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每日观察:关注comScore社交网络流量调查(7.9)

发布时间:2011-07-09 14:47:57 Tags:,,,

1)据games.com报道,Zynga游戏《FrontierVille》原来的扩展内容Pioneer Trail将独立出来成为另一款Facebook游戏。

Pioneer Trail(from frontiervillelegend.com)

Pioneer Trail(from frontiervillelegend.com)

games.com博客的一名读者对此表示,假如Pioneer Trail(拓荒者小道)独立成另一款游戏会让她很反感。她不玩《FarmVille》的原因就在于该游戏新推出的英国农场扩展内容。那个英国农场的内容过于复杂和繁琐,而且非常耗时。《FrontierVille》最好保持原状,让玩家自己探索拓荒者小道的内容,或者沿着该小道创建一些新任务,但就是不要让玩家在不同的城镇之间来回切换界面。如果游戏没有问题,Zynga就不需多此一举对其进行调整。

不同人看法不一,也许有人会认为《FrontierVille》运行速度很慢,而且经常出现程序崩溃故障,Zynga推出运行速度更快更流畅的《Pioneer Trail》或许未尝不是个智举。

2)日本最大的社交网络Mixi过去一直支持用户使用昵称,但最近不少用户发现,当他们登录网站“我的Mixi好友列表”页面时,就会看到自己注册时使用的姓名赫然显示其中。

full-name-on-mixi-list(from asiajin

full-name-on-mixi-list(from asiajin)

这也许只能说是一种微调,算不上重大政策转向,但这对一家日本社交网站来说却相当于迈出了一大步(游戏邦注:个人隐私在日本网络是个敏感话题,日本社交网络用户一般都很排斥实名制)。观察者认为,此举或是Mixi培养用户习惯实名制的第一步,甚至有可能为Mixi被Facebook收购奠定基础。

3)据comScore最新调查数据显示,商务人际社交网络LinkedIn在6月份的流量已超过MySpace,成为访问量居于Facebook次席的美国第二大社交网络。该网站在5月份进行了首次公开募股,随后流量一路上升,在6月份达到3390万的月独立访问用户。MySpace同一时期的独立访问用户却从5月份的3490万下降至3350万。

total unique visitors(from comScore)

total unique visitors(from comScore)

Twitter在5月份的独立访问用户是2700万,在6月份则上升至3060万,首次突破3000万大关。

Facebok在5月份的美国独立访问用户是1.572亿,在6月份上升至1.608亿,并于日前宣布在全球收获7.5亿的月活跃用户。

Tumblr在5月份的独立访问用户是1070万,6月份至上升至1180亿,该网站在6月份每天的页面访问量约为4亿次。

4)社交游戏公司Tiny Speck日前宣布聘用日本著名游戏开发者Keita Takahashi(游戏邦注:其代表作是一款销量达数百万份的视频游戏《Katamari Damacy》)。Tiny Speck由Flickr联合创始人Stewart Butterfield创建,在今年4月份融资1000多万美元。

Keita Takahashi(from venturebeat)

Keita Takahashi(from venturebeat)

5)Roar Engine是由Run With Robots公司推出的一项社交游戏开发引擎,最近完善了虚拟货币、绑定Facebook等社交功能,该引擎的招牌功能在于创建定制属性和资源,并在其中融入特定道具、任务等内容。

Roar Engine(from prweb.com)

Roar Engine(from prweb.com)

该公司承认这个引擎的收费标准较高,可能不利于吸引新兴开发商,所以决定调整付费标准,等到游戏突破100名日活跃出用户时再向开发者收费。开发者现可免费使用Roar Engine的托管、管理(包括细节分析)、支持、服务器和开发工具等服务,只有DAU超过100时才需要付费。

DAU在1000到2000人时,开发者需针对每千人用户付费6美元;而当DAU介于2万至10万之间时,开发者仅需针对每千人用户付费4.5美元,而如果DAU到达20万时,这一付费标准就降为每千人用户3美元;到达100万DAU时,这一标准则降为2美元,如果突破了100万,该标准就降为1.5美元。

6)《Weeds Social Club》是一款根据Showtime电视黑色喜剧《Weeds》题材开发的Facebook游戏,要求玩家在其中扮演该片主角Nancy Botwin,为维护在上流社会的生活和地位,而不得不在丈夫过世后成为一名毒品贩子。

该游戏由休闲游戏公司Mytopia开发,但发行方却是Ecko|Code公司和Lionsgate Entertainment(主要制作CBS公司的付费有线电视网络Showtime的电视节目)公司。据AppData数据显示,《Weeds Social Club》在目前内测阶段的MAU是1万4500,DAU则是1700。

Weeds(from insidesocialgames)

Weeds(from insidesocialgames)

