French social games publisher Kobojo has announced PyramidVille for mobile devices, starting with an iOS version. Kobojo is co-publishing the app named PyramidVille Adventure with BulkyPix in French, English, Italian, Spanish and German.
Kobojo’s original PyramidVille takes players to ancient Egypt where they build a city and manage its resources. The game comes in 6 languages (French, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) and currently has 740,000 monthly active users on Facebook.

The mobile version introduces new features, such as mini-games to accelerate time, that build on the River Nile as a key factor in Egypt’s development.
“Like we said at the LeWeb’11, Kobojo successfully epitomizes SoLoMo, which stands for ‘social, local, mobile’. This mobile version only strengthens our position in France and makes Kobojo a competitor to watch closely in Europe,” commented Franck Tetzlaff, CEO and founder of Kobojo.

Facebook currently represents only about a third of worldwide traffic for social networks, according to a recent white paper released by social games and apps platform Viximo and Superdata Research. The non-Facebook category of social gaming will represent the bulk of worldwide revenue generated in the social gaming market, the study states.

Further, the study found that non-Facebook platforms in Western markets will be responsible for nearly one-quarter of worldwide social gaming revenue within the next three years and that the majority of social gaming revenue is made on other platforms, beyond the borders of North America, where Facebook is the clear market leader.

These recent findings as well as strongly increasing user acquisition costs on Facebook are reason enough for us to examine international social networks that might offer opportunities to social game developers. In the second part of our weekly series we present the key facts on the biggest Spanish social network Tuenti.

•  Name: Tuenti

•  Country: Spain

•  Founded in: 2006

•  Owned by: Telefonica

•  Specifics: Social networking, Games (casual and social), Premium video content

•  Employees: 200-500

•  Offices in: Madrid and Barcelona, Spain

•  Membership: Invite only

•  Languages available: Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician, English

•  Age restrictions: 13+

•  Audience: 12 million

•  Audience demographics: Students/young people

•  How many games live: 20 social games, 60 casual games

•  Own virtual currency: Tuenti Créditos

• Top5 Games: Backyard Monsters (Viximo/Kixeye), Fitness City(Pyro Studios/iZ), Texas a lo Grande (Metrogames/Viximo), Parchis(Playspace), Millionaire City(Plinga/Viximo) -based on Tuenti rankings for social games

•  Open/closed for developer: Closed

•  Revenue share for developer: 70%

• Payment systems: Credit/debit cards, Mobile phone, Landline phone, PayPal, Paysafecard, Offers

• Other relevant info: Very little banner advertising (the site aims for a clean, curated experience); video ads have been introduced over time

Finnish developer Rovio has announced on its company blog that Angry Birds will be released as a social game on Facebook on February 14.

The Facebook iteration has been long anticipated, after originally being scheduled for release last spring. A web version of Angry Birds is already live in the Google Chrome Webstore and on Google+.

Angry Birds, which turned two in December 2011,  has been downloaded more than 600 million times, making it the most popular app ever as well as one of the fastest growing international brands.

Mobile game development studio Rovio was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Espoo, Finland.

European developers are gaining momentum on Facebook and other platforms. In this series we aim to highlight the most important social gaming companies from Europe.
First in line to answer our questions is Kobojo from France.

• Name: Kobojo

• What they do: Kobojo is the number one publisher in France of social games on Facebook and one of the European leaders.

• Location: Founded in Paris, France, where the headquarters are. Two local offices: Madrid, Spain (September 2011) and Berlin, Germany (November 2011).

• Founded by: Four EPITA Alumnis: Franck Tetzlaff, CEO, Vincent Vergonjeanne, VP Product & Strategy, Philippe Desgranges, Product RD Manager and Sébastien Monteil, Chief Technology Officer.

• Founded in: 2008

• Funding: €5,3 million, investors: ID Invest and Endeavour Vision

• Number of employees: 70

• Games published on: Facebook, Windows and Windows Phone 7, iPhone

• Game genre(s): Casual games, city builders

• Games: PyramidVille (170,000 DAU, 740,000 MAU on Facebook), Atlantis Fantasy (70,000 DAU, 210,000 MAU on Facebook), Goobox (180,000 DAU, 860,000 MAU on Facebook), Goobox Windows, Goobox iPhone

• Working with publisher(s): OUAT Entertainment, Bulkypix and Peakgames

• Languages: French, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese

• User demographics: 53% women; more than half of the gamers play in French, Spanish comes next before Italian, English and German

• Best-selling virtual items (all from PyramidVille):
  · Vine (decoration)
  · Cleopatra’s Garden: new, for advanced players – it generates materials such as wood or papyrus
  · Water Canals: new – before, players used troughs to make navigable canals
  · Campfire with potful – there is also a campfire alone, but players prefer the better version of it including the potful
  · HouseVilla: deluxe small palace, advanced house

• Most expensive virtual item: Cleopatra’s Oriental Palace: 100 Gemmes, between 200 and 100 Facebook Credits (between €16 and €8)

• What do you see as currently most exciting trend in the industry?
  We see several trends on the market: skill gaming/casino games are entering the market, the multiplayers mode is on the way, too.
  But for us, the MOST exciting is multiplatforms: PyramidVille, our #1 hit on Facebook, is going to be launched on iOS (iPhone and iPad) under the name of PyramidVille Adventure at the end of January. Mobile platforms allow us to provide with more game experience, that undoubtedly will be enhanced and give more satisfaction to out gamers.

King.com has released Bubble Witch Saga on Google+ – a highly successful bubble shooting game with 4 million daily active users on Facebook. It’s King.com’s first game on Google’s social network.

