2011 has turned into a landmark year for video games. Never has so many AAA games come our way, that gamers are actually overwhelmed by options. Reviews and preliminary sales data are in are often used to determine the best games of the year, but we at Raptr believe that when it comes down to it, the true gauge of a game worthy of your time, is the one you spend  your precious time playing the most. That was the thinking behind our inaugural Most Played Awards from Raptr!

Check out the winners below!

Download the Full Report Here

The Most Played Shooter of 2011
The Most Played RPG of 2011
The Most Played Open-World Game of 2011
The Most Played Sports Game of 2011
The Most Played Social Game of 2011
The Most Played New IP of 2011
The Most Played Game of 2011
The Most Successful Paid-to-F2P Game of 2011

For more info on how we picked each winner and what criteria we used, check out our methodology summarized in our report. What was your most played game of 2011? Let us know in the comments below!

EA surprised the games industry by capturing a sizable audience with The Sims Social. Up until recently, Zynga’s dominance of the social game market has at times seemed unassailable, but The Sims Social was able to rocket up the charts since its August release and currently ranks only behind Zynga’s aging juggernaut CityVille in monthly active users. Farming and interior-decorating game versus farming and urban-planning game — a heavyweight battle for our brave new era.

Based on actual playtime data from our 10 million Raptr members, our Raptr Report: The Sims Social dives deep into the data behind EA’s success and strives to answer a few key questions: How did EA attract such a large user base, what did they learn from Zynga’s proven formula, and now that they have a huge hit, can they parlay that into an even bigger share of the social game market?

EA aggressively marketed to their existing Sims 3 player base as well as across their social game portfolio and earned strong conversion rates to The Sims Social as a result.

However, those users did come at a price — Sims 3 and Pet Society play time dropped by 50%. Still, the game’s appeal to Zynga’s much larger audience is undeniable: Out of the top 20 other games played by Sims Social players, 10 are Zynga titles. Average weekly play time for FarmVille and Empires & Allies is down 25% since Sim Social’s launch. CityVille play time dropped as well, but a recent flood of promotions (Enrique Iglesias!) and marketing efforts from Zynga have helped protect CityVille’s numbers somewhat.

In contrast to previous EA social titles such as Dragon Age: Legends and Madden NFL Superstars, The Sims Social’s playtime patterns (average sessions length, average number of sessions per day/week/month) almost exactly match those of Zynga’s top games. In this space more than any other, imitation is the sincerest form of…successful game design.

So now that EA have a breakout hit on their hands, what’s next? A key factor in Zynga’s success is the company’s ability to release games in quick succession, with a high conversion rate from game to game. To replicate that model EA could look to its recent acquisition, PopCap. A large percentage of PopCap’s player base already plays social titles, and that propensity – coupled with The Sims Social’s impressive audience – could point to a sea change in the social game market. (Look, we just want a new Plants vs Zombies title. Tell us what we need to farm to make that happen.)

Download the full Raptr Report: The Sims Social here, and look for more Raptr Reports coming soon! You may also want to check out our previous Raptr Report: Zynga.

A note about methodology:
This report is based on data collected from Raptr’s service, available at www.Raptr.com. Raptr is the leading social network for gamers and automatically tracks gameplay activity for over 10 million users across PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. For browser-based games, Raptr defines an active playtime session as one where the game window is active.

This Raptr Report analyzes actual gameplay data for the following games: Adventure World, Bejeweled 3, Bejeweled Blitz, Bookworm Adventures, CityVille, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age: Legends, Empires & Allies, FarmVille, FIFA 11, FIFA Superstars, FrontierVille, Madden 11, Madden NFL Superstars, Mafia Wars, Peggle Deluxe, Pet Society, Plants vs Zombies, Restaurant City, Texas Hold’em Poker, The Sims 3, The Sims Social, Treasure Isle, Zuma Blitz, and Zuma Deluxe. Data is compiled from the launch of Raptr to October 7, 2011. This report was not endorsed by any 3rd party.

The Return of the Activity Feeds

They’re baaack! Keep tabs on your own gaming and non-gaming activity with the return the our Activity Feeds. Located on your snazzy profile wall, these feeds will keep track of everything you do; from comments to gameplay hours and achievements!

