Your Turn Football brings social to sports

Image via Pick6 Studios

A football game based on Words With Friends? And it’s good?

Inside Mobile Apps recently sat down with Your Turn Football producer and Pick6 Studios co-founder David Fruin to talk about his game, his inspiration, and how Your Turn Football’s social design can be replicated across other sports titles in the future.

Check out the exclusive interview over at IMA.

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Retro football game Gridiron Heroes raises funding via Kickstarer

Fledgling developer Pixel Rampage has managed to secure funding for Gridiron Heroes, an NES-style football game that will launch on Facebook in beta mode this April.

Gridiron Heroes is a football team-manager sim inspired by Tecmo Bowl. Players establish their own football franchise and handle almost every detail imaginable: choosing the team name and logo, managing the player roster and training athletes are only a few of the tasks that have to be accomplished. Ultimately, players will be placed into leagues with their friends and then start playing one another. Seasons last four weeks at a time, with each player getting to play one league game a day.

American football on Facebook is dominated by two titles: Madden NFL Superstars and Quickhit NFL Football. While both of these games are still operating, Quickhit NFL Football has never really managed to take off (at its peak, the game had 90,000 MAU, now it’s down to 20,000). Madden NFL Superstars, meanwhile, is holding steady at around 600,000 MAU, though that’s a far cry from when the game had over 2 million MAU back in 2010.

Pixel Rampage sought $7,500 on Kickstarter, the crowd funding website that helps groups raise money for creative projects. In order for a Kickstarter project to be successful, the stated financial goal has to be reached within one to two months. Pixel Rampage needed to raise the money to cover fees for software licensing and server costs. Up until the last minute, the likelihood of the game getting the support it needed looked doubtful. However, enough backers came through and Gridiron Heroes wound up with $7,613 pledged when the time frame closed.

According to Pixel Rampage co-founder David Murray, those who backed the game will have character customization options available to them, but only while the game’s in beta. Other than that, there are no other immediate bonuses planned for backers, though these players will have extra content made available as the game expands.

“We reached out to our fans, because ultimately they will be the ones playing the game,” said Murray. “Letting them name players and create content for the game seemed like a fitting reward — something they’ll really appreciate when they see the character named after themselves winning our version of the Super Bowl.”

The developer decided to pursue crowd funding because it wants to remain totally independent. Murray explained that he hadn’t tried to work with a publisher on the game and that they have no plans to.

“We’re indie through and through, and we love it this way,” he said. “As we grow we might consider looking into it further, but right now we’re happy where we are.”

Kickstarter is proving increasingly popular with independent developers looking to get their dream projects funded, especially now that Double Fine made headlines across the Web and broke records with the millions it raised.

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Football, beer, Myspace, Netflix and more on this week’s yop 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU

An app that allows users to personalize football jerseys and then share them to the stream, and act testing how many types of beers a user has tried, as well as a few Connect integrations and professional apps comprise our list of the fastest emerging Facebook applications by monthly active users this week.

The apps on our list grew from between 110,000 and 470,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.

Top Gainers This Week

Make Your Jersey topped the list with 470,000 MAU after allowing users to select their football (soccer) team, share it to the stream and invite friends via Facebook or email. Another very popular app, The Beer List Challenge, grew by 250,000 MAU and allow users to share a quiz of beers they have tried to the stream. Photo Roll allows users to interact with friends’ photos; it grew by 200,000 MAU.

An app called “best friends” asks users to invite their friends to engage in the app. ?????? grew by 180,00 MAU, Besten Freunde grew by 130,000 MAU and Meilleurs Amis by 120,000 MAU. Then there were a pair of professional networking applications. Talent.me grew 120,000 MAU and when the user signs up, the app automatically invites that user’s entire network to use it. Then, Identified grew by  110,000 MAU, and combines educational professional experience to ostensibly tell you how “in demand” you are.

The rest of the apps included a Connect integration called Saavn, a music website, which grew by 160,000 MAU. Another Connect integration, Myspace,  grew by 150,000 MAU. Then there was a profile banner application, Profile Banner Welcome, which creates an integrated photo from several at the top of the profile; it grew by 150,000 MAU. Netflix’s app grew by 120,000 MAU (it’s difficult to see exactly what the app does unless one has an account and is signed in), Welcome tab by 120,000 MAU and finally, Victoria’s Secret Spotlight grew by 110,000 MAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

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Movies, LMFAO, Target, Macy’s, Poker, Football and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages

Movies, music but most interestingly, Black Friday Pages were popular on our list if the fastest growing by the number of Likes this week. There were also a pair of game Pages and football (soccer) Pages on the list, too. Pages on our list this week grew from between 222,600 to 925,800 Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

“Scary Movie” grew by 925,800 Likes and appeared to be a Page consolidation, “Titanic” grew by 409,500 Likes and “Fast & Furious” by 298,400 Likes, partly it seemed due to a Blu-ray giveaway. Musicians on the list included Motown singers The Temptations with 290,900 Likes (a consolidation), Adele with 285,600 Likes and LMFAO with 222,600 Likes.

