What has large cuddly pandas, New York rock n’ roll, virtual coins and talking squirrels?  It’s Music Pets, one of the fastest growing games on the social gaming scene.  The game has accrued 700,000 users in only a month, and is one of the most talked about applications on my news feed.  The game is best described as a cross-breed between Pet Society and the Pandora music service…  Yes, you read that right.  Read on for the review!
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Do you remember when gaming just used to be called gaming, instead of being fragmented into a number of terms: casual gaming, social gaming, flash gaming? What do all these terms mean, and why care?

Well if you didn’t already know, this has been an important week in game development. The FGS 2010 Flash Gaming Summit took place on Mon Mar 8, and GDC 2010 Game Developers Conference started the day after and wraps up Sat Mar 13. Both conferences have looked at various aspects of game development, including coding, design, audio, legal and more. Naturally, during conference sessions, these types of gaming get brought up regularly, and if you’re not familiar with them, if might be worthwhile learning the differences. They are in fact distinct terms and loosely defined below: Read the rest of this entry »

Dr Robert Zubek of Zynga gave a fascinating talk, “Engineering Scalable Social Games,” at GDC 2010 Game Developers Conference about how Zynga has scaled up their computing resources to handle an increase number of players as well as increased usage. While the talk was fairly technical, here is the gist.

The primary problem: Social games by their very nature will attract increasingingly more players, and your servers have to be able to cope. A few reasons for growth:
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RockYou are today launching their “Deal of the Day” (DOTD) ad unit, which gives flash game developers the ability to offer and monetize deals on virtual goods and services. This offering is part of RockYou’s ad network, which reaches 280 million people across most of the major social networks. Lisa Marino, Chief Revenue Officer at RockYou, in an interview with SocialTimes, provided a bit of insight.
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Google has acquired Social Search provider Aardvark for $50 million, as reported minutes ago by TechCrunch.  Aardvark is a service that connects people with questions with people with answers by utilizing instant messaging an email.  It integrates quite intelligently with Google Chat, for instance, and the first time you sign up and ask a question, you’re immediately pinged with a friend request from the Aardvark chat bot.  The fact that Google is picking them up says a lot about the type of social features they want to introduce into their products moving forward.
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How many Twitter messages have you received in the past few weeks, inviting you to play one of those mafia games? You may be getting more messages from friends inviting you to join their squad on World of Blood’s Twitter version of its existing games already available on Facebook and MySpace.

The new Twitter-based version is called 140Blood, and this particular adaptation leverages the microblogging platform to make the game social for players. Find friends, invite members to your squad, and share your adventure online via Twitter updates.
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More games for hi5. The social network that’s turned to virtual goods has teamed up with RealNetworks in order to distribute some 1,500 game titles through hi5. While the financial details of the deal have not been revealed, this does appear to be yet another way in which hi5 can leverage its virtual currency through users downloading and purchasing various premium games.

hi5 has gone so far as to create an entirely new section to house its games, which launched earlier this year. Since its launch, hi5 has been adding more and more games to its game channel, mostly through partnerships wih game house developers and distributors alike. As hi5 has also been heavily promoting its virtual currency for an integrated approach to purchasing goods, including games, it’s a win-win for both hi5 and its game providers, which is RealNetworks in this case.
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Online game portal Bigpoint is launching a game called Seafight on hi5’s recently revealed Games Channel, making it immediately available in 20 languages. Play the game on hi5 here.

The realtime fantasy adventure game is among Bigpoint’s most popular. The Flash game will be made accessible for all hi5 users without having to install a seperate application. So far the supported launguages are English, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Potuguese, Romanian, Russina, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Seafight is the lastest in a growing string of games included on hi5 and integrated with the social network’s own virtual currency. Having yet another popular game with which to apply the hi5 Coins is a revenue-generating strategy that both hi5 and Bigpoint can take advantage of. It’s a necessary shift in payment options, considering the platform approach hi5 is taking to its own growing virtual economy.
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Playdom has added a new executive to its core team. The social game development company announced this week that John Pleasants is Playdom’s new CEO. Coming from Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA), Pleasants has a wealth of experience in the gaming industry, and has been brought on board in part to help Playdom achieve the high growth scaling the company is currently seeking.

At EA, Pleasants acted as the President of Global Publishing and Chief Operating Officer, giving him a very high level perspective on the gaming industry as a whole. Some benefits of EA are its established presence in its respective industry, as well as its involvement with multiple aspects of gaming overall. Having witnessed the recent changes to the gaming industry over the past several years, EA has managed to shift along with the times, even trying its hand at online social gaming.
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hi5 is extending its Games section by partnering with Mochi Media, the online games network. After launching Games earlier this year, hi5 is quickly expanding on its gaming portal, incorporating several new entertainment options for users and more revenue options for itself.

As with its own native games, those offered through the partnership with Mochi media will take advantage of the recently launched hi5 Coins, the social network’s virtual currency. While users will not be able to use hi5 Coins for direct transactions, there are plans for future options of purchasing downloadable games, challenging friends, accessing premium game content and status upgrades.
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