Young video game fans who have traveled the virtual Oregon Trail or hunted the elusive Carmen Sandiego on their desktop computers can now continue those adventures on Facebook, the popular online social network.
Today, Blue Fang Games LLC of Waltham and Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will unveil a Facebook version of one of the oldest computer games still on the market: The Oregon Trail. On Feb. 9, the two companies will release the classic geography game Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? for Facebook.
Through the joint venture, Houghton Mifflin will try to revitalize a couple of its aging video game franchises, while Blue Fang strives to become a major player in the booming market for social games.
Blue Fang is not especially well known, but it is one of Greater Boston’s most successful video game developers. The company produced the family-friendly personal computer game Zoo Tycoon for Microsoft Corp., and it has sold 8 million copies since the first version was released in 2001.
“We still get royalty checks from Microsoft,’’ said Blue Fang’s president, Hank Howie.
The game’s popularity has waned, however, and the checks are “not as large as they once were,’’ he said.
Last year, Blue Fang laid off about two-thirds of its 75 employees and reinvented itself as a developer of simple online games. With backing from the German game publisher Gameforge AG, the company published Zoo Kingdom for Facebook.
As with the original Zoo Tycoon, players can design, build, and populate their own zoos, complete with exotic animals. But while the Facebook version is free to play, gamers can enhance the experience by purchasing unusual trees, buildings, or imaginary animals like unicorns.
The explosive success of Facebook game producers like Zynga Inc. tempted Blue Fang to enter the social gaming market. Zynga was founded in 2007, and its games like FarmVille and CityVille attract 298 million Facebook users every month, according to the industry research firm AppData.com.
Zynga is privately held, but Wedbush Securities, a Los Angeles firm that tracks the game industry, estimates the company grossed $500 million last year.
The opportunity is not lost on other Massachusetts game developers.
Quick Hit Inc. of Foxborough, which makes a popular Internet-based National Football League game, plans to release a Facebook version this month. “Facebook is the largest gaming platform in the world,’’ said founder Jeffrey Anderson. “It’s a big market opportunity.’’
Anderson said most popular Facebook games are tailored to appeal to women, but his NFL game will attract male gamers.
Facebook games can be relatively simple to build; it took just 11 weeks to create Zoo Kingdom. While the game attracted 1.2 million users at its peak, it has since settled down to an average user base of about 300,000 gamers. About 1 or 2 percent make in-game purchases. Howie won’t say how much the company earns from Zoo Kingdom, but he said the game began turning a profit in October.
Blue Fang’s transformation caught the attention of Tony Bordon, president of the Learning Co., Houghton Mifflin’s educational software division. Learning Co. had a number of well-known game franchises in need of a reboot. Bordon was especially interested in reviving The Oregon Trail, developed for mainframe computers by a group of Minnesota schoolteachers in 1971. Later, the game migrated to succeeding generations of classroom PCs, where it became a favorite among schoolchildren. Players are cast as 19th-century pioneers trying to survive a journey from Missouri to Oregon, fending off hunger, disease, and accidents.
Bordon believed the game’s simple design and addictive game play were suited to Facebook. He interviewed several developers to choose one to create a new version, and settled on Blue Fang.
“They were a relatively small company that was able to communicate well with us and give us the time and attention we needed,’’ Bordon said. He was impressed with the company’s work on Zoo Kingdom.
Bordon also decided to put Blue Fang to work on another Learning Co. title. The game series Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego? was developed in the 1980s to teach kids about geography. It featured a cunning master thief who had to be captured by visiting locations around the world. Now, Blue Fang has transplanted Carmen Sandiego to Facebook.
Both games can be played for free, but users can get extra tools, such as virtual food and clothing, by paying a little something — generally no more than a few dollars. And unlike the traditional versions of the games, the Facebook versions let users team up with online friends to solve puzzles or overcome obstacles.
Blue Fang is also moving into mobile gaming. Its Lion Pride game runs on Apple’s iPhone and iPad, and it is working on an iPhone version of the board game Reversi.
“We still get feedback from users saying please, please do Zoo Tycoon 3,’’ Howie said, although the decision to develop a sequel is up to Microsoft, which owns the rights to the title. In the meantime, Blue Fang plans to prosper by making a lot of new friends on Facebook.
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