EVCin

When viral marketing tactics were curtailed by Facebook’s platform and policy updates, the question wasn’t whether developers would take a hit, but how much? And whether those that thrived on aggressive viral tactics would be hurt more than those that didn’t. I look at what appears to be behind those who did well and those that took a major hit.

I hope you all had a great New Year’s Eve celebration. While 2009 saw the amazing growth of social games, looking ahead, I wonder whether 2010 will be the year where:

More complex game mechanics catch on?
Facebook changes continue to take away the institutional learnings from leaders like Zynga, helping to level the playing [...]

Facebook started enforcing a slew of application policies over the last week, forcing game developers to revamp their viral marketing. Here are three of the top changes and how top developers are revamping their viral marketing tactics.

The top games on Facebok are down 11% from their highs this month. While it looks like it might be due to the holidays, the successive declines in the peaks of the latest Zynga releases might suggest the life cycle for social games is changing.

After being fairly quiet since early August’s launch of (Lil) Farm Life, Playdom launched two games in the last two weeks: TikiFarm (a South Pacific themed farm sim) and Wild Ones (an artillery/strategy game with pets – still in alpha).
CrowdStar and Zynga have been greatly accelerating the deployment of games and it’s possible [...]