• Lead Animator
• Technical Marketing Campaign Manager
• UI Lead

• Game Improvement Specialist
• Localization QA Analyst
• Marketing Manager
• Player Experience Manager
• Product Manager – Bubble Island

• IOS Developer

• Software Engineer

• Business Developer
• Business Intelligence Developer
• Game Artist Malm
• Game Artist Mobile
• Game Developer
• Game Programmer
• Graphic Designer – Vanadisplan
• Graphic Designer – Malm
• IT Technical Recruiter
• Java Developer
• Product Manager
• Senior Systems Developer
• Awesome 3D Artist
• System Administrator
• Tools Programmer

• Backend Engineer
• C++ Game Engineer

• Mobile Games Lead (PM/Design)

• Senior .NET Developer

•  Social Media and Web Specialist

• Social Community Manager

• Integration Engineer
• Senior Mobile Ad Sales Manager
• Mobile Developer Relations Manager

• Director of Monetization

• Social Interaction Designer

• Business Analyst- Digital Games
• Associate Product Manager, Digital Games

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Zynga triggers coastal zombie outbreaks —

Konami bringing Puzzle Chasers to Facebook — Konami announced that it’s working on an original puzzle game, Puzzle Chasers, to launch on Facebook this summer. The game is billed as a family-oriented jigsaw puzzle game where players have to complete pictures before time runs out.

Spartacus: The Game comes to China [Launch] — Large Animal Games and Starz Digital Media are breaking into the Chinese social game scene, launching Spartacus: The Game on social network Sina Weibo. Both Spartacus: The Game and its sequel Sparatcus: Vengeance are still active on Facebook under the 6waves banner.

Zynga’s stock closes week at new low — Zynga’s stock still hasn’t recovered from the beating it took during Facebook’s IPO last week. Although it hasn’t dropped so dramatically to halt trading, shares the stock closed down from its opening price four out of five days this week. Shares are currently sitting at $6.61.

RocketFrog combines Facebook casino games and real-world prizes [Launch] — Newly-launched Facebook casino game RocketFrog is aiming to redefine social gambling by offering real real prizes (but it isn’t breaking any laws by involving actual money). The company, which has MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson on its advisory board, is instead offering prizes like movie tickets, music and gift certificates for food.

Grand Cru snags Wooga’s former head of marketing — Finnish developer Grand Cru just brought on Thorbjorn Warin as the studio’s new marketing and business development director. Thorbjorn was originally Wooga’s head of marketing and the company became one of the top three Facebook game developers during his tenure. He will now assist in the development and launch of Grand Cru’s debut game The Supernauts.

Madagascar 3 coming to Draw Something —  Draw Something’s about to get an influx of content tied to Dreamworks Animation’s upcoming film Madagascar 3. The movie hits theaters in two weeks, and Draw Something will promote the game with special terms and video clips. This is the third time Dreamworks has advertised in a Zynga game; the previous times Zynga promoted Megamind and Kung Fu Panda 2 in its titles.

Catharina Mallet joins King.com — Catharina Mallet left EA Playfish last week and sources claimed she already had a new job lined up.  The rumors were apparently true, as King.com announced Mallet is now heading up the company’s new development studio in London. The new studio is expected to be staffed by over 40 people.

Part of the social network’s continued effort to improve game discovery, the new “feed gaming“ feature lets developers create a short demo of their game that users can play when they see it mentioned in News Feed and Timeline. These samples don’t need players to authorize an app and don’t collect user data, creating a risk-free environment for users to test a game before they commit and give a game access to their personal information. Once the sample is complete, users are prompted to play the full version of the game.

Feed gaming is already being used by King.com’s Bubble Witch Saga, Rovio’s Angry Birds Friends, Tetris Online’s Tetris Battle and Idle Games’s Idle Worship. Bubble Witch Saga offers players a level to play and then rewards them with extra soft currency if they install the game. Angry Birds Friends challenges users to beat a level score posted by a friend. Idle Worship provides a mini-game designed to generate interest in the full game. Tetris Battle, meanwhile, allows users to publish video replays of two-player battles.

