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.
(more…)

Yesterday PaidContent posted an article stating that Coinstar is preparing to sell cards for games and applications on Facebook. The cards will enabled buyers “to use them for subscriptions and tokens on casual games sites, to buy goods in virtual worlds, as well as for massively multiplayer online games.” Yes, that’s Coinstar, the company which let’s you turn your spare change into credit at the grocery store. Apparently the company will sell the cards via the Pay As You go racks within Cumberland Farms grocery stores.

Check out the Coinstar release.

Zynga’s at it again. The social gaming company has launched a mobile version of Scramble Live for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

The game itself, if you’re unfamiliar, is a grid of letters that can be connected to form words (think word search with options for all-directional word creation). While the words themselves cannot be re-ordered, the grid can be rotated in its entirety. This gives you additional perspectives in order to find your words. As with many other Zynga games made for the iPhone, Scramble Live takes advantage of the accelerometer, though this particular use case may not be as exciting as an action-oriented video game.

I gotta admit this game is pretty addictive for me in its online Facebook app version. I know… I’m a sucker for word games and they’re of the few things I get viciously competitive about. So I’ll be happy to take advantage of some of Scramble’s social features in order to beat all of you.
(more…)

Don’t thing social gaming is a big business? Think again. Zynga, one of the leading social gaming platforms on Facebook and MySpace announced at the end of the year that they were cash flow positive. Today PaidContent quotes Tim Chang of Northwest Venture Partners who says, “they’re making something like $30 million to $40 million per year mostly from people buying Texas Hold ‘Em chips on Facebook.”
(more…)

Over the past few years there has been a tremendous shift toward open platforms and now there are limitless tools to connect with your friends, increase your productivity, and waste your time. Facebook was a tremendous catalyst for this but now there are millions of applications on the web, some useful, some not, most of which now provide developer APIs. For those of you not aware of what APIs are, they enable developers to quickly integrate their own features directly into another service or build upon existing application functionality.
(more…)

This morning Zynga, the leading social gaming company, announced this morning that they have launched their “Live Poker” iPhone application. The company claims that this is the first “live game” on the iPhone, meaning that it’s the first to interact with other players in real-time. I’ve actually played a version of the classic game Connect Four in real-time but perhaps this is the first high-end live game. I’m guessing that they mean this is the first live poker game on the iPhone.

The application lets you play with other players that are actively playing the company’s popular Texas Hold ‘Em game across other social networks including Facebook and MySpace. Also of interest is that this is the first iPhone application to leverage Facebook Connect. The free version of the application, which you can access here, provides you with 1,000 free chips a day.

If you wish to upgrade you can purchase the $10 version of their application and you’ll have 40,000 chips daily. As Erick Schonfeld points out, trying to get any more chips on a daily basis will be challenging since the iPhone platform doesn’t allow for micro-transactions yet. Zynga is the first social gaming company which continues to grow on other platforms while extending on to the iPhone platform.

Social Gaming Network (SGN) has experienced massive success on the iPhone platform but it has appeared to sacrifice their social platform games at the expense of their mobile games. Playfish, the current leader on Facebook (according to Adonomics and Developer Analytics) has yet to expand into the mobile space. When I interviewed Sebastien de Halleux back in August, I asked him about whether or not they planned on expanding on the iPhone.

He said that they were looking into it but didn’t provide anymore details. It’s clear that the social gaming space continues to heat up and Zynga continues to be one of the leading competitors in social gaming.

The markets in Japan may be getting crushed right now, but one lucky developer will be celebrating with a $30,000 cash prize at the Tokyo Game Show. The application, which was ironically developed by a company called “Contests2Win.com”, is called youCharades and “is a Video Talent Platform where users can guess various titles acted out by their friends and fellow users.” Contests2Win.com appears to be a fairly large organization rather than a small developer.

Other finalists include Crazy Life, The Ninja Webcam Game, and SmartBaby!. According to the release, MySpace will translate the application into Korean, Japanese, and Chinese and promote it as a “Featured Application” for free, meaning they won’t have to pay $75,000 for one week of promotion.