其游戏玩法类似于农场模拟游戏,但部分机制有所调整。玩家需购买大麻种子进行播种,收割大麻后拿到街上出售,或开办一个与毒品贩子进行交易的市场;玩家还可以购买家具装饰房子和储藏大麻。游戏中的升级系统提供了一些可解琐内容,以便玩家提高销售大麻的技能,或者降低被捕的风险。

insidesocialgames指出,农场模拟游戏和以电视节目为题材的游戏在Facebook上并不鲜见,而毒品交易为主题的社交游戏也并不是特别受欢迎。《Pot Farm》目前的MAU还不足100万,而另一款在6月中旬亮相的相同题材游戏《Cheech & Chong》发展也并不乐观。《Weeds Social Club》比这两者表现更为突出的原因在于,它是一款与Showtime电视节目相关连的游戏。

7)在本周MAU增长最快的Facebook游戏榜单(100万以下MAU),由中国网游戏公司完美世界推出的第一款社交游戏《Perfect Getaway》坐上头把交椅,目前MAU是47.7万。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

该榜单的新面孔包括6waves推出的《My Country》(位居第二,MAU是75.8万左右)以及《Camelot:The Game》(位居第14名,MAU约40.6万)。前者是一款城市建设题材的游戏,后者是根据StarZ新剧《Camelot》改制的社交游戏。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

1)At least one of our readers isn’t too pleased about the big rumor that the upcoming FrontierVille Pioneer Trail expansion will be a completely separate Facebook game.

Games.com Blog reader Angela says the following:

“If the pioneer trail is going to be like Farmville, and it is another app/frontier than I DO NOT LIKE IT. I stopped playing Farmville because of new English farm. It was to much to deal with, time consuming, and there was so many problems with the game. Keep Frontierville the way it is and let us explore the trails but still come home to the family. Or create missions down the trails, but don’t make it where we have to move our towns. I… Hey Zynga!!! Have you ever heard, DON’T FIX IT IF IT’S NOT BROKEN.”

So, what do you think? If FrontierVille’s Pioneer Trail turns out to be a separate Facebook app, will you have the same gut reaction as Angela? Or does a small part of you think it’ll actually be a good thing? After all, FrontierVille is notorious for running slowly and crashing, so maybe a new game that runs faster and smoother might be in order. (source:games

2)Mixi Starts Showing Real Names (Kind Of) [Social Networks]

Dr. Serkan Toto

So far, Japan’s biggest social network Mixi was OK with users showing handles instead of real names on the site- and the vast majority of users has been using nick names, indeed (privacy on Japan’s web is a sensitive topic).

Mixi hasn’t changed this policy, but a few days ago, users started seeing the real names (at least the names people used when they signed up) whenever they logged into the “list of my Mixi friends” page (see below for an example).

This may be a small change on the surface, but for a Japanese social network, it’s quite a big step – and it might be the first move to make members get used to displaying their real names online (plus the move makes things easier when Facebook acquires Mixi one day).(source:serkantoto

3)LinkedIn Surpasses Myspace For U.S. Visitors To Become No. 2 Social Network; Twitter Not Far Behind

Leena Rao

Professional social network Linkedin surpassed Myspace in terms of traffic to become the No. 2 most visited social networking site in the U.S. in June. LinkedIn, which has seen a resurgence of traffic after its IPO in May, reached an all-time high of 33.9 million unique visitors in June compared to Myspace, which saw 33.5 million unique visitors (that’s down from 34.9 million in May).

Hopefully Myspace’s new owners can recharge the troubled social network.

Twitter posted record U.S. traffic, with June as the first month the site saw over 30 million unique visitors. Twitter.com had 30.6 million unique visitors in June, compared to 27 million unique vistors in May. The increase in traffic is actually a big win for Twitter, which splits traffic between its own mobile clients and the many third-party clients that are used to access the network.

Facebook also reached an all-time high in terms of U.S. traffic in June, according to newly released comScore data. In June, Facebook saw 160.8 million unique vistors in the U.S., which is up from 157.2 million uniques in May. The company also announced that it crossed the 750 million active users mark worldwide in June as well.

Tumblr saw 11.8 million unique visitors in June, up from 10.7 million unique visitors in May. In June, we reported that Tumblr was seeing around 400 million pageviews per day, thanks in part to international growth and faster response times. (source:techcrunch

4)Social game maker Tiny Speck hires Japan’s famous game designer Keita Takahashi

Dean Takahashi

Tiny Speck, a social game startup that has been making a title called Glitch, has scored a coup with the hiring of Keita Takahashi, a famous Japanese game developer.

Takahashi (no relation to me) is the creator of Katamari Damacy, a whimsical game that has sold millions of copies and was a rare example of independent creativity in the video game industry.

Katamari Damacy was an insanely creative game, where you took a ball and rolled it over things that stuck to it, generating a huge snowball of with a patchwork of items sticking out of it.

The hiring shows the disruptions happening in the core video game market and how talent is migrating from the older part of the industry to the new. It’s also a great endorsement for the team at Tiny Speck, which was created by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Tiny Speck raised more than $10 million in funding in Apri.(source:venturebeat

5)Social gaming platform Roar Engine drops charge for premium features

by Keith Andrew

Roar Engine might have won fans thanks to its multi-platform, social gaming bent, but it appears the charge attached to ‘premium’ elements of the engine’s set up was not so popular.

