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Ngmoco shutting down some titles March 31
Ngmoco announced on its website earlier this week that some of the game maker's biggest iOS titles, including We Rule, Godfinger and Touch Pets Dogs 2, are going to be shut down for good on March 31. The games will be off of Apple's App Store later this week on February 1, so no new users will be able to download them, and the servers for the games will go offline at the end of next month, effectively ending the games completely. Ngmoco didn't give a clear reason for the shutdowns, but it's not hard to guess: The company, once one of the biggest app developers on the App Store, has been fairly steadily transitioning over to Android titles in the past few years, and has seen a sharp decline in popularity on iOS. Not to mention that many of the figures who made the company so large, including former EA exec Neil Young, have left the company in recent days. In other words, it's finally game over for Ngmoco on iOS. Ngmoco was purchased by Japanese network DeNA a little while ago, and that company is still steadily trying to grow its own iOS sales and popularity. But Ngmoco as a brand is effectively done on the App Store, especially since these once-thriving games are shut down. One of the biggest names of the App Store's first generation is finally on its way out the door.
Ngmoco exec: Free-to-play is not exploitative
Delivering the keynote address at the current Free to Play Summit in London, Ngmoco Sweden General Manager Ben Cousins came out in strong support of the business model. He said that his response to people asking if F2P takes advantage of players is always the same: "Any business model where 95 percent of people who don't pay cannot be exploitative." As most F2P players never spend money in such games and tend to play the most, Cousins thinks that the model works in favor of the gamer. He also stated that freemium games are not set up to trick people into paying, saying that it's "ineffective" if that is the case as a vast majority resists doing so. Cousins addressed the news stories of people who dangerously splurge on in-game purchases as a rarity: "I've never come across a big spender on a free-to-play game who has maxed out their credit cards. The big spenders I've met generally know what they're doing. Even the $5,000 spenders are not being exploited, they are just people who have found their big hobby." Ngmoco publishes freemium titles on the iOS and Android platforms, including games like We Rule and We City.
Interview: Ngmoco's We Rule after a year on the App Store
Ngmoco's We Rule has arguably changed the App Store since its release. Before We Rule, the App Store was generally based on a rather traditional gaming model -- developers released games for a price, and customers paid or didn't pay based on that price. But with We Rule, Ngmoco (as outlined by CEO Neil Young at last year's GDC) showed that freemium could really work on the App Store, and the ensuing shift led us away from more traditional games and further into the idea of games as a service -- games that took advantage of a large free audience to make money with microtransactions. Now, a year after release, Ngmoco says that We Rule is doing better than ever. It's reached 13 million downloads and has seen 13 billion minutes played over the past year. On a daily basis, 15 million bottles of mojo (the game's main microtransaction currency) are being spent, and while plenty of those are earned for free in the game, there's no question that We Rule has seen plenty of success. TUAW spoke with Caryl Shaw, an executive producer at the company, and she told us a little bit about who's spending all of those minutes in game, Ngmoco's responsibility around microtransactions, and the future of We Rule and Ngmoco's other properties.
The top indie and free-to-play stories of 2010
I have to admit to feeling slightly amazed when I read that someone thought of 2010 as a bad year for MMORPG fans. Then, when I think about it, I realize that he was talking about the year in "AAA" subscription gaming -- something almost alien to me. I just don't get turned on by huge-budget subscription games like I did seven or eight years ago. Well, it might be better to say that I am always suspicious of big-budget gaming. Gaming is a lot like movies, and look at how bad most blockbusters are. They are often silly, over-the-top, special-effects-laden bores. If those movies were the only ones I watched, I might be a little depressed about Hollywood as well. If you pay attention only to what the major publishers are pushing out, you are simply going to have a narrow view of MMO gaming. You will miss too much. The year 2010 offered more than any year before it, and 2011 will top that. Thanks to mobile technologies and the always-dropping price of computers, you will find that smaller or unknown games have much more of a chance of grabbing a gamer's eye than ever before. So, what were some of the high and low points in free-to-play and indie gaming this year? Click past the cut and let's take a look!
