Ravenwood Fair passes 10 million MAU

The LoLapps Facebook title Ravenwood Fair, created by John Romero, has passed ten million monthly average users and has a sequel-sized expansion in the works.

Launched nearly six months ago, the title is still growing its audience, with 4.4 million average daily users in December. The choice to expand the game by releasing Ravenwood Mine, keeping hold of existing users instead of making a grab for a new audience, reflects a strong policy of retention at LOLapps.

"We are using a traditional strategy in games," said LOLapps chief executive Arjun Sethi to VentureBeat. "Instead of focusing on how much money we can make from a user, we are focusing on how long we can hang on to that user. Here's a new world that interacts with the one the user has been spending a lot of time in."

In fact, LOLapps has pulled resources from new projects to focus on the development of the Ravenwood Mine expansion, which was designed by Romero as part of a multiple expansion strategy. It was the title which caused Romero to see the potential of social titles and set up his own studio, Loot Drop, which has recently signed to develop a game for RockYou.

Historically, it has performed well in terms of revenue as well as audience. Metrics from AppData show that in December ten per cent of the game's users were spending money on virtual items in-game - a significantly better figure than the three to five per cent which the average Facebook title attracts.