The social gaming building engine is designed to streamline the development process for studios looking to launch the same game across multiple platforms.

Roar Engine also comes complete with key social features such as virtual currency and Facebook integration, but the platform’s signature feature is the ability to create custom attributes and resources, and embed them into specific items, quests or tasks.

Bringing down the wall

Up until now, however, certain facets of the web API, such as scripting elements, were hidden behind a paywall.

The company behind the engine – Run With Robots – has now admitted the charges were acting as a barrier to new entrants, and has dropped all such fees until the game in question reaches 100 Daily Active Users over a billing cycle.

“We were understandably concerned that charging fees for our premium services might be stifling innovation and growth,” said Run With Robots’ David Evans on the Roar Engine blog.

“So, we decided to make everything available for free. It just makes sense that we only get paid when you’re successful and we make it as easy as possible for you to gain the most success.”

Price dropsDevelopers can now access hosting, management (including detailed analytics), support, and server and development tools – initially without charge.

Should the DAU total pass 100, developers then pay an average of $6 per thousand users up to 20,000 users.

The fee drops to $4.50 per thousand users for games attracting between 20,000 and 100,000 DAUs, comes in at $3 for up to 200,000 DAUs, $2.10 for up to 1 million DAUs, and $1.50 for any games that pass the million player mark.

Roar Engine is also available via a more traditional licensing model, allowing developers to use the platform outright for a one-off charge of $125,000 per game, although hosting charges are paid separately.(source:pocketgamer

6)Weeds Social Club Joins Both Budding Marijuana Genre And Saturated Farming Sim Genre on Facebook

By Carolyn Koh

Weeds Social Club is Facebook game tie-in created to promote Showtime television dark comedy series, Weeds. The game puts the player in the shoes of Nancy Botwin, the main character of the show who becomes a marijuana dealer to support her white upper-middle class family after her husband suddenly passes.

The development and publishing of this game is a bit complex. The actual game was developed by casual games outfit Mytopia, which has some experience with card and tile games on Facebook.

Publishing, meanwhile, is handled as a collaboration between Ecko|Code — serial entrepreneur Marc Ecko’s games label — and Lionsgate Entertainment, which produces the TV show on CBS Corporation’s premium cable network, Showtime.

Weeds Social Club is currently in closed beta with just over 14,500 monthly active users and over 1,700 daily active users, according to our data tracking service AppData.

The premise of the game follows the plot of the TV series, where the main character’s objective is to earn money through selling weed to save the home from financial woes. The actual gameplay is a farming simulation where the purchase of seeds and pots is combined with a light-tweaking mechanic substituting for traditional plant-watering. Once grown, players harvest the weed and then sell it on the streets or open a market with a dealer. Players can also buy furniture to decorate their house and to stash bags of weed.

Weeds Social Club is mission-based, though players can also just grow weed to sell as a free-play experience. A character progression system unlocks better seeds and nets the player points to assign to skills, like the ability to sell more bags of weed per hour or reduce the risk of being caught. Risk adds a strategic element to gameplay as the player works to balance each plant’s odor rating with planters and weed storage options that reduce the odor. The higher the odor, the higher the risk of being busted. When busted, players lose a percentage of cash and bags currently in their inventory. Completing a quest for a corrupt law enforcement agent gets your record wiped clean.

As the game is currently in closed beta, monetization features are not currently live. Social features are also not in place yet, though there is a toll that cycles through your friends’ profiles and recommends them as neighbors. Game balancing and quest text are also still in development.

While farming sims and TV show tie-in games are nothing new for Facebook, marijuana-themed social games haven’t enjoyed the same growth of genre. Pot Farm currently has fewer than 1 million monthly active users and a Cheech & Chong marijuana-themed game launched to a slow start in the middle of June. It may be that Weeds Social Club enjoys an edge over these titles due to its TV tie-in status, but it’s not how clear how dependent the game is on its Showtime connection.(source:insidesocialgames

7)Perfect Getaway, My Country, Pet Tales Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

By AJ Glasser

Perfect World Entertainment’s luxury cruise simulation tops this week’s list of emerging Facebook games as recorded by our traffic tracking service, AppData. The rest of our list reflects a mix of genres and game types ranging from Arabic-language farm sims to TV show tie-ins.

Two new entries from developer/publisher 6waves that catch our eye are My Country at number two and Camelot: The Game at number 14. The former is a city-builder game developed by innoWate under 6waves’ publishing branch while the latter appears to be another collaboration between premium cable network Starz and 6waves — like Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, only Large Animal Games doesn’t appear to be involved this time. Camelot the TV series stars Jamie Campbell Bower, Joseph Fiennes, and Eva Green in a retelling of the King Arthur legend. The show recently concluded its North American season and will roll out to other territories throughout the summer, which may impact Camelot: The Game’s overall growth.(source:insidesocialgames


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