Two new titles released by Ngmoco, Adventure Bay and Star Wars: Imperial Academy
Neil Young and his company Ngmoco are running out of time to get all twenty new freemium products out that were promised earlier this year, but it looks like they're going to make a run at it anyway. Over the past weekend, Ngmoco released two brand new freemium titles on the US App Store. First up is Star Wars: Imperial Academy, a first-person shooter Star Wars game developed with THQ that basically plays like a Star Wars-themed skin of Eliminate. Unfortunately, iTunes reviews on this one aren't very good (framerates are apparently not great), but it is free, so if you're good with a blaster, it's probably worth a download anyway. Ngmoco has also released Adventure Bay recently. I'm surprised this one isn't just called We Island, because it's basically an island and pirate-themed version of the "We" series of games, from We Rule to We Farm and We City. You can build your own island (through waiting and spending in-game purchased Spice, this game's version of Mojo), do a little exploring to find treasure and collect items or do quests to earn money and fame. I can't say that it's bad, necessarily, but whatever you thought of We City will probably have you thinking the same thing about this one. So unfortunately, two less-than-impressive titles from one of the biggest iPhone gaming companies around. We'll have to see what Ngmoco plans next year. With the emphasis on "daily active users" and the freemium business model, it's possible that Ngmoco is just fine with how its business is going. But it would be nice to see a little more innovation on the gameplay side as well.
Ngmoco releases We City
Ngmoco has introduced its third title in the "We" series. We City arrives after We Rule and We Farm as the same kind of social simulation game. This time around, players will be building and creating their own cities, but other than the setting and the graphics, not too much has changed. Just like the other We titles, you can build farms to grow harvests (in this case, factories that build products), houses for citizens to give you rent, stores for your Plus+ friends to come and put orders in, and various types of decorations and custom items to paint your kingdom, sorry farm, sorry city as you see fit. What's called Mojo and Gro in the other two games is called Zap here, and it's available for the usual microtransactions, or some for free as you level up. Colleges are the one big innovation here -- you can build colleges and universities to do research for you, and those bits of research can unlock new buildings and items. It's kind of a shame that Ngmoco didn't go too far off of the beaten path -- especially with NimbleBit's Pocket Frogs showing that you can do different (and really fun) things with freemium, it's disappointing to see another "We" game with only the names and graphics changed out. But then again, I guess I can't blame them for going with what works. We City is available for free now on both the iPhone and the iPad. If you've played the other games, you know what you're in for, and if you've never seen Ngmoco's freemium model in action, here's your chance to check it out.
Ngmoco's iPhone titles nominated for a few GDC Online awards
Nominations have been announced for the Game Developers Choice Online Awards (to be announced at the upcoming GDC Online conference in Austin), and iPhone developer Ngmoco has secured a few spots in among the rest of the big PC game developers. We Rule picked up nominations for Best Online Game Design, Best Online Audio, and Best New Online Game, and Godfinger was recognized in the Best Online Visual Arts category. iPhone developers Booyah and Digital Chocolate also got nominated, but both of those companies were chosen for their Facebook titles, not their iPhone creations. So congrats to Ngmoco -- the company has certainly made a splash on the App Store with its freemium model, but these nominations show that former EA exec Neil Young's company is competing on quality with much larger PC titles like League of Legends, Aion and Dungeon Fighter Online. The awards will be given out at GDC Online, taking place October 5-8 in Austin, Texas.
Ngmoco releases We Farm in the US, celebrates three million We Rulers with free mojo
Ngmoco's free to play strategy is spooling right along -- not only is its We Farm title now available on the US App Store (it arrived late last week after a short beta in Canada), but the company is also celebrating three million We Rule players by awarding everybody 20 free mojo. New players can get their mojo by downloading the app and logging in, or old players can just say hi, even if you've been away for a while (and all of your crops have withered up). Ngmoco also shared some fun stats about those three million kingdoms: players have played for 2.2 billion minutes collectively so far, and have built 70 times the number of buildings in New York City, with enough roads to go around the Earth three times over. Pretty wild. Still, as big as three million is, it's still not quite a breakaway hit -- Zynga's Street Racing Facebook game once claimed three million players, and it was recently shut down in favor of Zynga's other more popular title. I would definitely call We Rule a hit, and given that Ngmoco's plan has always been to push for a large free audience to try and claim a percentage of those folks for microtransactions, I think Neil Young's company is pulling off what it set out to do. But even with numbers this big, the App Store's not quite scratching the surface of what the most popular Facebook games are achieving.
