[Editor's note:  HTML5 has been a hot topic for the past year, especially in the last weeks. While the technological infrastructure seems to be available, game developers are still slow or hesitant to adapt to this new way. Dutch game publisher Spil Games was one of the first companies to adapt to the new technology and advertising it as a part of their company strategy. In his guest post Spil Games CEO Peter Driessen shares the companies experience and insights on new mobile gaming.]

Spil Games’ HTML5-powered mobile-gaming sites have just celebrated their first birthday. Our philosophy has always embraced free access to games, whether from behind a desktop computer at work or on the run with a mobile phone. This is why we saw something special in browser-based mobile gaming, recognizing revolutionary potential in HTML5 – a set of technologies poised to challenge the dominance of native apps in the gaming industry by outfitting browser-based games for any device. The HTML5 technology is key in Spil Games’ mission.

Spil Games’ mobile sites now support 74 games playable across a range of devices. The cross-platform nature of HTML5 means that the same game can be accessed by iPhone, Android, or any smartphone with an up-to-date browser. Despite this being one of the largest platforms for mobile gaming, we believe it is only the beginning.

The past year has been about building the foundation. Our ultimate goal is cloud gaming, which would allow players to switch seamlessly between devices. For that to become reality, a strong cross-platform foundation is needed first – and we are working on just that.

Our mobile platforms currently feature a careful selection of games for smartphones and other portable devices, with players on mobile devices automatically rerouted to the HTML5 version of their favorite site. The recent addition of social features, such as friends and an activity feed, serve to enhance the user experience.

Browser updates crucial
We are experimenting with our mobile sites to find out what works and what does not. HTML5 use has definitely been picking up, with browsers rapidly adopting HTML5 specifications—but we’re waiting for consumers to update their browsers. HTML5 isn’t ideal for out-of-date browsers, which a sizeable chunk of the population still uses on its computers and mobile devices. So in order to ensure players on any device have access to games wherever they are – regardless even of internet connection – we still make content for native apps as well.

Hybrid strategy for transition
We currently have a hybrid mobile strategy, developing both HTML5 content and native apps. But browser vendors are opening up to HTML5, so while it will take browser-based games time to catch up to the quality level of Flash, the future looks bright.

Exciting trends are emerging. We have had had time to study the behaviors of our mobile players, and start a dialogue with them. A game jam co-hosted with Google and a subsequent HTML5 game-development contest got the creative juices flowing, teaching Spil about HTML5 best practices.

Mobile users come back to play more often than desktop users
The most successful mobile games are simple and easy to play while out and about. Puzzle games, dress-up games, and quizzes are popular favorites. iPad use – particularly by young girls – has shot up. Interestingly, we have discovered that mobile users come back to play more often than desktop users.  So we are busy leveraging our audience of 130 million by kicking off cross promotion on its sites. Banner ads and site takeovers let players know some of their favorite games are available on their cell phones, too.

Ten per cent of Spil Games’ user base will go mobile within the next year
Now that a foundation is in place, our plan is to put more emphasis on marketing the mobile sites and to invest seriously in the testing and in-house development of HTML5 games. We’ve built an infrastructure we’re proud of, and now we want to make it more visible and acquire users. I predict that some 10 per cent of Spil Games’ user base will go mobile within the next year – that’s 13 million players. We also expect mobile-game quality to get better and better, especially if that content is cross-platform.

We stand by the idea that people like to play games anytime, anywhere, on any platform –and our strategy reflects that.  Transitioning as a company toward a cross-platform gaming experience, all players will need is a browser… and all we will need is one platform to unite them all.

Social gaming developer Happy Elements has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Chinese firm Legend Capital with participation from existing investor DCM. Beijing-based Happy Elements plans to use the funds to expand in Western markets and to make an entry into the mobile entertainment platforms.

“We really know how users socialize and how games operate and spread. With this new investment, we will continue to recruit diverse talent from across the globe and we will continue to attract top-class producers and managers,” said Haining Wang, CEO at Happy Elements.

The company launched its first Facebook app My Fishbowl in 2009, its games are published on 15 platforms around the world including Tencent, Renren, Kaixin, Mixi, Hangames, Cyworld, Daum, Netlog, Hyves, StudiVZ and Orkut. Happy Elements employs 300 people in offices in Beijing and Japan. The developer claims to hold a leading position on social networking services in Japan, China and South Korea.

Recently, Happy Elements has released three mobile phone games in Japan and plans to push more aggressively into the mobile entertainment market with the launch of several new smartphone games in 2012.

The non-Facebook category of social gaming will represent the bulk of worldwide revenue generated in the social gaming market, exploding from $3.2 billion to $5.6 billion in 2014, according to a new white paper released by social games and apps platform Viximo. The study, conducted by SuperData Research, found that while Asia is the largest social games market, non-Facebook platforms in Western markets will be responsible for nearly one-quarter of worldwide social gaming revenue within the next three years.