Demos are a reliable tactic within other sectors of the game industry, often released before a title’s launch in order to build word-of-mouth hype. Larger games have even had demos come to Facebook, like Majesco’s Cooking Mama Friends’ Cafe, which used Arkadium Stadium to let users directly play the Flash game from their Facebook walls. Users haven’t been able to play samples of Facebook canvas games before now, though.

Developers can test the effectiveness of different game samples, images and copy in their feed stories. Facebook app insights will now show the number of impressions, clicks and clickthrough rate of each feed game story. See more details in Facebook’s documentation here.

Webkinz is a range of plush animal toys that each carry a unique code. Until now, these codes were only redeemable on the official Webkinz site to play the Webkinz World game that was located there. Now, these codes may also be used in Webkinz Friends on Facebook to bring new characters into the game — though there is no requirement for players to do so, and the game can be played with no problems for free.

Webkinz Friends is a fairly conventional citybuilding game at heart. Players must build housing for their animals, commercial buildings to make money and decorations to increase the community’s “happiness” level. An element of light resource management is included — rather than a generic “goods” supply that is used to power the commercial buildings, specialist resources are required to power particular structures. “Materials,” harvested from trees, are required to build structures. “Food,” harvested from crops, is required to power commercial premises such as bakeries. And “clothing,” harvested from certain plants and trees, is required to power other commercial buildings which do not focus on food. The player is introduced to all of these concepts through a brief tutorial at the beginning of the game, and subsequently through a series of quests. A reasonable level of reading comprehension is required to understand the game, making the title probably inaccessible to younger children.

In a twist on the usual citybuilding formula, players are also able to construct the inside of their pet’s house. As they progress through the levels, a larger variety of furniture is unlocked, allowing players to improve their pet’s home and express themselves through interior design.

The game monetizes through sales of energy and bypassing certain requirements — quests can be skipped and commercial structures can be forced to immediately start producing without having sufficient resources in stock by spending Facebook Credits. It’s also possible to hurry production of crops and income from commercial buildings by spending Facebook Credits. There do not appear to be any premium items for players to purchase, however — everything that it is possible to build in the game is unlockable, though much of it is level-gated. While the game’s monetization may seem quite modest in comparison to some titles, it’s worth bearing in mind that sales of the Webkinz plush toys also provides a source of income for Ganz, which could in turn be used to improve the game.

The game is of a reasonable quality overall but there are a few issues worth taking into consideration when looking at its potential for success. In the short-term, some bugs need to be fixed, the most major of these being that when attempting to purchase something from the in-game store and build it, the game often selects the previously-purchased item rather than the actual one the player clicked on.

Perhaps a slightly bigger concern is the question of exactly who this game is aimed at. Webkinz toys are aimed at young children, but Webkinz Friends is a surprisingly complex game with its resource management features, and a good level of reading skill is required to get the most out of the experience. Children may also become frustrated at how quickly the game’s limited energy resource runs out. It’s also worth noting that Facebook’s lowest age limit is well above the age group these toys are aimed at, meaning most children who want to play will have to either do so on a parent’s account or break Facebook’s terms and conditions to do so. This is a blow to a key part of the Webkinz experience — a feeling of “ownership” over these cute animals. Parents who have payment information on file with Facebook will also need to supervise their children to ensure they don’t end up spending lots of Facebook Credits.

While it’s understandable for Webkinz to want to take advantage of the social game craze, the intended market for the toys themselves means that a game like this is far better off in a more tightly-controlled, child-safe “walled garden” such as that which the official Webkinz site already offers. The business model for the toys and their core demographic is not a good fit for Facebook, and as such this title does not come recommended.

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The incorporation of collectible physical toys into a Facebook game is a good idea that should be explored further, but in this case the toys’ core demographic does not fit well with the social network’s audience.

The titles have significantly larger numbers of daily active users than games listed on the bottom half, so even though gains and losses can be much more dramatic, positioning isn’t as likely to change.

