This is a guest post by James Lema, director of product development for Poptropica.

When we launched Poptropica in 2007, we had spent months doing research into other products. We discovered many of them were following predictable patterns that had become the norm. At the time, virtual worlds were popping up everywhere. We knew we needed to stand out from a growing crowd and made some decisions that were necessary for us to be lean and scale quickly. In this entry, I will detail how we came to some of those decisions.

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When we cover children’s online gaming we focus on games played by the under-12s But with so many children over 12 years-of-age still playing browser-based games it’s about time we posted on this age group too.

The slides below are from a survey of 732 children and highlight that while some children’s games suffer a significant drop-off as kids reach their teens it’s not bad news for all; some games, like Runescape and Lord of the Rings Online attract more users as kids get older.
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In over a decade of designing virtual worlds and mobile games for kids games we’ve had our fair share of mistakes – in 2004 we didn’t believe anyone would ever pay for virtual goods, we were wrong! But we like to think we’ve learned from our mistakes over the years, and because we’re not very good at keeping secrets we’re sharing our five rules for kids’ games.

1. Create fans not addicts

Just because 84 million people played FarmVille at its peak doesn’t mean that the game mechanics are appropriate for children. Facebook games often use the same tactics employed by casinos to keep players coming back time and time again. But ultimately we resent that which we’re addicted to – resentful customers are not a recipe for long term success!
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Designing games for children is difficult. There are a wide spread of skills and abilities, even between narrow ages; a six year old girl is very different to a 10 year old boy. To cater to a range of players we prefer to design economies that reward grinding not just skill – we don’t want only the older, more skilful, players to be able to succeed. Grinding allows anyone (who spends enough time) to do well.

Grinding is a term relating to activity the player does over and over again in order to complete an objective or get to the next level. For example, it could be harvesting gold or completing fetch quests. Admittedly grinding sounds like a negative term, but it doesn’t have to be, grinding activities can be fun too.

Grinding games are monetized in two ways:
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The world of games development is blessed with a very rich lexicon. So, to help the newcomers we have designed this short guide to some of the most common terms we use in the development of our games.

If you want any further help, please get in touch.
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Amongst all the cat pictures and Gangnam Style tributes there’s a wealth of social gaming knowledge on the internet. For over two years we’ve been collating the best social gaming articles and publishing them in our This Week in Social Games (TWISG) newsletter. Read by over 1,000 subscribers.

With the year coming to an end it’s time to highlight the best of the best – the ten most insightful articles based on the percentage of clicks by our readers. From finding out what’s in Zynga’s ‘secret sauce’ to how to get your first 1,000 players, plus a handful of articles on making money by giving stuff away from free, it’s all here.

If that’s not enough, you can also read part one of this blog from back in June and get the twenty best social gaming features of 2012.

If you’re not signed up to TWISG yet, you can do that by clicking here.

So let’s begin with….

1. The secret sauce of social games

Reading this article from The Verge is the perfect way for anyone new to social games to become an instant expert! Featuring contributions from Zynga, Kixeye and Storm8 it looks at everything, such copycats, in-game spending, Whales, trends in game design and much, much more. Even if you think you already know it all, you will still find something new.
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Last year we posted our social gaming glossary – a list of 13 terms and eight benchmarks that everyone working in online games should know. Now we’re adding context to this list by uncovering the key metrics from the biggest games on mobile and online. Want to know the Average Revenue Per User for Habbo? What about GREE’s Customer Acquisition Cost? Then read on.

Average Revenue per Paying User (ARPPU)

Definition: Average Revenue Per Paying User, usually measured each month. In other words, how much money does the average customer spend (most of your players will never spend any money, ARPPU only includes those who spend money). It can be calculated as total monthly revenue divided by total monthly paying users.

Benchmarks:

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For every Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters and Where’s My Water there are plenty of games that will never make it, residing at the bottom of the iTunes chart and buried at the back of the internet. So what can be done to ensure you have a hit on your hand? The answer is counterintuitive, but really quite obvious – don’t build the game until you know kids enjoy playing it!

How can you know if kids want to play your game without building it? You could ask them. But don’t believe what they tell you, kids aren’t game designers and they don’t know how to evaluate the concept. The only way to find out if they like it is to watch them play it. The good news, most games, gameplay loops and characters can be created offline first – be that paper prototypes, short stories, and comics.
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A massive 72% of mobile-gaming kids have played Angry Birds! That’s huge, but, according to the Wall Street Journal, Angry Birds isn’t only one of the biggest IPs in gaming history, it’s also helping to rescue the plush toys market! This is one of the reasons we decided to research the apps-to-toys sector for leading toy trade publication, Toy News. Read More>

Following on from our post on the viral mechanics employed in Sim City Social, this time we’re turning our attention to FarmVille 2, the sequel to the biggest social game ever!

The original FarmVille is only three years old and still has 3.2 million users logging on to tend to their virtual farm each day! Considering FarmVille at its peak had 83 million monthly active players it’s clear to see that a lot has changed in those three years. For a broader view of the changes Zynga has made, take a look at this short video:
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