VentureBeat » The Sims Social

EA pulls the plug on 3 Facebook games

Jeffrey Grubb — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:12:56 +0000

Hope you weren’t building a simulated life on Facebook, because Electronic Arts is pulling a couple of Sims titles off of the platform.

The publisher revealed today that it will shut off Pet Society, The Sims Social, and SimCity Social on Facebook on June 14 (according to TheNextWeb). The company attributes these closures to each game failing to maintain a significant audience.

EA provided the following statement:

Today we are informing players of the difficult decision to retire some of our Facebook games: The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society.

After millions of people initially logged in to play these games, the number of players and amount of activity has fallen off. For people who have seen other recent shutdowns of social games, perhaps this is not surprising.

EA will continue to deliver popular titles for Facebook, most notably games from PopCap, including Bejeweled Blitz, Solitaire Blitz and the recently announced Plants vs. Zombies Adventures.

These kinds of shutdowns aren’t uncommon in the social-game space. Zynga, one of the biggest publishers in the market, closed down nearly a dozen games in late December. In February, Zynga canceled CityVille 2, only three months after debuting it on Facebook.

EA still has many Facebook games available — that includes digital board games like Scrabble, Monopoly Millionaires, and Risk: Factions. As its statement implies, it also has a major developer that knows the casual audience in PopCap, but today’s closures reveal that no game is safe in the volatile and fickle social gaming sector.

Filed under: Games

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Zynga exec: Debate over clones is a ‘distraction’ — everyone copies

Jeffrey Grubb — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:55:43 +0000

Everything is a remix, and according to Zynga, all games are derivative works.

Zynga published an open letter from Dan Porter, the general manager of Zynga New York, to his employees that further explains comments he made at a New York panel on wearable computers Friday. During his talk, Porter seemed to admit that the social-game developer copies popular games when designing their own, according to Quartz — now he says the press took his quote out of context.

“What I actually said was that all games are derived from other games, [I said] that this has been happening long before Zynga, and that the debate about originality in games is vastly overblown and misses the mark,” Porter said.

Gamers, publishers, and developers often loudly criticize Zynga for releasing games that seem to ripoff other popular titles. In August, Electronic Arts sued Zynga for copyright infringement. The publisher claimed that Zynga’s The Ville stole specific concepts from EA’s The Sims Social.

EA and Zynga settled in February.

“Before making Draw Something [and before Zynga acquired us], we ran OMGPOP for four years and made lots of games that were inspired by games we loved, and we emulated the mechanics from games with great U.I.,” wrote Porter. “This is no great revelation.”

Porter is slightly conflating emulating mechanics with outright cloning. When Super Mario Bros. popularized side-scrolling in a platform game, it was clear that other platformers would have to use that mechanic to compete. EA accused Zynga of making nearly an exact copy of The Sims Social with The Ville.

In addition to explaining his comments, Porter also apologized to Zynga staff for generating “negative press.” He also explained what Zynga does best.

“The bigger point that I made, one that was overshadowed, goes to the true genius of Zynga,” he wrote. “After making games for years, it was joining Zynga that made me understand the art, science and special sauce running games as a service.”

Porter called the debate over copying a games a “distraction” and that Zynga’s games-as-a-service model is what is truly important. From a purely financial standpoint, he has a point.

Filed under: Games, Mobile

Zynga and Electronic Arts settle The Ville lawsuit

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 19:42:45 +0000

One of gaming’s legal cold wars ended today.

Social-game developer Zynga and major third-party publisher Electronic Arts settled their respective lawsuits regarding Zynga’s The Ville game, according to Insidesocialgames. Neither company can disclose the details of the settlement.

The two companies jointly released the following statement to GamesBeat:

EA and Zynga have resolved their respective claims and have reached a settlement of their litigation in the Northern District of California.

In August, EA sued Zynga. The publisher claimed the developer’s Facebook game The Ville infringed on EA’s copyrights regarding The Sims Social.

“The core legal issue is our belief that Zynga infringed copyrights to our game, The Sims Social,” Lucy Bradshaw, EA’s lead on the game, wrote back in August. “In legal terms, our claim is that Zynga copied the original and distinctive expressive elements of The Sims Social in a clear violation of the U.S. copyright laws.”

In September, Zynga countersued EA, claiming that the publisher was attempting to employ anticompetitive practices to prevent EA employees from moving to Zynga.

In October, Zynga announced layoffs in the Austin studio that was overseeing The Ville. The developer let go a majority of that team.

As of the time of this posting, both The Ville and The Sims Social are still available to play on Facebook. The Ville is also still shockingly similar to The Sims Social.

Filed under: Games

Zynga strikes back hard at EA in copyright infringement case

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 20:27:59 +0000

Accused of copying Electronic Arts’ games, Zynga lashed back at its rival today in its first legal response to a copyright lawsuit.

Zynga said in a filing today that there is no merit to EA’s claim that Zynga’s recently launched The Ville was a copy of EA’s The Sims Social, which came out a year before. Zynga’s legal defense consists of several layers. The San Francisco social game giant made a motion to strike a number of allegations from the EA lawsuit that it said were irrelevant to the claims and inflammatory. Zynga has been quiet until now, but it is letting it rip. Zynga denied the copying charges and also alleged that EA tried to get it to break antitrust laws by proposing a no-hire collusion on snagging each others’ employees.

Zynga said it received more than 3,000 unsolicited resumes from EA employees. But John Riccitiello, the chief executive of EA, allegedly hit the roof when Zynga stole executives John Schappert, Jeff Karp, and Barry Cottle. He allegedly sent an email to Schappert asking him to send back any EA employees who wrote to Schappert about working at Zynga. In turn, Zynga claims the copyright lawsuit is aimed at discouraging more employees from moving to Zynga and to mollify EA’s board, which wanted the defections to stop. (Ironically, the defections have stopped, and Zynga is now losing employees because it had a weak earnings report).

“Today we responded to EA’s claims which we believe have no merit. We also filed a counterclaim which addresses actions by EA we believe to be anticompetitive and unlawful business practices, including legal threats and demands for no-hire agreements. We look forward to getting back to focusing all our efforts on delighting our players,” said Reggie Davis, general counsel of Zynga, in a statement.

Zynga also said in about 20 pages of text that it did not copy EA. It addressed each specific allegation. It also noted that Zynga launched its YoVille (2008, pictured right) people simulation game long before EA debuted its The Sims franchise on Facebook. And Zynga also said that Activision was the pioneer of people simulation games with its Little Computer People title (published in 1985), which was published long before The Sims debuted in 2000.

In a detailed lawsuit, EA alleged that Zynga’s character models in The Ville were strikingly similar to EA’s in The Sims Social and that customizing the skin tones of characters was also nearly identical to the way that EA handled it in The Sims Social. Homes could also be built in almost exactly the same style, and that the doors in homes in The Ville are the same height as they are in The Sims Social. Zynga’s game also has a similar “home value” concept where the value of purchased items is tallied up.