Keep your Raptr Friends Close

See what your friends are up to with the new Friend Activity tab located conveniently in your dashboard. With a click of a button, switch from checking out the hottest gaming content, to seeing your friends’ comments, posted links, status updates, and wall posts!

Vote on Comments, “Like” a Status Update

Merely seeing someone’s Activity Feed isn’t enough these days. Did you know you can now vote on comments and “Like” a status update? So the next time you read a comment that made you laugh, or a status update that you can totally relate to, be sure to let them know by voting on it!

This is just some of the new features we added. Check out the other blog post I wrote to learn more. For the full list of tweaks and improvements, see the website release notes.

So while you think of more features you would like to see next, I’m going to talk about some of the new features we just added that’ll help you learn more about your gaming habits, and to be better connected with the rest of the gaming world. Continue reading to learn how:

Nifty Email Breaks Down Weekly Gaming Habits

With 168 hours in a given week, you can put in some serious game sessions. How much time you actually put in can be easily answered by your Weekly Play Summary. This handy little email breaks down your gameplay hours, earned achievements, and new games added during the past week. If you spent more time sleeping than gaming, I’m really disappointed in you. Just kidding!

Easily Browse Game Titles by Platform, Series, and More

Did you know our Zelda Universe topic page on Raptr consists of 18 different Zelda games, from Ocarina of Time to Skyward Sword? With a new Games tab added to specific topic pages, you can now see and discover which game titles, including expansions, make up a Series, Universe, Genre, Company, or Platform!

Know When New Releases Hit the Shelves

Browse recently released and upcoming games by heading over to your Games tab on your dashboard. The New Releases feature even shows you how many more excruciating days before you can get your hands on the newest Raving Rabbids game. I know you’re dying to play it. And while you wait, make sure you click on the “Follow” button to stay updated with all the latest news and content for that game.

For a full list of tweaks and improvements, see the website release notes.

Hello to the Raptr faithful and anyone else who stumbles onto this space! My name is Brian Carter, aka Boddaker. For those of you who have never heard of my moniker and wonder why I’m posting here, I’m a video/audio producer by day and a PC-case modder by night. I specialize in building premium, one-of-a-kind PC mods based on well-known themes.

On the left is one of my original concepts for the Battlefield case. You can see the evolution of that idea on the right. *Note: These are just early mock-ups and at this time, I didn't even have the proper logo for Battlefield 3.

I recently got in touch with the folks at Raptr about working on a very exciting project together to celebrate the release of two of the hottest games of the year, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Being a huge FPS gamer myself, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to share my creations with other gamers who are just as excited about these games as I am.

By now, you should have heard about the awesome Raptr promo in question. If you haven’t, go here for more info. In short, Raptr is going to ask the community a series of questions, and you will have a chance to vote on which game franchise you think is better in a variety of categories. At the same time, I’ll be building a gaming rig using top of the line, bleeding edge components from Origin PC and AMD, which I’ll customize and tweak to ultimately reflect the winning game’s themes.

My kids have their own PC mods!

And right here on this blog I’ll chronicle how the case mod is coming along, sprinkled with pictures and comments at different stages of the process. My goal is to have at least one updated blog entry for the next several weeks, and hopefully it’ll serve as a nice teaser to how this beast of a gaming rig is going to turn out.

Next week, I’ll give you a bit more background info on who I am, how I got into the modding scene, some of my past mods, and more concept art of the PC I’m planning to build.

Can’t wait to get started. See you all next week!

-Boddaker

VOTE TO WIN A CUSTOM PC GAMING RIG!

CLICK HERE TO ENTER

UPDATE: Contest is over and winners have been selected. For the overall WAR OF WORDS contest, the Battlefield franchise was victorious by winning 5 of the 7 categories. Click here to see who won the custom gaming rig!

Time to pick sides — two of the hottest games of the year, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, are going head-to-head and launching within two weeks of each other. What’s your favorite franchise? Which game has the best single-player? Multiplayer? Who…wins?

Actually, you could be the one who wins this Battlefield vs. Call of Duty Showdown. Over the next several weeks, you’ll have a chance to speak your mind, make your arguments, and then play to prove that your favorite game is the best all around. And because we’re Raptr we have some crazy-good prizes for you to salivate over! How about a custom PC gaming rig specifically modded for you? Aroused? Discombobulated?

