Headquartered in the global technology hub of Herzliya, Israel, Plarium employs over 400 individuals across its three offices and animation studios. With 90 million registered users, Plarium is considered one of the top hardcore game developers on Facebook. Nicholas Day is the Creative Director for Plarium’s portfolio of hardcore games (Total Domination, Soldiers Inc., Pirates: Tides of Fortune, Stormfall: Age of War), and shares the story of Total Domination.
Over the past few months, there’s been an increasing amount of reports on the death of social gaming. Plarium’s hit hardcore title Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy proves that these reports have been greatly exaggerated.
Plarium’s Total Domination has been growing and evolving steadily since its launch in late 2011. In terms of numbers, Total Domination’s registered players have increased by 55 percent in the last year alone, with players logging in an average of three sessions a day on Facebook alone. As part of Plarium’s ongoing work with their core players, they’ve been consistently updating the game with new content, new mechanics, in-game characters, and extended storyline events that take the gameplay experience to the next level.
A few of Total Domination’s most notable new features include the immersive Global Missions, Live Chat, and the introduction of Clan Warfare, all of which increased the overall game engagement factor, while allowing Plarium to fully maximize the “social” aspect of gameplay.
With Global Missions, the game offers a break from competitive gameplay to allow players to work collectively against a universal non-player enemy – success or failure is up to the community as a whole, and players can earn free units, bonuses, and special content while unlocking key plot developments and shaping the course of the game storyline.
While a simple addition, adding live chat has given all in-game teams a powerful new tool to coordinate in real-time without leaving the game or sending messages. Coupled with new improvements to the game’s team gameplay interfaces, Live Chat has made it even easier to play with old friends and meet new ones without missing the action.
Over the past 12 months, Plarium has brought Clan Warfare to the center of the Total Domination player experience and put a stronger emphasis on team cooperation and social gameplay. This feature allows players to team up with live allies from around the world to battle for control of the game map, upgrade and defend powerful map objectives, and engage in complex team gameplay within the game world. Clans have their own player-determined internal command hierarchies, achievements, and access to special resources and units.
Artifacts have also been introduced to the game - advanced ancient technological components players can use to improve their fighting units, increase their resource production, and reduce unit production times. Artifacts can either be recovered randomly during battles, or by controlling and searching archeological sites across the wasteland map.
“We’ve introduced eight new units as exclusive bonus content within the game’s Black Market,” shares Gabi Shalel, Plarium’s VP of Marketing. “Each unit boasts serious firepower, and grants special collective attributes when fielded with weapon systems within its class.”
More recently, Plarium launched the latest installment of the Total Domination franchise, titled Total Domination: Reborn, for iOS devices. The mobile title features all new groundbreaking graphics and gameplay. Upon launch, TD: Reborn reached the #1 spot on the US App Store for Strategy Games and Top 50 spot overall.
The Total Domination team has a lot more in store for their players. With so many existing game features and mechanics, the next major step for TD is developing more story-driven multimedia content; including new fully-voiced game characters, an entirely new musical score, playable side missions, and a massive new storyline for new global missions that will uncover more of the world’s history and shape the narrative act of the game worldwide leading into 2014.
Launching a hardcore title is only the start of a game’s journey. To maximize the success of any title, whether it is on social or mobile, requires listening to user feedback in order to implement the right updates swiftly and efficiently. Additionally, community feedback can have a direct impact on your game’s long term engagement and monetization factors, so keeping an open channel of communication between core players and the development team is essential.
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