EA launched The Sims Social in August 2011. The game became the biggest threat to Zynga’s dominance on Facebook, growing all the way to No. 2 and getting tens of millions of players. But the game didn’t have staying power, and its usage fell this year. When EA filed the lawsuit, EA Maxis chief Lucy Bradshaw said that EA was standing up for the industry. At that time, Zynga said that EA’s own SimCity Social bore a lot of resemblance to Zynga’s earlier title, CityVille. Zynga launched The Ville (left) in June.

Zynga described EA’s complaint as an “unrestrained ramble of immaterial, inflammatory, and prejudicial allegations that have no bearing on the issue at hand.” Zynga said in its response that both The Ville and The Sims Social belong to a longstanding and well-developed game genre known as “life simulation games” and no one, “including EA, may lay claim to the exclusive right to develop and release games in that genre.” Zynga said that EA did not invent the genre, as The Sims creator Will Wright acknowledged he had played Little Computer People before making The Sims.

Zynga said that particular scenes expressing regular life, like taking a shower, or “scenes a faire,” are not protectable. But it did point out that many “scenes a faire” from SimCity Social are similar to CityVille. Zynga noted that EA sued after The Sims Social had fallen from a peak of 66 million monthly active users over nine months to 15.5 million MAUs, down 78 percent.

Hilariously, Zynga responded to the “shower copycat” allegation, saying, “Zynga admits that in The Ville, when a player decides to take a shower, the player clicks on the shower stall, the player walks to the shower, the player takes off his or her clothes thereby revealing the player in undergarments, the player gets into the shower, the shower curtain closes, and steam appears on the top of the shower. Zynga lacks knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations regarding the bodily needs aspects of The Sims Social and therefore denies those allegations.”

EA spokesman John Reseburg said, “This is a predictable subterfuge aimed at diverting attention from Zynga’s persistent plagiarism of other artists and studios. Zynga would be better served trying to hold onto the shrinking number of employees they’ve got, rather than suing to acquire more.”

Here are links to the filings:

1: http://www.scribd.com/doc/105945450/Part-1-Zynga-s-Motion-to-Strike

2: http://www.scribd.com/doc/105945465/Part-2-Zynga-s-Answer-and-Demand-for-Jury-Trial

3: http://www.scribd.com/doc/105945468/Part-3-Counterclaim-Public

Filed under: Business, Games, Social

Build your own SimCity on Mac this February

Stephanie Carmichael — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:59:23 +0000

Today at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, Electronic Arts announced that SimCity will arrive on Mac early next year via the publisher’s Origin distribution service.

“Whether you owned a Macintosh or a DOS PC, we all have memories of laying down zones and reticulating splines from our youth,” said Lucy Bradshaw, the senior vice president and general manager of EA’s Maxis label, the developers of the upcoming game. “To the millions of SimCity fans out there, we’ve been listening and can proudly say that your calls have been answered.”

Attendees at Gamescom this week, from August 15-19, are among the first to go play the PC version. They’ll also preview SimCity World, a new feature that records players’ progress through CityLog and allows them to compete in global challenges, compare their scores on the leaderboards, and influence the economy in the Global Market.

Gamescom isn’t the only way that prospective players can try the game. EA and Maxis have opened registration for the SimCity closed beta.

The SimCity franchise, which has existed since 1989, has sold 30 million copies in its lifetime. In June, EA unveiled the Facebook game SimCity Social, thought to be a counterattack against Zynga’s CityVille, one of the top games on the platform. More recently, EA filed a lawsuit against the social game giant, claiming Zynga’s TheVille (launched in July of this year) is a clone of its own The Sims Social (from August 2011).

Filed under: Games

EA sues Zynga, alleging The Ville is a blatant clone of The Sims Social

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 18:10:23 +0000

The grudge match between Electronic Arts and Zynga just got fiercer.

Electronic Arts, one of the world’s biggest console game companies, has filed a lawsuit against Zynga, the largest social gamemaker. EA charged that Zynga’s The Ville is a blatant copycat of its own The Sims Social. As the overall game industry’s growth slows down, this kind of dispute is to be expected, as big players try to elbow each other out of the way. For Zynga, it’s been a particularly tough month, its stock crashing after a very weak earnings report. The company has also been hit with shareholder lawsuits because of an additional drop after that report.

In a blog post, EA’s Maxis chief Lucy Bradshaw wrote, “The core legal issue is our belief that Zynga infringed copyrights to our game, The Sims Social. In legal terms, our claim is that Zynga copied the original and distinctive expressive elements of The Sims Social in a clear violation of the U.S. copyright laws.”

Bradshaw added, “The legal reasons are solid. But for creative teams who feel that their hard work and imaginations have been ripped off, there’s obviously an emotional element, too.”

EA launched The Sims Social in August, 2011, as a spin-off of its long-running franchise, The Sims. Players create their own characters, build a home, establish a family, and interact with their friends. The game got tens of millions of users but fell off rapidly in audience size this year. Zynga introduced The Ville, which former game designer Mark Skaggs (pictured below) and his team designed, in June.

Other companies have lobbed the charge of copycat at Zynga for its various Facebook simulation games in its “ville” series. But EA’s lawsuit is perhaps the biggest complaint to date, and it won’t be something that Zynga can shake off lightly.

Zynga’s Reggie Davis, general counsel, said, “We are committed to creating the most fun, innovative, social and engaging games in every major genre that our players enjoy. The Ville is the newest game in our ‘ville’ franchise — it builds on every major innovation from our existing invest-and-express games, dating back to YoVille and continuing through CityVille and CastleVille, and introduces a number of new social features and game mechanics not seen in social games today. It’s unfortunate that EA thought that this was an appropriate response to our game, and clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic copyright principles. It’s also ironic that EA brings this suit shortly after launching SimCity Social, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Zynga’s CityVille game. Nonetheless, we plan to defend our rights to the fullest extent possible and intend to win with players.”

Bradshaw added, “The similarities go well beyond any superficial resemblance. Zynga’s design choices, animations, visual arrangements, and character motions and actions have been directly lifted from The Sims Social. The copying was so comprehensive that the two games are, to an uninitiated observer, largely indistinguishable. Scores of media and bloggers commented on the blatant mimicry.”

“This is a case of principle,” she said. “Maxis isn’t the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product. But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it. Infringing a developer’s copyright is not an acceptable practice in game development. By calling Zynga out on this illegal practice, we hope to have a secondary effect of protecting the rights of other creative studios who don’t have the resources to protect themselves.”

In closing, Bradshaw said, “As a longstanding game developer, I know what it feels like to pour your heart and soul into creating something unique and special for your fans to enjoy. Today, we hope to be taking a stand that helps the industry protect the value of original creative works and those that work tirelessly to create them.”

