Redwood City, Calif.-based Kabam has discovered that there are hardcore gamers on Facebook and they are willing to pay much more than usual to beat their friends at social games that are graphically simple but still have a lot of depth as strategy games. We don’t have numbers for sure, but we would hazard a guess that Kabam’s stats on average revenue per user (ARPU) look pretty good compared to Zynga’s, as Zynga relies on getting lots of casual gamers in order to find a small percentage that are willing to pay a little bit of money. And they also buy a lot of stuff, giving Kabam one of the highest average revenues per user in the social game market. 90 percent play six or seven days a week for hours at a time. The thing about Kabam’s users is that they play their games for a long time. It is seemingly primitive games like this one that are making Kabam a credible threat not only to Zynga - which has 265 million users compared to just 12.9 million for Kabam - but also to giant hardcore console game makers such as Activision Blizzard. Kabam says it has done original work in creating Edgeworld. Rival Facebook game maker Kixeye has accused Kabam of blatantly copying the design of Kixeye’s hit Backyard Monsters, with similarities in game play and objects, with differences only in the genre. The game has just been formally unveiled, but it has already raised a big controversy. This real-time sci-fi game is a step up from Kabam’s earlier titles and it should keep the company on its trajectory of fast growth in the growing market for hardcore games on social networks, which have so far been dominated by more casual games.
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