Too late to get on the Facebook Bandwagon?

Things got interesting earlier this week when it was reported that Microsoft was considering a stake in a 5% stake in Facebook for between $300 million to $500 million. Following the news, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) shares rose to from below $29 to almost $30 mid-week before closing the week at $29.46 representing a gain of about 2.3%. More importantly, it got people really aware of the Facebook "phenomenon".

I was listening to the 93.8 live DJs discussing Facebook on air and I thought: Wow! Now EVERYONE (even those who aren't part of the usual social network demographic) is talking about Facebook!

Since we officially launched Singapore's first Facebook MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game), MW:BattleStations! about 3 weeks ago, we've been contracted by 2 other companies to create Facebook apps for them. We actually had to turn down 2 more requests because our order book was already full.

While we were working on BattleStations!, I was tracking the user growth of Warbook (another Facebook MMO) when it still had no more than 1200 users. The day after I joined, it grew by 1500+ users; 2000+ the day after that and 2500+ the day after. Beyond that, I didn't bother counting and spent more time working on our own app. With those kinds of growth figures, it's no surprise that developers are churning out hundreds of new applications everyday hoping to enjoy the same success.

However, economic theory dictates that something this good can't last forever and there are signs that it might already be too late to reap the same exponential growth that the first movers did.

Take our app for example:



MW: BattleStations! is growing at the rate of about 300~400 installs per day (~4000 in total). Active user growth is about 100~150 a day (active users = ~50% of total installs). The growth is certainly accelerating, but it's not exponential. The inertia is definitely noticeable and a sign of increasing saturation in the Facebook app space.

I can think of 2 reasons for this:

1) If you think about it, there's a limited amount of real estate on a user's profile that they are willing to use for apps. The apps that manage to get onto users' profiles earlier tend to stay there. Facebook users have also started to get sick of the torrent of invites they get all the time and now tend to ignore new invites.

2) Facebook has been trying to prevent "spam" marketing by apps and they've changed a few things as a result:
- Apps are now rated according to the % of active users they have instead of just installs (total users with the app).
- FB API has changed to prevent apps from spamming users with invites. Earlier apps could allow users to send invites to all their friends and even reward users just for sending out invites. Not anymore, the new system restricts you to 15 invites and the developers don't have anyway to track the invites and new users.

Newer apps are going find it very hard to get any traction even if they are better than existing apps. The way I see it, if you want to launch an app now you have to either:

a) make an app that's very viral and is really going to make users want to add it to their profile
b) you spend alot of money either buying ad banner space from Facebook or advertising on apps with a larger user base.

I think the Facebook Platform still has some ways to go before it hits a mature stage of development. While most of the early apps were created by individuals, I expect to see more companies with bigger budgets really going all out to push higher quality apps which will mean better quality and variety for Facebook users.

For the application owners who are already on Facebook and have managed to secure a stable user base; that user base will become more valuable as time goes by and the barriers to entry start propping up...

...which is why we'll launching 2 more apps very, very soon.

Pocket Cafe Developer Diary #5

I finally managed to find the time to review the screen renders for Pocket Cafe after my mid-term exam today. Pocket Cafe looks awesome! The sprites are an awesome interpretation of Lilian's anime character drawings.

I was just thinking to myself, hey, we should make Pocket Cafe into an MMO just like Mobile Weapon: Battle Stations! If we do that, Pocket Cafe will become the world's first restaurant MMOG!

MW: Battle Stations! - new character images!

Here are the new character avatar images for the engineers, male explorer and female pirate. Kudos to our artist, Shaoyang, rushing them out so quickly! We're one step closer to make Battle Stations the best MMOG on Facebook!



We'll have these characters (as well as the 2 commanders) added into the game this weekend so you'll get to see the correct characters for your display avatar. Traders will have to wait a while longer but don't worry about it, we'll get them done ASAP!

"Man your BattleStations!" - a Facebook MMO from TYLER

We haven't released any games for quite a while. That's because we were secretly working on this: Mobile Weapon: BattleStations! You can play the game now! just follow this link http://apps.facebook.com/battlestations/



It's our first MMO and we're pretty excited about it because we'll be launching it first inside Facebook and then later on mobileweapon.net. We've just finished an overtime, over the weekend session to get the game finished so we can launch it this week!