Filed under: Business, Games

EA attempts to calm nervous investors during its annual stockholder meeting

Mike Minotti — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 22:40:32 +0000

Electronic Arts’ stock has been in decline since the Battlefield 3 and The Sims 3 publisher warned investors of a tough upcoming quarter. Now EA is attempting to calm panicking stockholders.

During the company’s annual meeting with stockholders today, EA CEO John Riccitiello blamed the falling stock price on investors’ connection of EA with console retail gaming, a business that has been in decline. Riccitiello pushed EA’s new direction toward digital gaming, including mobile and social platforms, and touted the $1.2 billion the company earned in digital sales in the 2012 financial year.

Riccitiello compared a retail product like The Sims 3 with a CD — a one-time investment for the consumer — while a service like the music-streaming program Spotify can bring in constant revenue, something EA is hoping to achieve with games like The Sims Social.

Still, stockholders are clearly growing restless. During a question and answer section toward the end of the meeting, one investor said, “Every year you talk about how well EA is doing. Where is the return for shareholders?”

Riccitiello responded to concerns with a plea for patience, to wait for the digital revenue to continue to grow and for the new console cycle to bring life back into the retail market.

EA will release the earnings report for its first quarter of the 2013 fiscal year on July 31.

Filed under: Games

Zynga’s Mark Pincus discusses how mobile could disrupt the game industry (video interview)

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:00:45 +0000

Mark Pincus, the chief executive, chief product officer, and founder of Zynga, isn’t shy about expressing his opinion. The head of the largest social-gaming company spoke at our opening fireside chat at MobileBeat/GamesBeat 2012 last week in front of a crowd of about a thousand people.

Pincus once asked Apple to fix its ecosystem for mobile game companies. It was slow to do so, so Pincus encouraged his developers at Zynga to continue making Facebook games. Later on, after Apple saw the light and expanded its support for games, Zynga came roaring back. We asked him what he needed from the mobile ecosystem today, and his answer was enlightening.

Pincus wants what he calls “90-10,” or markets where Zynga can launch a game and have 10 million players within 90 days. If it can do so, that market is “investable at scale.” That’s what Zynga can do on Facebook, but this isn’t the case yet on mobile platforms. He wants the industry to be able to invest in high-quality content and get a return on it. The executive wants channels so that many more games can be discovered beyond the top-25 ranks.

“We found on Facebook that games can get viral and pass through a lot of people,” Pincus said. “Really, on mobile, games spread through word of mouth. It happens in pools and hotels and airplanes. It doesn’t happen online. I’m excited about when it can happen online, and it can happen at a much faster rate.”

Going forward, Pincus believes that “we as an industry can create this ‘dial tone’ for play that can create our own 90-10,” which will allow game companies to regularly launch games, get them noticed, and see them turn into blockbusters.

But even if the mobile ecosystem isn’t perfect, Zynga has to cross over (per our theme of The Cossover Era) into it anyway. That’s the way that the company will hit its goal of reaching a billion gamers. Zynga has made one large mobile acquisition and many smaller ones, and it has built up its team organically as well. The company’s chief thinks the market will grow fast, but he’s pouring his money into making better products now, not marketing.

“It’s obvious we should all be investing heavily, but the flywheel isn’t there in an obvious way,” he said.

We touched on a variety of subjects. Pincus weighed in on mobile technology, social casino games, and market-share fights. Pincus said his company goes head-to-head against rivals in existing game genres by making experiences more social and modifying them to suit consumer tastes after they ship. He says the result is usually an expansion of a game genre to many more consumers than what previously existed in the category. That effect, he says, is a blue-ocean strategy, not a red-ocean strategy (market-share battle). That’s why Zynga took two years to develop The Ville, the people-simulation title that the gamemaker recently launched in competition with Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social.

“The only way we are going to grow this industry is by creating new excitement, new mechanics, and new social,” he said. “The more investment, innovation, competition you are going to have, the faster we are going to move these genres.”

Pincus believes that mobile itself is going to be disruptive, and his team continues to bet the farm on social.

Here’s a video of our full conversation at MobileBeat/GamesBeat 2012 below.

Mark Pincus mb2012 from VentureBeat on Vimeo.

Photo credit: Michael O’Donnell

Filed under: Business, Games, Mobile, Social

Zynga’s latest Facebook game takes Electronic Arts’ Sims Social head-on

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:00:46 +0000

Social game developer Zynga has announced a new title in its popular “ville” series of Facebook games called The Ville, which looks a lot like Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social.

The Ville is a Facebook-based title allowing players to build and upgrade a virtual home as they interact with their friends. Gamers can plant gardens, take bubble baths, and even lure unsuspecting avatars into bed. Every action in the game depends on your character’s happiness, which only increases by interacting with other Ville citizens. The company unveiled the game at its Zynga Unleashed event today in San Francisco.

Multiplayer in The Ville is asynchronous, meaning that the other players do not control the avatars that your character interacts with. While playing, you can check your friends’ real-time Facebook updates and comment on them without having to leave the application. Zynga also implemented its Ztalk system, which lets friends leave each other messages in-game about events in lieu of active multiplayer.

Jeff Brown, spokesman for EA, said, “Just once, can Zynga publish a game that they didn’t clone from another developer?”

This works in situations where a player has a meaningful interaction with someone else’s avatar. If you “make whoopie” with a friend’s character, you can then immortalize the event on his wall.

Many of the Ville’s core features resemble content found in The Sims Social, including consumable items, friendship points, and, of course, home decoration and expansion. Zynga put its custom spin on these functions, bringing over its signature avatar style and interface. While The Ville is reminiscent of The Sims Social, it has a much less intrusive menu design that offers a wider view of the playing area.

What happens when The Ville launches Wednesday, June 27 will be interesting. The Ville is so similar to The Sims Social that people who previously played FarmVille or CityVille might switch back to this familiar style.

Filed under: Games

SimCity Social: If this free-to-play game is too good, will you pay $60 for the full PC version?

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 21:00:36 +0000

Electronic Arts is finally unveiling a long-rumored Facebook game, SimCity Social. And with it begins a great experiment: Will fans who enjoy this free-to-play online game also dish out $60 when the full-fledged SimCity remake arrives for the PC in 2013?

The game is the first major Facebook title that EA has launched since it debuted The Sims Social last August. And it is EA’s big counterattack against Zynga’s CityVille, which has been the largest game on Facebook for more than a year. EA announced SimCity social at its press event at industry trade show Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, Calif.

Lucy Bradshaw, senior vice president of EA’s Maxis label, said in an interview with GamesBeat that EA will clearly separate the two experiences between a lighter, more social Facebook experience and a deeper, full throttle simulation with the PC version. She noted that when The Sims Social came out, it actually increased interest in the overall Sims franchise across multiple platforms. The same could happen here.

