German browser game publisher InnoGames announced to enter the social gaming market. The company also announced the launch of a public beta version of its first Social Game within the next weeks.

“Social Games are booming just as browser based games do. We are convinced, we can reach new target groups in this market and thus enlarge our customer base”, explained Eike Klindworth, Chief Games Officer at InnoGames.

InnoGames plans to roll out their social games across different social networks. Additionally they will publish the game on an external address to give everyone access to the game “even without an account in a social network.” For the last few years InnoGames was steadily grew to over 50 million registered users . Their games “Grepolis”, “The West” and “Tribal Wars” are localized in over 20 languages. In May 2010 InnoGames received funding from British investor Fidelity Growth Partners Europe. The sum of the funding round was not disclosed. InnoGames plans to use the capital to hire 100 new employees and publish several new online games within the next twelve months.

Browser games are traditionally very strong in Germany. Apart from InnoGames, German rivals GameForge and Bigpoint have over 85 and over 100 million registered users. InnoGames’ rivals also already started to enter the social games market. BigPoint, for example, launched their success game “Dark Orbit” on MySpace. Gameforge launched their first social game “Funfari” on Facebook which has over 600.000 active users this April. It seemed like just a matter of time when InnoGames will join the trend. As they announced to do so now we are looking forward to the first beta.

A lot of updates have been done on the VZ networks this week. The number of apps was reduced from over 80 to just about 40-50 on every of the three social networks. Many new games were released and a significant number of simple apps was removed, probably due to inactivity.

Chinese developer ELEX has launched numerous new games from all popular genres including the pet game “Cute Pig” and the aquarium game “Cool Fish”. Cool Fish made it into the top 10 in the first week although the game is not properly localized yet. The wording in the game is partly German, partly English and even the game name is displayed in both languages. The in-game instructions are understandable but in poor German. Still, due to the lack of alternatives, those two games instantly became the most popular pet/aquarium games on the VZ networks.

Here are our weekly AppStats of unique app installs:

	App Name	Developer	StudiVZ	MeinVZ	SchülerVZ	VZ Total	Gain in %
1.	Frohe Ernte	Elex	491.695	1.014.719	1.312.030	2.818.444	+2.51%
2.	Brain Buddies	wooga	582.487	806.698	907.912	2.297.097	-0.13%
3.	Wobbix Quiz	Quiz-Fabrik GmbH	183.658	277.745	249.781	711.184	-3.85%
4.	Bubble Island	wooga	130.179	358.750	292.104	689.128	+195.59%
5.	GoodgameFarmer	Goodgame Studios	92.550	275.733	302.449	670.732	+0.60%
6.	Frohe Ernte Two	Elex	168.943	467.067	n/a	636.010	+2.17%
7.	Turtle Squad	Plinga	105.772	166.602	306.615	578.989	+0.79%
8.	Crazy Charly	Plinga	71.010	171.636	309.972	552.618	+2.10%
9.	Cool Fish	Elex	67.965	206.223	193.988	468.176	new
10.	Monster World	wooga	69.306	225.646	172.713	467.665	new

As predicted last week, wooga’s arcade shooter Bubble Island climbed into the top ten 2 weeks after launch. wooga’s third game in the top 10, Monster World, is a new entry which is certain to keep climbing the charts as well. It is by far the most original farming game in which monster avatars harvest funky fruit like magic lamp trees. On the VZ Networks Monster World is certainly the farming game with the most intuitive gameplay and the best instructions.

The variety of game genres slowly keeps increasing in the VZ Networks. Hamburg based development studio Goodgame published the first mafia game with the intuitive title “Goodgame Mafia”. The portfolio of games also includes Poker and other card games now. Additionally, the VZ networks published the first German social network app for the iPad this week.

Online gambling platform 888 announces that it has entered, through a wholly owned subsidiary, into an agreement to acquire the assets comprising the Mytopia social games development studio from Real Dice Inc. for $18 million.

The assets acquired comprise:

• a games development studio, specialising in developing cross-platform social games for smartphones, mobile handsets and social networking platforms including Facebook
• numerous games, including “Bingo Island 2” (one of the top Bingo applications on Facebook) and a social poker application using the “Pacific Poker” brand
• a real-time multiplayer mobile Poker application available for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and J2ME handsets which has been installed by more than 1,000,000 users globally
• a technology platform for hosting and operating real-time social games on social networks and mobile
• a software licence for Particle Code™, a cross-platform application development framework for mobile devices and tablets

The assets acquired will form the cornerstone of 888’s social gaming and mobile strategy, offering a seamless experience across different platforms. Social network and smartphone gaming applications will also be offered to Dragonfish B2B partners, allowing them to take advantage of this fast-growing area.

Gigi Levy, CEO of 888 Holdings, said: “This is a very exciting deal for 888, and builds on our aim of providing a variety of entertainment destinations where people can enjoy a truly interactive experience on a multitude of platforms. Mytopia is one of the leading publishers of cross-platform social-games and this acquisition gives us an immediate footprint in the fast-growing social gaming arena, complementing our core offering and giving us access to millions of customers.

