In addition to thinking completed, not completed or future goals it’s great time to stop and think all the good things we already have.
Have a good new year.
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The social games industry knows ELEX primarily from farming sim Happy Harvest (????), which is the second-best performing Chinese-language social game on Facebook in terms of daily active users. The Beijing-based developer currently has 300 employees and raised a single $3 million round of funding from Tencent in March 2009. Coming up on its second birthday in February, our AppData traffic tracking service reveals that Happy Harvest still enjoys 2.2 million monthly active users and 860,000 daily active users on Facebook alone with a retention rate at around 40 percent (compared to most games that are lucky to see 20 percent). Worldwide via other social networks, ELEX says that Happy Harvest broke 10 million MAU in December 2011. Across all its games on Facebook, the developer sees 4.4 million MAU and 1.4 million DAU.
ELEX was one of the first Chinese games developers to cash in on the under-served Chinese-speaking Facebook audience in 2009 when the platform was still young and the developer was only a year old. In most cases, we see Chinese developers take an existing game that saw success in local Chinese games networks (e.g. Tencent, RenRen, etc.) and port it to Facebook more or less exactly as it is. This doesn’t always result in a hit game, however, as the Chinese-speaking audience on Facebook is limited and most Facebook-focused publishers won’t pick up Chinese games because they’re hard to localize in a way that appeals to a Western audience. See 6waves Lolapps’ approach to its Smartron5 acquisition as an example.
Though ELEX built up a global audience on social and mobile game networks in Russia, China, Taiwan, the United States, Latin America and Europe over the past two years, the developer wants to focus on its own platform services in 2012. The XingCloud service, first announced in June 2012, is an all-in-one platform for developers to create, publish, localize and distribute games across a variety of platforms — including mobile and PC download.
ELEX CEO Binsen Tang tells us that XingCloud’s real value is in providing developers with data analysis — an area where he thinks most developers make mistakes.
“Data analyzing is different for Chinese developers,” he explains. “The details in games are often unnoticed. [In] the last few years, Chinese developers have focused more on customer experience, and thinking from the point of view of the player. This is why we’re investing a lot in XingCloud.”
The company is also using 2012 to focus on its own games portal, 337.com. This is a move some Western social game developers like Kabam are making, whenever they reach a certain critical mass of users. Though maintaining an independent platform can be expensive — and risky, if their audience will not follow the game off of Facebook onto a new platform — some developers see it as the best way to maximize profit because they don’t have to pay out fees and revenue shares to platform operators.
In ELEX’s case, this is not quite true as its games see the highest average revenue per user rates on Facebook. (For context, Tang tells us that Happy Harvest is its best monetized game at $1 ARPU.) ELEX reports that in the past two years, its signed over 20 publishers to the platform and enjoys over 10 million MAU and 500,000 daily user visits. Tang claims the platform is popular with Latin American and European players thanks in part to its focus on more “hardcore” games like shooters, racing games and action games. Interestingly, the 337.com interface currently looks a lot like Facebook’s canvas app interface:
The largest opportunity for ELEX in 2012, however, may prove to be mobile as the developer is only just getting its footing on iOS and Android with a Happy Harvest sequel and several original titles. Tang says that though Facebook has been a good investment for ELEX, it’s important for all Chinese developers to keep a second eye on the local market, which is continuing to grow.
“Facebook is already a very successful SNS platform,” he says, “but it is still mainly for English speaking countries.”
At this point, Halloween just comes too easy for Seattle-based PopCap Games. The maker of hits like Bejeweled Blitz, Zuma Blitz and, in this case, Plants vs Zombies has provided us with one crazy video. A resident zombie temp worker at PopCap is on a quest to ring in Halloween the right way, perhaps to impress his living co-workers and score a full-time position. So, he's not the best pumpkin carver, and shows his lack of skill quite well in a PopCap cafeteria. It's then that the clumsy cadaver comes up with an idea, which is rare for a zombie, no? The result is probably the most fly dance party PopCap has ever seen, complete with a very ... festive zombie. Of course, we don't want to give too much away now. (Well, no more than that image already does.)