“We think the core appeal of the SimCity brand will be a big draw,” Bradshaw said. “It is an interpretation of SimCity for Facebook. It is a quick and fun experience while the full SimCity on the PC will be deeper.”

Bradshaw said the game is a collaboration of EA’s Maxis studios in Redwood Shores, Calif., Emeryville, Calif., and the Playfish studio in Beijing, China. They have created a city-building simulation for the masses. Cities will come to life and “push back at the player,” said Jami Laes, vice president of global studios for Playfish, in an interview.

“Facebook gamers have been waiting a long time for the original and best city-building game to come to the platform,” said Laes. “This isn’t your typical drag and drop city-building game. Players don’t just build a city – they choose the kind of city they want and watch its soul come to life as it grows and reacts to their decisions. With SimCity Social, we’ve taken the best in social gaming design and married it with unprecedented depth to create an all-new, deeply social experience.”

Facebook has more than 900 million users, and about half of them play games. Many of those players are casual fans, and as Sean Ryan, head of game developer relations at Facebook, and Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, have said in the past, they aren’t likely to pick up a game and pay $60 for it.

SimCity Social has no set linear paths. Cities evolve as a consequence of the choices that players make. The point of that is to allow for more creative freedom, Laes said. As the mayor, the player has to deal with issues like crime, fires, and pollution, and he will also make decisions that will help the city take its unique shape.

“We want you to find surprises on every street corner,” Laes said. “We want it to have a wow factor.

The developers have tried to give the game great graphics for a Facebook title. Its look and feel resemble the original SimCity from 1989, says Bradshaw; although, the visuals more so evoke SimCity 3000. At any given time, from the highest view, you might be able to see 150 buildings at once. When you zoom in, you might see 10 to 30 buildings. Social interactions go beyond just visiting your friends’ cities. You can do mean things to your friends or be nice. You can cooperate with them or compete. The new SimCity will be able to add different kinds of events that affect the city over time.

EA has had a large team working on the game for a while. It’s not clear how it will do against the entrenched CityVille, which has 34.7 million monthly active users and is the No. 2 game on Facebook, behind Zynga Poker.

“For EA, there is a huge advantage in brands that have appeal in multiple audiences,” Bradshaw said. “What we can do is broaden our reach by doing different experiences. We apply our brands to Playfish, bringing our history and reinterpreting the games for the new markets. EA is thinking broadly about our strategy and being in every segment where the growth is. And we bring our triple-A quality.”

Filed under: Games

Gaming art for your Facebook Timeline (Part 5: Social and Mobile)

Samir Torres — Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:29 +0000

Facebook’s Timeline is here to stay. And although not everyone loves this new layout, we can agree that the option to display a big image at the top of your profile is pretty cool — especially if it lets you show off your favorite video games.

We’re releasing seven days’ worth of artwork, each with a different theme, that you can use to decorate your Facebook profile:

Sunday: The Modern Era
Monday: Modern-Retro
Tuesday: The Indies
Wednesday: The 8/16-bit Era
Thursday: Social and Mobile
Friday: Arcade
Saturday: Future Games

Today’s batch of covers features 10 addicting games from mobile devices and social networks. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures, then right-click (or ctrl-click for Macs) them and hit “save image as” to save to your computer.

Angry Birds Space

Bejeweled Blitz

Plants vs. Zombies

CityVille

The Sims Social

Fruit Ninja

Hidden Chronicles

Words With Friends

FarmVille

Doodle Jump

Filed under: Games, Mobile, Social

GamesBeat Weekly Roundup

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:48:39 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week Minecraft on 360 broke all digital-sales records on its first day, controversial marketing specialist Paul Christoforo filed a lawsuit against N-Control, Activision Blizzard touted Skylanders as bigger than Angry Birds, and Take-Two delayed BioShock Infinite.

You’ll also find reviews for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, Toy Soliders, Lone Survivor, and Awesomenauts.

The Sims Social on life support? EA says no way

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:00:39 +0000

Electronic Arts came out swinging against what it calls a “misinformed” article in Business Insider, which said that EA’s The Sims Social game is on “life support.”

The article stated that EA had turned the management of the social game over to its Playfish India studio, “…where social games are sent to be maintained with slight updates until they are discontinued,” the article said, citing a source close to the matter.

“The misinformed article stating that The Sims Social is on life support couldn’t be further from the truth,” an EA spokesperson told GamesBeat. “The Sims Social continues to be EA’s top social game, supported by a dedicated team of 75 in the U.K. and U.S. and will see a robust and steady stream of new game-expanding content as it continues to build upon its thriving community and drive continued success. We have no plans to walk away from a very successful game based on one of the most popular brands in video game history.”

The Sims Social was launched last August, and it gave Zynga’s top games a run for their money. The Sims Social had 66 million monthly active users in October 2011, but it has since fallen to 15.8 million today, according to AppData. And EA has fallen from second to fourth on the top game publishers list on Facebook, with 44 million monthly active users altogether.

Zynga has been launching more social games on a regular basis. But EA social-game launches, bolstered last year by the $750 million acquisition of PopCap Games, have been less frequent. EA has argued that its brands will enable it to gain share in social games in the long run.

During an earnings conference call with analysts this week, EA chief executive John Riccitiello said that the company will launch a new social game this quarter. The game is being developed by EA’s Maxis studio, which created The Sims Social.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

Filed under: Games

EA and Tencent to take The Sims Social game to China

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:20:32 +0000

Electronic Arts and Chinese social network Tencent are taking EA’s The Sims Social game to China.

Beijing-based Tencent, which has hundreds of millions of users, will publish the game on the Tencent Open Platform under the Chinese name Mo Ni Shi Guang. EA’s Playfish studio in Beijing is developing the title, which was a big hit last fall on Facebook. The move helps EA keep pace with rival social game maker Zynga, which has taken its CityVille game to China.

The game will be available to players on Tencent’s QZone social gaming network. The game will combine the gameplay from the original game with new features developed by Playfish for Tencent’s social game platform. The game is based on The Sims, the people simulation game that has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide in 20 languages. When it launched last year, The Sims Social grew to more than 50 million monthly active users in its first month, but the audience has since declined to 20.9 million monthly active users, according to AppData.

The Chinese version will have localized language and art. Tencent’s platform is now the largest social network in China. Closed beta testing of the game is under way and an open beta is expected in the coming months.

Filed under: Games, Social

Zynga reports a profit for third quarter on eve of IPO

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 17:36:48 +0000

Zynga reported net income of $12.5 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, down 54 percent from $27 million a year ago, according to an updated S1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The performance isn’t stellar, but it’s not so bad as to suggest Zynga’s planned initial public offering is in trouble.

