As part of a technical talk at GDC’s Social Games Summit, Amitt Mahajan, lead developer of Farmville, revealed a number of interesting statistics about the game, including current stats of 32 million players per day.

Farmville, a Harvest Moon-like farming social game, is one of Facebook’s biggest success stories, earning the small team huge accolades before being purchased by Zynga.

The game took only 5 weeks from conception to launch, developing the back end, using off-the-shelf components when possible, but more than that using best practices from both the web and game development worlds to keep the game extremely portable. Multiple times during development, or even after, Facebook’s API or rules changed, and with a strong web development sensibility at the beginning, nothing slowed the team down significantly. This also helped them avoid user fatigue due to lag or errors.

The core team was six web developers, two artists and three designers. After launch, they wound up getting 18,000 users in the first 24 hours. At the end of four days, they had 1 million users per day, all without having ever promoted it.

Now, the game has more than 110 million installs, and they recently breached the 32 million daily user mark, though the “official” number is still 31 million, and as Mahajan says, that number is still growing.

Panelists billed as the world's foremost experts on funding, buying and selling game companies have a view of gaming's future that's likely to be controversial to those working in traditional development.

In a panel at GDC 2010, Northwest Ventures' Tim Chang, Trinity Ventures' Gus Tai, Pacific Crest analyst Evan Wilson and Making Fun and Minor Studios CEO John Welch discussed what companies and products will get funded today -- and according to them, it's not triple-A.

Gaming is still a highly active arena for venture capitalists, says Chang -- and yet every news broadcast on the industry shows the console games business contracting, presenting a paradox of an industry that's "screwed yet growing," he says.

Chang, whose firm has backed Ngmoco and Playdom, says the shift in the games business is a mirror of what has happened in the music industry as much of it goes digital. Now, time and attention is shifting to the online space and the social players that are growing the existing game audience.

Developers' attention is best served thinking about "how to use all of your expertise to create this engaging, interesting flow that could lead to a proposition where you can make money," suggested Tai of Trinity Ventures, which has invested in Trion and Playfirst.

"The industry is in huge disarray," agrees Pacific Crest's Wilson, who believes console game developers are "in denial." The evolving blend between gaming and media is "scary," he admits.

"It was easier ten years ago... when you'd just ship a great product and the users pay you up front," Wilson says. "Those days are over."

Continue reading "GDC: VCs Talk Devs 'In Denial', Industry's Social Future" »

Gareth Davis’ GDC Social Gaming Summit keynote was a mixture of old and new, but his larger takeaway was the potential future of cross-platform gaming, based around your friends.

There were quite a lot of congratulatory statistics (rightfully so), including the facts that 70% of the Facebook audience is global (i.e. non-U.S.), 200 million people use Facebook daily, and 400 million monthly. Over a million developers have created over 500,000 apps over the last few years, and more than 200 million people are playing games every month on the service.

Davis is platform manager at Facebook, heading up the games division. “We’ve moved beyond the core gamer,” he said, “and we now have people playing games across every demographic.” Much of this was old news to veteran Facebook developers, who packed the keynote on the new summit’s first day. Davis mentioned that the Facebook platform is changing the way games are designed, monetized, developed, and marketed – and that interacting with friends is the true value seen in these games, calling this “the ultimate compulsion loop.”

He reminded us that most games throughout history have been social, from backgammon to chess, and that even modern board games and video games are social, from Risk to Rock Band.

“Pretty soon all games will be social,” said Davis, “and we won’t call them social games, we’ll just start calling them games again.” This was one of the better points made during the keynote – extrapolating on the sentiment, the way we describe these games may alienate certain developers from appreciating their applications beyond just the Facebook realm, which in fact is a point Davis addressed later.

Continue reading "GDC: Facebook Keynote Discusses True Multi-Platform Gaming" »

Korea-based NHN Corporation announced that it signed a publishing deal for a fantasy-based massively multiplayer online roleplaying game that features an Asian theme and uses Crytek's CryEngine 2 game engine.

The publisher signed the deal with Polygon Games, which is comprised of the Polygon Visual Works art team and the primarily developers behind free-to-play MMORPG Rohan: Blood Feud. Polygon Visual Works has previously worked with companies like Nintendo for game cinematics.

NHN plans to publish the project, which is currently codenamed Project E:st, in Korea and other markets, including North America and Europe. It intends to begin closed beta testing in Korea later this year. You can watch a trailer for Project E:st after the post break.

"The project name, E:st, was selected to show the commitment between NHN Corporation and Polygon Games to develop the best Asia fantasy game," says NHN Corporation's Hangame CEO Wook Jeong. "We believe that the high graphical quality realized with CryEngine 2, coupled with an immersive storyline, will strongly appeal to gamers."

Continue reading "NHN To Publish CryEngine 2-Based MMORPG" »

Engine tech company Emergent is under the stewardship of a new CEO -- the company says Scott Johnson took on the role late in 2009.

Johnson is former co-founder and CEO of mobile game developer Mobility Entertainment, which was acquired by Foundation 9. Prior to that, he spent seven years with Vivend in various managing franchises like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon.

Emergent says it has Johnson's leadership to thank for its strong close to 2009, which saw a 35 percent year over year increase in revenues and a 58 percent profitability boost. The company saw particularly strong growth in North America, Japan and China, where it says the success of its Gamebryo Lightspeed development platform drove results.

