tag:,2010:/4 2010-07-30T20:33:28Z Movable Type 3.34 tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23293 2010-07-30T21:00:51Z 2010-07-30T20:33:28Z

Multimedia group RealNetworks reported a 5 percent drop in revenues for its Games division during Q2 2010, and announced the promotion of chief revenue officer Matt Hulett as the new head of that unit. The company's revenues from its Games...

Eric Caoili Multimedia group RealNetworks reported a 5 percent drop in revenues for its Games division during Q2 2010, and announced the promotion of chief revenue officer Matt Hulett as the new head of that unit. The company's revenues from its Games business during Q2 2010 (ending June 30th) was $28.1 million, 5 percent less compared to the $29.6 million the department generated in the same period last year. RealNetworks' total revenues for the quarter from all of its units came out to $88.9 million, down from $135.7 million in Q2 2009 (includes $40.5 million in revenue from Real's music business and Rhapsody joint venture, which wasn't factored into its results this time around due to a restructuring of Rhapsody). For the third quarter of 2010, the firm expects its overall revenue to be "slightly lower" sequentially and less than its Q3 2009 amount, attributing the decline primarily to "softness" in its Games business. It also predicts that its future revenue statements will be affected by foreign currency trends. With its quarterly results announcement, RealNetworks revealed the appointment of Matt Hulett as the new head of its Games business, as John Barbour steps down. Hulett was previously CRO of the department, and has held executive roles at Expedia and Shockwave.com "Given the urgent need to pivot our Games business to social and online games, we think it is critical to have a leader based here in Seattle," says RealNetworks CEO and president Bob Kimball. "Matt has the right combination of leadership skills, online business experience and support from the team to refocus our Games business on the growth markets, including social games." Hulett's promotion comes a month after the company laid off most of its internal PC casual game studio GameHouse (Super Collapse and Little Shop) as part of a wider series of layoffs and a restructuring plan designed to "reduce the spans and layers of management to create greater efficiency, teamwork, and customer focus". RealNetworks retained its casual/social game team in the Netherlands, and said that its Seattle-based GameHouse studio will continue to operate its game portal, create titles for Facebook, and pursue second-party development contracts. "We made strong progress transforming RealNetworks during the second quarter," adds Kimball. "Our restructuring efforts are ahead of plan. In the first six months of the year, we cut more than $30 million in annualized operating expenses from our ongoing businesses." "Now it is time to focus on growing the business by improving our sales and marketing of existing products and building a strong pipeline of innovative products for the long term."]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23292 2010-07-30T19:00:20Z 2010-07-30T19:47:01Z

Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications is placing restrictions on public internet access and banning ads for online games following complaints that games help lead to juvenile crime, according to the country's state-run news agency. Minister Le Doan Hop announced...

Eric Caoili Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications is placing restrictions on public internet access and banning ads for online games following complaints that games help lead to juvenile crime, according to the country's state-run news agency. Minister Le Doan Hop announced the decision on Tuesday. The Vietnam News agency said citizens are concerned about online games' "negative influences on the youth." The restrictions follow public outcry that blamed increasing reports of juvenile crime and school truancy on online games and their allegedly addictive allure. The government in effect said it would cut off internet access from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. to shops that offer public PC use. Officials will also issue a temporary stop on licensing of online games. The restrictions are valid through the end of the year, by which time the ministry said it expects the government to approve draft online game regulations. In Vietnam, there are 22 licensed gaming companies and 93 games, according to the report. Long-term potential solutions to the alleged negative effects of youth online gaming include electronic IDs used to manage citizen's internet usage. Director of the ministry's Electronic Information and Broadcasting Department Luu Vu Hai said the IDs could also help regulate subscribers to mobile devices. The Ho Chi Minh City executive council is also pushing for limitations on games with violent, gambling and pornographic content. Vietnam's restrictions come less than a month after China's Ministry of Culture said it would ban online game companies from using sex to sell their products, and also ban the promotional use of violence and gambling in advertising.]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23291 2010-07-30T17:00:48Z 2010-07-30T19:36:07Z

Veteran game designer and erstwhile cosmonaut Richard "Lord British" Garriott has prevailed in his legal action against former employer NCsoft, scoring $28 million in a dispute over stock options and the circumstances of his departure from the company. A federal...