Revenue was $307 million in the quarter, up 80 percent from $170.6 million a year ago. In other words, Zynga is working harder for the profits it gets by generating a lot more revenue compared to the past.

In the second quarter, Zynga reported only $1.4 million in profits on $280 million in revenue, so the third quarter report is an improvement on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

The company updated its stats, noting it has 230 million monthly active users, down from 232 million when it first file for an IPO in June. It has 58 million daily active users in 175 countries. Those users play 2 billion minutes a day and engage in 4 billion in-game user-to-user connections a day.

Zynga said that, according to AppData, its games are played by more daily active players than the next 14 social game developers combined. Zynga said it has four of the top five social games on Facebook, based on daily active users.

Cumulative revenue to date is $1.5 billion since 2007. Zynga now has 2,789 employees, compared to 2,543 at the end of June.

Zynga said that data mined from its users provides it with more than 15 terabytes of data per day. The company analyzes that data to customize its games to fit user preferences. As of Sept. 30, Zynga had $926 million in cash. Zynga also has a $1 billion line of credit and hasn’t used any of that yet.

According to AppData, Zynga has 36.9 percent of the market for daily active users for social games on Facebook. Electronic Arts has been gaining with the launch of The Sims Social this summer, but the rate of gain has slowed and EA has 10.9 percent market share.

In the third quarter, Zynga’s average number of daily active users was 54 million, compared to 59 million on June 30 and 49 million a year ago. The average monthly active user number was 227 million, compared to 228 million on June 30 and 203 million a year ago.

The average bookings per user — or bookings for a period divided by the number of daily active users — was .058 cents on Sept. 30, compared to .051 cents on June 30 and .049 cents a year ago. Over time, that means Zynga is making more money per user.

Zynga provided a breakdown of the percentage of revenue generated by major titles. FarmVille was responsible for 27 percent, FrontierVille for 16 percent, Zynga Poker 15 percent, Mafia Wars 14 percent and CityVille 11 percent. That means that none of the games launched this year generates more than 10 percent of Zynga’s revenue.

Zynga apperas to be investing heavily in new games, research and development spending totaling $282 million for the nine months ended Sept. 30, up 188 percent from $98 million a year earlier. Sales, marketing, cost of revenue, and general and administrative costs are all up substantially as well.

Zynga said ad revenue was down $12.9 million in the quarter as the company reduced the number of in-game offers to improve player experience.

For the nine months ended Sept. 30, Zynga issued 34.9 million shares of Series C preferred stock for $485.3 million in proceeds. But it also bought back 27.5 million private shares for $283.8 million during the same period. During each period, Zynga periodically estimates its own valuation, with help from third-party analysis firms. In May, it determined that its value was $14 billion. In August, the value was reaffirmed at $14 billion.

That is interesting since Zynga’s value back in January was $4.9 billion, and because Zynga hasn’t said precisely how many shares it will issue and at what price/valuation.

Zynga’s cloud computing infrastructure is one of the biggest in the world. The company is able to add up to 1,000 servers in a day to handle changes in demand for games, and Zynga delivers more than a petabyte of data per day in new content.

Filed under: Business, Games

Sims Social, sports games, and digital sales drive EA’s Q2 earnings

Devindra Hardawar — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:45:50 +0000

For Electronic Arts, success in its second quarter came from strategies both old and new.

The company reported solid earnings based on strong sales of its major sports games, like FIFA 2012, Madden 2012, and NHL 2012, as well as major progress in its digital earnings thanks to The Sims Social and the finalization of its PopCap acquisition.

Non-GAAP net revenue was $1.03 billion, exceeding guidance estimates of $925 million to $975 million, and up from $884 million last year. Digital sales were also up 30 percent compared to last year, with digital revenue at $907 million on a trailing twelve months non-GAAP basis. The company also saw huge growth in smartphone games, with non-GAAP revenue up 87 percent from last year (thanks to its popular iOS games).

The company announced that The Sims Social, which launched in August, is now the No. 2 game on Facebook, with over 8 million daily active users and 40 million monthly users, according to AppData. With its PopCap acquisition complete, the popular game Plants vs. Zombies is now available on EA’s Pogo online game site.

EA says it sold nearly 8 million copies of FIFA 2012 during the quarter and over 3 million units of Madden NFL 2012. Additionally, over 6 million consumers have downloaded EA’s Origin game and social network software, a competitor to Valve’s Steam platform. The company has signed Warner Bros. Interactive, Capcom, and THQ to the Original platform.

EA has shipped over 10 million units of its Battlefield 3 game to stores, and it says it’s already beginning to receive reorders from retailers.

The company has raised its earnings forecast because of Battlefield 3′s strong sales, as well as Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is expected to be a big seller this holiday season. EA raised its earnings outlook for the third quarter from 85 to 95 cents per share. It now expects to earn between $4.05 billion and $4.2 billion in revenue for the entire fiscal year, while analysts expect just $4.1 billion, according to Reuters.

Filed under: Business, Games

Facebook changes how it tracks users, raising questions about true audience numbers (exclusive)

Matthew Lynley — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 23:02:39 +0000

Zynga may be losing some ground after spending years completely dominating the Facebook social gaming market.

Facebook today announced that it is changing the way it counts the number of active users who access an application on its site, a move that will lower perceived values of monthly active users. The actual traffic to Facebook apps has not changed, but the new calculations should be more precise and transparent, a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat.

One of the sites affected is AppData, which tracks an app’s monthly active users and is widely used as a metric for gauging success of some social app companies.

With the new changes, Zynga’s (and other social app companies’) recorded monthly active users — as measured by Facebook’s metrics — could fall. Sources familiar with the situation told VentureBeat that the drop would be less than 20 percent. AppData currently reports Zynga has 263 million monthly active users.

A drop of 11 percent or more would bring the company below its own reported number of monthly active users, 232 million, which the company reported when it filed to go public in July. (Zynga has not updated that number since then.) That would imply that Zynga has lost ground to social gaming companies like Electronic Arts and Wooga. Those companies are nowhere near Zynga in terms of users but are still top-ten developers, and have been slowly making inroads in social games.

“We support Facebook’s decision to change the way it measures the number of active users of its applications as it more accurately portrays the number of people who play Zynga games,” a Zynga spokesperson told VentureBeat. “As noted in our S-1 filing, we measure our player number on Facebook by how many people access our games and we are pleased that Facebook, and therefore AppData, will accurately reflect that number.”

With an IPO in the works, any perceived slow-down in the company’s growth could diminish its perceived value to potential public investors. Zynga is the most profitable high-profile company that has filed to go public this year and expectations are extremely high for the company now that it has hinted at plans to break away from Facebook. (It’s worth noting that VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi had a story earlier that throws a little bit of skepticism on the company’s accounting practices.)

