5th Planet Games launches Dawn of the Dragons for Android

Game developer 5th Planet Games today launched Dawn of the Dragons for Android in North America (and worldwide later this week). The social MMO has come along way for the indie developer who first launched the title on Facebook back in May 2010, and later released for Kongregate and Armor Games.

We first heard about Dawn of Dragons flying its way to mobile for iOS in January, and then the game hit the Apple App Store weeks later in February (review). Chief mobile officer Rob Carroll told us that there’s no differences between the iOS and Android versions, but users can play simultaneously with other players on either platform. As for cross-platform play between the mobile offerings and the web-based versions, 5th Planet Games decided to not let the mobile and web versions talk to each other due to the game being developed in Adobe Air and to allow the mobile version to have its own exclusive content. Carroll also adds the Android port was published in partnership with 5th Planet Games by an unnamed publisher (the studio will announce details about the publisher soon).

“We decided to intentionally not link the two versions,” he says. “There’s some different gameplay modes and unique content on mobile that we’ll be rolling out.”

We spoke in-depth with 5th Planet’s co-founders Robert Winkler and Steve Pladson a couple months after the launch of the game in 2010. Winkler revealed some impressive monetization figures with only a small user base (28,638 daily active users at the time of the story), seeing average revenue per paying user of $26.24.

Desipite Zynga laying off nearly a fifth of its staff today, other social and web game developers like 5th Planet Games are still seeing success on those platforms. Carroll says the company is still very successful on the web and heavily focused on web games for Facebook, Kongregate and Armor Games.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Dawn of Dragons for Facebook currently has an estimated 20,761 daily active users (DAU) and 144,056 monthly active users (MAU). On iOS, the game isn’t currently ranked on either the top free or top grossing apps chart.

Carroll says 5th Planet has plenty of new content in the works for future mobile updates, including new guilds-related content, unique world raids, and epic quests.

5th Planet’s president and chief operating officer Braden Moulton will be speaking on the Developing Cross-Platform Games panel at our Inside Social Apps conference this Thursday. Get your last minute tickets here.

Mediabistro Event

Get personalized advice from industry insiders at Facebook, Deloitte, Chartboost, Tango, and more at Inside Social Apps, this Thursday and Friday in San Francisco. Newly added speakers include Val Bauduin of Deloitte & Touche, LLP and Doug Purdy, Director of Developer Products at Facebook, so don’t miss the chance to add these valuable contacts to your network. Tickets are available onsite.

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Kabam gets in on the publishing game with 5th Planet’s Clash of the Dragons

5th Planet is the first third-party developer to publish a game with Kabam, having just launched Clash of the Dragons on the company’s web portal.

Clash of the Dragons launched on Kongregate in December 2011, with the developer reporting 300,000 installs within 30 days. This is the second CCG 5th Planet’s put out within the past month, having launched Legacy of Heroes on Kongregate’s portal on July 9. 5th Planet Games is finding great success as it expands from Facebook to other platforms and game networks; this year the developer is on track to bring in $10 million in annual revenue.

We spoke to Kabam VP, Corporate Communications Steve Swasey this morning at Casual Connect before spotting the game on Kabam’s portal. When asked about publishing third-party titles, Swasey said the company had no official comment yet, but to stay tuned for related news.

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Game of the Day: Liong - The Dragon's Dance

by Alexander Armero, Posted Dec 21st 2011 11:25AM

Mahjong fans rejoice, because today's Game of the Day is an exciting take on the classic card matching game. In Liong: The Dragon's Dance, the magical Liong dragons have been stolen and it's up to you to save the day.

Liong: The Dragon's Dance is the tradititional game of mahjong with a puzzling twist. Instead of matching cards, you'll have to match cards with the symbols on the dragon that slowly creeps by in each level. But don't take too long, if you let the dragon reach the gate, you'll have to restart the level from the beginning. So whether you're a mahjong master or a complete newbie, check out Liong: The Dragon's Dance below.

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Tags: free games, free online games, game, game of the day, games, games.com, mahjong, online games

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Social Gaming News Roundup: RockYou, Elvis, Cow Clicker, Mafia Wars Shakedown and Dungeons & Dragons

Sony & RockYou Team for Zookeeper Promotion – Players of Zoo World 2 on Facebook will notice a few new features in the popular Facebook game soon. Sony has teamed with RockYou to add characters and activities tied to its movie Zookeeper. In addition to getting special edition animals to collect in game, players who purchase Zookeeper on Blu Ray will receive $10 worth of Zoo Bucks for the social game.

Report Reveals Social Media Strategies of World’s Largest Companies – Buddy Media has released the results of a study they conducted in association with Booz & Company that breaks down the social media strategies of more than 100 industry leaders. The resulting report titled “Campaigns to Capabilities: Social Media & Marketing 2011” revealed some very interesting facts. For example, only 35% of respondents indicated their company had a senior executive responsible for social media. The full report can be found here.

Cow Clicker Shuttered by its Creator - Game designer Ian Bogost has shut down his “protest against social games” social game Cow Clicker, according to Kotaku. Originally conceived of as a joke that aped only the worst features of free to play micro-transaction funded Facebook games, Cow Clicker proved to be unusually successful, much to the annoyance of Bogost. The entire article and interview can be read here.