Eric Caoili Veteran game designer and erstwhile cosmonaut Richard "Lord British" Garriott has prevailed in his legal action against former employer NCsoft, scoring $28 million in a dispute over stock options and the circumstances of his departure from the company. A federal court yesterday ruled that NCsoft had deprived Garriott of profits on his stock options by mis-categorizing his exit. The Ultima creator, whose last project with NCsoft was the disappointing Tabula Rasa, left the company in November 2008, a month after his return from his space tourism expedition on board the International Space Station. In his suit, Garriott had claimed he was 'forced out' of NCsoft and that he had "objected to his dismissal," yet the company claimed he left voluntarily -- a decision that meant Garriott had to quickly sell his stock options in a disadvantageous market or lose them altogether, whereas had he been categorized as terminated, he would have had 10 years to divest. According to a report in Austin's Statesman, the trial lasted three-and-a-half days, and the jury spent three hours deliberating before making the decision to award Garriott the $28 million -- less than the $47 he had been seeking, but an amount equal to the profit he missed out on by having to sell quickly. Garriott, whose newest venture is a Facebook gaming start-up called Portalarium, said he was "very pleased with the final award". South Korea-headquarted NCsoft said via its attorney, however, that it "will be considering all options for next steps in the legal process." According to the report, Garriott first heard he would lose his job when he was spending time in quarantine in Russia following his space trip. Just after he returned, NCsoft announced it would soon close Tabula Rasa, an MMO launched under Garriott's stewardship a year prior that became a commercial failure, with only about a year on the market.]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23289 2010-07-30T15:00:25Z 2010-07-30T17:25:03Z

Free-to-play online publisher Nexon America (Maplestory, Dungeon Fighter Online) revealed that its revenues grew 26 percent for the second quarter of 2010 ending last June. While Nexon America, which is the Stateside arm of South Korean developer and publisher Nexon...

Eric Caoili Free-to-play online publisher Nexon America (Maplestory, Dungeon Fighter Online) revealed that its revenues grew 26 percent for the second quarter of 2010 ending last June. While Nexon America, which is the Stateside arm of South Korean developer and publisher Nexon Corp., hasn't yet provided exact revenue and profit numbers for Q2 2010, it noted that in June alone, its revenues were 36 percent higher compared to the same period last year. This announcement continues a trend of increasing revenues for the North American division -- last May, the firm enjoyed an increase in revenues to $45.5 million for 2009, a 31 percent growth over the $34.3 million it cashed the previous year Nexon America's free-to-play titles include MapleStory, which claims more than seven million registered users in the region; Combat Arms, which has over four milion registered users; and Mabinogi with one million users. It also recently launched Dungeon Fighter Online here, and will begin a closed beta for Vindictus next month. "Our player base and revenues continue to expand, which tells us that gamers find that our free-to-play business model fits their play needs," said Nexon America's CEO Daniel Kim, according to a report from Games Beat.]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23290 2010-07-30T13:00:30Z 2010-07-30T17:26:42Z

Academic, author and game designer Ian Bogost is a little bit worried that his latest game, Cow Clicker -- a simple Facebook title simply about clicking on cows -- might receive more attention than anything he's done to date. If...