Editor’s Note: Due to a delay, traffic data hasn’t been refreshed for today; traffic numbers are current for May 23.

Here’s what we’ve looked at so far:

• May 10, 2012: No. 25 (Candy Crush Saga) through No. 19 (Empires & Allies)
• May 17, 2012: No. 18 (Bubble Island) through No. 13 (The Sims Social)

12. Bejeweled Blitz

11. Zynga Slingo

10. Tetris Battle

9. Diamond Dash

8. FarmVille

7. Hidden Chronicles

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

FiveOneNine Games

• John Sherman, Senior Manager, Performance Marketing — This week’s highest profile hire belongs to FiveOneNine Games. Sherman was previously the online marketing manager at Performance Bicycle.

Akamon Entertainment

• Màrius Duch, Administrador de sistemas — Duch comes from Grupo ITnet, where he was also a systems administrator.

Cie Games

• Bryan Papa, QA Tester — Papa was previously a Nintendo Compliance Tester at 2K Games.

EA PopCap

• Robert Lester, Software Engineer — Lester moves up from an internship at EA PopCap’s studio in Ireland.

Kixeye

• Prasant Moorthy, Product Manager — Moorthy joins Kixeye’s Australian team. He is also the managing director at Mana Bar.
• Alex Erlandson, Flash Engineer — Erlandson was a software engineer at 6waves Lolapps.
• Omid Farivar, User Experience Analyst — Farivar was a web developer at MPublishing.

Peak Games

• Sina Mirgun, Product Specialist — Mirgun was previously an intern at Microsoft Turkey.

Wooga

• Tobias Frierson, Country Manager – English Speaking – Frierson comes from Kabam, where he was a player experience associate.

Zynga

• Janine L. Sugawara, Talent Coordinator — Sugawara was previously a talent coordinator in the film industry.
• Erin Martin, Community Specialist — Martin was an English teacher at Denver Public Schools before joining Zynga.
• Julian Jauregui,  Animator — Jauregui moves up from an internship at at Glu Mobile.
• Peter Knudson, Product Management Intern — Knudson currently attends Harvard.
• Pierre Djian, Product Manager — Djian was the manager of gaming products at IQ Engines.

In Outernauts, players are cast as members of the titular agency, which is tasked with capturing and training alien monsters (“Beasts”) to help them make the galaxy a better place. As the adventure unfolds, players fight evil corporations and space pirates, help out local populations and investigate a mysterious group known as “The Ancients.”

When the game starts, players have to choose one Beast to accompany their Outernaut on his or her journey across the stars. There are five different Beasts to choose from at the beginning of the adventure, and they can’t be captured later in the game. EA and Insomniac are planning to give players the ability to add these creatures to their menagerie, though, by selling real-world plush versions of each starting Beast. Each plush toy will come with a code that will unlock the associated Beast in Outernauts. Every Beast is based around a specific type of element — like ice, lightning and plants — which are stronger and weaker against other elements. At launch, there will be 12 different element types available.

Gameplay is divided between adventure exploration, puzzles, turn-based monster battles and base-building. Players can visit 30 different worlds and explore world maps by clicking on areas of ground that their Outernaut moves to. Each map contains a story mission and side quests. During our time with the game, we visited a world where we had to prevent space pirates from kidnapping a young girl, which meant defeating the pirates in battle. The game will also require players to do some mild puzzle-solving; in the demo, this involved flipping switches to unlock doors and move platforms.

While players can trigger battles by clicking on enemies, roaming Beasts will also attack players if they come too close while exploring the map. In combat phases, players control whatever beasts they have in their party. Each turn, players choose what their Beasts will do, which is usually limited to attacking or using passive abilities that provide boosts to friendly characters. The battles themselves can be one-on-one, two-on-two or three-on-three affairs. Combat ends when all the Beasts on one side have been knocked out. Every Beast that survives a battle receives experience and will evolve into a more powerful form when it hits predetermined levels. Players acquire new Beasts with special capture items in battles, which are more effective when an enemy Beast has low health.