Black Friday Pages started off with Target, which saw 571,600 new Likes thanks to Like-gated Black Friday deals. Then there was Small Business Saturday with 426,500 Likes; the Page promoted local business shopping on Saturday and included Like-gated content. Burberry grew by 269,600 Likes after releasing its new collection on Facebook. Macy’s promoted its Black Friday deals and Thanksgiving Parade and grew by 266,500 Likes. Then Levi’s, which had huge deals and Facebook savings codes, grew by 227,100 Likes.

Games included Texas Hold’em Poker with 312,900 Likes and Angry Birds with 245,800 Likes.

The rest of the list included Clear shampoo with 535,500 Likes, facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! with 333,000 Likes, Te quiero ?… Ver BIEN lejos :D with 296,500 Likes and Facebook with 259,500 Likes. Then there was Cristiano Ronaldo with 241,000 Likes, FC Barcelona with 231,400 and I Love My Daughter with 230,400 Likes.

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Football, Modern Warfare 2, Adele, Street King, Jesus and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages

Football and soccer-related were both popular on our list of Pages growing by the number of Likes this week. In addition to several games, popular musical acts like Adele and LMFAO, 50 Cent’s energy drink Street King, a religious Page, McDonald’s, Samsung Mobile and more.

We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

The football and soccer Pages on our list seemed to make their appearance due to consolidations, as most of the jumps in Likes came from one-day leaps. Spanish FC Barcelona player David Villa Sánchez saw more than 1 million new Likes this week, topping our list, bringing his total to 3.1 million. The Pittsburgh Steelers grew by 582,000 to 3.5 million, the Atlanta Falcons Football Club grew by 372,900 to 582,200 Likes and Spanish Premier League goalie Pepe Reina saw his Page grow by 367,800 Likes to 408,200.

Games on the list included Modern Warfare 2 at number two with 946,500 Likes to grow to 4.9 million, though it seemed to be a Page consolidation. Then there was Texas Hold’em Poker, moving 410,000 Likes to 51.6 million. Battlefield grew by 328,800 Likes to 2. million after moving from its beta version to its final version this week.

Music-related Pages included Jamaicansmusic.com, which appeared to be a consolidation-related jump of 700,700 Likes taking the Page to 1.2 million. Then Adele’s Page grew by 471,800 Likes to 7.4 million and finally LMFAO grew by 427,000 to 7 million by promoting their performances and album.

Film and TV Pages included the popular TV show “The Walking Dead” growing by 477,700 Likes to 3.5 million. The popular film “Paranormal Activity” with 379,200 Likes to grow to 8.7 million and the two Pages frequently on our list as of late: “Titanic” with 409,500 Likes to grow to 13.4 million and “Titanic” with 356,200 Likes to grow to 8.9 million.

The rest of the Pages were a mixed bag. Jesus Daily grew by 489,700 to 9.6 million Likes. Samsung Mobile grew by 390,500 Likes to 2.8 million by promoting engagement and prizes. Street King is a really interesting case of a product-charity combo; rapper 50 Cent is promoting his energy drink by pairing it with a Page growth charity giveaway. If the Page gets to 1 million, he will double his donation to feed 1 million hungry children; the result is 363,900 Likes this week to bring the Page to 400,500. Facebook’s Page grew by 352,700 Likes to 54.5 million, McDonald’s with 349,200 Likes to 11.3 million and  facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! 333,000 Likes to 445,400.

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Premier League Fantasy Football and ESPN Sports Bar & Grill Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

Premier League Fantasy Football rockets up to the top spot on this week’s list of emerging Facebook games with ESPN Sports Bar & Grill not far behind. Both titles offer sports fans meaningful ways to interact with their sport and team of choice, such as with a Game Predictor that ESPN just launched.

iWin’s two newest TV game show titles, 1 vs 100 and Deal or No Deal, turn up back to back on this week’s list just behind Kabam’s just-launched Edgeworld. Way down at No.15, Ubisoft’s Castle & Co. turns up, perhaps riding a wave of cross-promotion from the recently released Smurfs & Co. (which broke 1 million MAU a week ago, classing it out of this list).

ETA: Due to a miscategorization, Playdom’s GnomeTown was left off this list in error. It should appear at No.2 with a gain of 425,982 MAU for a total of 773,079 MAU at 123% growth in the last week.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

At No.10 is We Are Music, a “guess this tune in four notes” trivia game animated with cartoon avatars that wreck virtual instruments when the player guesses wrong. Gameplay modes are divided by music categories, like Hall of Fame for a range of songs or My Generation for songs from specific decades going as far back as the 1950s.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Come back next week for our top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, our daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

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