![]() ![]() That’s what will matter to fans of earlier Kabam games such as Global Warfare, Glory of Rome, Dragons of Atlantis and Kingdoms of Camelot. No hardcore gamer is going to get overly excited about how the isometric two-dimensional scenes look.īut the graphics in Edgeworld use a brand new game engine and are a cut above Kabam’s earlier titles. The graphics of the game are far behind what is possible on high-end PCs, which can display titles such as StarCraft 2 in stunning detail. But this one allows you to drop individual space soldiers into an enemy’s base and watch the combat play out in real-time. Kabam’s previous games are more like empire-building games. It is on the spectrum between more static games like tower defense games and the more graphically rich and fluid real-time strategy games such as StarCraft. James Holloway, head of the Edgeworld team, said in an interview that the game combines real-time tactics and interactive combat. Each game is designed to spur the competitive gusto in each person. Rather (in a talk at the recent Casual Connect game conference), Sheppard said that Kabam focuses on high revenue per user, quality, retention rates, frequent returns, a higher percentage of paying users, high quality customer support, and more transactions per user. Kabam has grown to 425 employees and they’re all working on titles like this one.Īndrew Sheppard, chief product officer at Kabam, says his company doesn’t design for “virality,” or rapidly spreading a game as fast as possible, like other companies have done on Facebook. And it’s also why Kabam raised an astounding $85 million in May, bringing its total funding to $125 million to date. That is why it has grown its following from 7 million in May to 12.9 million today. Redwood City, Calif.-based Kabam has discovered that there are hardcore gamers on Facebook and they are willing to pay much more than usual to beat their friends at social games that are graphically simple but still have a lot of depth as strategy games. We don’t have numbers for sure, but we would hazard a guess that Kabam’s stats on average revenue per user (ARPU) look pretty good compared to Zynga’s, as Zynga relies on getting lots of casual gamers in order to find a small percentage that are willing to pay a little bit of money. And they also buy a lot of stuff, giving Kabam one of the highest average revenues per user in the social game market. 90 percent play six or seven days a week for hours at a time. The thing about Kabam’s users is that they play their games for a long time. It is seemingly primitive games like this one that are making Kabam a credible threat not only to Zynga - which has 265 million users compared to just 12.9 million for Kabam - but also to giant hardcore console game makers such as Activision Blizzard. ![]() Kabam says it has done original work in creating Edgeworld. Rival Facebook game maker Kixeye has accused Kabam of blatantly copying the design of Kixeye’s hit Backyard Monsters, with similarities in game play and objects, with differences only in the genre. The game has just been formally unveiled, but it has already raised a big controversy. This real-time sci-fi game is a step up from Kabam’s earlier titles and it should keep the company on its trajectory of fast growth in the growing market for hardcore games on social networks, which have so far been dominated by more casual games. ![]()
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