s what some of the analysts who follow Zynga closely had expected before the announcement:

Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Baird Equity Research, said in a note that he expects results to be in line or slightly below estimates of a profit of 6 cents a share for the quarter.

He noted recently that Facebook said Zynga accounted for 11 percent of its revenues in the first quarter, down from 12 percent in the fourth quarter. Zynga pays about 30 percent of revenues to Facebook as a fee for Facebook Credits transactions, not counting advertising. That suggests Zynga’s net bookings were around $230 million in the quarter. The company also probably generated $65 million in ad bookings. He noted that Zynga games continue to dominate the charts on Facebook, accounting for eight of the top 10 games in daily average users. On iOS, Zynga has six of the top 100 grossing apps and eight of the top 100 on Android.

“While Zynga continues to dominate Facebook games and is making solid progress on mobile platforms, we believe that slower growth on Facebook limits upside to estimates near term,” Sebastian said.

Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, also said he expects results to be in-line with expectations. Pachter increased estimates for the fiscal year to reflect the acquisition of OMGPOP, which has a hit game in Draw Something on iOS. For the full year, he expects bookings of $1.35 billion to $1.45 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of 24 cents to 28 cents.

He expects Zynga shares to hit $17 in the coming year.

Atul Bagga, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, said in a note that he expects a profit of 4 cents per share on revenue of $315.6 million. He thinks Zynga has had a strong reception for its Hidden Chronicles and Slingo games and improved the monetization of CastleVille. Mafia Wars may be underperforming as a franchise, while Zynga Poker, CityVille, and FarmVille are stable.

He expects guidance for the full year to be raised from the $1.35 – $1.45 billion range to something higher. Bagga believes the stock has been falling based on fears that Zynga will make more (seemingly unwise) acquisitions, but he thinks those fears are overblown. His long-term target for the stock is $16 a share.

In the previous fourth quarter, Zynga reported non-GAAP earnings per share of five cents, or $37.1 million, for the quarter. The company reported fourth-quarter bookings of $306.5 million, up 26 percent from a year ago and 7 percent from the third quarter. Full-year bookings were $1.16 billion, up 38 percent from a year ago. Full-year revenue was $1.14 billion, up 91 percent.


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Smith & Tinker revives Nanovor with mobile app (exclusive)

giovedì, aprile 26th, 2012

Smith & Tinker, founded in 2007, was one of the darlings of the new studio startups when it launched its hybrid toy-game Nanovor in 2009. But while it was an ambitious attempt to win over young boys with a cool fighting game, it failed.

But the Seattle-based company was well-capitalized, having raised $29 million, and it was able to regroup. Now the company is launching a new version of Nanovor as an app for the Apple iTunes App Store. It is a collectible-card-style battle game (CCG), where you amass little creatures known as Nanovors that live inside electronic devices.

The game has been re-engineered from the ground up for touch-based mobile devices. Each creature has offensive and defensive attacks. Players can compete against the computer A.I. or battle human opponents online. You earn Nanocash in skirmishes and use that to buy new creatures.

“The sustained interest from the Nanovor fan base has been amazing,” said Joe Lawandus, chief executive of Smith & Tinker. “It was their input that drove game design leveraging the awesome 3D creatures from Nanovor Evolution alongside the strategic play featured in our original PC release. The dialogue with our players, largely via social networks, played a huge role in our development resulting in a new, one-of-a-kind collectible strategy game.”

The initial game has 24 different creatures.

Asked about reviving the franchise, Lawandus said, “Bringing the game back really wasn’t on our radar once we jettisoned the PC versions. But there was a core group of kids that were so persistent in asking us to bring the game back that we took another look. After a cruise through the App Store, we felt that CCG-style games were one of the few underrepresented categories. So we went back to the archives and found a bunch of game assets from Nanovor Evolution, so it helped cut our development cycle down significantly.”

He added, “Our guys here were fired up to bring the game back, so we started dialogue with the fans and created a hybrid game using the 3D assets from Nanovor Evolution combined with more battle strategy from our original release.”


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Spoof-proof location authentication to help legitimize mobile gambling

mercoledì, aprile 25th, 2012

As states move to legalize mobile gambling in the U.S., verifying exactly where someone is located will become crucial. You can place a bet on a football game if you’re in the state of Nevada, for example, but not if you’re outside of it.

That will change as more states authorize sports betting. But for now, mobile gambling entities have to rely on companies such as Locaid, which is announcing today that it will provide “unspoofable” location authentication for Cantor Gaming, the mobile sports-wagering arm of Cantor Fitzgerald. The Locaid technology is a critical part of the ecosystem that can support online gambling, which is expected to be a huge industry in the U.S. in the not-so-distant future.