Eric Caoili Academic, author and game designer Ian Bogost is a little bit worried that his latest game, Cow Clicker -- a simple Facebook title simply about clicking on cows -- might receive more attention than anything he's done to date. If that turns out to be the case, it'll be an interesting turn of irony, the sort that motivates the sometimes-controversial designer: this is because Cow Clicker is a satire that asks players and developers alike to examine the explosive popularity of Facebook games. Cow Clicker, Bogost tells Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra, was initially conceived as an alternative to a straight lecture presentation he was asked to give at an NYU event; with only ten minutes to speak, and (as usual for Bogost) "a lot to say", why not show instead of tell? Cow Clicker was intended to present the four issues that Bogost says "concern" him most about Facebook games: "enframing, compulsion, optionalism, and destroyed time," described in detail on his blog post about the title. Gameplay in Cow Clicker is insultingly simple -- Bogost has described it as "Facebook games distilled to their essence." Users obtain a cow on which they can click every six hours, and every time they click, they earn more opportunities to click their cow or their friends' cows. Users can buy custom "premium" cows or buy their way out of the six-hour delay with the game's currency, "Mooney" (Bogost claims that the coincidence with the last name of Zynga's vice president is nothing more than sheer accident). "It's particularly easy to be a negative critic, to talk down about something from on high," he says. "By making a game to deliver that message, I hoped it would be taken more seriously." So while Cow Clicker is, in a nutshell, a criticism of the social game industry, "that's not all it is," he adds. "It's also a social game! Which is counterintuitive, isn't it?"]]> Going Beyond Concept To Practice Counterintuitive or not, Bogost says that when using a medium to generate discussion on that medium itself, it was important to go beyond the conceptual into something that fully operates in practice: "If I had just made a Facebook game in which you clicked a button every six hours and it spammed all your friends, it just wouldn't have been interesting as art, as critique, as satire," he says. "By making a distillation of a social game that actually (if perversely) functions as a social game, I feel the stakes on video game satire are raised." "I wanted to see what would happen, and to learn if, perhaps, I was right or wrong (or neither) about this variety of social games," he continues. "So if I had to sum it up in a sentence, I'd say that the purpose of the game is to test a theory about social games." Since then, Bogost has watched Cow Clicker's players from afar in endless fascination, surprised to see both the volume of users willingly engaging with the satire -- alongside plenty of actual players who appear to be enjoying Cow Clicker the way they would FrontierVille or Sorority Life. He's fielded calls from National Public Radio and engaged in heated public debates with the development community. All in all, he says, it's been a surprising experience, but one with several major takeaways: "For one, clearly there was a tremendous amount of anxiety about social games among the general public," he says. Despite the current major trend that sees millions of users flocking to Facebook games and adoring them, he says player reactions to Cow Clicker have included a large amount of "performative snarkiness." Player Engagement Lessons "I think people really aren't sure what they think about Facebook games, about spending their time on them, about what they're being sold and what it means for life and culture and time and so forth," he suggests. "Cow Clicker offers a little release valve, a safe place to question those ideas." Bogost also says reactions to the game have taught him more about the willingness of players to engage with video game satire, whereas common attempts at video game humor feel insincere or fall flat -- unless, as the adage goes, you're Tim Schafer or Ron Gilbert, a theme aptly addressed by game critic Michael Abbott in a recent column. "Videogames in general just aren't funny, and when they are funny it's usually one-off gag humor," says Bogost. "Yet satire and humor are a very old form of expression, and they're enjoying a great deal of popularity right now. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert and the Onion and so forth—these are major players in media and culture these days." Going full-fledged and creating a working game helps Bogost in milking game satire for all it's worth, so to speak. But there is undeniably controversy around this latest salvo from a developer reputed for his tendency to question, often acerbically, the industry's favorite trends. And most of those most harshly on the side of Cow Clicker's detractors are Bogost's own colleagues -- game developers, many of them from a community of storied design veterans who have recently moved to the social gaming space, excited by new design possibilities therein. Many of them are missing the irony in Cow Clicker, says Bogost, and that scares him; instead, they "peacock about what features I might add or how I've missed opportunities for virality," he says. "Those reactions fill me with sorrow and dread." The Developer Backlash Bogost sees an enormous climate of anxiety surrounding social game developers, despite the mass proliferation of their success stories in the financial headlines. Many of them, he suggests "are full of loathing or guilt or other sensations" about the growing divide between their territory and that of the traditional audience -- much of which frequently vents its own sense of being threatened by the new market amid absolutist venture capitalist and CEO-driven talk of the death of video games as they've known them. The often-aggressive, contentious discussions in the comments on Bogost's blog are something to behold. "I think a lot of them are defensive. I think there's a huge amount of personal conflict and self-doubt in social game development these days," he suggests. "On the one hand, many developers know they despise many Facebook games, even if they can't put their finger on why. But on the other hand, many developers are jealous of their success." "And those who are in the social games scene, they feel like they're a part of some great new age of game development, finally bringing games to the masses, and they're bitter when called out for 'not making real games' by creators who, in their eyes, are just shoveling first person shooter power fantasies into the eyeballs of adolescents," he adds. "So all around, there's a lot of anxiety and doubt. And when people have doubt, they tend to lash out defensively." Cow Clicker drives directly into that flashpoint of conflict in an enormous and rapidly-changing game industry (summarized well in a post-GDC