Zynga is still in an enviable position compared to other social gaming companies, which are not even remotely close to the social gaming behemoth. The company recently filed to go public in order to raise up to $1 billion and has delivered hit after hit game on Facebook. Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus played host to a few dozen press earlier this week as he unveiled 10 new games and Zynga Direct, the company’s new initiative geared toward distributing its games on any device without going through Facebook.

“It’s important to note that any traffic has changed from yesterday to today, it’s just what they are measuring,” Inside Network’s Justin Smith told VentureBeat (Inside Network runs AppData). “I think they’ll bring (the two values) closer in line.”

Zynga has loaded its cannon with its next Ville game, CastleVille, along with a bevy of other Facebook games. But it hasn’t struck gold in nearly a year since the company released CityVille, which is still the top app on Facebook and contributes around 76 million monthly active users to the company (that’s according to AppData, so that will probably fall when the time comes). FarmVille, one of its first games, has reliably held the second or third-place spot for the company, with its newer games coming and going rapidly as they come out.

For example, Empires and Allies held the number two spot for Zynga for a few months. But even that game had a short shelf life of five months before starting to peter out (though it still has 25.6 million monthly active users, again an enviable position). Adventure World appears to have filled the niche for Zynga’s other “top three” game — the company’s top games that account for around 59 percent of the company’s revenue. That strategy has held off a number of other social gaming companies, but Zynga for the first time faced significant competition from The Sims Social when Electronic Arts released it in September. (Also worth noting that The Sims Social’s growth has slowed and it doesn’t look like it will catch up to CityVille.)

Even by AppData’s current standards, Zynga hasn’t showed any significant growth or loss over the past 30 days. The changes should more or less drag that holding pattern lower than it currently is (as pictured above). But those numbers do not include what will become part of Zynga Direct, the company’s next plans for growth independent of Facebook. The company is still poised for significant growth if Project Z, the company’s planned independent gaming website, proves successful alongside Zynga Direct.

Filed under: Business, Games

EA’s The Sims Social has stolen millions of players from Zynga

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:52:34 +0000

Electronic Arts came out of nowhere when it launched The Sims Social on Facebook. The social game that simulates human life took off like wildfire, surpassing FarmVille and closing in on Zynga’s most popular game, CityVille. Now Raptr, the social network for gamers, has revealed some interesting data about just who is playing The Sims Social. As suspected, many of the players came from Zynga.

The majority of The Sims Social’s user base are Zynga players, according to data collected from 10 million people on Raptr’s gamer social network. EA’s own social games and The Sims 3 accounted for only 15 percent of the total players of The Sims Social. Zynga players, on the other hand, account for 50 percent of all of The Sims Social players. About 30 percent came from other social games, and 5 percent came from World of WarCraft.

The Sims Social is now the No. 2 game on Facebook with 66 million monthly active players, compared to 76 million for CityVille, according to AppData. If roughly half of those players came from Zynga, we’re talking about close to 33 million users. Of course, not every single one of the Zynga players has quit playing a Zynga game in order to play The Sims Social. But CityVille has dropped from more than 100 million players.

Worth pointing out: The Sims Social has gained quickly on CityVille, but the rate of gain has slowed down dramatically recently. The latest Appdata information in recent days shows that CityVille is holding strong now.

The first trick in EA’s playbook, according to Raptr’s analysis, was that it successfully marketed the game to EA’s existing fans, including 10 million players of The Sims 3 game and 36 million social game players. More than 30 percent of The Sims 3 players are playing The Sims Social. But more than 60 percent of EA-Playfish fans of Restaurant City and Pet Society are also playing The Sims Social. That’s an impressive conversion rate, and it doesn’t hurt that EA has sold more than 140 million Sims games.

EA is enjoying a lot of success, now that it has more than 100 million monthly active users, more than double what it had just a few months ago. But EA is also cannibalizing its own social games. The average percent loss of total play time per week since the launch of The Sims Social in August has been heavy. The Sims 3 has seen its play time drop by 50 percent. Bejeweled Blitz from PopCap has declined 20 percent, and Pet Society has declined 50 percent. CityVille play time, by comparison, is down only 10 percent, while Zynga’s FarmVille is down around 25 percent and Zynga’s Empires & Allies is down about the same.

Prior to the launch of The Sims Social, EA had a terrible record in social games. In 2010, it purchased Playfish for as much as $400 million. That gave EA access to a team with proven expertise in social games. They applied their skills to The Sims Social. Now EA’s numbers are looking pretty good in terms of engagement, or how much time users spend in the game.

On average, users play The Sims Social for 4.95 minutes a session. They play eight sessions per day, 19 sessions per week, and 39 sessions per month. Zynga players, meanwhile, play 4.95 minutes per session, eight sessions per day, 20 sessions per week, and 34 sessions per month. EA’s social games that are based on console franchises (such as Dragon Age Legends and Madden NFL Superstars) have longer play sessions but fewer return sessions.

In fact, only 5 – 24 percent of EA’s players for its FIFA 11 hardcore soccer game converted to play FIFA Superstars on Facebook. And only 24 percent of Dragon Age 2 players converted to play the social game Dragon Age Legends. That is far below the 34 percent of The Sims 3 players who converted to The Sims Social. That’s one reason EA’s social games based on hardcore franchises only had about 1 million to 4 million monthly active users.

EA has a lot of new hope now that it has acquired PopCap Games (for at least $750 million). PopCap has a number of casual titles that can be converted to social games on Facebook. About 59 – 79 percent of the players for popular PopCap casual games are also playing social games on Facebook. Roughly 60 percent of Plants vs. Zombies players — a big PopCap franchise — are also playing social games. So PopCap’s audience should be easier to funnel from casual web site games to social games. With PopCap, Raptr concludes, EA is poised to have strong follow-ups to The Sims Social.

Filed under: Games

Zynga takes its most popular game, CityVille, to Google+

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:18:54 +0000

Zynga announced today it has taken its most popular game, CityVille, to the fledgling Google+ social network.

The move could be strategically important for both Google and Zynga, which need each other: Zynga needs Google+ to help it gain more independence from Facebook, and Google+ needs successful games like Zynga’s CityVille to lure users over to its fledgling social network. Meanwhile, the move is a blow for leading social network Facebook, which has had CityVille as an exclusive in Western markets.

Zynga previously announced in July that it was taking CityVille to China through the Tencent social network. CityVille definitely needs a shot in the arm. Today, it has about 72 million monthly active users, down from its peak of more than 100 million users. Meanwhile, the No. 2 game on Facebook, The Sims Social from Electronic Arts, now has more than 60 million monthly active users.

The addition of CityVille to Google+ should help the growth of games on Google’s platform. Previously, Zynga had launched a version of Zynga Poker on Google+. Under an agreement with Facebook, it wasn’t clear if Zynga would be allowed to move its games to other platforms. In exchange for supporting Facebook Credits and marketing support from Facebook, Zynga agreed to keep its games exclusive to Facebook. But the deal has a variety of conditions under which Zynga can move its games to other platforms, evidently.