This video comes just weeks after the studio showed us Crazy Dave's (also from Plants vs Zombies) rap game. At this point, we'll admit that we're pretty envious at how well the PopCap folks can get down. Now, could those folks get down and release Lucky Gem Casino already? And maybe after that some Plants vs Zombies on Facebook--alright, we're getting greedy.
Are you in the area? We’d like to meet you!
Inside Network Developer Happy Hour
Join Justin Smith and Kim-Mai Cutler at the Grand Hyatt Beijing for casual conversation and networking with fellow mobile and social developers in Beijing. We’ll be swapping stories and making connections with no pre-set speaker agenda, so please stop by, say hello, and stay awhile.
Monday, August 29, 2011
7:00 pm at the Grand Hyatt Beijing
(1 East Chang An Avenue, Oriental Plaza)
RSVP here
Look for the drinks lounge to the left after walking in the main entrance. RSVP not required, but please try to let us know if you plan to attend. We hope to see many of you there!
Are you in the area? We’d like to meet you!
Inside Network Developer Happy Hour
Join Justin Smith and Kim-Mai Cutler at the Grand Hyatt Beijing for casual conversation and networking with fellow mobile and social developers in Beijing. We’ll be swapping stories and making connections with no pre-set speaker agenda, so please stop by, say hello, and stay awhile.
Monday, August 29, 2011
7:00 pm at the Grand Hyatt Beijing
(1 East Chang An Avenue, Oriental Plaza)
RSVP here
Look for the drinks lounge to the left after walking in the main entrance. RSVP not required, but please try to let us know if you plan to attend. We hope to see many of you there!
I think Zynga is trying to tell us something here. A new Timed Goal has arrived in CityVille, titled "One Happy Camper," though its flavor text on the Goals sidebar reads, "Take a Hike." (I guess a few million of us haven't seen enough sun this summer, hm?) These Timed Goals work much like Catering Orders in Cafe World: Once accepted, players will have two days to complete this Goal and achieve the Gold prize. Without further ado, here's everything you need to know:
One Happy Camper: Get 14 Hiking BootsHarvest 50 CarrotsHave 12 items from the Fast Food Collection
The 14 Hiking Boots, as you could probably already imagine, are found through asking your friends. Harvesting 50 Carrots will cost 2,300 Coins and take at least eight hours to complete. The most difficult part of this Goal will be acquiring 12 items from the Fast Food Collection, which can be done most quickly and cheaply by collecting from the Burger Joint. Since the building only costs 1,000 Coins, it might be in your best interest to buy a few to complete this Goal even faster. 
[Image Credit: Zynga]
Have you started this new Timed Goal in CityVille yet? Would you like to see more or less of these Goals in the game? Share with us in the comments. Add Comment.
Weichselbaum is founder and CEO of TheBroth, which began as a community website based out of Perth, Australia in 2005. The company had some success with early apps on Facebook, including the 2007 jigsaw simulation game PuzzleBee. In 2008, TheBroth relocated to San Francisco and began steady releases of one major game per year to Facebook and eventually other social networks like hi5 and international social networks in Europe. This year, the developer worked with licensee Big Tent Entertainment to produce a social game based on Japanese TV mascot, Domo, which debuted on Facebook late last month with strong early growth.
“[Big Tent] heard through the grapevine that we were good with localization and multiplatform [releases] and they figured well, that’s the right kind of company to approach,” Weichselbaum tells ISG. “And we liked Domo. He doesn’t have a particular facial expression. He can be happy or angry and you wouldn’t know the difference. So you can project a lot onto Domo. If you make your own Domo, it’s really an expression of self. That makes him really ideal for a game because he’s so malleable and so accessible.”