Ngmoco's We Farm now available in Canada
Ngmoco has released the followup to its popular We Rule game on the Canadian App Store. We Farm is, as you can see above, very similar to We Rule, with the main difference being that the game is set on a farm rather than in a medieval fantasy world. You'll be able to raise animals, plant vegetables, build up a barnyard, and of course, trade and share with friends to earn experience. We Rule originally launched in Canada back in February (Ngmoco likes to use America's neighbors to the north as a testing ground before releasing their apps worldwide), and then it was released to everyone in March, so we can probably expect the same time frame for We Farm. Will it be as big a hit as We Rule was? It's hard to tell; the gameplay is certainly proven already, but one of the draws of We Rule was that it wasn't just a FarmVille clone, and obviously, this seems to be borrowing at least the setting from Zynga's popular title. Of course, another reason that We Rule was so popular was because it had the iPhone all to itself, and now FarmVille is up and running. We'll see, though. Ngmoco has certainly shown that it's constantly learning about how to find success on the App Store; I'm sure the company has taken lessons from We Rule and GodFinger, not to mention that their development method allows for plenty of quick updates and changes if things don't work out right away. It's been fascinating to watch Ngmoco's experiment, and We Farm (along with We City, another adaptation planned for release soon) is their next step.
Farmville for iPhone available
Facebook farmers with iPhones and iPod Touches, your wait is finally over. Zynga -- the maker of incredibly addictive and lucrative, Flash-based Facebook games such as Farmville -- has released the much anticipated iPhone version of Farmville. You might remember that the title was touted at the recent WWDC keynote speech, along with the iPhone 4 announcement. The game features everything you'd expect from the iPhone version of the game, minus the use of Adobe Flash, of course. It even features push notifications for certain events, much like the similar game We Rule. Also like We Rule, Farmville is free to purchase, with in-app goodies fetching prices anywhere from cheap to absurd. If you were one of those who left Facebook but sometimes miss your beloved Farmville fix, hold onto your hats; you still need a Facebook login to play.
Canabalt now universal, Godfinger now available
Here's two big updates to big games on the App Store lately -- first up, the much-loved Canabalt has now gone universal, so if you have an iPhone and an iPad and have already purchased the app, you can now play it in full resolution on your iPad. Of course, if you haven't bought the app yet, what are you waiting for? It's a classic one-button app, dripping with ambience, that's just $2.99 for both platforms. Ngmoco has released their second big freemium title worldwide -- Godfinger is now available on the App Store for both iPhone and iPad. I got to play an early build of the app at GDC, and it basically combines Ngmoco's We Rule social and persistent functionality with some Pocket God-style gameplay. In other words, it'll likely be popular. I'm a little surprised the app didn't come out sooner -- Ngmoco is supposedly planning to release twenty new titles this year. If that's still true, they better get a move on.
Crazy usage stats from Ngmoco
Ah, ngmoco. You wacky purveyors of "freemium" games. I love you so. If you have any doubts, check out my account. Oh yes. See? I'm there. Playing two different versions of We Rule on my phone, and a version on the iPad. Don't even get me started on the Godfinger! Good heavens. Turns out I'm not the only one on the verge of needing an intervention. According to Neil Young, CEO of ngmoco, they are up to thirty MILLION minutes of playing time every DAY. This is up from the 20 million stated for April of this year. This would explain why my personal minutes of use vary widely: with that many people on every day, you need ten more servers than you actually have. ALL the time. And now I know why my crops keep going bad. My back-of-the-envelope math tells me that is something like eleventy squillion people (give or take) on the Plus+ network at any point, raising puppies or ordering rehabilitated criminals or flinging followers around a planet.
