Sin City Holdem, from 5280 Funding LLC, is the latest Texas Holdem style poker game for Facebook. It launched in late August of this year and has drawn in more than half a million monthly active users — still a far cry from the 33 million plus of Zynga's
Texas HoldEm Poker, but impressive nonetheless.
According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Sin City Holdem currently has 535,174 monthly active users and 32,897 daily active users. Sin City Holdem offers lobbies of games (roughly 5,000 active players at review time) broken down by minimum bet. Games start at $400k buy-ins and go up to $12 billion for a chance to get in on the action. Tournament-style play is also offered, requiring registration to compete. The graphics have a hand-drawn feel, which helps the title stand out from the many other poker titles on the platfrom
Unlike Zynga's title, Sin City Holdem's tutorial to the game of poker is non-interactive, existing instead as a separate page on Facebook featuring screenshots to accompany rules and basic strategies. Achievements are in place, as is a screen where players can view their wins with specific hands and other statistics. A section called "My Items" and an in-game store have icons present, but are not yet implimented.
Social features at present include friend invites and gifting of chips to friends. The game also has a friends leaderboard and real-time online friends list.
Sin City Holdem is monetized through the use of Facebook Credits to purchase additional chips. It seems likely that chips will be used to purchase items from the game's upcoming store, as well. 5280 Funding has not indicated when this feature or the My Items section will go live.
You can follow Sin City Holdem's progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.
Source: Inside Social Games
Friday, September 30, 2011