Diner Dash lives, thanks to our friend in the pineapple under the sea

If you've yet to scream "Spongebob Squarepants" to yourself in a 4-year-old's voice, then there's something wrong with you. It's time for the yellow sponge to use his magical brand powers to inject some life into a fallen star, Diner Dash. Spongebob Diner Dash Deluxe has arrived, a collaboration between developer PlayFirst and Nickelodeon, on iPhone and iPad for $1.99.

Since PlayFirst went under massive restructuring and shuttered the Facebook version of its iconic casual game, the future of the Diner Dash was seemingly uncertain. Now, we know that future is brighter, but sans Flo. Based on the video below, it looks like nothing about the core Diner Dash play hook has changed: serve guests ad infinitum until you drop.

What has changed, however, are the aesthetics. Players control Spongebob as he serves Krabby Patties to popular characters from the cartoon, like Patrick and Sandy, for the miser Mr. Krabs across 50 levels and five unique restaurant settings. Oh, and we're sure Plankton will find his way into the game somehow--the guy's microscopic, you know.

Click here to download Spongebob Squarepants Diner Dash Deluxe for $1.99 on iOS Now >

[Via Pocket Gamer]

Are you excited for the Spongebob edition of Diner Dash? Do you wish that Flo would make a return? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

View the original article here

CBS comedy 2 Broke Girls gets Diner Dash-style Facebook game

by Jenny Ng, Posted Oct 10th 2011 4:30PM

More and more, TV networks are turning to games to promote new and existing shows. "Smack talk hipsters, serve coffee to loners and rack up tips!" is the hook of a new Facebook game launched by CBS last month to promote their new fall comedy TV series, 2 Broke Girls, about a pair of waitresses at a Brooklyn diner saving up for the chance to run their own cupcake shop someday.
Created by GameSalad (the generous hosts of the political Angry Birds homage, Angry Anna) and CBS Interactive, the 2 Broke Girls game is also available for iOS devices at the App Store as well as GameSalad's website. It's also not the first time a CBS show has made it as a Facebook game. Just last month, a fake collectible card game from CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, got turned into a real collectible card game for Facebook called "Mystic Worlds of Ka'a". 2 Broke Girls is a Facebook game very similar in play to Playfirst's phenomenally popular Diner Dash. The latter had made a home for itself on Facebook until poor traffic forced Playfirst to announce its shutdown back in July. Seeing how 2 Broke Girls is definitely more barebones and less Facebook integrated than Diner Dash was, I doubt it'll take off as a game alone. But if the show is good enough, they could always deepen the game's development.

Click here to play 2 Broke Girls on Facebook Now >

[Hat-tip: ClickZ]

Are Facebook games about a show enough to make you want to check out the show? Have you ever played Diner Dash before? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment

Bookmark this site!

Tags: 2 Broke Girls, 2 broke girls facebook game, 2 broke girls ipad game, 2 broke girls iphone game, 2 broke girls social game, advergame, branded facebook games, CBS, CBS interactive, Facebook games, GameSalad, social games

View the original article here

Diner Dash serves up good eats on iOS for free

by Brandy Shaul, Posted Sep 6th 2011 8:04PM

Were you sad to see Diner Dash close its doors on Facebook? If you have an Apple mobile device, you can now fill in a bit of the hole left behind with the game's closure, as the original Diner Dash is now absolutely free to download via iTunes. Technically, the free version is only for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but you can download it on your iPad as well (the graphics will be much poorer in that case).
Before this sale, Diner Dash could be purchased for $2.99, which makes this a pretty good deal. Add to this the fact that the game is frequently updated with new content (new themed restaurants and levels, for one) and the deal becomes even better!

Sure, downloading an iPhone game won't bring back the joy of playing as Flo on Facebook, but we certainly won't turn down a free game. The only thing to keep in mind here, folks, is that this free price will only be around for a limited time. How limited? Unfortunately, PlayFirst doesn't say, but that just gives you all the more incentive to download it now, even if you don't plan on playing it until later!

Do you already own Diner Dash on iOS, or will you download it now for the first time since it's free? Does this freebie giveaway help heal the wound of losing Diner Dash on Facebook? Let us know in the comments!

Bookmark this site!

Tags: diner dash, diner dash facebook, diner dash flo, flo, free games, free iphone game, ios, ipad, iphone, ipod touch, playfirst

View the original article here

Playfirst Sunsets Diner Dash as Traffic Declines

PlayFirst sent out notice to players today that the Facebook version of its popular restaurant simulation game Diner Dash will shut down on August 29. The developer cited declining performance as the reason for the closure, which as the same reason PlayFirst sunsetted Chocolatier in April.

Diner Dash’s life cycle plays out much like PlayFirst’s other Facebook titles as charted by our traffic tracking service, AppData. The game came to Facebook in January of this year, climbing to 2.2 million monthly active users and over 174,000 daily active users in its first two months on the platform. The game continued to grow in MAU through the month of May, but DAU began a steady decline in April. Diner Dash hit all-time highs of 2.5 million MAU and 257,000 DAU before arriving at today’s levels of 1.2 million MAU and 90,000 DAU.

The game is a faithful adaptation of the original PC download title where players control a waitress responsible for seating customers, taking orders, serving food, and cleaning up messes. A customizable garden was added to the Facebook version to maximize energy mechanics common to games on the platform, as well some gameplay boosts available for purchase with Frictionless Credits. Cross-promotion and connectivity with the other versions of Diner Dash on iOS, PC and Mac were limited to nonexistent, though Facebook players are receiving a coupon code for 50% off on the PC/Mac version.

