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 LOLApps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LOLApps. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
LOLapps' Ravenwood Fair nears 11M monthly players, but how?
LOLapps is not afraid to display its methods of success. In fact, it flaunts them in adorable infographics involving flagship game, Ravenwood Fair. This time around, the company is done educating the masses and shows that since Jan. 2011, the forests of Ravenwood have exploded with over 10 million monthly players and over 1 million daily players. However, the LOLapps may have unintentionally revealed how it achieved this milestone.
Then again, it could have been 100 percent intentional. Toward the end of the infographic, the company shows that the game has launched on three other platforms than Facebook: StudiVZ, Orkut and Imvu. Not to mention that Ravenwood Fair will soon launch on Mixi. (You mean other social networks exist?) Developers have a hard time getting close to even Zynga's worst-performing games. So, how does a game that suffered controversy and even a shut down short after its launch just explode in an instant? Alright, maybe not an instant, but it sure feels that way in social games at times.
All kidding aside, players from these networks could have easily migrated from their native social networks to Facebook, where the game was originally developed and released. Perhaps payments are complicated on these networks, as opposed to the simplified Facebook Credits method. Perhaps the game simply runs more smoothly on Facebook. Most importantly, perhaps there are more players already on Facebook. Granted, this is all conjecture, but let's be honest here: How many Ravenwood Fair players could there be on Orkut when compared to Facebook?
Social games require friends to succeed. It's plain and simple, and social gamers are privy to that. Is it possible that LOLapps intentionally released the game on other platforms to increase its player base inversely on Facebook? Perhaps this is too tin-foil-hat for some, and it could just as easily have been a pleasant mistake. But will this same thing happen again to the Mixi players? LOLapps said it themselves: A large reason why Ravenwood Fair and social gaming work is because of the nature of friend networks. Why do you think FarmVille isn't popular on its own website? Because that's not where the friends are, silly. You'll see if we're right in a few months.
Do you think this could be the reason for Ravenwood's rapid growth, intentional or otherwise? How long do Aside from being a well- designed game, how else do you think LOLapps achieved this success? Sound off in the comments. 5 Comments
Full infographic
Then again, it could have been 100 percent intentional. Toward the end of the infographic, the company shows that the game has launched on three other platforms than Facebook: StudiVZ, Orkut and Imvu. Not to mention that Ravenwood Fair will soon launch on Mixi. (You mean other social networks exist?) Developers have a hard time getting close to even Zynga's worst-performing games. So, how does a game that suffered controversy and even a shut down short after its launch just explode in an instant? Alright, maybe not an instant, but it sure feels that way in social games at times.
All kidding aside, players from these networks could have easily migrated from their native social networks to Facebook, where the game was originally developed and released. Perhaps payments are complicated on these networks, as opposed to the simplified Facebook Credits method. Perhaps the game simply runs more smoothly on Facebook. Most importantly, perhaps there are more players already on Facebook. Granted, this is all conjecture, but let's be honest here: How many Ravenwood Fair players could there be on Orkut when compared to Facebook?
Social games require friends to succeed. It's plain and simple, and social gamers are privy to that. Is it possible that LOLapps intentionally released the game on other platforms to increase its player base inversely on Facebook? Perhaps this is too tin-foil-hat for some, and it could just as easily have been a pleasant mistake. But will this same thing happen again to the Mixi players? LOLapps said it themselves: A large reason why Ravenwood Fair and social gaming work is because of the nature of friend networks. Why do you think FarmVille isn't popular on its own website? Because that's not where the friends are, silly. You'll see if we're right in a few months.
Do you think this could be the reason for Ravenwood's rapid growth, intentional or otherwise? How long do Aside from being a well- designed game, how else do you think LOLapps achieved this success? Sound off in the comments. 5 Comments
Full infographic
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)