Every player has a home planet they automatically return to between missions. Home planets serve as bases they visit at any time — even when they’re on an active mission — by clicking a button on their menu. Once they’re finished visiting the home planet, players can return to the mission where they left off. The home planet allows players to construct building that aid them on their adventures, like an armory that allows them to craft weapons or feeding stations that let them own more Beasts. The planets can be expanded  when players have accrued enough raw materials to add a section of land, and new territory unlocks new building types.

Outernauts features both cooperative and competitive social mechanics. Players can visit their friends’ home planets and assist on chores like tending items and helping wounded Beasts recuperate. An asynchronous co-op mode also allows players to play through world maps together. Developer Rowan Belden-Clifford describes this mode as a kind of cooperative leapfrog, where the idea is that one player will move ahead of the other, clearing out enemies and obstacles until they run out of energy, and then their friend will see the progress that’s been made the next time they log in to the game. There’s also a player-versus-player battle system where friends can challenge one another.

The game monetizes through the sale of hard currency, gems, which can be used for things like speeding up construction time, unlocking extra ability slots for Beasts and bypassing quest requirements. When asked about whether or not certain items in the game will be only available for hard currency, Belden-Clifford tells us players can acquire any item in the game without needing to spend money.

EA and Insomniac’s entry into the monster battle genre is both bold and risky, as the genre only has one clear leader — Monster Galaxy — and its success hasn’t seen a follow up in the year since the game’s release. Gaia Online’s monster game peaked in June 2011 with almost 20 million monthly active users and 1.5 million daily active users and is now down to around 1 million MAU and 90,000 DAU. Second after it is Broken Bulb Studios’ Miscrit series, which still performs steadily despite never having achieved the same level of popularity. Miscrits of Volcano Island peaked in April with 1.3 million MAU and 170,000 DAU, while original game Miscrits of Sunfall Kingdom peaked in September 2011 with 2 million MAU and 354,000 DAU. Meanwhile, Zynga does have a monster game of its own on iOS in Japan — Montopia — but the developer hasn’t announced any plans to bring the game to Facebook or North America. There is also a vague notion that someday Nintendo will bring its famed Pokémon monster collection game to mobile and social, potentially trumping all other games in the genre with brand recognition.

As for smaller games in the monster genre, we’ve seen most flounder soon after they launched. DJ Arts Games’s Mystic Guardians launched in February with 160,000 MAU and 10,000 DAU and now sits at 20,000 MAU and 2,000 DAU. Sneaky Games’s Syfy Monster Island launched in March, peaked soon after with 440,000 MAU and 30,000 DAU, and now holds 140,000 MAU and 6,000 DAU.

Outernauts has a couple of advantages that these games haven’t had — like its own recognizable brand and access to several million players already playing EA’s other social titles. Insomniac Games earned the bulk of its reputation from popular console video game franchises like Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank and Resistance: Fall of Man. Many of the studio’s fans will likely try Outernauts just to see what the developer’s brought to Facebook. And while EA may be struggling to find a followup to The Sims Social’s monstrous hit, it is still the No. 4 game developer on Facebook with 42 million MAU and 9 million DAU. If Outernauts proves popular, it could be a profitable property, even outside of Facebook via plush toys, a mobile version or other platform releases — and an animated series or movie wouldn’t be out of the question, either.

Outernauts is scheduled to launch on Facebook sometime this summer and Insomniac plans to put out new content for the game approximately every two weeks afterwards.

Clarification: We originally reported the name of the game as The Outernauts. The correct title is Outernauts. We also reported there were “over 20″ planets to explore, but were subsequently told there are 30.

Angry Words follows the conventions of most other Scrabble clones. The game is for two players only, and opponents may be picked randomly, added by username or selected from Facebook friends. Once the game starts, players are given seven letter tiles, each with a score value attached to them. Less commonly-used letters are worth more points, and special “star” tiles may be used to substitute for any letter — though once this letter has been chosen and placed on the board it cannot be changed.

