Following shortly after the launch of Portalarium two weeks ago, game design legend Richard Garriot has taken his first big step and launched the Portalarium Player for Facebook. The Portalarium player allows games that were developed on various engines, consoles and platforms to run as applications within Facebook. Judging by the quality of their flagship title, Sweet @$! Poker’, Portalarium games may successfully bring the console game experience to Facebook.
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Imagine walking into an establishment and being recognized by a digital system the moment you walk in the store. It’s a scene taken directly from Minority Report, but such ideas are not that far fetched considering some of the latest tools. For example, Foursquare in introducing new tools today that enable businesses to keep track of the people who have visited their establishment.
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Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), one of the largest and most successful online gaming companies of all time, has launched its first Facebook game, entitled PoxNora. PoxNora was previously available for play at PoxNora.com, and was hugely successful. The game was in fact acquired by SOE in January 2009, and has accumulated 2.5 million registered accounts so far. The game is a turn-based strategy game and collectable card game set in a fantasy universe. Sony also announced that they will “follow this inaugural Facebook launch of PoxNora with additional games for the Facebook platform based on both existing franchises and new intellectual property”.
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Recently, we noticed that RockYou had been promoting it’s ZooWorld application by using graphic ads on the Meebo chat service. This is certainly another sign of the growth of Facebook games, not only in reach, but in value to advertisers, as they pay to make placements on disparate networks or in this case, chat aggregators. We investigate how other game companies are attracting users to their Facebook games from outside of Facebook.
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Toy Soldiers, a real-time 3D simulation game set in World War I, was released onto XBox Live today. What makes it special is that the game has a unique feature: players are able to run their campaigns on XBox with the help of players that play the Match Defense: Toy Soldiers game on Facebook. In a first for the connected game world, Microsoft Game Studios has created a game universe where Facebook players can play a Bejeweled-ish casual game to contribute statistics and points towards a given campaign, and this in effect helps out players who are playing the campaign on XBox Live.
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San Francisco’s hi5, a social network that is increasingly focused on games, has announced a new set of Facebook compatible APIs which would allow very easy porting of an application developed for Facebook. This is in addition to their current OpenSocial implementation, meaning that games developed for either API will be easily portable to the hi5 system, which is emphasizing games with their upcoming games portal.
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If you’re an online marketer and your Facebook application just isn’t generating much fan engagement, Vitrue’s powerful ‘Wall Apps’ tool just may be what you need. Wall Apps is a new feature that’s part of Vitrue’s existing SRM (Social Relationship Manager) software suite.
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his evening LifeStreet Media has announced the acquisition of Social Cash’s ad network business, one of the leading monetization providers for application developers. In an effort build up the company’s position as “the largest social media ad network”, the company has decided to acquire all the assets of SocialCash. Given that it’s an asset acquisition, Social Cash will continue to operate as an independent company as they ramp up for a new product offering later this year.
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While Australians are reeling from the recent deaths of an 8 year-old girl and a 12 year-old boy, virtual lynch mobs are forming on Facebook and other social media sites, calling for the death of one of the accused killers. Unfortunately, if justice is to take its course, such social media actions might hinder criminal cases or result in mistrials.
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Consumers spent more than five and a half hours on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in Dec, 2009, according to a report by Nielsen. The amount of time spent on social media sites has increased by 82% from the same time last year, when users only spent three hours on social media sites each day.
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