In the restaurant genre on Facebook, Diner Dash stood out as both a latecomer and an oddity. While many early restaurant sim games like Restaurant City and Cafe World could be likened to Diner Dash’s core gameplay around pleasing customers, neither game placed emphasis on click timing the way Diner Dash has always done. It could be that the early restaurant sim games on Facebook altered player expectations such that the real Diner Dash experience was a bit jarring for players. It could also be that PlayFirst simply lacked enough of a Facebook presence to sustain a social game for an extended period of time being that its previous two games, Wedding Dash and Chocolatier, never came close to the traffic peaks Diner Dash enjoyed.

PlayFirst representatives did not respond to request for comment at time of press. When we last spoke with the developer about long term growth plans for the title, we were told that PlayFirst was experimenting with monetization and player progression through the various restaurant venues. As of today, players can earn more than just one restaurant and the world map has been altered to better reflect player progression toward unlocking new restaurants.

UPDATE: Mari Baker, CEO and president of PlayFirst, says, “We view this as a strategic redistribution of resources to platforms where we see better growth potential and those are the mobile platforms, specifically iOS.”

View the original article here

PlayFirst Sunsets Chocolatier as Diner Dash Ramps Up Monetization, Social Features

Casual games developer PlayFirst has a successful background on PC and iOS downloads, but so far the company has only introduced three of its franchises on Facebook. Of those, only Diner Dash seems to be thriving — thanks to a $9.2 million round of funding, a loyal fan base, and tight integration with Facebook Credits.

Diner Dash launched on Facebook early this year and saw strong growth throughout the month of February. Since that time, the developer has been steadily adding new features to the title, including additional playable restaurants and purchasing options via premium decorations and gameplay boosts. It also recently added Frictionless Credits as a payment option for boosts and is planning to integrate Buy With Friends in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, PlayFirst is sunsetting its second Facebook title, Chocolatier: Sweet Society, before the end of the month. In a farewell message posted on its blog, the company explained that the title was no longer performing at a level that justified the expense of maintaining it. Sweet Society players are being offered a special discount on the PC version of the game for a limited time. PlayFirst’s oldest Facebook foray, Wedding Dash Bash, went offline in September 2010, roughly six months after its launch.

We spoke with Eric Hartness, vice president and general manager of social games at PlayFirst, about some of the lessons the team is learning to make Diner Dash a sustainable Facebook game. Though it would’ve been easy to port the original PC retail game to Facebook, PlayFirst approached the platform instead with a new game in the series, complete with its own storyline and character cast.

“That was one of the key challenges, adapting the gameplay from a disc to a live game on Facebook,” Hartness says. “Our core audience is older women, so it works out really well with all the older women on Facebook. [The Facebook audience] is a bit different. We’ve got about 20 percent male, when historically we’ve been 90 percent female. We’re seeing a younger demographic as well and international players. So Facebook has really allowed us to broaden our audience.”

Diner Dash currently has 2.3 million monthly active users and 196,000 daily active users on AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers. It already surpasses Chocolatier’s peak traffic of 902,000 MAU and 119,000 DAU, which the game reached in October 2010, five months after its initial launch. Wedding Dash Bash boasts far less than that at all-time highs of 164,000 MAU and 15,000 DAU. Hartness points out that Diner Dash achieved these results not through ad buys or extensive cross promotion within its iOS title, but through sheer brand recognition with existing fans.

“Recently we’ve been testing with some ad spend, but predominantly most of our installs have occurred without it,” he says. “This is something that I’m very proud of. It showcases how much the fans love Diner Dash. We have over 58,000 reviews and we’re holding steady at 5 stars, a claim most of our competitors can’t make.”

In the long run, PlayFirst hopes to sustain Diner Dash’s growth through additional monetization features and steady content support. As detailed in our early look, the game is structured around the traditional restaurant time management gameplay and a park decoration meta-game where players can spend the currency they earn from working shifts at the restaurant. PlayFirst has adjusted the traditional gameplay so that players can only play two restaurants for free and must spend Facebook Credits to unlock premium restaurants. Recently, the developer downgraded a premium restaurant to an unlockable restaurant that players can earn by increasing their star rank.

Hartness says the company is thinking of different ways to do these downgrades. “We might use [materials gifted by friends] or an ‘invite friends to unlock’ [mechanic], or some different combinations to work that out,” he tells us.

For now, the social features in the game are limited to gifting energy or items used for decorating restaurants, visiting friends’ parks to help out with daily missions, and some light leaderboard integration. Hartness says that the leaderboards will be “beefing up” in the near future with weekly tournaments, score-tracking, and the ability to challenge friends.

On the horizon is the possibility of integration with the larger Diner Dash brand. PlayFirst has a large enough fan base to where cross-promotion could be especially helpful to the Facebook version. Hartness is no stranger to the ideal of cross-platform cross-promotion, having spent nearly nine years at EA before entering the social games space.

“We have talked about it but we haven’t gotten to that stage yet,” Hartness says . “Chris Williams who heads up the iPhone team and I have talked about it, about how can we link Diner Dash on iPhone and Diner Dash on Facebook. It’s very cool conceptually, but very difficult technically. How can we carve out the time?”

Chocolatier: Sweet Society closes officially on April 28. You can follow Diner Dash’s progress on AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

View the original article here