PHASE 1: WAR OF WORDS

From Oct 17th to November 20th, we’ll post questions on the Battlefield vs. Call of Duty Showdown page that compare different aspects of the two franchises. For each question, state the name of the game or franchise you think is best, and then explain why (no more than one vote per poll question, please. But feel free to discuss and debate!). We’ll tally the votes to determine the winning game for each question, and then we’ll customize this PC rig to reflect the themes of the overall winning game.

A note about this one-of-a-kind item (valued at $4,999): Origin PC and AMD will provide the internals, and multiple award-winning case-modder Boddaker will take care of the rest. In fact, Boddaker’s chronicling the build progress right here.

PHASE 2: PLAY TO WIN SHOWDOWN

Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are two must-play games of the season. That should be a good enough reason to jump into the fray. But how about a few more: We’re giving away a bunch of awesome prizes to Raptr users just for playing either or both games, on Xbox 360, PS3, or PC!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ON PHASE 2

Finally, are you a connoisseur of legalese? Get your fix with the full contest rules!

* Images of PC mods are early concept arts and do not represent the final looks of the PC mods.

OUR BUDDIES AT WAR

]]> http://blog.raptr.com/2011/10/06/battlefield-vs-call-of-duty-showdown/feed/ 120 http://blog.raptr.com/2011/09/27/zynga-report/ http://blog.raptr.com/2011/09/27/zynga-report/#comments Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:00:51 +0000 John Master Lee http://blog.raptr.com/?p=6836
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You already knew Zynga was huge – but did you know Raptr users have logged more hours playing Zynga’s Ville series of games than Assassin’s Creed, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and the Grand Theft Auto franchises combined? That’s a lot of strawberry farming and cow clicking.

Zynga’s projected $15-20 billion valuation makes it one of the decade’s most highly anticipated IPOs. Everyone wants to understand how Zynga will continue to grow and engage its massive user base. Our exclusive Raptr Report sheds light on all this.

This Raptr Report provides details about Zynga’s users and their gaming behavior – including stats on playtime, session length and frequency, user conversion from game to game, and much more – helping to shed light on why Zynga remains top dog when it comes to social games. Even Zynga’s own analysts haven’t seen our exclusive data on both traditional console and PC gamer habits! We know how you love Raptr data so we’ve posted the entire Zynga Raptr Report here. To keep it interesting, check out some of the highlights below:

Zynga’s FarmVille to CityVille conversion rate stacks up favorably against that of many core franchises.

But it’s not just FarmVille players that are loyal; for almost any given Zynga title, between 80% and 95% of players also play another Zynga game. And they play often, like eight sessions a day on average for Ville series gamers – compared to roughly two play sessions a day for Call of Duty and Warcraft series fans. But they don’t play for all that long: 41 minutes per day for Ville gamers compared to 177 and 252 for CoD and Warcraft respectively.

Yet, a few die-hard Zynga gamers – we call ‘em Zynga’s “Two-Percenters” – do average upwards of 120 minutes of gameplay per day. You may know a few: They’re the ones constantly Facebook guilt-tripping you to send them more energy in Empires & Allies or help upgrade their CityVille bakery.  And they’re probably laying out some cash, too – to the tune of $500-800 million in 2010.

And while Zynga led the way in creating a new kind of game and a new kind of gamer, hardcore and social gamers are approaching their own version of a singularity. In 2010, only 20% of Xbox 360 players also played a Zynga game. So far in 2011, that number is already at 30%.

That’s just a taste – download the full Zynga Raptr Report here. And look for a much larger Raptr Report on the overall state of the social gaming landscape coming later this year!

A note about methodology:
This report is based on data collected from Raptr’s service, available at http://raptr.com, and was generated with no input or data from Zynga itself. Raptr is the leading social network for gamers and currently tracks gameplay activity for over 10 million users across PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Built with powerful proprietary data tracking features, Raptr analyzes more than 23 million gaming sessions and a billion minutes of gameplay each month, and Raptr is the industry’s only source for comprehensive gameplay trends and statistics across console platforms and PC.

