Hi,

At long last, we are very excited to announce the launch of the MochiSocial API!

MochiSocial has been in beta for some time, but is now readily available as another tool in your Mochi Media toolkit. The purpose of this new product is for you to incentivize game play through social interactions. This is a great opportunity to grow your game and your brand virally as well as create better experiences for your players!

Key Highlights Of MochiSocial Include:

  • Players can send invites to play your game to THEIR friends on THEIR social networks. A key advantage to MochiSocial here is that this single API supports 4 different social networks! (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and MochiGames). These invites result in higher virality of your game and penetration into networks you might not have been previously able to get into.

KingdomsAtWar_invite

  • Players can post their game play to their various social streams, such as Twitter and Facebook (“I just played X game” with a link back to that game)

Post To Stream

  • Players can send “Gifts” to their friends as an incentive to join them in playing your game (and can be rewarded for doing so). Castle Wars 2 is a good example of this, where you can send a “Gift” (invite your friends to play the game) and you each receive 100 “keys”

Screen shot 2010-08-03 at 11.47.26 AM

  • Virality- players can post their achievements across their various social graphs, exposing your game to their networks

Screen shot 2010-08-03 at 11.32.12 AMScreen shot 2010-08-03 at 11.29.47 AM

  • Developers can now communicate directly with their players in-game!

Direct Messages From Developer

  • Developers will see “Social Data” show up on your dashboard as metrics that you can follow in your dev accounts.  You won’t be able to access information from other networks (like Facebook or Twitter), but you WILL have access to the data generated while they are playing your game. For example, you will be able to see how many “Gifts” were sent from your game, how many “Fans” you have or how many “Messages” have been posted in your stream.

Some Numbers From The Beta

  • Total Messages Sent (aggregate of: Invites, Stream Posts, Leaderboard Posts & Gifts Sent): 472,518
  • Total Gifts sent: 663
  • Total Gifts awarded: 2,340

So, what does it all mean?  What it means to us is that it works.  There are quite a few factors that go into “why a number is what it is”, and there is always the variable of how MochiSocial is implemented in the game.  That said, one number that is quite interesting is the ratio between “Total Gifts Sent” and “Total Gifts Awarded”.  2,340 gifts were awarded vs. 663 sent.  Even if you factor in the award given to the initiator for sending the gift, it is almost a 2:1 ratio in awards given.  What this means: gifts are posted to social networks where anyone can pick them up and come to the game.  In this case, the average return for every gift sent has been 2 new players.

Remember:

The key values to socializing your games are the ability to go “viral” (the spreading of your game by your players) and getting your players to play with their friends vs playing alone. People who play together, stay (in your game) together.

Other good case studies on how to use MochiSocial include Crazy Go Nuts 2, Bloons Tower Defense 4, Jade Monkey Social, Kingdoms At War.

Bloons Social Example