roundup written this year by former Civ IV project lead and Spore designer/programmer Soren Johnson). In that respect, the game's greatest success may be that it's exploded the conversation, bringing some of these considerations and private insecurities even more directly into the forum of public dialogue. "I think a great many social game developers are mistaking the success of their games for positive contributions to humanity," Bogost says. Plenty of social game developers cite the new mass audience as one of the primary merits of their work. When he joined Playdom -- recently picked up in a much-buzzed (and much-questioned) Disney buy for up to $763 million -- well-reputed Infocom veteran Steve Meretzky brought up all the "people in retirement homes playing Wii Sports and everyone's parents and grandparents getting DSes and playing Brain Age." And it's a common refrain. "If you talk to just about any social game developer, but particularly those who used to work in 'traditional' development, you'll hear them talk about how their niece or mother or uncle or whomever plays their games now. As if that fact justifies the nature of the games themselves," says Bogost. "It's as if there's been this huge vacuum of professional isolation that's finally being released, and some developers are using that release as an excuse to justify the construction of profoundly dastardly works." Developers and players alike often experience an enormous feeling of resignation when they see headlines about the multi-million users -- and the concurrent multi-million dollars -- in the social gaming space. The high-risk traditional game industry has traditionally operated in virtual slavery to numbers, where earnings equate to opportunities for innovation until they're themselves seen as evidence of, or reward for innovation. "When I hear so many developers use the market as a primary justification for design choices or professional choices, it makes me feel wretched," says Bogost. "Many people like saturated fats and simple sugars and The View and a great many other things, but that does not automatically make those things righteous or good." The Battle Lines It may not be so simple. Plenty of design veterans, like Civilization II and Rise of Nations developer Brian Reynolds (who joined Zynga and launched successful FarmVille-alike FrontierVille) or long-serving Brenda Brathwaite, best known for her work on Wizardry and now creative director at LOLApps, tell us that the Facebook platform allows them to focus on the types of challenges they best enjoy: what Reynolds calls "straight mechanics" in an environment of rapid innovation. "Designing an award winning RPG took me longer, but it was easier," said Brathwaite in a Twitter conversation with me recently. "We iterate rapidly and distribution is super fast. The majority of games stick to formulas (genres) and innovate within." Despite her enthusiasm for the new space, Brathwaite also is puzzled by the environment of controversy and conflict on all sides that so often targets the Facebook space: "Many board and card games have simpler dynamics and sell amazingly well, but don't provoke the same bias. It's interesting," she said on Twitter. "This whole social versus hardcore reminds me of console vs. PC, or even hardcore RPGs versus Diablo... and we can see who won that battle." The industry will never see the climate that birthed Ultima and Wizardry again, she points out. Bogost asserts his respect for these designers, and believes they are "earnestly hopeful." But he's still defiant: "I don't really see what rapid iteration has to do with 'innovation' or breaking out of formulas," he says. "Aren't all these games just as formulaic as any genre, with innovation mostly limited to optimizations meant to squeeze more out of players?...I think these designers are making aspirational claims. Let's hope they live up to them." The Learnings -- And The Numbers In the end, Bogost believes he's drawing the most fire for being a critic: "I've heard some developers suggest that as a fairly visible critic and developer, I ought not to say nasty things about games, because doing so will open some mythical floodgate of public resentment," he says. "This is frustrating to me since I've spent many years supporting the uses of games far beyond the blindered view of the traditional industry, so I think I've earned my stripes in this regard." "But more importantly, supporting video games is not a monolithic affair. Part of being a critic is highlighting the bad along with the good. I know that critique mostly highlights the 'awesome,' so maybe this point is lost on some, but disagreements are productive," he adds. "I find it baffling that some developers might assume the existence of some sort of tacit contract for the universal support of videogames. What a juvenile idea." Of course, we had to ask Bogost about his user numbers. One final key takeaway he says he's gleaned from Cow Clicker is the inherent unreliability of Facebook metrics: "According to the site, I had around 16,000 monthly active users at the start of today," he says. "I count something more like 25,000 users in my own records, but I'm aware that 'user' isn't the same as monthly active user in Facebook terms. That's a tiny number compared to these giant Zynga and Playdom games, of course, so clearly I'm not reaching Colbert or Onion level public invective yet." What about the money question? How much is he making? "Currently, very little, enough to cover the hosting costs of running the game," he says. "Ironically, I'd have to engage in the statistics-based design and A/B testing of the big boys to tune cash out of the game, and I don't know if I have the stomach (let alone the time) to take a swing at that." "But I think it also should remind us of the scale of finances in these sorts of games," he adds. Generally, the percentage of users who spend money in social games is markedly smaller than the number of those playing for free -- "that's a fact that feeds back on the design of social games. You need to get a bajillion users, and the design follows suit." "I'm not entirely sure what Cow Clicker is," Bogost reflects. "It's an experiment. I'm trying to keep an open mind about it, and to let it guide my understanding and opinions about social games. As of right now, I feel genuinely apprehensive about it." "On the one hand, it's great fun to watch the satire take on its own life." And yet watching it all happen, watching the users and cents fluctuate, Bogost is picking up his own lessons on what it may feel like to be in the shoes of his social colleagues. "On the other hand, I find myself drawn to the game and its support in the same unhealthy, compulsive way I suspect social game players feel about social games." "Perhaps that very struggle, between joy and loathing, is at the heart of the game's meaning."]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23279 2010-07-30T01:00:39Z 2010-07-29T21:32:43Z