MyTown updates to version 3.1, adds collectibles and social features
MyTown is one of the hottest things going on the App Store right now in terms of social apps. As we mentioned in the interview with CEO Keith Lee a while back, they've actually got more users than Foursquare. The company has just released version 3.1 of the app, which introduces more collectible rewards earned by checking-in to certain local, real life locations (which you can then use to customize the properties you "own"), as well as more social features. You can now browse through the top trending properties, see your most frequent check-ins, and browse through where your friends are going out to and checking-in from. Additionally, Booyah tells us that the app is growing by over 100,000 players each week. They're suggesting that the average player of the game spends "more than an hour a day within the app." That's kind of incredible, but if it's true, that's one heck of an attachment rate. In fact, those are exactly the kind of usage stats that Ngmoco's Neil Young would drool over. Considering that MyTown just made an appearance in Ngmoco's We Rule splash screen, odds are that the two companies are at least sharing notes and, at most, possibly primed for a partnership. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
We Rule content update, server fixes incoming
Ngmoco CEO Neil Young posted another update last week about We Rule. That game is probably the biggest hit Ngmoco has come across yet with its freemium model, but unfortunately, the title has been plagued with service outages since the release. Young says that they simply underestimated the amount of people who want to play the game, and that they're working as quickly as possible to scale the server infrastructure on both the We Rule and Plus+ systems. The game is free-to-play, but in-game purchases still seem to be doing well for the company, as the app currently sits at number 40 on the Top Grossing list in the App Store, above a few $0.99 apps and even much more expensive fare. Young says the company is also pushing out content updates for the game -- there are new crops to grow and new buildings to buy and build on the farms. I'm playing We Rule (if a little reluctantly), and it seems like Ngmoco is playing around with the variations on crops and reward times -- some crops seem designed to bring people back to the app in as quickly as a few hours, while some promise a large reward daily (as if they're trying to at least drive people back in every day). I've experienced a few more bugs as well, like not seeing any of my friends' kingdoms on the main screen. Despite the bugs and the issues, it certainly seems like people are playing (and paying), and clearly Ngmoco is dedicated to support and producing content (Young says they're planning more updates for players who've reached level 25 already). Other freemium games like Godfinger haven't quite taken off as quickly, but as a flagship title for Ngmoco and a learning experience for their future releases, We Rule seems to be working well.
Apple adds App of the Week to the App Store
This little tidbit was hidden in the rush of iPad news last week, but if you check out the iTunes App Store, you'll notice that Apple has started promoting an official iPhone and iPad App of the Week (presumably every week from now on). They're not diving very deep to find apps for this one (MLB At Bat 2010 is the iPad app, and We Rule is the iPhone choice -- both of those hardly need any more promotion), but since we've heard from developers that Apple promotion really can make or break an app, the addition of another app spotlight can only mean good things for those apps. Critical Thought's David Whatley made this point well at GDC a few weeks ago -- he said that niche outlets (like our own little blog right here) covered his app first, which then gained the attention of Apple, who then promoted it in the App Store as "new and notable" and on the top paid charts. That then led to mainstream attention, which of course led up to major sales numbers. In short, the more Apple promotes apps, the more they sell. And that's why an "App of the Week" promotion like this can mean a lot to the right developers. MLB doesn't really need the extra spotlight, but getting a slot in the new App of the Week spot could make the careers of quite a few smaller developers out there.
Kleiner Perkins iFund doubles to $200m, investing in iPad apps from Shazam, ngmoco and more
Apple said it expects the iPad to be a "second gold rush" of app development as consumers rush to add content to their new devices, and it looks like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers agrees: the venture capital firm just announced that it's expanding the iFund to $200 million to invest in iPad app development. If you'll recall, the iFund was originally announced alongside the iPhone OS 2.0 SDK, and provided $100 million in total investments to 14 iPhone app developers like Shazam, ngmoco, and Shopkick -- companies responsible for 18 apps that have hit the App Store Top 10. Keep in mind that this money was promised before the iPhone App Store was even launched -- so given how that bet paid off, it's not surprising that KPCB's decided to double down on the iPad, which looks like it'll have even higher app prices. Along with the announcement, some iFund devs announced the following iPad apps: Pinger: Doodle Buddy and Starsmash Booyah: MyTown, a popular location-based game Shazam: Shazam, optimized for the new screen size, ngmoco: Flick Fishing, a new MMO called CastleCraft, Charadium (described as "massively multiplayer Pictionary"), God Finger, We Rule, WarpGate, and one more we missed -- anyone catch it? GOGII: TextPlus Nothing too surprising here, but it looks like the heavy hitters are going to be on the iPad bandwagon from day one -- and pushing hard for this thing to be a success.
