You might find this suprising, but the top social gaming companies on the iPhone are not the same ones you know of from Facebook and MySpace. Zynga, despite $54.2M in funding, has hardly made a dent on the iPhone. Neither has Playfish, which was recently bought for $300M. Playdom hasn’t done squat, either. Although “the big three” of social gaming are great at online games, they aren’t doing too well on the iPhone. For example, Zynga’s Mafia Wars game hardly hit the top 25 throughout its time on the App Store.
One company that is cleaning up on the App Store is Playmesh, a small startup with only 5 employees (4 of which are founders). They’ve had 15 apps on the App Store, and just announced that their iFarm iPhone App [iTunes link] has been downloaded 1 million times in just 10 days. Though just a free app, 1 million downloads in such a short time span is extremely impressive. Other than ngmoco’s Eliminate Pro, I haven’t heard of an app that’s done better on the App Store.
But more impressive than iFarm’s success is the business that 23-year-old UCLA graduate and Playmesh CEO Charles Ju has managed to create. They’ve had 6 top 25 games since they started in January. Charles wouldn’t disclose revenue numbers, but he did say that Playmesh has 5 million users and 10 million downloads. They develop exclusively on the iPhone, and are able to generate between $0.50-$1 Average Revenue per User. That’s because they’ve mastered the two primary pain points of the App Store: distribution and monetization. They first launched a social gaming app in January, a game called iMafia [iTunes link], a clone of the popular Mafia Facebook games. Back then, says Charles, distribution was easy as long as you’re game was viral and encouraged organic growth. Slowly, over the next few months, they generated an install base that is extremely powerful. Now, anytime they launch a game, they simply promote it in their existing apps and immediately enter the Top 100. In this way, distribution is easy for them – Charles did note, however, that distribution for new app companies on the App Store is damn near impossible nowadays.
On to monetization. They earn money through two channels: advertising and virtual goods. Games such as Link4 Online [iTunes Link] are powered entirely on advertising, and they have managed to get CPM’s of $1 through Greystripe’s mobile ad network. This strategy seems to be achieving solid results; Link4 Online gets over 1 million plays a day and is #18 on the Top Free list. It’s important to note that they were considering using TapJoy’s platform until “the OfferPal shitstorm” hit, according to Charles. Since then they steered clear of any offer-based revenue.
Playmesh has quietly become one of the biggest social gaming companies on the App Store, despite the fact you may never have heard of them. One of the other major success stories, Storm8, was recently banned from the App Store by Apple due to a scandal regarding illegally-obtained cell phone numbers. Playmesh seems to be right up there with SGN and ngmoco – two of the other major gaming companies for the App Store – but because they’ve got no venture funding and no marketing or PR representatives, they aren’t in the spotlight quite as often. One thing to note is that Playmesh doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of creativity, unlike SGN and ngmoco. Their most successful games are just rip-offs of existing games – in fact, many of their games use the same back-end but are simply re-skinned and re-purposed under different names.
Regardless, Playmesh seems to be a great Silicon Valley success story; they’ve hit two hot trends at just the right time: social games and the iPhone App Store. They aren’t looking for funding (Charles says they don’t need it), and are currently open to merger and acquisition offers.
Since when is taking other people’s ideas the formula fora “a great Silicon Valley success story?” They basically copied every single thing out of FarmVille to create iFarm.
Umm, you’ve never heard of Microsoft then?
And FarmVille is a 100% copy of farm land.
Obviously, the fact that they take ideas from others is not ideal – but social gaming is all about execution. They all steal each other’s games. (And of course, so do tons and tons of other great companies). The reason why they’re a great story is because they’ve beaten out the extremely established well-funded social gaming behemoths by developing execution expertise on the iPhone. They are 5 employees and completely un-funded; I’d call that impressive.
Since Zynga got rich, bitch.
Sorry, I just had to rhyme that. But it’s true.
$1 per user x 10 million users = _______
holy crap.
Actually $0.5 – $1.00 per user (probably inflated). So let’s say $0.75.
