Cascadian Farm is embracing the virtual love that farming has received lately thanks to FarmVille. They have created their own FarmVille account and recreated the the real Cascadian Farm online. While it is hard to understand exactly how they will “carry out the mission of the brand to grow good and honest food that is free from synthetic fertilizers and pesticides” online, it’s a noble cause. And, they are going to share the benefits of their presence on FarmVille with current fans of Cascadian Farm on Facebook. Users can friend Farmer Joe Cascadian – the FarmVille avatar that runs the virtual Cascadian Farm – by visiting www.facebook.com/farmerjoecascadian.

“Given our heritage of engaging consumers to increase awareness and support for organic farming and the organic lifestyle, partnering with FarmVille was a natural fit for Cascadian Farm,” said Tim Goldsmid, marketing manager, Cascadian Farm. “We’re excited to have the opportunity to partner with a leader in the online gaming world and offer unique ways for new and existing consumers to become involved with the brand.”

Players dive into the action by selecting one of three races: humans, elves, and minotaurs; each with their own attributes. After selecting the race, the player is prompted to select an order, although no functional advantages are conceivable at the point of selection. The tutorial is pretty thorough and gets players exposed to the various aspects of the game in an easy to understand manner.

The conclusion of the tutorial marks the beginning of a story packed with compelling narrative. Players  do various quests in areas and progress through stages, unlocking new ones as they level up. A nice touch to the game is the flash animation that ensues during battles where a miniature soldiers engage in slashing action till the victor remains standing.

The lay out is very similar to Superhero City and other old school RPGs we’ve found on Facebook in the past, although it apparently does not detract from player experience. Although a plethora of new RPGs have arrived on Facebook including visual masterpieces like Sony Online Entertainment’s  Agency: Covert Ops, true social game play is less about fancy graphics and more about creation of an evolving experience that keeps players engaged with new content and refined mechanics.

There’s more elements to the game that will become known and having played this for a short period of time I cannot fully comment on the breadth of the game play. But one thing is for certain and that is the undeniable iteration speed and community response time of Klicknation’s service team. The dau/mau ratio, according to appdata, seems to be dropping off but hopefully Age of Champions will find its balance and create a compelling following.

The graphics are big and fantastic, and the overhead map that shows you all the islands that are available really makes the game feel expansive, which is a lot of fun, and adds to the sense of escape in this game.  We’ll take a deeper look and full review of the game in the coming weeks, as the game goes through its first month adjustments, but so far we’re a fan.  Also, have to say that the music in this game is just as relaxing as the music in Safari Kingdom.  These social gaming composers are really hitting the mark.

Twitter Celebs Attract Hackers and Criminals?

John Dunn of TechWorld/ PCWorld brings up a very interesting tidbit about the motivations in the recent increase in Twitter spam and phishing attacks. According to a report by Barracuda Labs [PDF, 30 pgs], nearly half of the current top 100 Twitter celebrities started tweeting between late 2008 and early 2009. Two of the most notable celebs: Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. As public interest in Twitter rose as a result, so too did criminal interest, followed by phishing and hacking attacks. Spam increased as well, and Twitter is actively trying to do something about that.

Free TargetGov Conference on Social Media

If you want to learn more about social media, TargetGov will have a free teleconference, “How to Cut Through the Clutter, Chatter and Confusion of Social Media,” on Mar 30, 1pm EST. Access includes a 40-page “toolkit” on SM strategies, a link to which will be emailed on the day of the teleconference. Registration is required. [via SBTV]

What’s in the Future of Social Gaming?

USA Today reports from SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, that the next killer social gaming title will be one that can be played on different devices: computer, smartphones and TVs (via a console). This is very likely something that’ll come from more than just game publisher. Nils-Holger Henning, CCO of Bigpoint, one of the sponsors of last week’s GDC 2010 (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco, showed me a demo of a “pod racing” type of game that functioned both online and on an Apple iPod Touch.

Three Laws of Social Media

Josh Sternberg of Huffington Post posits an interesting three laws of social media that seem to be a play on the three laws of thermodynamics. Good for a bit of amusement and insight on social media.

Some People Will Believe Anything

All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka writes that it’s pretty easy to hoodwink people on Twitter, and even gives a few tips on how to do so. The problem is, some people will unwittingly (or intentionally) participate in hoaxes, helping virally propagate misinformation as a result.

Number 5 Icon found via Wisdom Portal

Brief Summary

It was a very interesting discussion about social gaming, and for those of you that may not be able to listen to the whole thing, presented below is a quick summary of some of the highlights:

• Lolapps used their own network to promote their game, as they were in a revenue sharing partnership with EA
• The game was completed in less than 5 weeks
• Manu believes that the Facebook Credits will have a big effect on all transactions
• Manu and I discuss local offers and their importance
• Lolapps’ next big goal to become a top 5 publisher of Social Games, and with their current statistics, they are well on their way
• Top 100 Lolapp applications
• MAU:  20,632,822
• DAU:  1,055,487

In response to the question about Lolapps’ next steps, Manu sent me this:

• We will be one of the top 3-5 social gaming companies
• As the market continues to mature, we will continue evolving to expand beyond the RPG platform to bring competitive value to our partners.
• Differentiation:
  • We will experiment with proven game play mechanics and push the envelop with content and social game mechanics
  • We will continue to build symbiotic partnerships with entertainment companies, helping them engage with social media to further their brand and expand their reach through Facebook’s massive user community.
  • We will publish games built by other companies on our network (for example, Fashion City among other upcoming titles)

Miniclip.com has been a leader in casual games since its release in 2000, and has been the launchpad of some very succesful franchises.  Club Penguin, a popular MMO for youths, got its start on the network, and continues to be the top game.  Miniclip traditionally gets its revenues through advertising, creation of sponsored games and commissions for paid subscribers.  This new release of Social Gold will be a big milestone, and with a very dedicated user-base and high quality games, virtual currency and goods may quickly become the main revenue driver on the site, as we saw happen with Zynga’s social games when they began using similar strategies.