Muskedunder is one of the leading European social game developers.  Their first hit game Icy Tower is a social version of a popular ten year old game which the Swedish developers brought to Facebook in September 2009. Within a couple of months Icy Tower had over 1.5 million monthly active users and 200.000 daily active users. Now they are planning new games and the expansion to other social networks. In our interview we talked to Muskedunder’s Director of Social Games Johan Peitz about problems during the launch and success factors like in-game features and distribution channels.

SocialGamesObserver: Icy Tower was an overnight success, which problems did you face during the launch?

Johan Peitz, Director of Social Games at Muskedunder

Johan Peitz: Our biggest issue when we started growing for real was the capacity of the servers. The game grew faster then we could handle and would constantly hit the performance roof faster than we could improve the backend. This lead to constant frustration and a lot of “quick fixes” that eventually would not work properly anyway. After having grown out of a couple of servers of increasing size we eventually settled with Amazon’s EC2 services. Then the game also had a number of early issues which arose from us not quite knowing how to utilize the Facebook platform which stopped some players from playing the game. These were however minor problems that could be fixed and disposed of fairly quick.

SocialGamesObserver: What are the most important competitive features in the game?

Johan Peitz: Since it is a game about beating your friends’ scores, the competitiveness revolves around knowing how good your friends actually are. In Icy Tower we try to show the player how tough the competition is as often as possible. First off is showing your friends’ results inside the actual gameplay. When players ascend the tower they will see their friends’ avatars positioned at their best results. As soon as they pass (or not pass) they will know that they were better (or worse). This is combination with weekly resets of the top lists keeps the competition fresh and engaging.

SocialGamesObserver: Icy Tower was successful a long time before it came to Facebook. Why did you adapt gameplay to be more forgiving?

Johan Peitz: We wanted to lower the barrier of entry and reach a broader market. A lot of casual players aren’t interested in the kind of humiliation playing a new game often brings along. If we could minimize that we hoped to have more players stick to the game. That said, even if the game is more forgiving it is still as challenging as ever for experienced players.

SocialGamesObserver: Individual avatar creation can increase user retention. The avatars in the wardrobe are breathing , what other features did you install to bond users to their characters?

Johan Peitz: The characters do these little animations every now and then to look alive. For instance, in the wardrobe when you try something on, the character responds with an appropriate animation. Try out a new pair of shoes and the character will lift her leg and look down on the new item. We also diversified the clothing items so that players should be able to express themselves with different styles. As we localized the game we also added nationally themed clothing items that allowed players to identify with their characters even more. Since players also see their friends’ avatars when they play and recognize them as their friends, they also make the connection that they are seen by their friends every time they play. This adds an additional layer of bonding. Finally, we choose to as often as possible display players’ characters in combination with their profile pictures, further reinforcing the identification.

SocialGamesObserver: Which distribution channels did you use to promote Icy tower?

Johan Peitz: With Icy Tower being around for so long we had quite an arsenal of promotion tools at our disposal. We started off by (more…)

Virtual currency monetization platform SponsorPay announced today that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Hasso Plattner Ventures. Previous investors Team Europe Ventures also participated in this round. The Berlin-based company will use the investment to accelerate growth in international markets and further expand its leadership role in Europe.

SponsorPay recently signed contracts with leading international publishers 6waves and Perfect World and expects to work with at least 50% of the largest US-based publishers by the end of the year. This latest infusion of capital is testament to SponsorPay’s tremendous growth – within the past year the company has expanded to 40 employees and serves local advertising offers to over 150 million users in more than 100 countries. “We are pleased with SponsorPay’s progress so far and strongly believe that the innovative concept along with the talent across the company, which has already made SponsorPay the European leader, will take it to the next level internationally. Only one year old, they convinced us with their professional management and absolute will to succeed,” commented Yaron Valler, partner at Hasso Plattner Ventures.

SponsorPay, established in 2009, has rapidly become the dominant force in virtual currency monetization in Europe. In February this year, it acquired its main European competitor GratisPay. The company works with almost all major Europe-based online game publishers such as Gameforge, Bigpoint, Gala Networks, InnoGames, Café.com and Frogster. On the advertiser side, SponsorPay is focused on building direct relations with branded advertisers to provide user-friendly and transparent offers to online gamers and users of social networks.

Moblie payment provider mopay has expanded the global reach of its mobile payment platform by adding a substantial number of Latin American countries to its worldwide coverage list. With this move, mopay opens up the fast-growing Latin American market to international companies looking to monetize its offerings by means of mobile payments. In addition to its long standing mobile payment coverage in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, mopay just added 11 new countries to its coverage map, racking up the total number of countries covered to 75. Among international mobile payment providers, mopay is fortifying its lead in global coverage.
The 11 recently added countries include Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay. mopay connects to the major carriers in each of these countries facilitating the billing of small amounts to mobile phone accounts, enabling consumers to choose mopay as means of payment to buy digital and virtual goods with their mobile phones. Beneficiaries of this expansion are both companies in Latin America with a global focus as well as mopay’s well established customer base in Europe, North America and Asia who address this market.