We've been doing ALPHA testing since 2 weeks ago and I must say that the game is really fun even though it's now just into BETA. Here are some screen shots of the game:

Explore the world!
We've made sure there's plenty to do in MW:BS. If fighting all the time isn't your kind of thing, you can go exploring or trading to make some gold and maybe find rare items. We've added more than 50+ ships, weapons and upgrades. There are plenty of secret items to be found as well.



Ship to Ship Combat!
Remember the characters in MW1 boarded and airship and flew to the Imperial City? In MW:BS you are the captain of your own airship. Airships are a big part of Sios and we decided it be fun if you get to fly your own and try to become the most powerful battleship in Sios!


It's not MAWs but finally MW players will be able to engage in PvP combat!

Make sure you add the game to your Facebook account ASAP!

If you love MW ...you love Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann!

We don't normally do Anime reviews on this website but I've been watching this one recently and I think Mobile Weapon fans are really going to like this one.

The Japanese title roughly translates into "Break through the Heavens, Gurren Lagann!". It's not your run of the mill mecha Anime and the show is a great mix of comedy and over the top action. Definitely one of the best series I have seen so far this year.



I strongly recommend checking this one out. You guys may also want to check out the Wikipedia entry for more details!

TYLER aims to boost traffic to 80 million hits per month

To achieve our financial target for Q1 2008, TYLER will aim to increase its traffic (and consequently ad revenue) to 80 million hits on any combination of our key website assets. Higher volumes of traffic concentrated on one site will allow us to get higher advertising premiums.

We'll be focusing most of the efforts on mobileweapon.net as well as our new release title "BattleStations!"

We'll be doing 4 initiatives to boost traffic to the desired level:

1) New Multi-player Content
2) Social Networking
3) Alexa
4) SEO


1) New Multi-player Content
We'll have a few new releases by end of year. MW: Battle Stations! will be released early September. While the beta version of MW: Online will be release end of the year.

Long over due is an advertising programme with ad rate card for advertisers to come direct to us if they want to advertise with us.

2) Social Networking
Su Yuen will be helping us get publicity through social media because she's more familiar with the blogging community and web widgets like twitter which I really can't keep track of.

We'll also be redesign Mobileweapon.net to have community features and allow for user submitted content. Mobileweapon.net will also have updated news from the TYLER blog by having an rss feed to show the news (instead of just the headlines as it shows now).

We'll also create a webmasters section for fan site kits and link banners to our game sites.

All of our new multiplayer games will also have widgets for blogs and social networks: Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, tagged, Friendster

3) Alexa
I'll be working on the Alexa initiatives:
- Installing Alexa tool bars in all TYLER computers and setting Mobileweapon.net as the homepage.
- Write articles for authority sites such as Digg, Wikipedia, etc
- Add Mobileweapon.net link to my forum signatures and also blog about web marketing and how we're working to increase site traffic (like that I'm doing now).


4) SEO
Joel will be handling the SEO initiatives:
- Get listed in Yahoo Directory, Google directory, etc
- Perform keyword identification and keyword density measures to ensure that search referrals are maximized
- Write articles for authority sites

TYLER's SEO, Alexa initiatives

A friend of mine, Joel, will be working with me to perform SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on all key TYLER websites i.e. mobileweapon.net, chocopets.com. We know the new MMO and portal projects we're working on will help to bring in a lot of traffic. But if there's anything more we can do to help people to find our sites and get more traffic, we're definitely going to try it out.

For the record, the Alexa ranking for mobileweapon.net was at 381,945 when I first started composing this post. The past record high was about 244K and it's been dropping ever since.

Will TYLER be able to bust into the 4 or 5 figure range by December? We shall see...

MW: Battle Online!

Hi Guys, here's an update for MW:Online.

We'll be changing the name to MW:Battle Online! to show the new emphasis on the combat system (we had a big headache trying to make the exploration system so we'll add that only later). We've got a new combat system specially for our online multiplayer version that is unlike any of the other casual MMOs out there (or any other MMO for that matter).


The 2 promotional images you see here feature the remodeled Avenger MK2 with a completely new MAW. These are in game graphics! Well, the blur effects might be slightly different depending on how we want to optimize them for the engine.

We may introduce texturing later on but for now we'll be be using the same system as MW1 which let you guys customize the colors on your own MAW.