For those of you looking to participate in the MySpace gaming competition domestically, tough luck! The company has yet to announce any plans to launch a similar competition here in the United States. The next interesting test for these applications will be user adoption. So far, SmartBaby! has attracted almost 17,000 active users, whereas the other applications have all attracted less than 1400.

Interestingly shoved into this press release was a quote from Mitch Liu, the co-founder and VP of Product at Offerpal Media (who is also a sponsor of this blog). Offerpal and other competing lead-generation ad networks have been highly successful with social games. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues.

Last night Google announced that they had launched Google AdSense for games. One of the largest gaming companies benefiting from the new advertising platform is Playfish. Google actually included a demo of AdSense for Games directly integrated into Playfish’s Word Challenge game. This is a big step for Google and one that competing advertisers should pay close attention to.

Why? According to sources within Google, games are not the only applications that Google is advertising on within social networks. Google is testing out their AdSense platform for other social applications. Take a look at some of the most popular applications on Facebook and you’ll quickly realize that Google is testing banner advertising on some of the largest applications.

This could mean trouble for some of the existing advertising networks on Facebook that focus primarily on banner advertising. Currently eligible partners “must have a minimum of 500,000 game plays and have 80% of their traffic from the U.S. or the U.K.” Google is currently filling advertising inventory for Zynga, Playfish, Armor Games, Konami, and a number of other large gaming networks.

Currently Sprint, Sony Pictures, and esurance are the primary advertisers testing out the Google AdSense for games platform but we know of other advertisers, including the Travel Channel, who are testing out other forms of advertising on the social platforms. Look for Google to continue to expand their presence on social platforms over the coming months.

>Are you into developing the next wave of social gaming applications? Want to attend the 2008 Tokyo game show? Well if you are a developer of games and live in China, Japan, Korea, or India (e.g. not a reader of this blog), you can have the chance to win a trip! The significant part of this announcement is how heavily MySpace is promoting their platform as a place for games.

Social gaming has emerged as a highly competitive and rapidly growing space. Just this week the Social Gaming Network announced a round of funding from Jeff Bezos’ personal venture capital company. Zynga, a competitor to SGN, also announced today the hiring of two new executives as the company continues to expand.

This is definitely shaping up to be a fast growing segment on social platforms and possibly the largest segment next to applications which simply extend existing platform functionality. I’m not sure about other user habits of social games but I tend to pick one game and stick to it. Currently my game of choice? Mouse Hunt on Facebook.

As the platforms continue to mature, I have a feeling that we will see larger players enter the social gaming space. Another area of growth? The iPhone. With the launch of applications, more people are turning to their mobile devices for simple games and thanks to location aware systems on the iPhone it is now possible to build in social functionality to these games.

Social gaming is clearly at an early stage but MySpace’s announcement today makes it clear that social gaming will continue to be one of the most significant segments on social platforms. What’s your favorite “social game” to play?

This morning, the Social Gaming Network is announcing that they have accepted an investment by Bezos Expeditions, the fund which manages Jeff Bezos’ personal venture capital investments. The most recent investment we covered by Bezos Expeditions was Animoto’s round.

As usual we don’t know how much money has been invested but given that Bezos Expeditions has invested over $70 million in tech startups, my guess it is in the millions. Back in May SGN announced a $15 million Series A round lead by Greylock Partners and Founders Fund. These investments make it clear that many large players in Silicon Valley foresee a great future ahead for social gaming.

The real challenge ahead for many of the social gaming companies will be competition from traditional competitors such as SEGA or Electronic Arts. EA has already launched applications on Facebook and SEGA has started focusing on the iPhone where a new wave of social games will begin to pop-up. While we are still at the early stage of social gaming, I believe there is a broader shift toward more engaging games and a heavier feature set.

This is great news for the Social Gaming Network though and it will be interesting to see how this space continues to grow over the next 6 to 12 months.