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每日观察:关注亚马逊聘用游戏元老Jonathan Tweet(7.19)

发布时间:2011-07-19 15:17:11 Tags:,,

1)据IndustryGamers报道,亚马逊日前聘请著名游戏设计师Jonathan Tweet担任公司游戏设计师/制作人(游戏邦注:该消息来源是Tweet在LinkedIn网站上的信息,而且已得到其本人的确认)。Tweet之前曾参与设计《龙与地下城第三版》以及RPG游戏《Ars Magica》和《Everway》等项目,最近还曾在Gamehouse开发Facebook游戏。

dungeons_dragons(from tsrindex.net)

dungeons_dragons(from tsrindex.net)

IndustryGamers认为,此举足以表明亚马逊已有意进军社交游戏领域,并有可能推出带有RPG元素的社交游戏。

2)RockYou最近宣布成立Studios Partners新部门,为独立开发商推出的游戏提供广告推广、市场营销等发行服务以及分析工具等技术支持。其首家合作伙伴是Loot Drop,发行游戏是《Cloudforest Expedition》,目前暂无其他新客户。

RockYou(from socialgaminghub.com)

RockYou(from socialgaminghub.com)

3)社交游戏开发商Zynga日前再推一项用户调查,希望了解《CityVille》玩家最希望在自己的城市中看到哪些“世界奇迹”。该调查问卷中的选项包括法国艾菲尔铁塔、罗马竞技场、中国万里长城、秘鲁马丘比丘古城等20处著名景观,但玩家最多只能选三项。Zynga有可能根据玩家的选择,在《CityVille》中添加相关设置。

cityville(from RockYou(from socialgaminghub.com))

cityville(from RockYou(from socialgaminghub.com))

4)《Animal Party》是一款结合了寻宝和园艺元素的宠物模拟游戏,由独立开发商Tribal Crossing开发,该游戏最近与6waves签订发行合作协议并迅速收获可观用户。据AppData数据显示,《Animal Party》目前的MAU是76万6922,DAU是10万2469。

Animal Party(from insidesocialgames)

Animal Party(from insidesocialgames)

该游戏社交功能包括内容分享和好友邀请,另外还有一个特定的宠物机制,支持玩家向好友发送宠物以促使他们参与游戏。这款游戏主要以贩售装饰性道具进行盈利,玩家可通过晋升到更高级别解琐新内容,或者用Facebook Credits兑换新植物和道具。

据该公司首席执行官Tommy Wu所述,小型独立开发商面临的最大挑战并非开发成本,而是用户获取成本。他们如果开发一款复杂程度与《Animal Party》相当的新游戏,投入成本大概是20万美元;但像Zynga这种大公司仅在上个季度每天的市场营销成本就是这一数字的两倍左右。

5)Paymentwall近日宣布采用其虚拟商品交易、广告推广服务的社交游戏开发商已超过1000家。该服务支持用户通过PayPal、信用卡、Paymo、MoPay、亚马逊支付系统、Google Checkout等多种支付方式完成交易;用户还可通过参与注册Netflix帐号等广告推广活动,赢取游戏虚拟商品。

Paymentwall(from venturebeat)

Paymentwall(from venturebeat)

该公司目前共有75种不同支付选项,最近还与中国、巴西和俄罗斯等国家的支付公司进行合作,并将于未来数月在德国、土耳其设立新工作室。Paymentwall可处理50多种货币和20门语言的服务,其业务已覆盖200多个国家。

Paymentwall成立于2010年,现有32名成员,计划扩充至50人;竞争对手包括支付领域的PlaySpan(已被Visa收购),以及广告赞助领域的TrialPay和Sponsorpay。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

6)在上周MAU增长最快的Facebook游戏榜单上,Kabam游戏《Global Warfare》位居榜单之首(目前MAU是448万),居于其次的是King.com最新游戏《Mahjong Saga》(MAU为113万)。而Zynga新作《Empires & Allies》和Digital Chocolate游戏《Army Attack》皆因MAU下滑而无缘此列。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

1)Amazon will duel Zynga in the social games arena, recent hire suggests

by Joe Osborne

Who else wants in on this? Linkedin? Twitter? It appears that gargantuan Internet retailer Amazon looks to enter the social games melee as well, as the company has hired veteran pen-and-paper (think Dungeons and Dragons) game designer Jonathan Tweet as Game Designer/Producer, according to his Linkedin page, IndustryGamers reports. There are no details regarding Amazon’s first social game, but Tweet did confirm his new position to the website.

Tweet is best known for his involvement with Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition and RPGs (role-playing games) like Ars Magica and Everway. However, he has also worked most recently in Facebook games with Gamehouse, and considering Tweet will be leading the project, IndustryGamers guesses that the Amazon social game will have RPG elements. Will we have to swing a sword and fling spells for even better deals on Amazon? Probably not, but that’d be pretty darn cool.

