King.com has only been making Facebook games for a year and iOS games for a couple of months.

Still, it's being making games since 2003, something CEO Riccardo Zacconi encapsulated in his GDC Europe talk 'Building a multi-platform games out of Facebook and onto mobile and tablets'.

To start with, he said that King.com's casual portal is the best proving ground for games.

"I believe no casual game company is testing as many games as us," he said.

Testing, testing

This is because King.com has 150 simple arcade games - often made more engaging via head-to-head tournaments - on its portal and launches another 15 games per year.

These are developed by small teams and then the most popular ones are honed, polished and launched on Facebook and then tablets and mobile.

The difference with these latter platforms is that the company adds the social graph, enabling gifting and light competition to enjoy people to play (and pay) more.

The Facebook and mobile games are also run by live development teams, ensuring they constantly get more content and are optimised depending on audience feedback.

In this way, King.com has gone from zero to 12 million players DAUs on Facebook in 15 months.

The mobile way

But mobile is a different environment; notably in terms of app discovery.

"App discovery isn't through your friends on mobile, it's through Apple and that's both good and bad," said Zacconi.

King.com is leveraging its Facebook presence to try and drive virality on iOS. To help this, the Facebook and iOS versions are the same and all game states are synced between the platforms, at least up to the first 150 levels.

In total, there are 300 levels available on Facebook.

"You can also play [on iOS] without being Facebook connected," Zacconi added, although there are plenty of incentivised hooks to encourage people to do so.

MVP

In terms of the release of the iOS version, install breakdown was 65 percent iPhone, 25 percent iPad and 10 percent iPod touch.

iPad players monetise twice as well as iPhone, which monetises twice as well as iPod touch.

And the Facebook connected player is more valuable, in terms 7 day retention, engagement and likelihood of buying IAP.