Realtime Worlds, developer of APB and the original Crackdown, has announced Project: MyWorld, a PC platform that combines social media with a virtual representation of the real world. More of a social platform than a game, Project: MyWorld uses data...

Eric Caoili Realtime Worlds, developer of APB and the original Crackdown, has announced Project: MyWorld, a PC platform that combines social media with a virtual representation of the real world. More of a social platform than a game, Project: MyWorld uses data from GIS (geographic information system) mapping services to create a 3D render of entire countries. Users can then alter the features of cities and towns using in-game tools to make buildings and other structures more accurately mimic the real world. Project: MyWorld uses a Wiki-like system to ensure that users do not alter the virtual world in ways that stray too far from reality. Realtime Worlds released a walkthrough video, demonstrating tools that allow users to alter the dimensions, colors, textures, and external features of buildings. The project integrates several forms of social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google, and Loopt, though there are few details about how these services will work within the platform. Users can also play several types of casual games within the virtual locations, including fishing, driving, farming, and flying. “We see Project: MyWorld as the next generation of social game platforms…we see it has the intersection between virtual worlds, online gaming and social media,” explains Sean Dugan, design director of Project: MyWorld. Realtime Worlds hopes to open the Project: MyWorld platform to users early next year.]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23278 2010-07-29T23:00:31Z 2010-07-29T21:24:37Z

Every other week, we'll examine the fastest growing Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at which titles and developers are having the most success attracting new players on the social network. Though Lyore Network's QuizBone doesn't seem to...

Eric Caoili Every other week, we'll examine the fastest growing Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at which titles and developers are having the most success attracting new players on the social network. Though Lyore Network's QuizBone doesn't seem to really qualify as a game, the quiz-making title was still the fastest growing app listed in Facebook's "Games" category, doubling its audience to 2.9 million after gaining 1.5 million new users in the last week. QuizBone managed to overtake Zynga's FrontierVille, which held that #1 spot almost every week since its launch in June. The pioneering sim grew by 6 percent and now has 21.9 million players, 1.1 million of which just started playing within the past seven days. At #3, Watercooler's Kingdoms of Camelot grew its userbase as it added 970,122 new players, now up to a total of 4 million. The kingdom-building simulator spent the past month below 3 million users but experienced a 32 percent surge for its audience recently. Playdom's offbeat game Fanglies (#4), which launched earlier this month, more than tripled its total to 1.1 million users after attracting 838,583 new players. Apparently, gamers have taken to the idea of a city-building sim starring cartoonish vampires! Playfish/Electronic Arts' Pirates Ahoy, another early July release, shot up to #5 and enjoyed a 1,425 percent growth this week, picking up 796,939 new swashbucklers and expanding its total crew to 852,846 players. The new title invites players to sail with their friends and search for treasures. ZipZapPlay's Baking Life hasn't budged from its #6 spot since our last tally, bringing in 787,344 (+23 percent) new users for a total of 4.3 milion. Metrogames' clothing store management game Fashion World climbed up to #7, with 779,802 new shoppers joining for a total of 3.1 million. Two more non-games, Windows Live Messenger and Entrevista tus Amigos, popped up on our list of Facebook's fastest growing games at #8 and #9 respectively. Popcap Games Bejeweled Blitz continues to grow on the social network, as 733,654 new gem-matchers (+7 percent) helped bring its total audience size up to 11.5 million. You can see the full list of the top 20 fastest growing Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts after the break: All charts and data are courtesy of Facebook application metrics and trends site AppData]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23277 2010-07-29T19:00:10Z 2010-07-29T19:39:26Z

Farmville developer Zynga has teamed up with telecommunications/media corporation Softbank to create Zynga Japan, a joint venture focusing on social games and the local mobile market. Along with announcing the Tokyo-based joint venture, Softbank revealed that it's completed a previously...