We are open to conversations with anybody in games about all kinds of business models to see how we can extract more value.

BBC Worldwide is currently the home of BBC’s digital media offerings, which aim “to use the web to reach existing and potential fans of BBC content across the globe.”   Expanding upon this goal, they recently secured a former EA Casual Games VP (and former colleague of mine), Robert Nashak, to function as Executive Vice President and spearhead the new initiative.  Robert’s game industry experience will help ensure that the BBC games project has the required understanding of the game development pipeline to properly achieve their vision for the various products across platforms.

It is interesting to observe that BBC has listed Facebook along with iPhone, Wii and DS.  This certainly raises the question as to whether they understand what it takes to succeed on that platform.  Are they planning to release full-featured games akin to Farmville or will they end up with less engaging marketing games that are usually released from big brands (see Pepsi Joygles @ 1000 MAU)?  Also, are they planning to monetize these games directly?

In any case, they certainly are examining the potential for social gaming, and considering that they are releasing games that are tied in heavily with existing BBC properties, leveraging the virality of social games may be the right move to help spread awareness of some of their brands.

What Bebo has done with its game platform is integrate it with several of its existing features, such as chat, messages and other forms of notifications. This means that users can do things like challenge other users to a game directly from their chat window. It also means that developers have more immediate access to users for the purpose of encouraging them to return to their games.

Ultimately it means more monetization opportunities for Bebo and developers. With Bebo enabling game integration on a more ubiquitous level, developers can better gauge their own expectations of their reach across Bebo’s platform. For users, the games are more seamless and tied in directly with their Bebo experience. Whether or not users will appreciate this level of interactivity is to be determined on an individual level. But a significant portion of social network users enjoy wasting time with casual gaming.

The social factor is meant to further increase user engagement on Bebo’s site, essentially turning it into a social gaming platform. With this type of implementation, Bebo is separating its capacity to appeal to a wider pool of application developers and appealing heavily to game publishers. So far this has been the more lucrative route to go, especially for those social networks seeking additional and more direct monetization opportunities with end users.

hi5 has taken a similar approach to its social network, building out its platform on an administrative level for games to plug into. The presence of its virtual currency provides a leveling factor for marketplace exchanges within its social gaming environment, giving hi5 more control over the platform in its entirety. Friendster too is looking for a more direct form of integrated game play as well, combining several aspects of casual gaming and social networking.

Considering the moves by Bebo, hi5 and others, the growing desire to improve on many aspects of Facebook’s own application platform involve the top-down approach. Facebook has been surrounded with expectations of a similar platform roll out, but the regulations regarding such an approach would conflict with some existing terms for app developers, among other things.

With Facebook’s own recent changes to its terms policy for its platform and rapid game platform integration from several of Facebook’s competitors, the question of how Facebook can improve its own platform for monetization and the establishment of social platform standards remains partially unanswered.

Rather than letting the publisher integrate, Live Gamer works with the publisher to provide them with a full commerce solution that’s catered to their needs. Earlier this summer the company acquired another company, N-cash, in order to boost its offering portfolio. This happens to be a fast growing space with the rise of social gaming and there’s a good chance this is still just the beginning.

As digital transactions become more common these companies are poised to generate substantial profits. Previously Live Gamer was not a significant player in the social gaming space but with the Playfish acquisition, the company will be tightly integrated into the social gaming economy.

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.

There are four story lines to choose from with 140Blood; Eleven Blood, a medieval journey through heaven and hell, Blood Lust, a Gothic fantasy hunt for vampires and werewolves, Skies of Blood, featuring a post-apocalyptic world of high-tech weaponry and City of Blood, a fast-paced action game that tests your tactical skills.

140Blood is the latest in a growing linen of Twitter-based game formats. Not surprisingly, many of the games we’ve seen on Twitter have been established games already found on Facebook, MySpace and the iPhone. Twitter has simply become the latest format for the casual gaming industry. Twitter is appealing not only because of its increase in popularity, but also because it spans the social networking and mobile worlds that are easily applied to casual games such as World of Blood.

Like most other games that follow a similar structure, World of Blood is able to leverage all of these social networking and mobile platforms to generate revenue. Becoming a part of the virtual goods industry, in a way, has enabled World of Blood to take part in this growing area of social gaming.

But a concern I have regarding Twitter’s use of feed networks such as Twitter for the purpose of updating game activity is that it will eventually take away from the purpose of the network itself. With more and more types of businesses finding ways to take advantage of sites like Twitter for various marketing schemes, we’re going to see an evolution in the way in which consumers utilize these sites, as well as the way in which these sites provide tiered privacy and personalized organization options for its users.

Grouping friends for gaming purposes is just one way in which Twitter could handle the growing use cases for its platform, and it may be a readily viable option given the fact that this has been a heavily requested feature from Twitter for some time.