Ravenwood Fair Stats
In just the two short months that LOLapps' Ravenwood Fair has been in town it's garnered 4.7 million monthly players, according to AppData's findings. And for a company to round up and maintain this many users in the midst of a Facebook privacy crisis that crippled the game for days is certainly impressive. So, how did they do it? LOLapps recently released a cutesy yet informative set of graphs and pie charts breaking down not only exactly how they approach players like you and I, but how they keep us coming back for more carnie craziness.
While we won't bore you with too many specifics, there are some interesting facts here. For example, LOLapps relies heavily on cross promotion (60 percent)--much like the recent CityVille sign that's plopped itself in your farms--and far less on ads (eight percent) and 32 percent viral promotion (i.e. lots of News Feed messages making their way into your Feed and more) in its first phase. But then something changes in their strategy, which is when you'll see plenty more advertisements on your Facebook pages as they jump to 30 percent while cross promos and viral marketing level out.
Find the full chart and even more interesting (and hilarious) statistics behind the break.
What's most interesting is LOLapps' gender breakdown. According to the company, 60 percent of Facebook gamers are women, beating out men in every age bracket by huge margins. So, thank you, ladies, for keeping the genre alive. But don't think that the recent privacy incident didn't effect Ravenwood Fair at least a little bit. You'll see a significant drop in the game's player base right around the end of October into the beginning of November, but luckily it bounced right back and it appears even more gamers are enjoying building their own spooky carnivals today.
It's rare that a social game developer is this open about its numbers and reach, so gobble this info up while you still can. Not to mention that a lot of this information could be indicative of how other social game developers handle bringing in new users and keeping them there.
Now, 4.4 million players sure is a lot, but what does mean for the citizens Ravenwood Fair specifically? It means 15 million hot dogs eaten, 10 million spooked guests, 6.5 million trees chopped and, as LOLapps puts it so quaintly, "5 million NPCs who took a crap in the thunderbox." And with no signs of Ravenwood Fair stopping, it might be time to build some more outhou--er, we mean thunderboxes.
Expanding Boundaries of Facebook Games.
What do you think of LOLapps suddenly revealing many of their secrets? Is it time that more social game developers do the same?
Showing posts with label CrossPromotion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CrossPromotion. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
FrontierVille Gingerbread House changed - CityVille cross-promo removed
If you're one of the many FrontierVille players that are struggling to finish your Gingerbread House (either the first or the second time), due to a glitch with the CityVille cross promotion that doesn't give you a Chocolate Bar in FrontierVille after finishing the branded CityVille mission, you'll be happy to know that Zynga has listened to your concerns and has removed the CityVille cross-promotion from the Gingerbread House in FrontierVille altogether.
Whether you're on your first or second go around with the Gingerbread House, there are now just two cross-promotional activities that you'll need to take part in: one for Mafia Wars and one for Treasure Isle. To earn the Chocolate Bars, you'll now have to simply click on the "Ask for More" button from within the Gingerbread House's menu. This will allow you to post a news item to your wall, asking friends to send you a Chocolate Bar. This is a "Give one, get one" situation, so your friends will earn a Chocolate Bar in return, if they help you out.
The rest of the Gingerbread House building requirements remain unchanged, but as the cross-promotional links have now been fixed, this is one feature that now looks to be running fairly smoothly, all things considered.
Whether you're on your first or second go around with the Gingerbread House, there are now just two cross-promotional activities that you'll need to take part in: one for Mafia Wars and one for Treasure Isle. To earn the Chocolate Bars, you'll now have to simply click on the "Ask for More" button from within the Gingerbread House's menu. This will allow you to post a news item to your wall, asking friends to send you a Chocolate Bar. This is a "Give one, get one" situation, so your friends will earn a Chocolate Bar in return, if they help you out.
The rest of the Gingerbread House building requirements remain unchanged, but as the cross-promotional links have now been fixed, this is one feature that now looks to be running fairly smoothly, all things considered.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Could FarmVille, FrontierVille give CityVille Factories a needed boost?
After perusing the CityVille forums, I've come to notice a general discontent with the brand new Factories feature. Several experienced mayors claim that the 10 percent payout bonus that premium Goods provide pales in comparison to what some well-placed decorations can. Frankly, the time and Energy costs are not worth it when forum users like buildingaworld can use one Energy to receive over 3 thousand coins from a Tower Eats in seconds. But tlclark2418 proposes a brilliant idea: Why not just use FarmVille and FrontierVille to farm our Goods?
HarvestBoth of Zynga's most recent games included farming as a major mechanic, and, quite frankly, it's silly. Why should players have to farm in every game, especially CityVille, the epitome of a capitalistic play style in a videogame? Industrialized nations import more Goods than any other on the planet, so why shouldn't this be realized in Zynga's biggest game? Here is an excerpt from tlclark2418's forum post:
"I would love to replace the farms with factories or at least reduce significantly the dependency on farms as they are required for supplying franchises," tlclark2418 writes. "I would have hoped that Cityville would eventually do away with farming as I grew very tired of that aspect of Frontierville and Farmville. Why not have an option to import goods from Farmville or Frontierville?"
In this player's perfect world, FarmVille players would have the option, when harvesting crops, to send those crops as Goods to CityVille. This would eliminate the need for farms altogether in the game and validate the existence of Factories. These new buildings would then serve as processing plants and storage for Goods to supply Businesses. Like we said, this works from a logical, real-to-life standpoint, but from others as well.
What if Zynga gave players the option to farm in either game, but each method had its advantages and disadvantages? For instance, importing crops from FarmVille would give more payout yet took longer to process, but farming domestically would be quicker with lower payouts. Each serves its own purpose, but also entice players to play both games more often when possible. It's not as if this would be impossible--FarmVille English Countryside will communicate with the original. Will you look at that-- a feature that would make for a more interesting game for us players while increasing player retention for Zynga. This is a win-win.
HarvestBoth of Zynga's most recent games included farming as a major mechanic, and, quite frankly, it's silly. Why should players have to farm in every game, especially CityVille, the epitome of a capitalistic play style in a videogame? Industrialized nations import more Goods than any other on the planet, so why shouldn't this be realized in Zynga's biggest game? Here is an excerpt from tlclark2418's forum post:
"I would love to replace the farms with factories or at least reduce significantly the dependency on farms as they are required for supplying franchises," tlclark2418 writes. "I would have hoped that Cityville would eventually do away with farming as I grew very tired of that aspect of Frontierville and Farmville. Why not have an option to import goods from Farmville or Frontierville?"
In this player's perfect world, FarmVille players would have the option, when harvesting crops, to send those crops as Goods to CityVille. This would eliminate the need for farms altogether in the game and validate the existence of Factories. These new buildings would then serve as processing plants and storage for Goods to supply Businesses. Like we said, this works from a logical, real-to-life standpoint, but from others as well.
What if Zynga gave players the option to farm in either game, but each method had its advantages and disadvantages? For instance, importing crops from FarmVille would give more payout yet took longer to process, but farming domestically would be quicker with lower payouts. Each serves its own purpose, but also entice players to play both games more often when possible. It's not as if this would be impossible--FarmVille English Countryside will communicate with the original. Will you look at that-- a feature that would make for a more interesting game for us players while increasing player retention for Zynga. This is a win-win.
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