Currently moderating a panel at the Flash Gaming Summit on the 4 keys to social game success that every game developer should know. Panelists are:

• Mark Skaggs, Zynga
• Dan Fiden, Playfish
• David Stewart, Playdom
• Gavin Barrett, Crowdstar

Looking forward to continuing the discussion here.

What do you think are the 4 keys to social game success that every game developer should know? Feel free to comment below.

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Hello everyone,

This coming week will be a very exciting one for those of us in the game industry. Both the Flash Gaming Summit and GDC are taking place here in San Francisco.

At the Flash Gaming Summit I will be moderating a panel on the “Keys to Social Game Success” featuring panelists from Zynga, Playfish, Crowdstar, and Playdom. The rest of the week I will be in meetings and parties with many of you. If we haven’t met yet lets connect at one of these events. If you’d like to connect at a specific time send me a Facebook message with your mobile number.

Looking forward to meeting all of you in person!

Happy GDC week!

Sana

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In the last few months a number of casual gaming companies have created social games. Four of the titles, that we know of,  have broken 1 million monthly active users, including: 1) Bejeweled Blitz by Popcap Games at 9.83 million, 2) Bubble Popp by GameDuell with 3.11 million, 3) Jungle Jewels by GameDuell at 2.62 million and 4) Icy Tower  by Muskedunder Interactive at 1.12 million.

While the MAU for these games are nowhere close to those of dominant contenders coming from social game developers, they are still interesting case studies that demonstrate which aspects of a casual game development mentality work on Facebook and which don’t.

To read the rest of this post please visit Inside Social Games.

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I just published another blog post for Inside Social Games.

Recently we have seen a move towards games that combine more complex game design seen in traditional casual flash games with social networking provided by popular Facebook games. We just covered one of these games: Battle Punks from Gravity Bear. Another one like this is Restaurant Life by CrowdStar.

Restaurant Life has been steadily growing since launch, in part because Crowdstar has added Restaurant Life to its cross promotion toolbar on Happy Aquarium and Happy Pets. Today, the game has more than 1.8 million monthly active users.

Of course, Restaurant-themed games are not new on Facebook. Playfish has Restaurant City and Zynga has Café World. And, like these games, Restaurant Life lets players earn cash by preparing and serving food to visiting patrons. Also, like the other games, you can hire your friends to serve the food. Lets look at some of the things that makes Restaurant Life different from existing games.

To read the complete post please visit:

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/12/04/restaurant-life-bringing-cooler-game-design-to-facebook/

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Recently there has been lots of new interest in the gambling genre for social games. Playdom is exploring this boat too (based on a comment from their CEO to me at a recent party ).

And today Playfish tweeted about a sneak peak to its new Poker game–Poker Rivals. Here a promo video (great video by the way). The game fan page already has 108 fans. Keep reading →

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Here is a post I recently wrote for Inside Social Games:

If you have been following Facebook games, you know that the latest popular genre is fishing games. And if you read this site, you’ll know thatCrowdStar, the developer behind the largest of these, Happy Aquarium, is exploring several other games as well. Now, the company appears to be starting a happy game line, judging by the early results from its new virtual pet-caring game, Happy Pets.

The app, launched last week, has grown from 0 to 870,000 monthly actives by today — not bad by any measure, but especially impressive given that this is the company’s first follow-up to Happy Aquarium.

To read the complete post please visit:

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/11/16/crowdstars-new-happy-pets-game-sees-zynga-like-growth/

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I just came back from a very interesting meeting with 2 of the founders of @minshdotnet. Minsh is a game like virtual fish world formed by your tweets. A fantastic concept that has the potential of significantly reducing the text based burn out that happens for many tweeters by making your twitter life visual, fun, and playful.

The beta version for Minsh launched a few months ago and the founders have since been refining the concept. As more and more feedback flooded in they realized that they need a more structured approach to testing. When I met with them I put my “I love Minsh fish” hat aside and put my business hat on. I gave them an hour of coaching that will help them begin figuring out how to test, with customer development and monetization in mind.

Many more startups reach out to me for similar feedback then I have for so here is a quick blog post with some ideas that will get you started. Keep reading →

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Interview with Justin Kan from Justin TV where he talks about ways video game developers can use the Justin TV subsite for game launch marketing http://gaming.justin.tv

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I have had a few strange experiences recently that made me reflect about how companies often abuse social media marketing. Here are two:

• The organizer of an event I believe in and have been promoting on Twitter called me and asked me to tweet about hotel rooms available at a discounted price, something unrelated to the event
• An affiliate company has repeatedly emailed me asking to review their products on my blog for pay. They say that payment is not contingent on whether the reviews are positive or negative but until I become a partner I don’t have any visibility into what products I will be promoting

In both cases I politely declined as neither requester has been able to help me understand how these things are related to the people that really matter–you guys, the readers of this blog and my followers on Twitter. I am surprised that clarity on what I write/tweet about and what my audience likes wasn’t something they sought to obtain before making such requests. Especially since if I do promote them they are more likely to have a higher return if what they are offering is related to what my audience wants.

These situations are delicate, I have to explain why I am okay with promoting certain things and not others. I have to repeatedly explain why certain things are a no go. And this can be very time consuming. A general understanding of how to reach influencers and help them stay authentic to their voice and audience would really help all of us get what we want easier and faster.

Some quick tips on reaching out to influencers

Keep reading →

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SlideShare is featuring my presentation ‘How to launch your product with Social Media’ on their homepage. Here is what their email said:

“We thank you for this terrific presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everyday.”

Do check it out!

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