Overall, Emergent boasts 120 licensing deals sealed throughout the year 2009, and says more than 50 games built on its technology are coming from Asia -- most of them free-to-play and social MMOs.

Emergent is apparently focusing more squarely on that high-growth space. According to CEO Johnson, the company's tech is ideal for developing within the category.

"Over the past 12 months the video game industry has seen a dramatic shift in the way it conducts business. The era of $15 million plus titles is in our rear-view mirror and changing focus to the new way business is done will be challenging for our competition," Johnson says.

As GDC begins, German browser games portal Bigpoint has announced -- alongside the opening of a U.S. office -- that it is planning to debut games that allow head-to-head PC versus iPhone play using Unity, and is developing an MMO based on NBC Universal's Battlestar Galactica property.

The company currently employs 340 people in Hamburg, Germany and has 110 million registered users for its gaming services -- for which is U.S. is its number three market. "It's not the top market, and we want to make it our top market," Nils-Holger Henning, the company's CCO, tells Gamasutra.

The company currently runs 30 free-to-play games which have been developed in-house, with another 20 externally-developed titles, in over 30 languages. The company's mission, says Henning, is "all games must be browser-based without download installation, games you can play from any device you want."

The company's U.S. office, announced last month, will be based in San Francisco. In 2008, NBC Universal acquired 35 percent of the company -- which both opened the door to its San Francisco move, and explains the emergence of the just-announced Battlestar Galactica MMO, which is due in the back half of this year and is based on the popular Syfy TV show.

Citing a desire to "decentralize" the company, Henning says the SF move is "linked to our partnership with NBCU." Henning notes that the company's founder and CEO, Heiko Hubertz, is making the move to the Bay Area, an area Bigpoint finds attractive because "we love the spirit of San Francisco. You have a lot of talent, and you're at the foundation of everything... It came out of the Bay Area." Henning cites the fact that "all of the internet players", such as Facebook, are in the Bay Area, and so are "excellent schools like Stanford. That's, for us, the place to be."

Continue reading "GDC: Bigpoint Announces Battlestar MMO, Unity Partnership, San Francisco Office" »

U.S. gamers spent $3.8 billion on massively multiplayer online games in 2009, almost 15 times more than other substantial MMO markets in Europe, according to a new study.

Consumer data from Today's Gamers MMO Focus Report by Gamesindustry.com and TNS indicates that the number of MMO players in the U.S. has reached 46 million, 46 percent (21 million) of which paid to play online games; the rest, around 25 million gamers, play MMOs without spending any money. The average paying MMO player spent around $15.10 per month on their games.

The report points out that Blizzard's World of Warcraft has the most number of players in the U.S. out of all the MMOs it tracked, just in front of NeoPets and Club Penguin. Other MMOs in the top five include Disney ToonTown and RuneScape.

The study also breaks down the $3.8 billion total spent on MMOs in 2009: 47 percent ($1.8 billion) was spent on monthly subscriptions, 15 percent ($580 million) on annual subscriptions, 19 percent ($740 million) on virtual currency, 8 percent ($280 million) on direct microtransactions, and 11 percent ($400 million) on the initial boxed product or client download.

Continue reading "Study: U.S. Gamers Spent $3.8 Billion On MMOs in 2009" »

Chinese online game company Globex Studios has opened a new development branch in Los Angeles with a number of veterans from recently closed Electronic Arts developer Pandemic Studios.

Globex Studios LA will act as its parent company's North American development and project management arm. Founded in 2005, Globex Studios's operations include development, publishing, localization, outsourcing, marketing, and more. The company also has offices in China and Taiwan, and expects to expand to over 100 employees at its three locations by the end of the year.

Carey Chico, formerly executive art director of Pandemic Studios, will work as president and chief creative officer at the new LA studio. Globex Studios LA's staff collectively boasts more than 100 shipped console and PC games, including Pandemic releases like Star Wars Battlefront and Mercenaries.

Electronic Arts closed down Pandemic's physical studio and reportedly cut around 200 employees last November as part of a round of layoffs and restructuring. The pubisher saw its losses widen to $391 million in its second fiscal quarter and plans to cut some 1,500 jobs by April 2010.

Continue reading "Globex Opens LA Office With Pandemic Veterans" »

MMO developer Sony Online Entertainment launched its first Facebook game, an adaptation of popular turn-based strategy game PoxNora with new social features.

Originally released in 2006, PoxNora is part turn-based strategy game, part collectible card game, and is set in a fantasy world of creatures, relics, and spells. The game was originally developed and maintained by Tucson, AZ-based developer Octopi, which SOE acquired in 2009 and set up a Tucson studio around.

Since the purchase, PoxNora has brought in more than 2.5 million registered accounts. SOE hopes to expand that userbase to a wider social networking audience by including new features in the Facebook version like the ability to invite friends and post updates of accomplishments.

SOE, which typically developers PC and console MMOs like Free Realms, EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and many others, says it plans to create more games for the Facebook platform based on both existing franchises and new intellectual property.

“The Facebook platform offers gamers a new and powerful way to interact with and tap into their social communities,” says SOE president John Smedley. “With the launch of PoxNora for Facebook, we are leveraging the expertise SOE has gained bringing entertainment to the online gaming community for over 10 years.”