Editor’s Note: Doug Scott is vice president of marketing and revenue at Japanese mobile-social gaming company DeNA. For a taste of what will be discussed at the “Platform Opportunities for Social Apps” session at Inside Network’s Inside Social Apps conference June 6 to 7, Doug answered a couple questions regarding the prospects of current mobile app platforms.

Inside Mobile Apps: Now that Google I/O just concluded, where do you see the Android platform for mobile development in the future?

Doug Scott: We have found Android to be a great development platform for several years now but the announcements at Google I/O take it to another level. By focusing on features to enhance gameplay and support game developers further, I look at this as a watershed moment for mobile gaming. This will certainly encourage more game developers to embrace Android and will allow developers of platforms such as Mobage to focus on even deeper, richer tools and communities for developers on top of these features. It is a testament to the power of gaming as the most engaging activity on these platforms.

IMA: Is there a difference between the iOS and Android platforms in terms of monetization for DeNA?

Scott: There can be differences between the platforms depending on the product but we have found that it’s possible to monetize extremely well on both Android and iOS. Without question, great businesses can be built on both platforms.

App monetization platform Burstly today announced that it has restructured the company into an end-to-end mobile app development solution for developers. Now Burstly, which was founded in 2009, will be offering its app testing platform TestFlight, app analytics tool FlightPath and app monetization service SkyRocket (formally the Burstly monetization platform) to all developers, not just for some of the largest apps in the world.

“For the first time, we are our opening up our monetization platform to all mobile developers and publishers through the launch of SkyRocket,” said Evan Rifkin, CEO of Burstly, in a statement. “With Burstly, developers now have the option of using a full suite of integrated services which are incredibly powerful when mixed together, or the flexibility to use each service on its own.”

With the opening of its products to all developers, the Santa Monica, Calif.-headquartered company, which is used by some of the top mobile publishers including Electronic Arts, Rovio, Zynga, and more, will be allowing developers to now create custom segments of users in FlightPath and then using those segments to create different monetization experiences in SkyRocket. For example, developers can choose to not display ads to valuable users, or apologize to users which have experience an app crash by giving away virtual currency in a game. Burstly is now becoming a service that can possibly compete on a level with the likes of Tapjoy, PlayHaven, Millennial Media and more.

Before today’s announcement, Burstly was last making news when it opened its TestFlight for Android private beta to all users, and in just 45 days of closed beta, 5,000 developers uploaded 4,500 apps which have seen more than 50,000 downloads. Burstly also recently announced the private beta launch of FlightPath, its mobile analytics service for mobile app developers, featuring real-time data that can be customized and segmented to the developer’s liking.

At a Google I/O session today covering monetization in Google Play, Ibrahim Elbouchikhi, Google Play product manager for commerce and monetization, revealed that in-app revenues increased 700 percent year-over-year from May 2012 to April 2013.

Elbouchikhi also says since launching the ability to monetize through subscriptions a year ago, revenue has doubled each quarter. He notes internet radio service Pandora as a perfect example of a top grossing app which monetizes its users via a subscription model.

Android for tablets is starting to show some growth now, Elbouchikhi reveals. In the past 12 months, Google was seeing a 1.7 times higher purchase rate of apps on tablets compared to apps on smartphones. “The additional cost of optimizing your apps for tablets is well worthwhile,” he says. Additionally, there’s a 2.2 times higher purchase rate on recent platform versions compared to prior ones. “Take advantage of the latest features, whether its Google+ sign-in or all the latest APIs released at I/O this week.” On top of all this growth, average revenue per user (ARPU) is 2.5 times greater year-over-year.

Below is a chart, showing that higher-rated apps in Google Play monetize better:

Google hasn’t been slowing down at all when it comes to adding and optimizing forms of payment. In July 2012, Google introduced the Google Play gift cards at retail. Google also launched promotional campaigns for Google Play credit by partnering with pre-paid phone providers, offering a $50 Google Play credit if a user purchases a particular pre-paid phone, for example. Carrier billing, one of the most lucrative forms of monetization in various parts of the world, is now available to 50 percent of Google Play’s daily active users. Google also optimized the purchase flow, making it more contextual, faster and simpler. According to Elbouchikhi, Google has dropped latency by 35 percent when users make purchases. Looking forward, Elbouchikhi says Google will invest more in expanding Google Play gift cards to more markets as well as carrier billing. (more…)

Real-money gaming is now reality in the U.S. with Skillz, a first-of-its-kind multiplayer tournament platform, which gives players the chance to compete for real money and virtual currency in mobile games of skill. The platform launched today in beta for Android.

“We’re bringing real-money gaming to the U.S. right now, and we’re the first people to do that,” Andrew Paradise, co-founder and CEO of Skillz, tells Inside Mobile Apps.