Accessibility is a key component of TheBroth games. Having its roots in the early days of Facebook games gave the developer incentive to keep gameplay design simple and immediately available after only a few minutes of tutorial. Even today, the Barn Buddy tutorial is only six screens long and the Planet Domo tutorial is considerably shorter than other mission-based adventure games of comparable complexity.
The only downside to this quick-play approach is that TheBroth has sometimes had to sacrifice presentation. Particularly with its early games like Kickmania, the art style and presentation date the game in a way that could turn off a social gamer new to the space and therefore more accustomed to higher art quality. Weichselbaum says that TheBroth would like to go back to Kickmania and some of its older titles to bring them up to speed; but right now, its focusing its resources elsewhere.
“We’re a small company, we don’t have all the resources to do what we want to do right now,” he says. He explains that with Kickmania, TheBroth originally wanted to do a “female” version of the game because the premise of “kicking someone’s ass” was just too male-oriented to achieve mass appeal. That never came about, though, and now TheBroth is instead looking at bringing the game to mobile.
“Kickmania is my favorite and one of the most promising of gameplay types out there combining social aspects and casual gameplay,” Weichselbaum says. “The whole look of it is sort of 2008, so there’s a lot of work to bring this one into modern times. We feel this is going to be ideal for mobile.”
Right now, Weichselbaum TheBroth has a few free apps available on mobile devices, but he wouldn’t say what they were or where we could find them. TheBroth is still experimenting with game types and techniques for releasing games to mobile. Some of their older Facebook properties would actually be better suited to tablets and iPads, he says.
“We think that our games are less suited to smaller screens, but would have a fantastic place on tablets,” Weichselbaum says. The key concern, he explains, is finding games that are action-based, preferably grounded in physics as opposed to mission-based social games like Barn Buddy and Planet Domo. In the case of smartphones and feature phones, the game needs to use the core features of the platform in a way that jibes with gameplay. For exmaple, Weichselbaum says, TheBroth’s Hoop Fever Live would be the perfect candidate for iOS and Android because all players need to do is drag a finger to plan the trajectory for a basketball — and that’s it.
“For mobile, you want something something you can do on the bus,” he says. “You can just take it out and throw some more angry birds at some pigs. It makes sense — a short interaction you can go back to whenever you want. This is an action game you can play for 30 seconds and it’ll be really fun.”
Another game type TheBroth wants to revisit for mobile is jigsaw puzzles. The developer has proprietary technology that supports an actual puzzle simulation where players either need to drag pieces in order to rotate them or can toggle an auto-rotate mode that activates when the player selects a puzzle piece. This technology is currently in use within PuzzleBee and forms a Planet Domo mini-game; Weichselbaum could easily see it as a standalone jigsaw title for iPad or tablet — but not for smartphone.
“Your finger is obscuring the puzzle pieces,” he complains. “I haven’t seen a single good jigsaw puzzle on the iPhone for example. Not because people can’t program well but because the device just doesn’t lend itself. For iPad, we can’t wait to release [a jigsaw puzzle] game. It’s a no brainer.”
As ambitious as TheBorth is to get into mobile, however, there is still the need to balance the limited resources the developer has. Whenever TheBroth has worked on releasing a new game, its existing games has lost traffic as the developer cuts back on content releases. With Barn Buddy, the game first lost a significant chunk of daily active users as TheBroth worked with publisher Peak Games to release the Turkish language version of the game, Komsu Çiftlik, and then DAU took another huge hit while TheBroth scaled back content again ahead of Planet Domo’s release (pictured here).
Going forward, TheBroth has new content releases planned for both Barn Buddy and Planet Domo in the form of a competitive community event for the former and new gameplay features and levels for the latter. Mobile development and international releases are progressing at a rate that pleases Weichselbaum, though he admits that scaling would be easier with funding.
“The time may come this year where it may make sense to raise significant funding to accelerate and utilize our ability that we have because are multiplatform and multi-language,” he says. “[Scale] requires man power, it requires funding, it requires an advertising budget. Without funding, we can’t really do that as well as the big guys. But for right now, we’re quite happy to do our thing and grow organically.”
