Roar Engine puts the power of an incredible social game mechanics platform into your hands, complete with management tools, payment processing, reporting systems.

Using the powerful Roar Engine tasks system, construct elaborate crafting systems: eg. convert stones and pixie dust into a magic gem (a prerequisite for your Epic Mission series of quests of course). Tag your own crafting classes: blacksmith, carpenter, alchemist, enchanter, anything!

Unlike most ‘social game platforms’ who are just mashing a database and some website code together for all their clients, with Roar Engine you get a dedicated, blazing fast, specially built, C++ driven Roar Engine server for each game you create, along with a custom URL to access that game’s API.

Earn money from virtual currency sales using real money payment gateways. Roar Engine supports premium currency purchases through supported payment gateways, as well as an admin API hook for implementing your own custom payment providers.

Significantly, I didn’t see anywhere that they intend to take a cut of your sales. Nice! Pricing is a flat fee per month, based on number of API calls. You get 100K API calls for free. Supports clients in Flash, Unity, HTML, mobile, etc.

I’m really tempted to try this out in the future. I’ll watch its evolution with great interest.

This is just pure hogwash. (And, please note, I’m going to use some sarcasm and exaggeration in this post because I can’t help it.)

First of all, saying something like, “If you make a Facebook game, you can get rich because Zynga is projected to earn $700 million this year” is totally irrational. Zynga is the #1 game developer on Facebook. Never, ever compare your company with that, unless you have nine-figure venture capital funding–in which case, you are not indie, and you have different problems entirely.

The other half of that is, “If you are not Zynga or making at least $100 million per year, you can’t be successful with a social game.” This is equally as ridiculous.

Now this leads to the “If I can just make 1% of what Zynga makes, I’ll still make $7 million per year!” But that’s the wrong end of the stick when you are doing financial planning. (And that’s another post itself.)

My beef is with setting up very false expectations. This is what makes a “gold rush” insane (read The Madness of Crowds sometime), even when there’s not nearly as much gold as you think because the only company ever being talked about is the #1 company. Pandemonium ensues.

There’s a huge gap between Zynga’s revenue and the #2 company. And that’s the #2 fricken company on all of Facebook! There’s only room for one #1 and one #2. Unless you have the VC funding, why are you even thinking about what they are doing, much less talking about it as if it matters to anyone with less than $100 million in the war chest? Does. Not. Apply.

Hey, I’m just asking for some common sense when talking about the realities of commercial success on Facebook.

The fact is that there are a lot of small and mid-sized game developers making some sweet money on Facebook (and elsewhere). You don’t need a team of 700, like Zynga. Try a team of 30 or 10 or 3. You might find that you can cover costs with a much smaller player base. You won’t have 80 million monthly players, but–like Neo in The Matrix–you won’t need to. (Sorry, possibly obscure reference there in the service of “humor.”)

All I’m saying is that there is more than one way to skin this cat, so everyone stop talking in absolutes about how if you are not Zynga, you can’t be successful, and, therefore, the fad is over, Facebook sucks now, and let’s all go eat worms. If you’re indie, you’re probably small. There’s a big chance you can succeed on Facebook (and elsewhere) because you are nimble and your overhead is low. Yes, you might need to spend money on ads. So does everyone who sells anything. It’s called marketing.

Second of all, no, virality is not dead on Facebook. Spamming is dead, but not virality (aka “word of mouth”). Make a game people want to talk about, and you won’t be impacted by these “draconian” changes. On top of that, Facebook isn’t the only fricken social networking site out there, people! Diversify or die.

Thirdly, you don’t need to host your game on a fricken social networking site at all. There are plenty of games “in the wild” (that big, scary place!) that have millions of monthly active users and rake in money. No, you won’t be able to spam a million people and get 7 figure MAU numbers in a week. Most people, at this point, say, “Oh no! Then you can’t survive! Just quit instead. I’m not Zynga–” *sound of self-inflicted gunshot to the head*

Cheer up. You can survive–and thrive. Just ignore the news about companies that are nothing like yours, and you might find your way.

Lastly, this kind of alarmist hyperbole is just feeding back on itself and creating more hysteria. Please stop, and think!

The economy sucks, and will get worse, but you don’t have to make $700 million a year to be commercially successful. What are your costs of living? Now double that, and make that your goal instead. Gee, that seems to change all the parameters.

Interesting.

The interesting thing to me about social games is the distribution platforms (ie, the social networks). Despite what anyone thinks about the hype, social sites as a gaming platform really is something new in that regard. Reach. I once marveled about the reach achievable through Mochi Media and Flash games, but that is dwarfed by the 400 million+ users of Facebook. That’s new, and it’s remarkable.

Never before has it been so easy to invite a friend to check out a game. No need to fire up an email client or even type. Your friend receives the message right on the site where the game will be played. No need to run another app or go to a different site (one you might not trust or that might crash your computer with too much bling).

Never before has the process/interface been so standardized (ie, very low friction) in between the friend getting the invite and getting into or out of the game. Everyone knows how to add or remove a game/app.

Never before have people felt so comfortable “installing” a game/app because they know the platform gives them control (unlike mailing lists, etc) over what communications they receive (or not) and when (if at all).

This converges with the growing power and ubiquity of Flash and other web browser technologies, giving rise to a huge number of highly accessible games (not all of them “casual”). These have existed before, but not on a platform like Facebook that brings so many other crucial factors into play, like reduced interface friction, user comfort, and low barriers to entry.

It’s still an uphill battle to get attention (and revenues), but it’s easier than out in the frontiers of the web, alone.

For instance, some games have “quests” (in most games, that means one click).

These jobs sometimes require you to have a certain amount of friends in your “crew” or group or neighbors before you can access it. That really just means inviting players into the game and forgetting about them since they become a number.

Interestingly, this gives rise to “add me trains,” where a huge comment thread consists of players asking other players to add them as friends to increase their in-game friend count.

Or, you give a friend a gift to entice him or her to play the game. Gifting can be very fulfilling, but in this case it’s entirely in the service of marketing the game with sleight of hand. It’s not actually “social” in the way you expect when you say the word.

But…

…is this fun?! The answer depends on who you ask, but it’s not much fun to me. These games are certainly engaging because of the behavioral psychology behind their design, but I’m not sure that is the same as being fun.

There’s no meaningful interaction in most current “social” games. Your social graph is nothing but a marketing data mine for the developers. I don’t have a big problem with that on its own, because you do opt in. You don’t have to invite your friends. But the motivating factor is not the quality of the game, and I would wager that you won’t need to force your players to tell friends if the game is good enough.

I love the idea of shared worlds.

As I define it, a shared world game is where the gameplay alters the world state, and the world state alters the gameplay in a fun feedback loop. It’s really fascinating to think about the potential when players’ actions can change the world in which they play, and then that, in turn, can affect what players do next. It sounds like a blast to me.

It also happens to dovetail nicely with social games. I mean, here’s a chance to make them actually social! I don’t mean like “talky ha-ha” social. I mean like “negotiating with each other” or “participating in simple forms of governance within a game world” social. You know, the kind of social where you interact with other people and fun things happen as a result.

To be clear, these things don’t have to happen in synchronous, full-on MMO style. But it also doesn’t have to be a game as vacuous as most of what we see on Facebook today.

The time is ripe for a new kind of social game that is more than hollow mouse clicks on a plastic harvest. And I hope to make one soon.