Skillz enables games of skill to be played in cash tournaments in 36 states — such as California, New York, Texas and more — as well as virtual currency tournaments in any game worldwide. All a mobile developer has to do to enable cash and free multiplayer tournaments is integrate Skillz’s SDK, which can be implemented in as short as an hour to three work days.

Skillz has come out of stealth with 10 developers with 10 games on board, including Gnarly Games with GnarBike Trials, Spooky House Studios with Bubble Explode, Rocketmind with Big Sport Fishing 3D Lite and more. The first batch of titles run the gamut genre-wise, with genres like endless runners, bubble shooters, mini golf and more.

The obvious question to ask is how did Skillz make real-money gaming legal in the U.S.? The easiest answer is that real-money gaming via a skills competition has been legal for years in most states. First, it’s important to define the difference between a skill versus a chance game. On one end of the spectrum is a skill game like chess and on the other end is a chance game like roulette. The legal definition of a skilled game is if a skilled player predominantly beats an unskilled player about 75 percent of the time. Examples of games of skill where a cash competition is legal include chess tournaments, running marathons, golf tournaments, fishing tournaments, esports tournaments for games like StarCraft 2 and Call of Duty, even the arcade game Golden Tee, and more.

“One of the things we created is a way to statistically verify the level of skill versus chance in a game, and so one of the things we do is plug in these virtual currency tournaments into a given game and then we’ll run virtual currency tournaments and gather data,” Paradise says. “Basically, we can look at how often skilled players beat unskilled players and then determine if a game is skill versus chance.” (more…)

Editor’s note: Arcade action game Nimble Quest is the latest offering from Tiny Towers and Pocket Planes developer NimbleBit. Kevin Oke, Lead Designer at both Adrian Crook & Associates, a social-mobile game design consultancy, and PlayRank, a second screen startup, analyzes the stickiness in Nimble Quest. He previously wrote a guest post for Inside Mobile Apps that analyzed engagement in Supercell’s Clash of Clans.

NimbleBit, creators of Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes, released their latest title the aptly named Nimble Quest at the end of March. While it’s a fun game, I’ve found four key issues described below that I believe limit its stickiness and in turn, its ability to monetize.

According to AppData, after a strong start peaking at No. 6 on the top free iPhone apps chart for the games genre, it has slid to No. 217 as of this writing. Its rank on the top grossing iPhone apps chart for the games genre is at No. 190. These positions may be at least partially attributable to the issues I found.

The Compulsion Loop

This is the biggest barrier for Nimble Quest to overcome. The nature of its compulsion loop makes for a very grind heavy experience that hinders its stickiness.

It’s a rule of thumb in game design that the shorter the loop, the more addictive the experience. By analyzing the loop (diagram above), one can see that unless the player is willing to spend hard currency, they have to restart from the beginning every time. The variable session length nature of the game means that as the player and their friends improve, it takes more and more time for them to challenge their ever-increasing high scores.

Essentially Nimble Quest is banking on players getting invested enough in leaderboard competition to start paying once the grind becomes too much to bear. This is a risky hook to rely on here, as it’s one that is much better suited to games with more of a sense of permanence and ownership, like city builders and strategy games such as Kingdoms of Camelot by Kabam. The reason being that without such permanence, it’s much easier for the player to decide to quit when the grinding gets tiresome.

As in any freemium game leveraging the player’s time for money, if the player tires of the grind too quickly and churns out, they can’t be monetized. However Nimble Quest is especially at risk here because of their compulsion loop. Fixed session lengths with level progression and difficulty determined by a party XP level would have provided more stickiness. (more…)

Game company GungHo Online, the makers of the Japanese juggernaut mobile game Puzzle & Dragons, saw its market cap surge to $9 billion as its stock prices significantly jumped in the past few days.

GungHo’s stock, which is traded on the Osaka Stock Exchange, has more than doubled in price in April, increasing by about 20 percent from yesterday to today. As industry watcher and analyst Dr. Serkan Toto pointed out, the swell in the Japanese company’s stock price could be attributed to the recent launch of the English version of Puzzle & Dragons on Android, and the announcement for a version of the puzzle and role-playing game hybrid for the Nintendo DS handheld system and a new spin-off game called Puzzle & Dragons Challenge for iOS and Android (both titles are Japan only).

GungHo’s market cap is larger than other Japanese gaming powerhouses like GREE and DeNA as well as Zynga, which released its quarterly earnings yesterday.

Puzzle & Dragons, which is said to be generating between $62 million to $86 million per month, was labeled by Distimo as the top grossing app worldwide.

Japanese mobile-social gaming giant DeNA recently gave a talk at the 2013 Game Developers Conference about the success of live events, a gameplay feature, in its Japanese RPG card battler Blood Brothers. DeNA also has live events in other games such as card battle game Marvel: War of Heroes, which just received a new raid boss event featuring Deadpool.