Mobile MapleStory Game Launches in Japan, Only on Mobage - Nexon’s latest game MapleStory: Bokurano Boken, a social game based in the MapleStory universe, has made its debut on DeNA’s Mobage platform. As with previous iterations of the hit franchise, players of Bokurano Boken team up with other players to defeat monsters.

Hide Your Daughters, Elvis Coming to Facebook, Google+, Mobile - Games Blog is reporting that Entertainment Games has reached a licensing deal with Elvis Presley Enterprises to bring the King himself to their as yet unannounced, celebrity based, storyline-focused social game. In a press release, the Pennsylvania based company said that Elvis will be just one of the celebrities featured the the nostalgic themed game.

TeePee Games Expands Offerings Again – TeePee Games is aggressively growing its network. This week they announced a new deal with Alpha Digital Network to bring the Facebook game Lands & Legends to their platform.  Readers may recall last week we reported that UK based TeePee Games had inked a similar deal with SetGo bring aboard its game Castaways.

Car Town Teams With Walmart to Sell Fast Five Blu Ray – Cie Games has announced a promotional partnership with Walmart that will allow players of its popular Facebook game Car Town to pre-order Fast Five in virtual Walmart stores. Car Town has been promoting the auto racing movie since April, when Cie Games added a Rio de Janeiro race environment based on the movie’s key location to the game.

Former Mythic CEO Moves into Social Games – Two former heavyweights of the gaming industry have teamed up to venture into the red-hot social gaming market. Mark Jacobs, co-founder and former CEO of Mythic Entertainment and Andrew Meggs, former senior software engineer at Bethesda, Mythic and Trioka, announced last week that they had formed City State Entertainment in March. City State will focus on creating what it is calling “brand-focused” mobile and social games.

Mafia Wars Shakedown coming to Android? - Last week Zynga revealed that a new Mafia Wars game, Mafia Wars Shakedown, was coming to iOS. As they’ve done before, Zynga went on a domain name buying spree in anticipation of the launch. Tech blog Fusible noticed, Zynga registered several domains such as MafiaWarsShakedownAndroid.com, which point towards an eventual Android release. For the full list of Shakedown domains, read the Fusible article here.

You’ll Probably be Seeing More Social Game Movie Promotions – According to a study commissioned by RockYou, social gamers are also big fans of movies. The results showed that 41% of social gamers preferred to watch movies in the theaters, and that more than half of them had watched at least one rented movie in the last thre months. On average people who identified as social gamers had watched 15 movies in the last three months, four in theaters and 11 on DVD/Blu Ray/Streaming.

[Launch] CW’s Vampire Diaries Now on Facebook – TV is proving to be the next great frontier of Facebook Games, with the CW premiering The Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In, on the social network. The game will build upon the plot of the TV show, challenging players to complete missions given to them by the show’s characters. The game is free, but also gives players the option of using Facebook Credits to purchase in-game items and new areas to explore.

[Launch] Dungeons & Dragons Officially Live on Facebook – Atari announced the official launch of Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter on September 15; we got an early look at the game back in June. Neverwinter allows players to create their own characters and venture through dungeons slaying monsters and collecting items. Players can also take on the role of dungeon master, creating adventures that other players can complete.

[Launch] BBC’s Being Human Coming to Facebook as Social Game – Utinni Games is bringing the BBC’s ultra-popular supernatural drama Being Human to Facebook. Players will be able create their own characters and explore the universe of the TV show as they work through an extensive and persistent storyline, according to a promotional video on Utinni’s website.

[Launch] Ravenworld Expanding into RavenSkye City - Lolapps is adding more content to their hit Facebook game Ravenworld Fair with an expansion called Ravenskye City. According to the developer, Ravenskye maintains the look and feel of Ravenworld Fair, but adds more character development, more quests and allows for interplay between other Ravenworld games.

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Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter goes live on Facebook

Released previously only in a private beta, Dungeons & Dragons Heroes of Neverwinter has now officially gone live on Facebook. Developed by Atari and set in the Neverwinter realm, the game already has 166,000 monthly players from its time in beta, but if you'd like to join them, here's a taste of what you can expect.

When first starting Heroes of Neverwinter, you'll be allowed to create a character using either set templates of a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric or Rogue (each with their own stats and specialties), or can create a custom character to customize your gender, stats, class, race and more. In this, the game can immediately start out being as complex or as straightforward as you like.

Upon launching into the game proper, you're met with a story of amnesia and will be introduced to Edrick, a scout that was guiding you on your way to Neverwinter before a pack of Goblins knocked you unconscious. Through this introduction, you're told of Neverwinter, a place of hope and civilization that has survived the Ruining, and that you had originally wanted to travel there to purchase a home and earn your fortune. With this as a base, you're sent on your way.

