Goblin Wars: Our Facebook Game Project

The Facebook game (Goblin Wars) is released. It is a fun facebook game. The facebook page is www.facebook.com/goblinwars the application is apps.facebook.com/goblinwarsgame. The support website is goblinwars.com/forum. GoblinWars.com

The Goblin Wars Project

Goblin Wars represented Corg’s venture into social gaming during the Facebook platform gaming boom of 2009-2012. Built as a casual strategy game, it leveraged the then-explosive growth of Facebook’s gaming ecosystem.

The Facebook Gaming Era

The late 2000s and early 2010s were the golden age of Facebook gaming. Titles like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and CityVille attracted hundreds of millions of players. Facebook’s social graph made viral distribution possible — every action a player took could become a story in their friends’ news feeds, driving organic growth.

Game Design

Goblin Wars was a turn-based strategy game where players built goblin armies, defended their territories, and raided opponents. The social mechanics encouraged players to recruit friends as allies, leveraging Facebook’s viral loops for player acquisition.

Lessons from Game Development

The Goblin Wars project taught valuable lessons about:

Platform risk — building on Facebook’s platform meant being subject to their algorithm changes and policy shifts
User acquisition costs — as the Facebook gaming market matured, organic reach declined and paid acquisition became necessary
Retention mechanics — the gap between acquiring a player and keeping them engaged required constant content updates
Monetization balance — free-to-play games must balance revenue generation with player satisfaction

Domain Assets from Gaming

The project also demonstrated the value of owning GoblinWars.com — a exact-match domain for the game title. This gave the project SEO advantages and brand credibility that competitors with generic URLs lacked.

The experience reinforced Corg’s thesis that premium domain names create measurable business advantages.

The Facebook gaming ecosystem that spawned Goblin Wars offers important lessons for anyone building products on third-party platforms.

The Facebook Gaming Timeline

2007-2009: Early growth phase. Simple games like Scrabulous and FarmVille demonstrated the potential of social gaming. Low competition, high organic reach.
2009-2011: Peak era. Zynga dominated with multiple titles. Revenue exceeded $1 billion annually for top developers. Easy user acquisition through viral mechanics.
2011-2013: Platform maturation. Facebook restricted viral channels, increased platform fees, and tightened app policies. User acquisition costs rose dramatically.
2013-2015: Mobile shift. Players migrated to mobile apps. Facebook Canvas gaming declined. Major studios pivoted to iOS and Android.

Platform Risk in Digital Business

The Goblin Wars experience illustrates a fundamental risk in building on someone else’s platform. When Facebook changed its algorithms and policies, games that relied on viral distribution saw their player counts collapse overnight.

This lesson applies far beyond gaming:

Websites dependent on Google search traffic face the same risk when algorithm updates change rankings
Amazon marketplace sellers can lose their business when Amazon changes fees or launches competing products
Social media influencers lose reach when platforms adjust content algorithms

The Domain Connection

Owning your own domain — and building a direct relationship with your audience through that domain — is the ultimate hedge against platform risk. A business that owns its domain, builds its email list, and creates its own content has an asset that no platform can take away.

This is one reason Corg continues to invest in premium domain names. A great domain is platform-independent infrastructure. Whether the traffic comes from Google, social media, email marketing, or direct navigation, the domain is the constant.

Game Development Costs vs. Domain Investment

The Goblin Wars project required significant investment in development, art, servers, and ongoing content updates. In contrast, a premium domain name requires only the annual registration fee to maintain, with no ongoing development costs.

The return-on-investment comparison between the two asset classes reinforced Corg’s core focus on domain investing over product development. While games have higher upside potential, domains offer more predictable returns with dramatically lower carrying costs.

Read about how domain names influence user behavior and why premium domains are valuable business assets.