Opinion: We Rule now rules the top grossing chart but now matters less than later

It's been two weeks since ngmoco's We Rule free-to-play online kingdom-building game launched globally.

The game's certainly been making headlines, thanks to its prolonged Canadian beta test, early - and continuing - server issues, plus the stories people tell when they're playing and not playing the game.

What's more important for ngmoco however is how well it's performing commercially.

The good news is that it hit one million gaming sessions within 24 hours, and remains high both in the free charts (peaked at #3, currently #5), and the top grossing charts too (#1 peak, currently #2).

Not bad going considering it's making more money than the $4.99 Zenonia 2 and $9.99 Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies.

We Rule is funded when and if players buy the in-game speed boost element mojo. This is available in quantities ranging from 99c/59p for five bottles up to 800 bottles for $50/£30.

Yet as ngmoco, and other companies who have released online games for iPhone (and other platforms) well know, the launch phase is the easy bit.

Focusing on player retention and daily activity will be key in the coming days, weeks and months if We Rule is to be a genuine success.

Some idea of the process can be seen in terms of how ngmoco has supported its online shooter Eliminate Pro.

I followed its launch in November 2009 in terms of launch weekend stats. It also performed well, getting in the top grossing chart but since then has dropped out of this and the free game chart.

Ngmoco has never revealed any figures about the game's performance, other than week one download figures of 500,000.

But what's been surprising is how hard ngmoco has worked since in terms releasing new features - and more significantly new apps to promote these, and more prosaic activity such as additional power cells.

You can get some idea about these from US chart graphs (from TopAppShopper), both in terms of the number of releases (5), and the way ngmoco broke out new features such as a co-op mode, and additional currency, to encourage new downloads, even among existing players.

For the record, Eliminate Amplifier was a 99c version of the game with 20 free power cells, while Eliminate Boost was a free version with 10 free power cells.

Expect a similar process to kick in with We Rule over the coming months.