Eric Caoili Farmville developer Zynga has teamed up with telecommunications/media corporation Softbank to create Zynga Japan, a joint venture focusing on social games and the local mobile market. Along with announcing the Tokyo-based joint venture, Softbank revealed that it's completed a previously reported $150 million investment in Zynga, boosting the San Francisco's total amount of venture backing raised since its founding three years ago up to almost $370 million. With the establishing of Zynga Japan, the developer is taking its first step into Japan's growing internet and mobile businesses. The joint venture looks to tap into Japan's history of gaming while leveraging Softbank's mobile and web technology to produce what the two firms hope will be "the best social games in the market". "We're excited to partner with Softbank to bring Zynga's social games to Japan and gain insights from the Japanese market," says Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus. "As one of the most innovative technology companies in the world, Softbank is bringing the mobile internet to consumers making the social web more accessible to people everywhere." ]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23276 2010-07-29T17:00:00Z 2010-07-29T16:11:48Z

The Lego Group announce that it's selected newly opened studio Dire Wolf Digital to produce a trading card game based on its upcoming Lego Universe massively multiplayer online game. This agreement with Dire Wolf allows the company to not only...

Eric Caoili The Lego Group announce that it's selected newly opened studio Dire Wolf Digital to produce a trading card game based on its upcoming Lego Universe massively multiplayer online game. This agreement with Dire Wolf allows the company to not only create a physical collectible card game, but also digital products for PC, Mac, and mobile devices. The studio doesn't plans to release the Lego Universe card game until 2011, while the NetDevil-developed MMO will launch on October 26, 2010. Based in Denver, the studio is headed by Sony Online Entertainment Denver's former head Scott Martins, and is staffed by veterans from SOE and Worlds Apart Productions (acquired by SOE in 2006). Martins and his team have previously specialized in creating online trading card games like Legends of Norrath and the Free Realms TCG. The developer says it has an "Anytime, Anyplace" approach for its technology, which is designed to enable consumers to "play from multiple types of clients (web/social, mobile, console), all connecting to a single back-end." Dire Wolf's deal with the Lego Group allows it to potentially implement this concept with its Lego Universe project. "Creating a game with the Lego Group and NetDevil is an exciting opportunity, allowing us to work with a beloved brand and great business partners," says Martins. "The creativity and ‘build anything’ spirit of the brand and Lego Universe fit perfectly with trading card games, where players are limited only by their imaginations."]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23275 2010-07-29T15:00:19Z 2010-07-29T15:50:33Z

Social game developer Playdom is the latest studio to sign a five-year contract with Facebook to exclusively use the social network's universal virtual currency Credits across all its titles. The news follows just a few days after Disney announced its...

Eric Caoili Social game developer Playdom is the latest studio to sign a five-year contract with Facebook to exclusively use the social network's universal virtual currency Credits across all its titles. The news follows just a few days after Disney announced its agreement to acquire Playdom for up to $763 million, a purchase that puts Facebook in the position to claim that Credits, which is currently in beta, has the support of a major media conglomerate, possibly compelling other companies to follow suit. Inside Social Games, which reported the new contract, notes that developers such as Wooga (Monster World), LOLapps (Band of Heroes), RockYou (Zoo World), and CrowdStar (Happy Aquarium) have also announced agreements to exclusively use Credits, with the latter two signing similar five-year deals with Facebook. With Credits, players can purchase digital goods in any social games that support Facebook's in-house virtual currency. The benefit of this system to users is that it's designed to be more portable than virtual currencies that they can only spend in a specific game or a catalog of titles from a single publisher. Playdom, which will soon join the Disney Interactive Media Group if the acquisition is completed, offers dozens of titles on Facebook and MySpace. On Facebook alone, its games (e.g. Social City, Tiki Resort) bring in a total of more than 38 million monthly active users, according to figures from AppData.]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23262 2010-07-29T01:00:46Z 2010-07-29T01:15:07Z

Games network IGN Entertainment has launched its beta for MyIGN, a gamer-focused social network adding game-like elements and new community features to its flagship consumer news site. The social network, which acts as a layer over the company's site, looks...