Despite Facebook’s apparent dominance, especially within the United States, Facebook currently represents only about a third of worldwide traffic for social networks, the study states. The white paper’s findings show that beyond the borders of North America, where Facebook is the clear market leader, the majority of social gaming revenue is made on other platforms, with more focused and locally incumbent social networks dominating new growth. Key markets including Brazil, Germany, Russia and Turkey are currently experiencing a rapid trajectory in increased non-Facebook social gaming traffic and present significant, incremental distribution with strong monetization and lower customer acquisition costs for social game developers.

“The social web beyond Facebook is often overlooked when it comes to games and applications. As it turns out, social networks beyond Facebook represent a non-trivial – in fact, significant – and fertile ground for games and apps,” said Dale Strang, CEO, Viximo.

The white paper also finds that the social gaming market (including Facebook and non-Facebook social networks) is projected to continue to grow, reaching $8.6 billion in worldwide revenue by the end of 2014. Asia remains the largest market for social games and has an estimated $2 billion in total revenue for 2011. Other research findings show that Russia and Brazil are the two Western countries with the largest social gaming audiences, with 35 million and 32.6 million respectively and that Germany is the Western country currently generating the most social gaming revenue with more than $173 million; this is predicted to reach $250 million in 2014.

The findings are presented at a surprising time. At the last f8 conference end of September Facebook further strengthened its market position and announced significant growth outside the US. Despite the strong growth of Asia’s fragmented social network market, current trends indicate that Facebook is gaining a lot of ground in Europe and emerging markets like Brazil and India. The white paper is also very bullish on the Google Plus games section. This prediction is also hard to confirm as Google Plus is going through a decisive phase. Right now Google Plus is only actively used by a crowd of early adopters and does not seriously threaten Facebook’s revenues from the games channel.

Social Network and game developer  Quepasa today announced it had signed a global publishing agreement with long-time partner, Viximo. The agreement enables Viximo to manage the localization, publishing and marketing of Quepasa Games’ hit title, Wonderful City – Rio across the Viximo network of social networking properties that encompass, over 15 additional social networking platforms and reaches over 150 million monthly unique visitors.

According to Quepasa Wonderful City’s “initial success has invited substantial interest in publishing and marketing the title to alternative Facebook geographies as well as alternative social networking platforms across the globe”. As of August 31st, the game had generated over 4.4 million installs on Quepasa.com, Facebook and Orkut, including over 850,000 DAUs (daily active users) and nearly 4 million MAUs (monthly active users).

The Viximo network of social networking properties includes popular European social networks Tuenti (Spain), Lokalisten (Germany), Gaia Online (US), VZNet (Poland), Odnoklassniki (Russia) and Nasza Klasa (Poland).

Quepasa will provide additional updates on the performance of Wonderful City across the social platforms to which it has been published in its forthcoming quarterly report. Quepasa will discuss key metrics and results in its forthcoming Q3 Financial Results press release in November.

Japanese mobile social game company DeNA continues its recent shopping tour and announced the acquisition of Atakama Labs, a Chilean mobile games studio. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, however, the acquisition value is rumored to the around $6 million. Atakama Labs was founded by Argentines Esteban Sosnik and Tiburcio de la Carcova and is backed by Austral Capital and the COPEC-UC Fund, two venture capital funds. Titles developed by Atakama Labs include Terra Nova, Today I Die Again, Freaking Inkies and Little Cave Hero.

The Atakama Labs team will be supporting Ngmoco, a major mobile game developer which was also acquired by DeNA for $400 million October last year. Through its subsidiary Ngmoco DeNA runs Mobage, a highly successful platform which is a mix of virtual world, social network and gaming platform. According to DeNA, Mobage has over 30 million members in Japan, making one of the biggest social networks in the country. In Japan Mobage is already generating $1.3 billion in revenues for DeNA. End of July this of this year DeNA and Ngmoco launched Mobage internationally.

Peak Games the fastest-growing emerging markets social gaming company, today announced new acquisitions, new partnerships, new social games, new funding and massive, continued growth in some of the largest emerging markets including: Turkey, MENA (Middle East North Africa), South America and Mexico. Peak Games has been executing on aggressive growth plans by acquiring two hardcore strategy games studios Umaykut and Erlikhan , new partnerships with companies including RockYou , new games including Umaykut and Happy Farm , and updating and improving developed games including TrendKiz and Okey . The company also raised an additional 11.5M USD in new funding from Earlybird Venture Capital, Hummingbird Ventures and a strategic investor (bringing the total raised to 19M USD) which will be used f or market expansion, additional game studio acquisitions, hiring, and user acquisition . Peak’s games now reach over 16M monthly active users (MAU source: AppData ).  Core to the company’s strategy, Peak Games reaches underserved markets with localized and culturally-specific games that employ strong engagement and monetization strategies. Peak Games is now among the top six social gaming companies in the world.

