About    Team    Business   Press   Partner   Contact Us


  • Battle Stations Among Top 5 Nominees For Best Facebook Game and Facebook App in Mashable Open Web Awards

    Nov
    28
    posted by Mohan Belani on Saturday, November 28, 2009 at 7:24pm Categories: Blog

    battle stations small logoUPDATE: We are receiving information that Battle Stations and Fish Wrangler have been removed from this list. Nothing specific confirmed yet, will update as soon as we hear something.

    UPDATE 2: Check out this link: http://bit.ly/8wq0NC (thanks to @winstonyw). Could be the reason why BS was disqualified.

    Battle Stations, the locally Singapore made MMORPG on Facebook, has been steadily growing over the last few years. Earlier this year, we reported how Battle Stations alone was contributing USD$40,000 in revenue to Tyler Projects (parent company of Battle Stations), while growing it’s average monthly users by about 26%. I just checked today and their monthly active users, as of now, stands at approximately 215,000 users, way above what we reported in early Feb. They have practically tripled their user base in the last 9 – 10 months.

    It is interesting to note that while this number looks somewhat impressive on the surface, it is actually nowhere close to the user base of top Facebook games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars, which usually stands in the tens of millions. How the heck then, did a game with such a measly number of users as compared to the big boys, make it to the top 5 nominees for the Best Facebook Game and Facebook App? Leonard Lin, co-founder of Tyler Projects, sums it up with one word, Community!

    Community
    Leonard mentioned how the big dogs were not getting the support you would usually expect them to get for a large awards event like this. In fact, it was the community that voted Battle Stations into this awards in the first place, not the internal Tyler Projects staff. Leonard also stressed that he usually does not pay much attention to stuff like this, but the community got it started and that got him to take notice. In all logic, it would automatically be assumed that an app with millions of users, would automatically get a mass amount of support and votes. However, we have clearly seen here that this isn’t the case. One of the reasons for this could be that the other social gaming companies have focused primarily on monetization and growth, while Tyler Projects have focused mostly on building a great community behind Battle Stations. And that bet has definitely paid off for them. Just for comparison sake, I am listing the top 5 nominees together with their user bases.

    Top 5 list for Best Facebook Game :
    Battle Stations (approx 215k users)
    Pet Society (approx 22M users)
    Fish Wrangler (approx 640k users)
    Mousehunt (approx 420k users)
    Ghost Trappers (approx 180k users)

    Top 5 list for Best Facebook App :
    Battle Stations (approx 215k users)
    Pet Society (approx 22M users)
    Fish Wrangler (approx 640k users)
    Mousehunt (approx 420k users)
    Farmville (approx 68M users)

    Quite apparently from the list above, it’s clear that more users does not equate to a better community which does not equate to more votes (I’m discounting any possibility of foul play or dirty tactics here, just purely community voting). Only 2 of the 6 games above have users in the millions, with Battle Stations having the 2nd lowest numbers.

    If you are keen on voting to help them Battle Stations, or any other apps listed above for the matter, head to Mashable’s Open Web Award page and start voting!


6 Responses to “Battle Stations Among Top 5 Nominees For Best Facebook Game and Facebook App in Mashable Open Web Awards”


Leave Your Comment




Events
top