Backyard monsters weapons4/11/2023 ![]() ![]() Consequently, the company dedicated itself to making traditional games for social and mobile platforms, with follow-ups like Dragons of Atlantis, Global Warfare, and Glory of Rome. In 2009 its strategy game Kingdoms of Camelot become one of the first Facebook games to attract a dedicated following and earn genuine praise from critics typically dismissive of social games. ![]() with the goal of producing social games. Kabam formed in 2006 - then called Watercooler Inc. "Seven out of 10 social game players are also playing games on a console, and that number rises to 82 percent among what we call 'Hardcore Social Gamers.' 55 percent of Kabam players report that they have decreased their amount of playing time on other platforms as a result of their social game playing." "Research data reveals a high degree of overlap already exists" between social gamers and console players, Ted Simon, vice president of brand marketing for Kabam, said. ![]() Its staff has grown over to over 450 employees. Kabam, one of its biggest competitors, is another company that has enjoyed success creating traditional competitive games for social networks and browser play. Following the success of Backyard Monsters and another RTS hit, Battle Pirates, the company has grown to 60 people. We saw it as a wide-open space."Ī year and half ago, Kixeye had three employees. "After the success of we thought the idea that gamers on Facebook don't want real games was more about developers - who were spending more time copying one another with variations of farming games or text-based RPGs like Mafia Wars. "It had cute monsters, but there was lots of blood, and we had real strategic elements in the game that really weren't on Facebook before that." "It was a little bit softer, because it was our first go-round," Harbin said. Then, in early 2010, after realizing the market was flooded, the company decided to refocus on traditional, highly-competitive games for Facebook and other Flash platforms.īackyard Monsters was the company's first game after the relaunch - a social twist on real-time strategy games where players fortify their own backyards while others amass armies to attack them. Kixeye, formerly Casual Collective, tried its hand at updates of Desktop Tower Defense and Minions, and spent three years trying to build itself into a quick and accessible game hub. So we thought there was an opportunity to do something a little more core on Facebook. My favorite genres are real-time strategy games, role playing games, and MMOs, and there was nothing like that on Facebook at the time. I've been playing games since the early '80s. I have an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3, a Wii, and a souped-up PC. "I definitely consider myself an avid gamer. "Gamers judge games, they don't judge platforms," Will Harbin, CEO of Kixeye, told Gamasutra. This is Not a Future State, This is Happening Today These companies are changing the industry. Likewise, big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, and 2K are beginning to experiment with offshoots of their biggest franchises. Where fans see stereotype, a growing number of developers see a distribution platform with an increasingly powerful set of development tools, capable of reaching a wide audience with the least number of obstacles in the way.Ĭompanies like Kabam, Kixeye, and Free Range are all making serious games for browsers and social networks. Is that over? Whether fans stuck in the mud of their own rhetoric like it or not, the industry is churning forward, and the barriers between these seemingly contradictory categories are being broken apart. We can also use categories to diminish other games, fencing them off from any possible seriousness because they are "social" or "casual." (Can anyone think of hardcore games like StarCraft and Counter-Strike as not social?) Over the last several years new and untrustworthy titans have emerged from these instantly dismissible categories: FarmVille, CityVille, Cow Clicker, Angry Birds, Bejeweled Blitz, Fruit Ninja - anything that can run on Facebook or attract tens of millions of players without the use of an assault rifle or pylon is not to be trusted by "hardcore gamers." ![]()
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