Providing players of games with external rewards has become a prosperous business in recent years, and companies Kiip and Raptr have emerged as the frontrunners of the concept. As I learned over the course of a panel featuring Brian Wong (Kiip) and Dennis Fong (Raptr), they tend to approach the model in very different ways.
It may be sitting behind CityVille and FarmVille on the active user charts, but amongst users of the gaming social network Raptr The Sims Social is the most played social game of the year.
The Sims Social has been one of the few games on Facebook to compete with Zynga's dominance on the platform. Currrently, it sits just behind CityVillewith the second largest playerbase on Facebook, with a current player base of more than 65 million monthly active users. And according to a new report from gaming social network Raptr, many of those players came at the expense of Zynga games and other titles in The Sims series.
Gaming social network Raptr has released a study that shows just how hardcore Zynga gamers can be. Based on the report, gamers who play the likes of CityVille and Adventure World play online almost as much as those who play Halo.
When Raptrrecently announced an additional round of funding for a total of $27 million, I was impressed and puzzled at the same time. On the one hand, $27 million is nothing to sneeze about. On the other hand, to only boast of 8 million users (that's not active, mind you) with all that funding, is good spin but is actually sad. What is Raptr working on to justify all this funding, aside for the fact that founder Dennis "Thrash" Fong sure could play a mean game of Quake back in the day? Part of the answer was revealed today. Raptr has re-launched its web site as a social news platform. A mash-up of Digg, Facebook, and Xfire for games, the new Raptr site is very well-designed.