Eric Caoili Games network IGN Entertainment has launched its beta for MyIGN, a gamer-focused social network adding game-like elements and new community features to its flagship consumer news site. The social network, which acts as a layer over the company's site, looks to keep IGN.com's 12.7 million monthly visitors (the entire network attracts over 18 million visitors each month) entertained by offering features that allow them to track items posted on the site and compete with their friends. MyIGN enables the site's users to follow specific releases, game developers, IGN.com editors, and other users to create and customize a personal newsfeed that provides news, reviews, videso, blog posts, and more. They can also post status updates, similar to other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. As users take advantage of these features and participate in the MyIGN community, they'll earn points and level up. The system adds a competitive element, as users' levels are displayed throughout the site, and IGN hopes this will motivate them to become more active and beat their friends' ranking. Though IGN's parent company, News Corp., also owns MySpace, the technology for this social network was developed within IGN, according to a report from VentureBeat. Producing MyIGN in-house allowed the site to tailor its features to what it believes gamers want. "We created it because gamers are not currently served by social networks," said IGN's SVP and publisher Peer Schneider. "If I post what I really feel about a game on Facebook, I’ll get odd comments from non-gaming friends and family. In our setting, you can feel comfortable talking about gaming. No one else has nailed it." IGN plans to eventually introduce new features to the social network, such as the ability to join friends in games, try out instantaneous demos, and purchase digitally distributed releases. Users can currently sign up for the social features by using their existing IGN account, creating a new IGN account, or logging in with their Facebook details.]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23260 2010-07-28T23:00:43Z 2010-07-28T21:03:07Z

Google is talking to "several" developers in the social gaming space about the creation of a social network that would rival the 500 million-strong Facebook, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The report cited multiple anonymous sources close to the...

Eric Caoili Google is talking to "several" developers in the social gaming space about the creation of a social network that would rival the 500 million-strong Facebook, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The report cited multiple anonymous sources close to the dealings who said Google is talking to companies including Playfish parent Electronic Arts, FarmVille house Zynga and Disney's recent acquisition, Playdom. If Google launches the reported games-friendly social network, it would find itself in direct competition with Facebook, which is home to the leading social network games. A successful Google social network could also give game developers another viable platform to reach the millions of "social" gamers who spend real-world cash on virtual items. Google did not immediately respond to Gamasutra's inquiry about the service. The Wall Street Journal said that Google CEO Eric Schmidt this week would not confirm development of a social game-friendly networking service, rumored to be called "Google Me." The search engine giant is keenly interested in expanding its reach into the gaming space. In April this year, Google hired longtime game industry veteran Mark DeLoura as developer advocate for games at the company. "In this time of great disruption in the game industry, there are a huge number of opportunities for developers," he said at the time. "It can be difficult for traditional games companies to navigate the new possibilities provided by mobile platforms, social networks, and alternative business models." Google reportedly invested around $100 million into Zynga this year as it prepares for a wide-reaching gaming initiative. Schmidt did not confirm the unannounced deal, but said, "you can expect a partnership with Zynga [in the future]." The most recent major social gaming transaction was Disney's acquisition of Sorority Life developer Playdom for $563.2 million and up to an additional $200 million in earn-outs.]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23259 2010-07-28T21:00:48Z 2010-07-29T18:59:11Z

Zynga's decision to shutter its Street Racing social game has incited frustrated players to accuse the developer of delivering the cancellation news insensitively and providing inadequate compensation. The San Francisco-headquartered company announced the game's termination in its forums and app...

Eric Caoili Zynga's decision to shutter its Street Racing social game has incited frustrated players to accuse the developer of delivering the cancellation news insensitively and providing inadequate compensation. The San Francisco-headquartered company announced the game's termination in its forums and app page with a brief note that reads, "On August 2, 2010, Street Racing will be shutting down its garage doors and will no longer be open for business. But if you liked Street Racing, try out FrontierVille by Zynga ... See ya there partner!" Social games analyst Nicholas Lovell, who described the announcement as "asking for trouble", told trade site Develop, "Telling people to try FrontierVille from Street Racing is telling people to play a game that is completely different in terms of concept and design. A hugely apologetic email would have made more sense." Zynga posted a similar note when announcing its cancellation of Roller Coaster Kingdom last month, inviting players to try out Vampire Wars. And while some Street Racing fans are upset over the studio's apparent indifference, even more are complaining about losing the virtual cars and modifications they've purchased in the game with real cash. Lovell commented on the issue : “[What] they could have done is offer people credits, where every pound/[dollar] you spend in Street Racing will be used in other games. But I imagine they didn’t want to set that precedent. Zynga didn't provide any reasons for why it's removing Street Racing from its servers, but the title has received very few updates in recent months and has a shrinking audience of around 444,000 monthly active users -- an impressive amount for smaller developers perhaps, but a fraction of what the company's top releases typically pull. Despite Zynga's top releases attracting tens of millions of monthly active players, this isn't the first time the firm has shut down one of its social games. It's previously discontinued titles like Ponzi Inc. (after acquiring its developer Challenge Games), Dope Wars, and most recently Roller Coaster Kingdom. Update: Zynga has since addressed these issues by offering to compensate any Street Racing players who have purchased in-game goods within the last 90 days with virtual currency they can spend in some of Zynga's most popular titles. "As an acknowledgment of the inconvenience these changes may have caused, we have offered credits to all players who have made a purchase in the last 90 days," said a representative for the developer. "Those players will receive a credit for the exact amount of their purchases, plus an additional 100 units of premium currency, in any of Zynga’s nine most popular games." "We thank the Street Racing community for their support and hope they enjoy a new Zynga game of their choosing."]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23261 2010-07-28T19:00:13Z 2010-07-28T21:03:51Z