This is far from the first time the Internet retailer has dived into gaming. Even before launching its own Android Appstore, through which PopCap has launched an Android game, the company bought Reflexive Entertainment in 2008 to sell its games online. It appears that, slowly but surely, Amazon is getting serious about gaming–just like everybody else. We’ve contacted Amazon for comment.(source:games

2)RockYou forms new publishing wing to work with independent social game developers   Facebook

By Andrew Webster

In addition to developing great social games like Zoo World 2, RockYou has also started publishing games, like the upcoming Cloudforest Expedition from Loot Drop. And that trend looks to continue as RockYou has announced a new Studio Partners program that will see it partnering up with independent developers to bring new experiences to social gaming.

Studio Partners is a brand new business unit within RockYou, that will help support independent game studios by providing advertising and marketing support, as well as analytics tools. The new initiative stemmed from RockYou’s experience working with Loot Drop.

“We’re inspired by the originality and imagination of social game developers around the world,” said Josh Grant, who will be heading up Studio Partners as SVP and GM. “Studio Partners gets to the heart of what RockYou believes in—delivering the very best, most innovative games to our players.”

No new partnerships have been announced just yet.(source:gamezebo

3)Is CityVille headed to China, Egypt, Rome and more with Wonders?

by Joe Osborne

Zynga is at it again with its consumer surveys. This time, it might be asking CityVille players what Wonders they would like to see in their cities. The survey doesn’t mention “Wonders” specifically, the oft-teased and mysterious final tab on the Build menu. But the items mentioned, like the Eiffel Tower and Coliseum of Rome, are featured as silhouettes within the “Wonders” tab in-game.

The list ranges from The Great Wall of China to Machu Picchu and almost everything in between. However, the developer doesn’t reveal any intent for how Wonders will operate in CityVille.

Of course, of the 20 available options, players are restricted to three choices. If you had to force us, we’d love to see how Zynga handles Machu Picchu, the Egyptian Pyramids and the Pantheon. According to CityVille Wiki, which also somehow found images of two of the upcoming Wonders, these special buildings might increase the effects of Landmarks. Regardless of what we know, this survey (which you can answer here) is telling of the scope with which the developer is approaching the mysterious Wonders feature in CityVille. Let’s just hope Wonders do not turn out like Landmarks did.(source:games

4)Animal Party Picks Up Speed on Facebook Under 6waves Publishing

By AJ Glasser

Animal Party is a pet simulation combined with treasure hunting and gardening from indie developer Tribal Crossing. The game was recently signed to a publishing agreement with 6waves, which has since accelerated the game’s growth through user acquisition, landing Animal Party on our weekly top 20s lists.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Animal Party currently has 766,922 monthly active users and 102,469 daily active users.

“What you see now in Animal Party is a fundamentally different game from our first public version (our first version didn’t even have a garden),” Tribal Crossing CEO Tommy Wu tells ISG in an email. “We were set on running marketing campaigns on our own and had just finished finished building a system to measure lifetime value of users by different entry points so that we could have dynamic CPI bids by traffic source.”

Wu says that the biggest challenge small indie studios like his face aren’t development costs, but rather, user acquisition costs. “With the game frameworks we have built over the past year, we could build a new game as complex as Animal Party for ~$200,000,” he says, “but if you look at Zynga’s last quarter, you’ll see they spent twice that amount per day in marketing costs.”(source:insidesocialgames

5)Paymentwall’s in-game payment options gain a good following

Dean Takahashi

Paymentwall said today that more than 1,000 developers have adopted its alternative payment methods for virtual goods in social games, including special ads known as offers.

By creating new payment options for gamers around the world, Paymentwall can help expand the overall game business.

“We are filling a void left by the other companies that have moved on to other strategies,” chief executive Honor Gunday said in an interview. “We are trying to become the global payment platform.”

As its name suggests, San Francisco-based Paymentwall presents a full page of payment options to users when they want to buy something.

As you can see from the picture, you can pay via PayPal, credit cards, mobile payments such as Paymo and MoPay, Amazon payments, or Google Checkout. Users can also make payments by choosing advertising offers, where they can get virtual goods in a game if they perform an action like signing up for Netflix.

Most recently, Paymentwall has added payment partnerships in China, Brazil and Russia. Facebook is not dominant in those territories. Paymentwall will open new local offices in Germany and Turkey in the coming months. Paymentwall can process more than 50 currencies and can localize its wall to 20 languages. Some developers reported a ten-fold increase in monetization in territories such as Southeast Asia, Turkey and Brazil, thanks to Paymentwall, which now reaches 200 countries.

Paymentwall has 32 employees and plans to build its workforce to as many as 50. The company was founded in 2010 and competes with rivals such as PlaySpan (bought by Visa) in payments and TrialPay and Sponsorpay in offers.(source:venturebeat

6)Global Warfare, Mahjong Saga Lead This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU

By AJ Glasser

Kabam’s Global Warfare winds up in the top spot on this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games by monthly active users while King.com’s newly-released Mahjong Saga debuts number two. Neither Empires & Allies nor Army Attack turn up this week as both strategy games appear to be shrinking in MAU.(source:insidesocialgames


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