Rip Gerber, chief executive at Miami- and San Francisco-based Locaid, said in a panel at the Global iGaming Summit yesterday that hackers have learned how to spoof, or fake, their locations. That’s because it is easy to circumvent the security in global positioning systems (GPS) and Wi-Fi-based location authentication methods. But Locaid works with the carriers to fix a mobile user’s location based on the phone’s interaction with cellphone towers.

Gerber said that Locaid’s “geo-fencing” method meets the requirements of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. You need carrier verification to show that a mobile device is inside a state’s borders, and Locaid’s applications programming interface gives developers the ability to integrate location into their apps. Thus, it helps companies such as Cantor Gaming extend gambling beyond the casino floor. The market for mobile wagering in Nevada may seem like a small one now, but it is expected to expand over time as more states authorize online gambling in order to cash in on much-needed tax revenues.

“To comply with state law, it was critical to ensure a mobile user’s location for mobile gaming and safeguard against today’s sophisticated spoofing technologies; Locaid enabled us to meet this challenge,” said Paul Williams, chief technology officer of Cantor Gaming. “Locaid is the only compliant network location-based solution for mobile sports betting in Nevada, and their services allow us to extend our reach of mobile gaming to the entire state.”

The Cantor Gaming app is available on Android.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.


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Joke app Happy Poo finds some success on Android platform

venerdì, aprile 6th, 2012

Happy Poo!

Urban dictionary defines turd polishing as “The act of trying to make something hopelessly weak and unattractive appear strong and appealing. An impossible process that usually results in a larger, uglier turd.” Luckily, one mobile game developer was able to turn this saying on its head.

Retro Dreamer created an app–Happy Poo–in reaction to what can be seen as the sad state of affairs of the Android market. They had released a game called Double Take, which got very few downloads. Their modest success on Apple’s App Store was disheartening.

Happy Poo was born of this early frustration. Says Gavin Bowman, co-founder and lead programmer, “I think most app developers think about making silly apps like this from time to time, especially when things aren’t going well.”

Interestingly enough, Happy Poo garnered positive reactions from friends and family alike. Many small developers use their social circles as a sort of adhoc beta tester group, and Retro Dreamer is no exception. It also helped that the Android market ecosystem is so forgiving.

Bowman says, “This app would never have hit the market if we’d had to submit it for approval. We would have been over the idea before I uploaded the binary and we’d have pulled it down. Being able to get it out there instantly and get the amusing reactions from our friends was the only reason this wasn’t just another discarded silent vent.”

After relatively little activity on the Google marketplace, Happy Poo became somewhat of an Amazon App Store success after a whim of a submission. It reached No. 3 on the overall free apps chart, and continues to have more downloads than their flagship app, Sneezies, which is also available for free on Amazon. The company has broken even on the project, something Bowman counts as a success.

As Bowman and partner, Craig Sharpe, showed Happy Poo around at GDC this past March, they got tons of feedback from other developers. They also read through over 500 reviews on the Amazon App Store. Their final take-away? That Happy Poo needed more game elements. Multiplayer Happy Poo for 2, Happy Poo Jump, and kid-friendly Wash The Dishes are all out now on both Android app marketplaces. Have they found the same level of success? Not yet. “We don’t have any interesting data from any of these new apps yet. Happy Poo for 2 is the only app that’s been available for more than a few days, and it’s the only one that’s available on the Amazon App Store so far, says Bowman. “It’s getting some downloads, but it’s not attracting the same craziness that the original did. But that’s to be expected. My only hope for that one is that someone enjoys it.”

In a rush-to-the bottom app ecosystem that can be seen on both iOS and Android platforms, it takes a combination of luck, quirkiness, and great design to succeed. For a two-man team to find even this level of success is both a testament to the disruptive nature of the smartphone gaming arena as well as to the persistence and dedication of its development community.


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Flurry releases new analytics features to improve monetization

venerdì, aprile 6th, 2012

Flurry launched new analytics features today that allows customers to take better control of how they measure and access the metrics for their apps. The features will help app developers make more money from their apps.

Customers can now create funnels that measure their most important conversions of free users to paid users. The analytics will now send out metrics trend notifications, and users will be able to create custom dashboards.

Flurry is providing pre-made templates for ad-supported apps, free-to-play apps, premium apps, engagement, and user acquisition and retention. Customers can always be clued in when metrics for an app change.

Since launching analytics in 2008, Flurry has more than 65,000 companies using its service across more than 170,000 apps. Flurry tracks app activity across more than 500 million Android and Apple iOS smartphones and tablets each month. It tracks more than 300 billion transactions per month and 1 billion user sessions per day. Flurry issues 25,000 session reports per second. Since December, Flurry has added 10,000 companies and 35,000 apps.

Sessions tracked per day rose from 760 million in December to 1.2 billion in March, up 50 percent in three months. Rivals include other analytics firms such as Kontagent, which released its own analytics tools update this week too.


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