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Web Game Site Kongregate Goes Social With Dream World
by Eric Caoili [PC, Indie, Casual]
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February 5, 2010
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Along with announcing new alternative payment partners, indie game portal Kongregate revealed that Playmage's Dream World, the first social game to use its Konduit Application Platform for community/monetization features, attracted over one million gameplays.
The Konduit Application Platform enables developer to tap into Kongregate features like leaderboards, virtual goods, profiles, and chat from their own backend using Javascript, Actionscript, or REST APIs.
It's a similar setup to what social game developers have used on other platforms like Facebook; Kongregate believes that offering the same architecture helps establish itself as an alternative to casual titles on social networks, or as a social site for core gamers.
Just two weeks after Playmage ported Dream World from Facebook to Kongregate -- the developer integrated Konduit into the title in less than one week -- the social RPG received more than one million gameplays with an effective CPM (revenue per thousand plays) of $20 and an ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) of $26.
Kongregate attributed the game's success to its integration of the platform's achievements system to pull in hundreds of thousands of players looking to earn badges.
They company also revealed several new payment method partners from the social gaming market: mobile payments provider Zong, offer-based ad network Offerpal, and PlaySpan's prepaid card Ultimate Game Card. Kongregate also plans to to add European partners later this month like prepaid card PaySafe and other payment options through PayByCash.
Based in San Francisco and founded in 2006, Kongregate receives more than one million game plays a day and adds around one thousand new titles to its portal each month. The site enjoys an audience of more than eight million unique users worldwide, 85 percent of which are young males. While its games are free to play, many premium titles allow players to purchase virtual goods with real world money through its microtransaction platform Kongregate Kreds.
"Free-to-play web MMOs and strategy games are a rapidly growing $500 million market, and yet the largest, most popular social networks are unable to address the needs of this large and important demographic of hardcore players – 13 to 34," says Kongregate CEO and co-founder Jim Greer.
"These games tend to be more complex and require a higher level of skill to play them, and existing social platforms are simply unsuitable for the more sophisticated, hardcore gaming experiences," he continues. "Konduit brings together our community of millions of players with the architecture necessary to deliver the robust social features that benefit both the developer and player – Dream World exemplifies this."
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