Most of fish keeper, either beginner or advanced keeper say that discuss fish are considered as the most well-liked kinds of fishes to keep .There are many fish keepers over the world to proudly keep them due to their beauty.
But this fish can be very expensive because of their attractiveness. Since this creature come with temperamental character, you should pay close attention. They will be really responsive regarding with the food you give them and the water where they live. Really different with other species, this fish need your special attention and persistence to make them happy and healthy.
However, this fact should not hinder you from keeping this type of fish. Through properly learning, you can keep and breed them successfully.
One thing that you should pay attention, they like to swim. You must prepare enough space to wander around in the tank. As a consequence of this fact, you must prepare ten gallons of water for each discus fish. You must ensure to prevent aquarium from overcrowding, in case dealing with this type of fish. Since such condition will cause them stressed, and if they go through higher stress, the more chances that they will be unhealthy.
Above fact requires you to prepare big tank for keeping them, in case you want to keep more than 2. In addition, you must keep in mind that if you want make them happy, you must keep them no less than six discus fish together in the same tank.
The two factors that you should really take into consideration are the shape and size of the fish tank. You should know that discus fish like better a tall sized tank. For that reason, you have to prepare the tank that is taller than longer. For instance, it's your decision to make a tank which is 3 feet tall and 4 feet wide. A 35 gallon tank is a proper size designed for them. However, it is advisable to try getting a larger fish tank. In addition, with larger tanks, maintaining water quality is much less difficult than smaller tanks. Also, it's important to understand that discus fish are somewhat sensitive regarding water quality.
Since discus fish will be really sensitive in term of water quality, keep the water clean and maintain the stability of water chemistry. You must replace no less than 50 % previous water with fresh water every week as well ensure that PH level is always stable.
The proper temperature for keeping this type of fish around 82 until 86 degrees F and the hardness must be about 3 and 15dH. In addition maintain PH level approximately 5 and 6.5.
Mentioned above are important stuffs you have to keep in mind if you want keep discus fish successful. By applying above tips, surely you will have experience and capability to keep healthy and happy discus fish.
About the Author:
Find free tips and ideas on how to keep and take care of discuss fish, please visit my site: www.breedingdiscusfish.getmytips.com
We held two happy hours in Europe in Barcelona alongside Mobile World Congress and in Berlin to get to know our community of Facebook and mobile developers across the Atlantic. In Barcelona, we held the event just a few blocks from Fira Montjuic: venture capitalists, business development folk from Deutsche Telekom, Glu and Sponsorpay as well as journalists showed up.
In Germany, we threw an event alongside Wooga, Europe’s biggest social games developer, and monetization company Sponsorpay.
Here are photos from both events.
June Parina of Spark PR chats with Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch.
Chris Chandler, who just joined Mig33 from Microsoft as vice president of business development, talks with Olga Steidl, who heads marketing for SPB Software, which works with device manufacturers to create apps for phones.
Steidl poses for a quick shot with Johannes Heinze, who is head of mobile for Sponsorpay.
Marcel Weiss, who blogs about e-commerce for ExcitingCommerce, listens intently.
Henric Suuronen, who recently joined Wooga as head of studio from Digital Chocolate’s Barcelona office, shares a drink with others.
Janis Zech, SponsorPay’s chief revenue officer, has a side conversation with Frogster chief executive Andreas Weidenhaupt.
Jens Begemann, chief executive of Wooga, gives a short talk about how to use data to optimize game design on Facebook.
Philipp Moeser, Wooga’s co-founder, chats with Max Franke, who is developing an unlaunched game.
The SponsorPay team poses for a photo in between drinks.
Projjol Banerjea, who recently joined SponsorPay as director of marketing, strikes a pose.
A sideroom in Wooga’s office where designers get creative with character design.
The raccoon from Bubble Island hides in a corner of Wooga’s office.