New MAWs for MW Online

Those of you who have been following my tread on the forum will know we've decide to focus our efforts on developing MW Online.

One of the key factors in making a good online game is variety and you guys said we need more MAWs. To make sure we really have alot of new MAWs and enemies, we'll be adding MAWs from MWTC:mobile, MWA2(currently on hold), and some unrelased MAWs from MW1.

Here's a preview of MAWs taken from MWTC:mobile:

Mobile Adaptive Weapons (MAWs)

"Strider" - Assault / Anti-personnel Type
A fast, agile MAW equipped with dual gattling cannons for quick hit and run attacks.


"Rhino" - Defender Type
The Rhino embodies the typical defender type MAW; heavy frontal armor and armed with a heavy cannon loaded with armor piercing rounds which would punch right through lightly armored MAWs. The Rhino also has a MAW hammer to deal with melee attackers.


"Longbow" - Artillery Type
In large battles, mobile artillery like the Longbow are of great strategic value. The entire MAW is designed so it can brace from the recoil of firing its "firestorm" main gun. However this means that the Longbow is completely open to melee attacks with no means to retailate.



Conventional Weapon Platforms

"Goliath" Medium Tank
The backbone of the Imperial army. While not as manuverable as MAWs or as versatile in terms of armament, their main cannon packs a powerful punch.


"Impaler" Missle Tank
Often seen backing up the frontline tanks, "Impalers" provide range support fire.


We'll also be adding a few new MAWs specially for MW Online, so there'll be plenty of different MAWs for you to choose from when MW Online goes live in December!

We make some nice mobile games with Scrawl Studios

TYLER Projects teamed up with Scrawl Studios to produce a few mobile games based on their Nanoboy TV series. The games look very nice, they have good artists. Their art + our programming = good games.



I will now entertain your rants on why are we working on things like this instead of Mobile Weapon. :-P

Mobile Weapon 1st Anniversary

Mobile Weapon was launched on 7th of July 2006.

One year later, what better way to commemorate the first anniversary of Mobile Weapon than with our user counter going over 3 Meeeliiooonn.... exactly 365 days after the game was first launched (it was still less than 3mil on 6 July). Dat's right, more than 3,000,000 people (or unique computers) now know that Mobile Weapon is more than just a term for the ordinary tanks in Gundam.

To celebrate MW's birthday, here are some updates:

a) MW2 Progress - It's NOT 50% done. It's not 10% done. It's still in the ??? phase because it's going to take a long time to do it. I promised 3 times the length of the first game + console (PS2) game quality so it will take some time (meaning a LONG time).

I will say this though the graphics are SOooo much better than MW1 that it will blow your mind when you see them (I showed my fren Desmond and it blew his mind). You'll look at the "beyond god-like" 3D graphics and say: "Yes, this truely deserves to be on a console, I will pay for the full version of this game." Hehe.

Bad news is: I'm not going to show you guys anything because we still have to work out the details with our animation company. The good news is: you may be able to get a glimpse of some those gorgeous graphics in...

b) Mobile Weapon Assault 2 - We're making a commercial title out of the side-scrolling MW game. MWA2 will feature new characters, a seperate storyline, different areas, a much improved game system and of course, improved 3D MAWs.
Update 29/7 - This project has been put on hold

c) Mobile Weapon: Online - Honestly I wasn't expecting us to do this till next year but we will likely be getting some funding to do this pretty soon. We'll be using a simple turn based strategy system for MW:Online.

You guys will finally be able to beat each other up in MAWs instead of having flame wars in the forum!


Stay tuned for more MW updates!

TYLER Financial Performance

Let me try my hand at spining financial figures so they look better than they really are.

TYLER's revenue for the first and second quarter of 2007 stands at $68.4K almost double the 2006 revenue for the full year ($38.3K). This is represents a 361.38% increase in revenue over the same period last year.

TYLER's CFO, Leonard had this to say about the company's improved financial performance. "We have exceeded our growth target for the year (because we didn't have one at all). I'll have officially graduated by the 2nd half of the year so I'm optimistic that we will do even better."

TYLER plans to release 2 game titles by the end of 2007 as well as a online multi-player game service.

"I haven't stated any profit figures but I would like to ensure all our shareholders that I personally ensure that our directors' salaries rises in line with our profits to ensure that we do not have to pay too much corporate tax." -quipped Leonard