We chatted this week with Chris Plummer, DeNA’s general manager of all North American game studios, about the importance of live events in mobile-social games, especially for monetization.

Inside Mobile Apps: At the 2013 Game Developers Conference, DeNA revealed that events were key to the success of Blood Brothers. Is this a feature that’s as successful in other games from DeNA?

Chris Plummer, DeNA general manager of all North American game studios (pictured right): All of our current first-party games host live events on a regular basis and many of our third-party titles do as well. We feel it’s an essential part of operating a compelling live service that delights and entertains our entire audience of always-connected, mobile players.

IMA: What constitutes an event and what are the different types of events that are in DeNA games?

Plummer: The most important factor for an event is for the experience to be entertaining and engaging. You can’t think about running sales or pushing new content live with a fancy name and expect it to delight or perform like an event. Events must be experienced, played and engaged with deeply. Live events should have their own narrative, features or other elements that define the experience and are unique to the event. Similarly, event rewards should include special items or other valuable things that can only be earned by participating in the event. Limited-time exclusivity is another key element to any good event. ‘Experience it now before it’s over!’ The thought of missing out on a cool experience or rare reward is a powerful concept.

Perhaps the most important ingredient of all is the hourly live operation that happens behind the scenes during each and every DeNA event. Our live event teams work nonstop to ensure that everything stays balanced, exciting and that everyone has a good experience regardless of their level or skill. Live event analysis, tuning and operation is an art form all its own and something DeNA is particularly skilled at. A well-tuned, constantly monitored event will deliver so much more fun and perform significantly better than an event operated without a high degree of care and dedication.

IMA: Other developers, such as a direct competitor like GREE, run events in its mobile-social games as well. What differentiates DeNA’s events in its games versus the competition?

Plummer: What separates DeNA’s events from our competitors really boils down to our focus on delighting customers. A lot of talent, passion and energy goes into crafting and refining every one of our events and it shows in the final experience. After each event, we review all the details and challenge ourselves to make the next event even more fun. In this way, our events are always more entertaining, more rewarding and more fun for players. Try them and you’ll see.

IMA: What effect do events have on the monetization of a game?

Plummer: The way we run events is the single most important factor influencing the monetization in our games. These are always-on, live games and important live services for our players. We operate them with that level of importance in order to unlock their full potential.

IMA: What makes an event success? Are you measuring by an increase in retention, average revenue per user, etc.?

Plummer: Ultimately, an event is a success if it delights our players and they eagerly anticipate the next event. Everything else falls into place if players are happy and having a fantastic time. By focusing on our customers, other benefits like increased engagement and monetization come naturally.

IMA: What’s the next evolution for the events gameplay feature in DeNA games in the future, such as raid boss events in the upcoming first-person shooter The Drowning?

Plummer: Events differ by game since each game has its own unique features, content and driving parameters. As such, new event types evolve based on the unique attributes of each game. You may see some similar event types in our games, like our very successful Raid Boss framework, but you will also see new and surprising event types unfolding as new game systems are released or existing games continue to grow.

NARR8 gains monetization and auto play features – Motion comics app NARR8 for iPad (review) added a virtual currency called NARRs tokens, which can be used to unlock new episodes from the variety of different content series that are available. Users can acquire NARRs by just using the app as well as by purchasing the currency with real money. NARR8 also added a auto play feature for its motion comic series, which lets users continuously stream content with a one tap. In the future, NARR8 plans to turn its app into a platform, allowing third-party publishers the ability to publish and sell their content through NARR8.

Tapjoy partners with Popcornflix, launches freemium movie streaming app PopcornflixGold – Mobile advertising and publishing platform Tapjoy partnered with movie streaming service Popcornflix to launch a new mobile app for Android, named PopcornflixGold, that lets users watch movies for free on their mobile devices by engaging with ads. Similarly to a monetization model seen in mobile games, the app allows users to match movies by earning a virtual currency called FlixPoints, which can be earned by interacting with ads from the Tapjoy Marketplace.

Playnomics adds behavioral targeted push messaging feature to its PlayRM platform – Predictive analytics company Playnomics added a new behavioral targeted push messaging feature for mobile games to its PlayRM platform. This new feature may increase user engagement for developers by sending targeted, real-time messages to individual players based on in-game behaviors.

Gameloft launches Dungeon Hunter 4 for Android – French mobile game developer Gameloft launched dungeon crawler Dungeon Hunter 4 for Android this week. Click here for our review of the iOS version of the game.

Former Zynga Boston employee raises $2.25M for new game studio Proletariat – Seth Sivak, a former lead designer from the defunct Zynga Boston office, raised $2.25 million for his new game studio Proletariat. The raised amount in equity funding appeared in an SEC filing. Proletariat’s first release came back in March, with word game Letter Rush for iOS.