$0.75 x 10M x 0.70 (30% apple tax) = $5.25 million
Divide by 5 people, then deduct costs and taxes, comes to about $500k / person, about the yearly net pay of a mid-level google employee.
but all of the founders are 23. and if their business is growing, then…
But all of the founders are around 23. and if their business is growing, then…
Half a million dollars a year net income each? I’m sure the average income is considerably less than that, so if what they do is simply ripping off what someone else has already done then why doesn’t everyone do the same and reap the same income?
Many are succeeding at it. It is fairly difficult to code the right thing at the right time, though. Most people choose the steady job over a slim chance at real success.
Cut that in half. The article says Playmesh has 5 million users and 10 million downloads.
It sounds like they just take the most popular online games and duplicate them for the iPhone App Store. iMafia and iFarm – come on, aren’t they just Mafia Wars and Farmville rehashed? This is the kind of “innovation” you think Silicon Valley needs to indulge in? At least bring something new to the table in copy-cat releases, which is generally how successful console games are done.
Why are people so stuck on ‘innovation’? The point is to make money, you do that by fulfilling a need. If the need is there and you can cover it easily with tested and true methods, what’s the point of innovating?
Oh man, yet another round wheel? It’s only been a few thousand years, /bored!
“$0.50-$1 Average Revenue per User” WOW very impressive!!!
I am calling BS, they are not in the top grossing list anywhere.
If they would doing those numbers they would be in the top ten of top grossing.
That’s not how it works. As mentioned above, Playmesh makes money through advertising and selling virtual goods. Neither of these occur through the App Store infrastructure, so their revenues are not being tracked through the traditional “Top Grossing” list.
Their virtual goods are somewhat tracked through the fact that they sell apps with (for example) “50 Playmesh Points” – however, they offer so many varieties, that it would never show up on Apple’s lists. Apple’s lists don’t aggregate multiple iterations of the same app into one.
This may also explain why Apple hasn’t (to my knowledge) featured them a whole lot, since Apple tends to (understandably) prefer apps that bring in revenue for Apple.
Rip offs, deffinitely. However the fact that they managed to become so successfull with no funding and with only 5 people is quite impressive.
They’re doing well because the owners of the original games did a bad job creating and marketing the iPhone versions of their own games. If they were a “complete” rip-off then Farmville would win because of its marketing clout.
Likewise, Hasbro should be walking away with the best Connect 4 and Boggle games, but instead they are creating mediocre versions of their branded games while indie game developers give them strong competition with much better versions.
Very few computer games are completely original – the industry is all about taking ideas and expanding on them. Unless the game is patented, other game developers have every right to create so-called “rip-offs”.
I will never play another PlayMesh game again in my life after the fiasco which was iMafia (and iRace, iVampire, iRace Miami, iMafia NYC, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.)
“I haven’t heard of an app that’s done better on the App Store.”
Well, iSteam had more than 1 million downloads in 7 days :)
http://isteam.co.uk/2009/01/07/isteam-dominates-hits-1-million-downloads-in-its-first-week/
I think he meant “game.”
“but because they’ve got no venture funding and no marketing or PR representatives, they aren’t in the spotlight quite as often”
Hear, hear. Let’s rephrase this:
“but because they have no VCs to call in favors at the media outlets or pay TechCrunch for articles, and they don’t waste their money on overpriced PR reps, they aren’t in the spotlight as often (however, users don’t give a crap how many times you get mentioned on TechCrunch, as evidenced by how successful they are)”
I have a iPhone. I would like to have more iPhone games.
I am interested to have more iPhone games. please give me the links.
just a test for the google slap:
http://diekirscheaufdersahne.blogspot.com/
They did create a wonderful game that they set up no protection from hackers, no customer service for those that spend money on their apps and created out of laziness a banding system for their players. I truly hope apple does not allow their “premium” apps to come out. If Playmess can not even manage their games now with paying customers already, what makes you think that they will be able to do any better with those? Besides, all their games are the same game with different pictures. That really creative. They brag that they only have five employees, if they can not respond to same email sent over 500 times, what makes you think that they’ll help you with anything. They hide in lies. Read their tweets, JOKE. Google their name and all you get is bad reviews and customers just wanting a response on an email or question. If you look at their own reviews and comments, you’d think they were the best thing since Jesus himself.