San Francisco-based Zynga said this is one more step in its mission to “connect the world through games and create play for everyone, everywhere — no matter which platform they play on.” Zynga is hoping that diversification will help it grow faster and produce more stable revenues. That, in turn, should help it go public through its planned initial public offering.

Filed under: Business, Games, Social

Brands finally succeed in social games on Facebook

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:00:16 +0000

Facebook gamers are finally embracing well-known brands in their social games. That’s one of the conclusions from a panel on social games at the f8 conference for Facebook developers yesterday.

Sean Ryan (pictured left), director of game partnerships, pointed out that Facebook as a gaming platform has evolved from a place where original game ideas initially prospered. Now that there are 800 million users on the social network, it’s only natural for brands to take over, he said. Gamers can gravitate to them because they can pick up a game already knowing the narrative behind it, making the game much easier to learn.

For a time, Facebook was resistant to brands. Friends shared games that they found to be fun, and in the early days, Zynga dominated the market. That turned into a huge advantage for Zynga, and its distribution power now allows it to launch original titles that can succeed in part because they can be cross-promoted to so many of Zynga’s existing users. The same is true with the iPhone, where original titles such as Koi Pond drew a lot of attention at first but where plenty of brands such as Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies, and Uno in the top charts.

What was unusual about Facebook is that non-branded games held onto the top rankings on the popularity charts for a longer time than usual, largely because of the power of friend recommendations on the platform. Many game companies tried to launch branded games on Facebook and it was like hitting their heads against brick walls.

But this year, that is beginning to change. The biggest proof is The Sims Social, a Facebook game from Electronic Arts that taps the Sims franchise, which has sold more than 100 million units on the PCs and consoles. The Sims Social is now the No. 2 game on Facebook, with 53 million monthly active users, second only to Zynga’s Cityville. In turn, the Sims Social is helping other branded EA games catch on.

“Brands are an important part of the business,” said Barry Cottle (pictured left), head of EA Interactive, the social, mobile and online division of EA. “Early on, in traditional gaming markets, original intellectual property caught on. At the core, you always have to have a great game. That’s a core ingredient. But brands give the ability to be recognized, to tap into loyalty.”

Within six weeks, the Sims Social hit 10 million users without much advertising at all, mainly because it has been known for a decade, Cottle said.

“People coalesce around things they recognize,” Cottle said

Zynga has mostly stayed away from brands. But the company took advantage of a chance to get a license with Lucasfilm for its Adventure World game, Owen Van Natta (pictured right), chief business officer at Zynga, said. By October, the film character Indiana Jones will be integrated into the game. That deal came after the game launched, but it could help the game get wider awareness over time.

“Indiana Jones was an opportunistic thing,” Van Natta said. “I’m amazed at how we were able to create brands quickly on Facebook.” Zynga also has run promotions with a variety of movies and with the singer Lady Gaga in its FarmVille game.

We ran our own feature story recently on startup Iconicfuture, which has created a marketplace so that brands can license their properties in a matchmaking service with game companies that want to license them.

Kabam also jumped into the branded-game business by acquiring the rights to the Godfather for Facebook. But he said the game evolved when the company decided to create a crime game, said Kevin Chou (pictured left), chief executive of Kabam, a maker of mostly original hardcore social games on Facebook.

Kabam figured out the core fun mechanics in the title, and then looked around for a narrative that could become the overarching back story for the game. The Godfather made a lot of sense, and Kabam was already talking to Paramount Pictures about a license.

“You have to start with the core game,” Chou said.

Disney tested the power of a brand with a title called Gnome Town, launched two months ago, said John Pleasants (pictured right), head of Disney Interactive and Playdom. That title did OK at first, getting 500,000 daily active users, but then Disney renamed it Disney Gnome Town. The result was that the cost of acquisition, such as advertising a game, dropped by a third as the game took off more on its own. Users were also more likely to spend money in the game, since they trusted the Disney name.

Disney also launched a couple of ESPN-branded games, where it was able to advertise the games on TV using remnant (unsold ads). The result was that the users who came in from the TV commercial had a much higher “lifetime value,” or spending on the game over the course of the game’s life. That was because those users were much more loyal to the ESPN brand. During 2012, Pleasants said Disney will come out with two to four major Disney brands as social game properties.

“We think it’s an advantage, if you put game play first,” Pleasants said.

Filed under: Games, Social

EA’s The Sims Social breezes past Zynga’s Farmville

Matthew Lynley — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 07:18:23 +0000

Game publishing company Electronic Arts‘ newest social game, The Sims Social, has passed social gaming supergiant Zynga’s Farmville and now has 36 million monthly active users just under a month after its launch, according to AppData.

The Sims Social has held the top spot as the fastest growing application on Facebook for more than a week. The game picked up more than 1.7 million new users on Sunday, and picked up a total of about 8.3 million new users last week. It’s seen enough growth to knock off FarmVille and become the fourth most popular social game on Facebook, behind Zynga’s own Empires & Allies, Cityville and Texas HoldEm Poker. Zynga’s Farmville now has 35.7 million monthly active users.

Electronic Arts is now the second top Facebook app developer with 77.8 million monthly active users. Its well behind Zynga’s 273 million monthly active users, but it’s much further than the next closest social game maker Wooga, which has nearly 40 million monthly active users across all its games. Before The Sims Social launched, Electronic Arts had around 29 million monthly active users, according to AppData.

Electronic Arts’ newest social game looks like it will give Zynga — which hasn’t really faced any stiff competition in Facebook games — a run for its money. That’s because the game has a massive franchise and name behind it, along with a development team that has a pretty stellar track record. EA has sold more than 140 million copies of the The Sims and its sequels and expansion packs and has generated around $3 billion in revenue from it.

The Sims Social is basically a lightweight version of The Sims built into a browser on Facebook. The team behind The Sims and casual games maker Playfish both worked on the game. Electronic Arts bought Playfish in 2009 when it was vying with social games maker Zynga for the top social gaming spot. Zynga has since lurched ahead and claimed the top spot.

The Sims was a smash hit with casual gamers because it was a very light game that was easy to get into and offered a lot of depth. You basically control a “sim” as it lives its life and try to achieve lifetime goals — which lets gamers accomplish whatever they want to do in the game. The games are known for having tongue-in-cheek humor and sharp writing.

Electronic Arts has not-so-quietly established a fierce casual and social gaming team. The company bought Playfish back in 2009 and also bought casual games maker PopCap for $750 million. Both teams have made successful games, and once the PopCap deal closes, there’s a good chance Playfish will be working with casual games maker PopCap.

