Facebook brings social App discovery to iOS
Facebook Credits and HTML5 apps can be purchased through mobile platform; but Facebook heavyweights see decline in user retention.
Zynga welcomes competition from EA
Zynga has said that the success of EA's The Sims Social on Facebook is to be welcomed, and shows that social gaming is still very much on the rise. EA is the first true challenger to Zynga's dominance on Facebook, with The Sims Social rapidly closing in on CityVille, the most popular game of all time on the social network. The Playfish-developed Sims title currently boasts 65.1 million monthly active users compared to CityVille's 71.3 million. More >
Games at risk as HTTPS becomes Facebook standard
Facebook apps and games will be disabled tomorrow unless their developers convert them to support HTTPS, as the social network makes secure data transfer mandatory. More >
What do Facebook's changes mean for games?
CEO Mark Zuckerberg details updates that will see friends' social gaming activities return to feeds.
EA confident of dethroning Zynga's CityVille
"We've learned what we need to learn to take on Zynga," says EA subsidiary Playfish following The Sims Social's successful launch.
1Zynga announces Mafia Wars 2
Zynga has announced a sequel to its 2008 social game Mafia Wars. Platforms are yet to be revealed - the original is a rare breed of Zynga game, playable not just through Facebook but other social networks and a native mobile app - but the developer promises to take "one of our longest running and most successful franchises to a whole new universe, introducing a vast 3D world where being bad never felt so good." More >
1Zynga to add Indiana Jones to Adventure World
Zynga's latest Facebook game, Adventure World, draws no little inspiration from the Indiana Jones films, and the developer has now announced plans to add Lucasfilm's iconic adventurer to the game next month. More >
Ngmoco acquires Facebook developer Lionside
DeNA subsidiary Ngmoco has purchased Facebook sports game developer Lionside for an undisclosed sum. Lionside is best known for NBA Legend, a mid-level Facebook title which peaked with over a million monthly active users, although that figure has recently fallen to under 300,000. "We are very excited to have Lionside join the Ngmoco and DeNA family," Ngmoco said in a statement issued to Gamasutra. "They are working on new products for the Mobage social gaming platform, bringing their passion and experience to our continuously expanding first party development capabilities." Mobage, the enormously popular Japanese mobile social gaming network, launched on the Android Market in English-speaking countries around the world in July.
Zynga launches Adventure World
The social gaming titan's latest game for Facebook, Adventure World, was revealed last week. Overnight, Zynga got in touch to confirm that the game, which takes no little inspiration from the Indiana Jones films, is now live on Facebook. This is the first game from Zynga's Boston studio, and it claims it's its "most feature-rich" work so far, with a world 40 times the size of FarmVille. "We call this genre social adventure," said Nabeel Hyatt, general manager of Zynga Boston, "where players can explore, discover and team with friends on an adventure of a lifetime. We hope our players have as much fun playing the game as we had building it." Find out for yourself by following the source link below.
The Sims Social passes 30 million users
EA took its time bringing The Sims to Facebook, a curious move given that it seems such a good fit for social gaming. However, it appears to have paid off, with the game amassing more than 30 million active users since its launch last month.
Zynga's Adventure World inspired by Zelda
Zynga announced its latest Facebook game, the Indiana Jones-inspired Adventure World, earlier this week, and has gone into more detail on the title in an interview with Gamasutra. Promising greater emphasis on puzzle-solving and storytelling than in previous Zynga games, lead game designer Seth Sivak said: "We love the action-adventure genre, we love games like The Legend Of Zelda, and we want to find a way to make that for everybody." There will also be reduced emphasis on base-building in Adventure World, to encourage players to spend more time exploring the large game world. No firm release date was set, with Zynga only saying it would launch "in the coming weeks."
Zynga announces Adventure World
Imminent launch of latest Facebook game a welcome distraction from rumoured IPO woes.
Facebook: we're an opportunity, not a threat
Sean Ryan says publishers can help Facebook gaming mean more than just FarmVille.
2Zynga Game Cards hit 18 new countries
Zynga has partnered with Epay to take its virtual currency cards to 18 new markets: the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Croatia.
1Activision: social gaming company valuations “out of whack”
Activision isn’t ruling out expanding into the social gaming arena, but it appears unlikely to do so aggressively through buyouts. Speaking about the high market value of social game makers, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg told Bloomberg: “Valuations of some of the companies in that space are out of whack, so that’s an issue when it comes to acquisitions.” The executive went on to say that while Activision may not have made any formal announcements on the subject of bringing its games to social networks, “any new place where people are playing games, at scale, is something that we’re interested in.” He added: “Don’t mistake careful, methodical planning for inaction.”
1Facebook updates terms to forbid Google+ promotion
Inside Social Games reports that Facebook last week updated its Platform Policies to forbid developers cross-promoting games on "any competing social platform." A Facebook spokesperson said: "[We] don't believe it's appropriate to use our site to promote a competitive service whether through ads, platform or any other channel we make available to other thirdparties on Facebook. We've had this policy in place for our advertising platform for some time, and the recent update extended this to Canvas applications on Facebook." While the language used in the new terms - "Apps on Facebook may not integrate, link to, promote, or redirect to any app on any other competing social platform" - suggests promotion of mobile games may also be forbidden, it has been established that this is not the case. As such it seems little coincidence that Facebook chose to update its policy in the week games were added to Google's new social network, Google+.
The Sims Social hits Facebook today
Confirmation that the social incarnation of EA's enormously successful The Sims is to finally hit Facebook comes as the publisher's subsidiary, Playfish, announces an agreement with ad platform Nanigans. The deal will see the Nanigans Ad Engine used to manage Facebook advertising campaigns in all Playfish's Facebook games. Inside Social Games took an in-depth look at the game while it was in closed beta: follow the source link below for more.
1GameBox brings CityVille to iPad
The GameBox app makes Facebook games playable on the Apple tablet by handling Flash rendering in the cloud. Only two games are available at present - Zynga's CityVille, and Army Attack by Digital Chocolate - but developer Mobi2SNS is promising that more titles will be added over time.
1Zynga sued for patent violation
The social gaming titan was sued for copyright infringement last month, and is now facing allegations of patent litigation from Segan LLC. The patent in question is titled "System for viewing content over a network and method therefor," and covers "a system and method for viewing content over the Internet wherein a user accesses a service provider server to view a character icon provided by the service provider to a user interface device." Segan claims that Zynga's FarmVille and Mafia Wars are in violation of its patent, and seeks "a reasonable royalty to compensate" it for "injury and monetary damages".
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