Disney's recent buy of Playdom may not have been a wise move, says one analyst, perplexed by the high value of the acquisition in a climate of viral slowdown for Facebook games. The Mouse paid $563 million, plus the possibility...

Eric Caoili Disney's recent buy of Playdom may not have been a wise move, says one analyst, perplexed by the high value of the acquisition in a climate of viral slowdown for Facebook games. The Mouse paid $563 million, plus the possibility of an additional $200 million if the Social City and Sorority Life developer achieves certain performance targets. That's a possible value of $763 million all told -- a deal that Cowen and Company's Doug Creutz says "looks very expensive." He says it's unclear whether Disney can possibly expect that kind of return on its investment -- according to the analyst, this is the fourth large-scale acquisition since CEO Bob Iger became CEO in 2005. Among these acquisitions was the equally-massive buy of online kids' social world Club Penguin, for which Disney paid about $700 million during a period when virtual worlds were nearly as popular with investors as social gaming is now. $350 million of that price was target-based incentives that the company ultimately missed. Not only are such big buys "potentially raising questions about how to evaluate the returns on Disney's strategic deployment of shareholder capital," according to the analyst, the Playdom acquisition seems illogical to Creutz when compared with the relatively recent $400 million Playfish purchase by EA ($300 million up-front, $100 million with performance contingencies). According to the analyst, Playdom's user base is about 30 percent smaller than the 60 million monthly active users across all platforms that Playfish had at the time it was purchased by EA; on Facebook only, Creutz cites AppData figures to suggest Playdom's monthly actives are about 15 percent smaller -- which makes it questionable why Disney's potential purchase price for Playdom is almost twice as high as Playfish's just eight months ago. ]]> FarmVille, but just from March 2009 to July of this year, that title has plummeted from its peak of 85 million monthly active users to 61.6 million -- a loss of more users than most social gaming companies outside the top three have across their entire portfolios. However, Zynga's newer game, FrontierVille, is seeing explosive growth, pulling 7.4 million new users in two weeks as of July 8, suggesting that social game companies still can attract users if they replace familiar properties with new trends on a regular basis -- something that to Creutz might be a harbinger of another negative trend. "We believe the dynamics of the social gaming space are becoming increasingly commoditized and fad-based, and attracting gamers could become an exercise in increasingly aggressive marketing budgets, impacting the economics of the social gaming model," warns the analyst.]]> tag:worldsinmotion.biz,2010://4.23258 2010-07-28T17:00:12Z 2010-07-28T17:31:51Z

Internet/mobile services firm and online game developer Tencent has signed a multi-SKU licensing agreement with Emergent Game Technologies for the use of the company's Gamebryo and Gamebryo Lightspeed engines. Emergent's engines allow developers to create single-player, online, and multiplayer titles...

Eric Caoili Internet/mobile services firm and online game developer Tencent has signed a multi-SKU licensing agreement with Emergent Game Technologies for the use of the company's Gamebryo and Gamebryo Lightspeed engines. Emergent's engines allow developers to create single-player, online, and multiplayer titles in a variety of genres, providing a cross-platform toolset for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PC projects. They're designed for "rapid prototyping, rapid iteration, and rapid development", and allow studios to integrate both in-house and third-party tech. Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, Tencent develops, publishers, and operates a number of MMOs and casual titles, including Dungeon & Fighter (Dungeon Fighter Online), Cross Fire, and more than 60 other games. It also runs QQ.com, one of China's largest web portals. Tencent maintains a development studio in Boston, which is currently working on an unannounced "fantasy-based MMO". The company hasn't revealed if that project will use Emergent's engines, but it has said that Gamebryo and Lightspeed will serve as "core client side technologies" for the development of its gaming products. "Tencent is a true global success story, continually innovating with each level of its business and we look forward to a long, integrated partnership to help them realize the next level of videogame entertainment," says Emergent CEO Scott M. Johnson. "Emergent’s products allow Tencent’s teams to focus more on game specific development and content creation, rather than core client technology development."]]>