Last week at SXSW, John Pleasants, CEO of Playdom, spoke about “The Future Of Social Gaming”, but the greatest takeaway was the current economics of Facebook Games. If you are looking to get into the business or are already a player in the space, there were a number of important facts disclosed by Pleasants. What’s clear is that the business is a smaller version of the movie industry with the difference being that games can be improved as users interact with them.
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Kirstie Alley, the very public and notoriously inconsistent dieter, has made a cameo appearance in the Zoo World Facebook game.   The game, which revolves around building a zoo and keeping your customers happy, now allows for you to either purchase a Healthy Snack Stand item that is sponsored by Kirstie Alley, or you can buy a Kirstie Alley Greeting stand, which just sits there and looks pretty.
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If you have or are planning to get into social game development on a tiny budget, you need to get financially creative and learn to bootstrap. The practice of bootstrapping a startup is essentially an act of balancing costs against revenues, and it applies as much to a game development studio as any other business. Do it right, and your business will likely survive long enough for your games to have a chance of success — something that’s a necessity given how many small studios and bedroom entrepreneurs are jumping into the social game development space. Here are a few tips on bootstrapping as relevant to game development.
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EA is promoting Saboteur, one of their newest console titles, by creating a Facebook quiz application that involves videos and content from the game. The application isn’t a full-fledged game, but does have a quiz element and leaderboards to compete with friends. There are also prizes to the top players, including an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas.
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Just as farming games like (Lil) Green Patch, Farm Town and Farmville once surged in popularity, the city-building genre is rapidly gaining players.  Playdom’s new Social City has gained 5,600,000 users in 2 weeks and is an excellent example of a city building game; it has great graphics, a pleasant interface and some great social features.  On the other hand, the game seems to be more about the “City” and less about the “Social”.  We review the game below.
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With Flash Gaming Summit (FGS) and Game Developers Conference 2010 (GDC) now over, we’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on some of the key takeaways. One of the most discussed areas was career opportunities in the gaming industry, particularly in the area of social gaming. Here’s a few of the opportunities gleaned from various sessions, panels and interviews last week.
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Zynga just launched their newest title, Poker Blitz for Facebook, and from our early looks it seems to be Texas Hold ‘Em meets Farmville.  The game is a simplified version of texas hold’ em poker with cutesy graphics and powerups that affect gameplay.  The game seems to be inviting new demographics to enjoy the game of poker, and my first impressions say that they’ve succeeded.
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To be known as a “social game”, games need to have a number of elements that encourage player engagement amongst friends.   Players need to be able to interact with their real world friends in many ways: they want to compete, cooperate, show off to and taunt friends.  To better understand the ’social’ in social games, we put together a list of the 7 elements that should be included in every social game.
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If you are looking for a job in social games, you better be ready to be guided by metrics and not just your creative genius. That’s what Scott Jennings told a small groups of gaming enthusiasts and curious minds during a conversation led by him and James Au at SXSW 2010. It was in response posed to him by Social Times about what specific skills social game developers need that traditional game developers don’t have.
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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 »