We Rule hits a million sessions in 24 hours
Ngmoco CEO Neil Young tweeted on the official account that We Rule has reached a million app sessions in a 24 hour period, which means we can probably call their big freemium experiment an early success. We've seen quite a few people talking about We Rule and their accounts in our comments and on Twitter, so it's definitely out there and being played. But of course we have no idea yet just how well it's doing in terms of turning over in-app purchases and making money. Still, if his talk at GDC is any indication, Young doesn't really care: their main goal is to get lots and lots of people using the app, and a million sessions in a day sounds like they've either got that or they're well on their way. Which means you will probably see lots more of this on the store in the near future -- Godfinger is due out soon from Ngmoco (it's currently in their Canadian App Store "beta"), and of course we've heard that they've got no less than six iPad titles planned, undoubtedly some due soon after the April 3rd launch. Ngmoco's freemium model had its naysayers when the company first revealed their plans, but it looks like they've all quieted down -- they're off playing We Rule.
Ngmoco's We Rule is live, but buggy
Ngmoco's We Rule is now available for download worldwide in the App Store -- it's the first ground-up game developed for their big freemium experiment, in which they give away a game and then support it with periodic updates, bringing in revenue with in-app purchases driven by social interaction and game design. I got to play the game at GDC a few weeks ago, and if you've ever played Facebook's Farmville, you'll find most of it very familiar -- you can plant crops, build a town, and earn money both by waiting in real time for investments to pay off, and trading/giving items among friends. Early App Store ratings are pretty good, and while the app doesn't seem to be charting yet, Ngmoco's Neil Young made it clear at GDC that this is a slow burn model -- they're not worried so much about charts as building up average daily users. Unfortunately, it seems the app suffered from some early bugs -- the game requires a 'net connection to run (like Farmville, it's very server oriented), and many users were having trouble connecting. Young wrote a blog post himself about the issues the other day; he says that it's primarily a server problem, and that the teams are working as quickly as they can to fix issues. Not unexpected -- Ngmoco's model calls for an "MVP" ("Minimum Viable Product") to be released on the App Store, so again, they're more interested in how the app does long term, not in the first few days. Other than the hiccups (which did result in a few bad App Store reviews and ratings), We Rule appears to be taking off carefully. We'll have to wait and see if the Farmville-style click-and-wait gameplay is enough to bring in those average daily users that Ngmoco is craving from the App Store.
Six Ngmoco iPad titles revealed
In his panel at GDC last week, Ngmoco's Neil Young dropped the news that his company was going all out with their freemium business model -- not only are they releasing twenty iPhone titles by the end of this year, but they're planning on having six iPad titles ready to go right away at launch. Touch Arcade has done a little digging, and they've come up with what they think the six iPad titles will be. Here we go: GodFinger We Rule (both of these were previewed last week) Flick Fishing (probably re-created as a freemium app) NBA Hotshot (also likely remade into Ngmoco's model) CastleCraft (an MMO strategy/wargame) WarpGate As you may have noticed, two of those are Ngmoco originals, and four of those are Freeverse titles that were either planned for the iPad or are being remade for the new platform; again, presumably free-to-play, along with microtransactions and freemium resources in the Ngmoco mold. That's definitely a sizeable library going into the new platform, and if Ngmoco really does have these ready to go on April 3rd (and I don't see any reason why they wouldn't -- even if they haven't gotten one of those test iPads from Apple, their model is designed to release early and make updates quickly if needed), then they'll be positioned to grab iPad app space very early on.
GDC 2010: Ngmoco's Neil Young on how freemium will change the App Store world
On the third day of GDC 2010, Ngmoco's Neil Young took the stage in one of the largest rooms at the conference to talk about what his company had "unlearned" in its time in the App Store. Ngmoco has become a large and polarizing figure in the world of App Store development -- after starting out with a big investment from the iFund, it's moved quickly to become one of the biggest iPhone-only developers, and after starting out with a few premium titles like the very successful Rolando, have recently made waves with its "freemium" business model. Young talked about the company's history so far, and went in-depth on Ngmoco's plan for ruling the App Store and why he believes it's the "most significant shift and opportunity for [game developers] since the birth of this business." We've summarized Young's long address in this post. It was pretty incredible -- not only did Young lay out his idea of a clear plan for building and developing a large portfolio of very profitable App Store titles "at scale" (the company plans to release twenty new freemium products on the iPhone in the near future, as well as six titles on the iPad), but he made it very clear that he fervently believes that freemium and the model he's structured is the future of the video game business.