“King.com’s mission is to bring quality games to players across the globe via any platform,” said Riccardo Zacconi, CEO at King.com. “Integrating the Google+ game API made it simple to port Bubble Witch Saga over to the network. We are looking forward to having more of our popular games extended to the platform.”

“Bubble Witch Saga’s engaging game dynamics make it a great addition to the Google+ games family. We look forward to working with King.com to introduce their other casual social games to the G+ community,” commented a Google+ spokesperson.

Other leading developers such as Zynga (CityVille, Mafia Wars 2), Playdom (Gardens of Time), Wooga (Diamond Dash, Bubble Island, Monster World) or Kabam (The Godfather Five Families) are already publishing on Google+ Games. The platform now encompasses 36 titles across different genres.

According to Google CEO Larry Page, Google+ has 90 million users – how many of these users are playing games is unclear.

London-based social games developer Bossa Studios made the headlines even before publishing its first game. Founded in late 2010, Bossa was acquired in September last year by Shine TV, owned by Rupert Murdochs News Corp.
The acquisition was an accelerator for the small company. “Overnight Bossa Studios started to gain momentum, being able to go after the incredible talent we needed to execute our plans,” Bossa’s co-founder and Marketer-in-Chief Roberta Lucca tells us. Getting acquired so early wasn’t the plan, it just happened. Shine was looking to complement its digital strategy with a games division, and Bossa was looking for long-term funding. “On top of that came the incredible TV brands and formats Shine owns, now open to become social games,” says Lucca.

Social is about making an impact – such as ruining a friend’s city

Bossa’s first game Monstermind was released on Facebook in early November 2011. Lucca describes it as a departure from traditional social games, but not a complete rupture with the format. “We look at social gaming as necessarily multiplayer, in real time, while other games simply use friends as resources,” she tells us. “It’s player-versus-player arena, where your actions have a social impact on your friends’ play experience. That’s what social is all about, not begging for things and being forced to recruit more people in order to keep on playing,” Lucca believes. In Monstermind players can (and should) destroy their friends’ cities by releasing giant B-movie monsters against them, and defend their own city from a subsequent revenge.

Hardcore social games still have the ‘chicken and egg’ issue

Under the hood, Monstermind is more like a MMORPG than the traditional social game. This approach was a lot of effort, Lucca admits, but she is very confident it was worth the trouble. “We built a platform that is years ahead of anything our competitors currently have, and that will enable constantly more advanced games.”

Bossa's Monstermind - an MMORPG disguised as city building game.

To live up to the big words, Bossa Studios will need  a lot of staying power. Though Monstermind was well-received, the game shared the fate of many others and has been losing players constantly, down to 190,000 monthly active users.
Maybe Bossa’s second title, to be released later this year, will turn things around. Development is in full steam under guidance of creative director Yoshifusa Hayama who joined Bossa from Sony late last year.

Not unlike companies such as Kabam or Supercell, Bossa Studios is betting on hardcore social gaming. “But social players are not ready for hardcore gameplay experiences, and sadly hardcore gamers think social games are not worth their time, so we have a kind of ‘chicken and egg’ situation here,” thinks Lucca.

What’s next? 3D graphics and real-time storytelling

So what will the next Bossa game look like? “With Monstermind we traveled the player-versus-player roads, now we’ll embark on cooperative gameplay instead, but again in real-time if your friends happen to be online along with you. And the production levels will raise the bar for others to follow, as we’ve shifted to 3D, characterization, storytelling and, as you can expect, a strong and established IP behind it all,” Lucca explains.

Needless to say, the company will also be testing the waters for mobile games this year, starting with a Monstermind companion app. Other fields of interest include location-based games aligned with the second-screen usage linked to television and streamed shows.

MGames, a developer from Wales, has launched The One Ring, a role-playing social game on Facebook, based on The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books by J.R.R Tolkien.

The game was created under license from Middle-earth Enterprises. Users join the quest to defeat Sauron, form a fellowship and work together to save Middle-earth. They complete quests, choose from a variety of items, and partake in player-vs-player battles.

Bubble Island was released almost two years ago (on February 1st 2010). Despite social games’ allegedly short lifecycle the Raccoon-themed bubble shooter is still going strong. It was recently selected as one of a handful of games to be tightly integrated into Facebook’s Timeline.

Developer: Wooga
Genre: Arcade, action
Platform(s): Facebook, Google+
Language(s): English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish
Monthly active users: 9.8 million (on Facebook, January 23)
Monetization: Free-to-play with paid premium currency

What’s inside?

A bubble shooting game with various social features and a very, very cute raccoon.

How to play

Bubble Island is a puzzle game based on a popular arcade gameplay: Users aim and shoot a bubble-cannon to pop three or more bubbles of matching colors hanging from a ceiling that is steadily moving closer.

Bubble Island is all about shooting colored bubbles - with a little help from a furry friend.

To add flavor to the old concept, Bubble Island is set on a Caribbean Island and its hero is a backpacking raccoon (name unspecified). The friendly mammal accompanies players through the game’s many stages, provides ammunition for the bubble cannon and cheers at high scores.
All the different settings are beautifully designed and vary greatly in style as well as difficulty to keep things interesting.

The game has two currencies: Lives and Coins. Coins enable players to retry and also provide help in harder levels. When a user doesn’t manage to clear all the bubbles in a level, one Live is lost. Running out of Lives means he or she must restart at the very beginning of the current stage. Friends can help each other to regain Lives – the more levels all in-game friends play in total, the more Lives are provided to each of them.

Special competitions are held regularly to encourage and promote user engagement.

Other social features include leaderboards, special competitions and achievements which are published in notifications stream and in a dedicated box on a player’s Facebook Timeline.

Who’s playing?

Bubble Island is preferred by female players of all age groups: 73 percent of users are women (according to data derived from Facebook’s ad targeting engine).