Filed under: Games, Social

Exclusive: Meet Guerillapps’ Trash Tycoon, a social game to bring out your green side

Matthew Lynley — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:28:11 +0000

Social games maker Guerillapps today launched Trash Tycoon, a social game about recycling that’s designed to encourage “upcycling” — the process of converting old trash into usable products.

Instead of planting crops or building cities like in some of the most popular social games today — Zynga’s CityVille or Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social — in Trash Tycoon you clean up trash, build worm farms and try to convert what starts off as a mess into a vibrant “upcycling” community. The company is capitalizing on momentum built up in the social game space by companies like Zynga, which recently filed for an initial public offering to raise up to $1 billion.

“Trash Tycoon is our first game in the green space,” Guerillapps co-founder Raviv Turner told VentureBeat. “We want to try and motivate consumers to do the right thing.”

TerraCycle, a real-world recycling company that positions kiosks around major cities, is a sponsor for the game. Whenever a Trash Tycoon user recycles something through a TerraCycle kiosk, they earn points in the game that they can spend on virtual goods — similar to the way other social games give points for signing up for services.

Guerillapps plans to make other social games geared toward sustainability. It has an upcoming social game based on fitness and personal health that will interact in the real world much in the same way Trash Tycoon does, Turner said.

While Trash Tycoon is initially only available on Facebook, the company plans to port it over to other platforms such as mobile devices and Google+ soon, Turner said. The company is also planning to make an HTML5 version of the game, which is largely seen as a successor to the Flash technology that powers most modern web browser applications and works on most mobile phone browsers.

“Green is just the beginning,” he said. “We’re using a social gameplay model proven by those like Zynga and applying it to the market segment of health care and sustainability.”

The company has raised $500,000 so far, and it’s in the middle of raising another round of funding to start making its other games. But it has the benefit of positioning itself as both a gaming company and a cleantech company, Turner said.

“We get traction and interest from both traditional gaming investors and publishers and also investors interested in health and green,” he said. “It’s right at the border of combining gaming and sustainability.”

Guerillapps is based in New York, N.Y., and has six employees. It was founded in 2009, and Trash Tycoon has been in development for around eight months, Turner said. CarbonFund.org and TreeHugger.com are sponsors for the game. Guerillapps was a finalist at VentureBeat’s Who’s Got Game competition at our annual GamesBeat conference in San Francisco in July.

Filed under: Games, Green

Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social hits 4.6 million daily players a week after launch

Matthew Lynley — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:09:57 +0000

Electronic Arts’ latest Facebook game, The Sims Social, has picked up more than 4.6 million daily active users after launching a week ago, according to AppData.

The Sims Social was the fastest growing social game this week, picking up 2.6 million daily active users as of the beginning of the week and 1.2 million daily active users today alone. That’s compared to Zynga’s smash hit Empires & Allies, which lost around 328,000 daily active users today. Frontierville, another Zynga game that recently released a new sub-game called Pioneer Ville, lost around 220,000 daily active users today, according to AppData.

Before The Sims Social launched, Electronic Arts had around 29 million monthly active users, according to AppData. The company has since risen to around 34.6 million monthly active users, passing social gaming company Wooga (which has around 34 million monthly active users).

Filed under: Games

Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social is now live

Matthew Lynley — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:39:44 +0000

The Sims Social, a social gaming version of Electronic Arts’ incredibly popular life simulation franchise The Sims, is now live on Facebook.

Since then, Zynga hasn’t faced a lot of competition from other social games makers. The next closest social gaming competitor is Wooga, which has around 32 million monthly active users. But it has never gone up against the likes of The Sims, which seems like a natural fit for Facebook.

Filed under: Games, Social

With EA’s The Sims Social, has Zynga met its match? (hands on)

Matthew Lynley — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:27:17 +0000

The Sims, a life simulation game, is one of Electronic Arts’ most successful franchises. The company has sold more than 140 million copies of the game and its sequels and expansion packs and has generated around $3 billion in revenue from it.

The Sims has always been a casual game at heart. And soon, it’ll be on Facebook, one of the largest platforms for casual games.

The Sims was a smash hit with casual gamers because it was a very light game that was easy to get into and offered a lot of depth. It wasn’t a complicated game — you basically control a sim as it lived its life and tried to achieve lifetime goals — which let gamers accomplish whatever they wanted to do in the game. The games are known for having tongue-in-cheek humor and sharp writing.

The Sims Social is basically a lightweight version of The Sims built into a browser on Facebok. The team behind The Sims and casual games maker Playfish both worked on the game. Electronic Arts bought Playfish in 2009 when it vied with social games maker Zynga for the top social gaming spot. Zynga has since lurched ahead and claimed the top spot, with 253 million monthly active users compared to Electronic Arts’ 29 million monthly active users, according to AppData.

Same game, new place

The Sims Social is a pretty good translation of its computer gaming roots onto Facebook. Right when you start the game, you have to build your sim like in the original computer game. That includes picking hair styles, clothes and figuring out what kind of personality you want your sim to have. I went with an athlete’s personality, but you can choose between rockers, business tycoons and other types of personality archetypes.

The game then drops you into a pre-made house and runs you through a quick tutorial of how to play the game. That involves completing initial quests that grant you skills — like writing and playing guitar — and gives you the game’s first bit of cash. It’s like a regular Sims game, where you have to make sure you keep your sim happy by making sure it eats and sleeps enough and stays clean. If you keep your sim happy, it becomes inspired and you get extra bonuses for completing quests.

The game is pretty zippy and loads all the objects individually instead of waiting to load the entire game all at once. The game runs in Flash in a web browser, and a mobile game should come out soon after the Facebook game comes out, Playfish vice president of publishing and product management C.J. Prober told VentureBeat. They will interact in some way, but Prober wouldn’t get specific.

Like other Facebook games, The Sims Social features asynchronous play — which means that two players don’t have to be online and playing The Sims Social at the same time to be able to interact. You can add a neighbor, similar to games like FarmVille, and then visit their home and start playing with their sims. Like other social games, you’re limited by the amount of “energy” you have, and most actions — like eating, cleaning up bushes or dancing — take up energy.

You get experience points as you complete actions, and when you get enough points you level up. That gives you additional energy and opens up more clothes and things you can buy with the game’s various currencies. The goal of the game is to reach a higher level so you can buy cooler clothes and furniture for your house and make it much larger. As you buy more stuff, your home value goes up and you can show off your new sweet kicks to your friends.

The other goal of the game is to attract a bunch of new neighbors. You do that by adding your friends on Facebook to the game, and then you can visit them whenever you want. The game starts you off with one neighbor — Bella Goth — and lets you add your friends as they start playing the game.

“She’s like Tom from MySpace, she’s everyone’s friend,” said Playfish online content manager Sam Houston. “She’ll always be there.”

Not if I have anything to say about it.

Next Page: The Sims Social loves troublemakers

Filed under: Games

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