“At Peak Games, understanding emerging markets like Turkey, MENA and Latin America is in our DNA! We’re at a point where we know what kind of games they enjoy, how to acquire new users in specific regions, what triggers virality, and, ultimately, how to monetize,” said Sidar Sahin , chief executive officer and founder of Peak Games. While much of Peak Games’ rapid rise was originally due to games based on traditional Turkish and Arabic card and board games such as top performing game Okey , the company has expanded offerings to include a wider range from rather hardcore games such as Umaykut , and to games specifically for women and girls such as TrendKiz .   All games provide localized content showing a strong understanding of the local audience. In addition to developing its own IP (intellectual property), Peak has partnered with several of the leading global social gaming developers – including RockYou , which created Zoo World 2 ; The Broth , which created Barn Buddy ; and MagnetJoy , which created Pet Party – to create and publish localized versions of those games. Fostering even further growth, Peak Games has launched games such as Happy Farm in modern Arabic in the MENA region, and is supporting this game while developing others through a strategic acquisition of Umaykut and Erlikhan game studios.

Turkey is already the fourth largest Facebook market, with over 30 million users and growing, representing over 87 percent of the online population (source: Socialbakers.com). Taken as a whole, the MENA region is one of the fastest growth areas for Facebook and social networking, with the number of users growing by 30 percent over the last six months to 35 million users and forecasted to reach 250 million users by 2015. People across MENA are increasingly active on the Facebook platform and starting to use it in a more sophisticated way as they interact more with each other via games. Latin America is currently at 130 million Facebook users with the entire region growing at 37 percent over the last six months.   More specifically, Brazil has 26 million Facebook users representing a whopping 98 percent growth in the last six months and in Mexico Facebook has 29 million users representing 21 percent growth over the last six months (source: Social Bakers ). “Similar to most emerging markets, the patterns we see in MENA gaming are exceptionally exciting,” said Rina Onur, chief strategy officer for Peak Games. “Given our current portfolio of games and those in the pipeline that incorporate local languages , we believe we will be able to connect with users in MENA and Latin America by offering games that speak to their needs and passions .”

Today Quepasa Corporation, owner of popular Latino social network Quepasa.com, announced that it closed a $5 million financing from two existing affiliated institutional shareholders. The financing coupled with an existing $5 million commitment from Mexicans & Americans Trading Together Inc. (MATT) provides the necessary $10 million in new equity required by the Quepasa — myYearbook merger agreement. “Despite a difficult market environment, our shareholders continue to be extremely supportive of our strategy to build the leading brand around social discovery on both web and mobile”, noted Quepasa CEO, John Abbott. “This capital allows us to meet a significant closing requirement, which we believe paves the way for the merger with myYearbook to be closed in the fourth quarter.”

MOL AccessPortal Pvt. Ltd, an Asia payment service provider that recently re-launched social network Friendster, reports the platform is actually gaining users.  Friendster has attracted more than half a million new users and now includes over 40  games. The new site is aimed at bringing social games to young Asians and helping games publishers and developers tap the Asian gaming markets. Friendster’s Chief Executive Officer Ganesh Kumar Bangah, said: “Social gaming is rapidly gaining momentum in Asia. The early results attest to the fact that social gaming is proving to be creating deeper engagements and interactions for these young Asian users.” Friendster relaunch has increased Monthly Active Users and Daily Active Users by 50%. More than 90% of the new users are now based in Asia. There are currently over 40 premium games and hundreds of free-to-play games and applications with nearly half of the new users regularly playing between one to five games in the last 30 days. The top 30% of these users spend more than 45 minutes on Friendster during the last 30 days. More than 10% of the users have purchased virtual credits in Friendster to help them better enjoy their games. Bangah further explained that the service continues to be developed and additional features are regularly being added in.

Friendster has already added in Facebook Connect which allows users to login to Friendster using their Facebook account. Just last week the new site allows users to choose Simplified Chinese as their main interface. Popular gaming features such as chat and forums are expected to be introduced in the coming weeks. Friendster’s virtual currency, Friendster Coins, has seen a healthy increase since the site was re-launched, the company reports. Friendster, which was re-launched with a new brand and logo, has also introduced a free wireless Internet services at popular outlets such as Starbucks and Papa Jones across Malaysia. Friendster was acquired by MOL Global in late 2009. MOL Global also operates MOL AccessPortal, an Internet payment provider for social networking sites, virtual worlds and social gaming platforms. As part of the re-launch, Friendster moved its business operations out of the U.S. to Asia. Friendster is leveraging gaming specialists within the MOL team and the company now operates mainly from three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. “We are on the right track to make Friendster a sustainable online business,” Bangah added. “There are endless possibilities for us to extend our service offering to our users. We have major plans to introduce new channels and integrate more online and social activities.”