Players take it in turns to lay down a valid word on the 15×15 game board, beginning at the center and working outwards. Scattered around the play area are special spaces which provide bonuses — these either double or triple an individual letter’s score or an entire word’s score. The arrangement of these special tiles is different to that seen in both Scrabble and Zynga’s immensely popular Words With Friends, presumably in an attempt to both distinguish the title from these games and help to counter accusations of being a direct clone of them.

The game features a chat facility allowing players to leave messages for one another, and completing a turn provides players with the options of posting on their opponent’s Timeline and sending a request, though neither of these are obligatory. If the player has a mobile version of the game connected to their Facebook account, they will also be told when it is their turn via push notification, allowing them to pick up a game where they left off on the go.

In terms of gameplay, Angry Words does very little to distinguish itself from Zynga’s Words With Friends and the official Scrabble games on Facebook. Where it does shine, however, is in its multilingual support. Upon starting a new game, players have the option of playing in English, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Brazilian, Dutch or Swedish. This makes the game much more friendly to international players, and also for those wishing to test their skills in a non-native language.

Angry Words is a competent, well put together word game that will likely find most of its success in the non-English speaking markets, since Zynga already dominates the English-speaking Scrabble clone sector. Its cross-platform, asynchronous play works well with few issues — though the game did seem to have some difficulty loading on Safari 5.1.7 on Mac OS X Lion — and it’s quick and easy to get into a game and take your turn.

Angry Words currently has 1,100,000 monthly active users and 380,000 daily active users — though it’s worth noting these figures include mobile players who connect their accounts to Facebook. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Play

A good quality Scrabble clone that caters particularly well to international and multilingual players.

• Business Developer
• Business Intelligence Developer
• Game Artist Malm
• Game Artist Mobile
• Game Developer
• Game Programmer
• Graphic Designer – Vanadisplan
• Graphic Designer – Malm
• IT Technical Recruiter
• Java Developer
• Product Manager
• Senior Systems Developer
• Awesome 3D Artist
• System Administrator
• Tools Programmer

• Lead Animator
• Technical Marketing Campaign Manager
• UI Lead

• Game Improvement Specialist
• Localization QA Analyst
• Marketing Manager
• Player Experience Manager
• Product Manager – Bubble Island

• Software Engineer

• Backend Engineer
• C++ Game Engineer

• IOS Developer

• Mobile Games Lead (PM/Design)

• Senior .NET Developer

•  Social Media and Web Specialist

• Social Community Manager

• Integration Engineer
• Senior Mobile Ad Sales Manager
• Mobile Developer Relations Manager

• Director of Monetization

• Social Interaction Designer

• Business Analyst- Digital Games
• Associate Product Manager, Digital Games

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

GameMaker: Studio is the next version of 2D drag-and-drop game development tool GameMaker. Originally created in 1999 by professor Mark Overmars, YoYo Games acquired the license in 2007. This new version of the program provides developers with the options to export native titles to most platforms, including HTML 5, Facebook canvas (as seen with YoYo’s own Grave Maker), Android, iOS, Windows and OS X.

German developer Handy Games has partnered with YoYo Games to use GameMaker: Studio to create a new, as-yet-unnannounced role-playing game, but YoYo Games CEO Sandy Duncan tells us the tool is primarily intended for small companies working on a budget. According to Duncan, creating a cross-platform casual game with GameMaker: Studio can cost less than $10,000 in total. A more labor intensive social game can be done for under $50,000.

In the low-end of the game development market GameMaker: Studio could prove to be serious competition for companies like Unity Technologies and GameSalad. Priced under a modular model the base price for GameMaker: Studio is $99, which allows developers to export to Windows and OS X. HTML 5 is another $99, while iOS and Android cost $199 each. All-in, the entire platform is a one-time purchase of less than $600, compared to $1500 for Unity Pro and GameSalad Pro’s yearly subscription rate of $299.