Appolicious launches educational app discovery service appoLearning – App discovery service Appolicious launched appoLearning earlier this week, which is a new service geared toward helping parents, teachers and others find the best educational apps for children.

Full-service Chinese mobile games publisher Yodo1 revealed a social games platform it plans to launch in Western markets. The platform, titled Kryptanium, allows developers to add social and cross-promotional features into every game, including single-player games, with an API.

The Kryptanium platform emerged naturally out of Yodo1’s localization and publishing business, helping Western developers monetize their games in China. In Western markets, social networks like Twitter and Facebook are invaluable tools to developers for marketing their games, and can, in the best cases, have a viral affect. But this is much harder to achieve in China where Google, Twitter and Facebook are blocked.

Kryptanium aims to solve this problem by integrating with the popular alternatives to Facebook in China (Sina Weibo, QQ and Tencent Weibo) and pulling them all to one platform which can then cross-promote to a large audience. An added benefit to the platform is that the user can interact with the platform, tap on cross-promotions and download new games all without exiting their current game session. “Never leave the game,” is the guiding philosophy, Yodo1’s vice president and lead on Kryptanium Spencer Liu told us.  “When the developers we work with saw Kryptanium in action, the response was very enthusiastic. They asked us how they can use it, right now and in the U.S.”

Read the rest on our sister site Inside Social Games.

Social-mobile gaming developer Digital Chocolate today launched its first real-money gaming title Slots! Pocket UK for iOS in the U.K.

Powered by real-money gaming platform Betable, Slots! Pocket UK is a slots game that allows U.K. users the option to wager either real money or virtual currency and chips on pulls of the slot machine. Betable first announced its partnership with Digital Chocolate back in November 2012. Digital Chocolate is one of 10 developers so far to partner with Betable for its real-money gaming platform, which is still a private beta program. Betable handles all the real-money aspects of the game on the backend, including compliance, fraud prevention, identity checks, wagering, and gambling results, while Digital Chocolate can focus on the development of the actual game. In order for players to gamble with real money, they must be authenticated with Betable by signing up, depositing money, and more.

“[Betable] helped us leapfrog the whole race into real-money gaming by allowing us to partner with them on their platform, and of course, they have the license in the U.K. to do real-money gaming,” Jason Loia, chief operating officer of Digital Chocolate, told Inside Mobile Apps.

There are about three ways to enter the real-money gaming market. First, an IP-licensing deal like how Zynga partnered with real-money games operator bwin.party, where bwin makes a game that’s Zynga branded. Second, a developer can acquire their own real-money gaming license, but its a very expensive and long process. It costs millions of dollars and takes years to acquire a gambling license. Lastly, a developer can acquire a company that already has a real-money gaming license, but whatever developer that acquires a company with a license would have to restructure because they have to become compliant with whatever country’s government that allows real-money gaming. After analyzing its options, Loia says Digital Chocolate realized it couldn’t enter real-money gaming alone, and it didn’t have deep enough pockets to obtain a gambling license in each country where real-money gaming is legal. With Betable, Digital Chocolate gets to make its own game, control its IP, and have Betable do all the backend real-money gaming legwork, all under a fair revenue share model.

“There’s some bigger companies that are going after the licenses themselves, but for us and the majority of the gaming sector, it makes more sense to partner with experts in that field,” Loia says. “We’re not experts in real-money gaming law — Betable is. We’re experts in making great social games for mobile and web. The partnership makes total sense.”

Slots! Pocket U.K. launches with seven thematically different slot machines, with more to come in the future. Themes in this release include a safari-themed slot machine, an underwater machine, a Wild West machine, and more, all with its own sound, characters and storyline. Each slot machine also features its own mini-game, which can be unlocked depending on the spin of the wheel. When completing mini games, users earn the chance to level up (users have to level up to unlock more slot machines) and win more. Lastly, the combination of potential winning spins increases based on the number of friends a player has.

The game also features an advanced power up system, which rewards users with virtual currency. For example, a player can take a chance and apply a multiplier to their spin, or they can throw an anchor to hold on to a specific reel within the machine, altering the outcome, or make a quake and shake the reel for a winning combination. No matter which power up a player utilizes, they earn bonus points. The real-money slot machines don’t have any of these power ups from the virtual-currency machines as the real-money machines look and feel like a slots machine a user would see in a casino.

Loia says the future for real-money gaming is when regulations open up even further so real-money gaming mechanics could be added to social gaming in general, not just casino games. Digital Chocolate’s portfolio mainly consists of free-to-play social games like social racer Race Track Rivals (review), medieval fighting game Kings and Warlords, city building game Millionaire City and more.

“The more exciting thing about real-money gaming is when you can couple the broad reach of those social games with the massive monetization that real-money gaming brings to the table,” he says. “That’s when it truly explodes and changes gaming forever.”