This Raptr Report analyzes actual gameplay data for the following Zynga games: Empires & Allies, CityVille, Treasure Isle, FrontierVille, Café World, FarmVille, Texas Hold’em Poker, PetVille, YoVille, and Mafia Wars. Data is compiled from the launch of Raptr (2007) to August 2011.

Here are the details on what we just launched…

Achieve Stardom on Raptr with New Topic Leaderboards

Want to get featured on a game page? Just become the most popular poster for a specific game/topic, and our new leaderboard system will proudly display your face (profile pic) on that page for the whole world to see. You can also check out which pages you are a topic leader of in your dashboard.

Platform and Genre Details on Profiles

Based on your strong feedback (this has been a top issue in GetSatisfaction since we launched the new site), we’ve brought back improved versions of the platform and genre charts for your profiles! This visual breakdown shows your top gaming platforms and genres in your library, and shows specific subcategories as well. Now others can quickly see exactly what type of gamer you are. Also, on your game library, you can now filter by platforms, genres, favorite games, and more!

And without spilling the beans too much, one of the most requested features from our old site will soon be making a return… gaming activity feeds! Stay tuned…

Get Quick Hits of Information with Raptr Hovercards

They say a person on average makes over 400 mouse clicks per day. As gamers, that number is probably a lot higher. With our new Raptr hovercards, you can now get more information on a game or a user with a lot less clicks! Simply hover your mouse over a topic/user, and a pop-up will magically appear with important information like number of followers and more!

For a full list of improvements, check out the website release notes.

It was only seven months ago when we proudly announced that we wrangled together six million gamers on Raptr. Today, we’ve reached another epic milestone; our fans now number at 10 million.

So what do 10 million gamers look like when you break it down to gaming stats? Here’s a quick snapshot, as it captures just how many hours you’ve collectively played,  total achievements/trophies you collectively racked up, and how many games we now track in our library. Talking about stats really gets us going.

The Raptr community has racked up 30,500 years of gameplay hours – more years than modern day humans have existed; if you believe in evolution and all that stuff. Dinos never got a fair shake.

Sure, we built a lot of cool features that gamers love. We’ve got a client that can auto-track your gameplay hours. We have a full breakdown of what Achievements and Trophies people have unlocked for thousands of games, and we show you how you stack up against the community. Back in May, we launched an all-new personalized news feed that gives you full control of what gaming topics you want to follow, so we can serve you the hottest content based on what games you play (another fun stat – since May, you guys collectively followed over half a million upcoming gaming topics, a new feature we didn’t have before). But we are only just beginning. New profiles are coming. New user created content as well. Not to mention new ways to interact with each other.

With over 1 million active users daily on our website, desktop client, and iPhone app, Raptr has become a vibrant community that loves sharing their favorite gaming content with others. We all wear the gaming badge of honor proudly, and I’m proud to be part of something that you guys helped build!

Taskle here again (head of product development @ Raptr). I want to share some updates on improvements we’ve made to our website.

We know how much you love checking out the hottest content for your games on Raptr while being on the hunt for the next best game to play, that’s why we’re covering all the bases with our latest website update. These new features will give you more ways to discover the best content you care about, hottest games and even friends!

See More of What you Like to Read

With the ever-evolving gaming world, reading just one article won’t give you the whole story. That’s why with our new “Related Stories” feature, conveniently placed on the article page, you can check out similar articles and quickly move from one story to the next. You’ll never run out of new content to check out!

Let Raptr Find Your Next Gaming Adventure

Having trouble deciding on what to play next? Head over to the new discover page on Raptr and check out what the hottest games are that people are playing. You can view by platform and/or genre, and see what games are similar to the ones you follow. As a bonus, the more you follow, the smarter we’ll get at serving you content that matters to your personal gaming tastes. We’ll also be recommending titles to you in the future based on the games you play.

You Can Never Have Too Many Friends

Discover which of your friends are gamers that use Raptr using our friends importer. Easily find those already on Raptr by importing from Facebook, Twitter, or email contacts. We’ll suggest friends for you and let you choose who to become friends with. You can even invite anyone missing out on the fun. If you want to see what your friends are playing and when, Raptr is the best way to do it!

For a full list of tweaks and improvements, see the website release notes.