Movement is achieved on a grid, with this turn-based game automatically allowing you to move at the beginning of each turn. When commanding a party, you'll be able to complete multiple actions, including attacking or opening your inventory with each character before needing to manually end their turn and start over with the next character. Once each "adventure" in the game is complete, you'll receive experience points for the battles you won and the tasks you completed in the process. For immediate prizes, you'll sometimes be able to loot your fallen enemies, selecting a prize from a list of ten. You can choose randomly from ten cards, or can use a potion to reveal items before you choose.

In terms of actual combat, you'll have a wide variety of options, depending on the classes of characters in your party. You might be able to attack an enemy from far away, eliminating them before they ever become a threat, or surround an enemy with multiple characters, giving everyone a combat advantage. There's enough strategy here to keep more hardcore players satisfied, but the initial sections of gameplay are incredibly simple and work well to help an unfamiliar player get up to speed.

Back in Neverwinter proper, you can access a variety of buildings including the Adventure Board where you'll accept new Adventures (Adventures require energy and have multiple difficulty levels), the Tavern where you can purchase energy potions or Adventure boosts to your stats, the Trade house where you'll purchase similar potions or new equipment items, and even your own home, which you'll be able to fill with treasures as you complete different achievements or tasks within the game (collecting a certain amount of gold, for instance).

That being said, the main focus here (understandably) is in the Adventures themselves. There are plenty of them to undertake, each with an additional focus on bringing your friends in to help you (early on, it's entirely possible to fail even the most basic of Adventures by simply going it alone). The lore within the game is presented through text boxes at the beginning and end of most scenes and encounters, and will likely satisfy current D&D fans. Still, this isn't the first game of its kind of Facebook, so hopefully the D&D name alone will help draw more followers into the fray.

Will D&D Heroes of Neverwinter win over the "Zynga" crowd with its fairly in-depth, and somewhat slow-going gameplay? Likely not, but there's plenty of content here for fans who go out specifically in search for it.

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Have you tried Heroes of Neverwinter on Facebook? What did you think of it? Sound off in the comments.

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Kabam trades dragons for desert planets in Edgeworld for Facebook

Prepare to activate your "Check Your Edgeworld Base!" phone alarms. Kabam, creator of strategy Facebook hits like Dragons of Atlantis and Kingdoms of Camelot, has launched Edgeworld on Facebook and Google+ Games. (Kabam is also the first Facebook developer to launch a game on Google+ Games.) Edgeworld takes a visibly different approach to strategy games than its predecessors, with a focus on real-time combat between players.

The game also focuses heavily on mood, with rallying, futuristic music and a story that unfolds as you play. You've been enlisted as commander of a rogue faction of The Union, a collection of nations who landed on the planet Cerulea to harvest the resources and technology of an advanced, ancient alien race known as The Ceruleans.

You know, standard sci-fi fare. Like most real-time strategy games on Facebook (and elsewhere, really), you must gather resources to build an efficient base, muster defenses for that base and execute strategic attacks against both other players and the storyline factions.

That said, players can choose to focus on either the sprawling campaign, much like Empires & Allies, or to go to war with other players. Regardless, your "safe status" will eventually disappear as you progress in the game, so you'll have to fight opposing players eventually. (Within three days of starting the game, to be exact.) While players can purchase protection from other players, the easiest way to ensure your survival in this game is to form alliances with fellow commanders for mutually-assured protection.

The game seems to have been heavily influenced by traditional strategy franchises like Starcraft and Command and Conquer. However, competing Facebook strategy game maker Kixeye claims that Kabam copied its Backyard Monsters in Edgeworld's creation. Regardless of where Kabam sourced its inspiration from, Edgeworld looks to be a blast, and already enjoys over 400 thousand players. With strategy games looking (and sounding) like this, it's no wonder that nearly 80 million Facebook gamers are playing strategy games on the platform. Just remember to sleep, kay?

Click here to play Edgeworld on Facebook Now >

Have you tried Edgeworld out yet, and if so, what do you think so far? Do you think this is the start of a growing trend in social games? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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Kabam, Plinga Bringing Dragons of Atlantis to European Social Networks

Kabam (formerly Watercooler) has partnered with European game publisher Plinga to launch its “massively multiplayer social game (MMSG)” Dragons of Atlantis to 14 new European social networks. Beginning March 1, Dragons of Atlantis will be exposed to a large audience base of new potential players on these non-Facebook platforms.

Plinga, a Berlin-based company founded in 2009, will be responsible for the customer service, translation, and distribution of Kabam’s games in Europe, beginning with Dragons of Atlantis. The game will be playable in 11 different languages and will debut on social networks such as the Dutch network Hyves and the Polish network Nasza Klasa. Chris Carvalho, COO of Kabam stated, “We are excited to partner with Plinga to bring Dragons of Atlantis to the large number of European gamers who play games on social networks other than Facebook.”

Dragons of Atlantis was launched last October by Wonderhill, who was acquired by Kabam shortly thereafter. The game is very similar in gameplay to Kingdoms of Camelot and other fantasy themed strategy games on Facebook. According to our AppData tracking service, Dragons of Atlantis currently has over 2 million monthly users and just under 250,000 daily users.

Tami Baribeau is Senior Community Manager at ZipZapPlay and a contributor to Inside Social Games.

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