The web-based social game Mafia Wars attracts 4 million daily users one year after debuting on social networking sites, developer Zynga said Thursday.

The game launched in June 2008, and according to Zynga, doubled the number of daily players in the last three months. The game, available on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Tagged, and Yahoo, also launched in iPhone in April this year.

Mafia Wars lets players start a mob family with their friends and run crime businesses. At four million daily users, the game makes up a third of Zynga's daily traffic across all of its games, which totals 12 million daily users.

Zynga claims to attract 50 million daily users per month, and the game, which is initially free to play, monetizes itself by allowing players to pay for extra items and resources via micropayments.

“Mafia Wars is on its way to becoming a cult classic,” claimed Zynga's Bill Mooney, executive producer.

In May, Zynga opened a Baltimore, Maryland-based studio, Zynga East, led by chief designer Brian Reynolds, best known for strategy games including Civilization II, Alpha Centauri, and Rise of Nations.

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Virtual goods sales and distribution system Virtual Greats has partnered with urban apparel brand Rocawear to offer digital recreations of the latter's products (e.g. jackets, hats, pants) through virtual worlds, social networks, and online games.

Outspark's Project Powder, a free-to-play snowboarding MMO, is one of the first titles to offer Rocawear products, selling virtual merchandise based on current and prospective physical pieces through an in-game Project Powder Pro Shop.

According to the companies, this deal marks the first time merchandise from Virtual Greats will be available in massively multiplayer online games. They also claim that Rocawear will be the first apparel brand to license its intellectual property for distribution through online communities via Virtual Greats.

"Our online games and relevant user base provide great engagement channels for the right celebrities and brands," says Outspark's Business Development VP Wilson Kriegel. "We’re excited about working with Rocawear, one the leading and hippest brands out there. Partnerships like these deliver the types of experiences and unique content we continuously seek to offer our community."

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Social game maker PlayFish said Wednesday that users have installed 100 million of its games across seven titles in the 18 months since PlayFish's launch.

Playfish's games include social games Restaurant City, Minigolf Party, Pet Society, and Bowling Buddies. Users play the games in their web browsers through social networking sites including Bebo, MySpace, and Facebook.

In 2008, PlayFish landed $17 million in in a Series B round of funding led by Accel Partners and Index Ventures. The game maker said it would use the money to expand its presence in the social gaming sector.

Currently, PlayFish said it has over 30 million monthly active users across its seven titles, all of which have been a top 10 game on Facebook by popularity. Pet Society is PlayFish's most popular title, reaching 12 million people each month, PlayFish said. The company's latest game is Restaurant City, which PlayFish said is performing well.

"By putting the emphasis on interaction between friends, social games have expanded the potential reach beyond traditional video games to an entirely new, non-gaming audience," said Atul Bagga, VP of gaming research for ThinkEquity.

PlayFish CEO Kristian Segerstrale added, "Reaching 100 million installs in such a short time is clear proof of social gaming’s popularity and how loyal, enthusiastic and deeply engaged the Playfish community is."

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Scottish developer Realtime Worlds, currently at work on its MMO APB, has hired Joshua Howard as its new program manager.

In his new role with the Dundee-based Studio, which developed the 2007 action game Crackdown, Howard will coordinate Realtime Worlds' various internal and external operations surrounding APB.

He has previously served at Bella Sara publisher Hidden City Games, and over the course of more than a decade at Microsoft he became studio head of Microsoft's now-defunct casual studio Carbonated Games.

Said Howard of his new position, "I was drawn to Realtime Worlds because they had the expertise and experience to deliver on their ambitious goals.

"I am very pleased at the chance to be a part of Realtime Worlds, to help ship APB, and to be working with the tremendously talented people here focused on the vision of creating great games."

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The strategy gaming faithful owe something to Brian Reynolds. The longtime game designer is responsible for such notable games as Alpha Centauri and Civilization II.

Most recently, Reynolds, who co-founded strategy mainstay Firaxis Games, was with another respected strategy game maker, Rise of Nations and Catan house Big Huge Games, which he also co-founded.

But with Big Huge's former parent THQ falling on financial hardship, the publisher had to sell off the studio, or close it down completely. Upstart online game developer 38 Studios managed to save Big Huge from closure by acquiring the company in May.

But Reynolds didn't come with it. After leaving Big Huge that month, he is now with Zynga East, a new branch of the social game developer based in the Baltimore, Maryland area that opened on May 23.

So instead of creating complex strategy games with long development cycles to sell at retail, Reynolds will be working with Zynga on mass market-focused strategy games that will show up on networking sites such as Facebook.

Reynolds told WorldsInMotion sister site Gamasutra that his new job isn't so displaced from his previous design work. "The game design fit is a lot sweeter than you’d think," he said. "My approach to game design has always been to iterate rapidly – try something out, play it, revise the game based on feedback, lather, rinse, repeat."

"But in the 'retail videogame business' it has been getting harder and harder to really iterate on a game design, because the production times, technology development, and asset expenses have become so onerous – and you certainly can’t iterate after the game has been released."

Now, he said, Zynga allows him to both move a new game idea or mechanic to market very rapidly, and continually tweak it while users play the game.

Reynolds said he's been a "huge Facebook addict" for a couple of years, and that piqued his interest in the possibilities of integrating games with social sites.

But if it weren't for THQ's financial shortfalls -- ones that led THQ to drop Big Huge as work continued on an unnamed RPG -- would Reynolds have considered following this supposed lure of social gaming?

"If you’ve been following the company for the last few months you probably already know that something had to change one way or another, and it’s hard to know what the hypotheticals would be for other flavors of change," he said.

"The biggest one being that I probably couldn’t have pursued the Zynga opportunity if the detachment from THQ hadn’t freed me of non-compete obligations."

What counts now for Reynolds is that he's feeling "happiness, joy, and constant productive activity", as the new territory has given him fresh perspective and opportunities.

As for his old chums at Big Huge, he still has an ongoing consulting relationship with the studio. There is no apparent animosity between the two parties, and he's on very good terms with Big Huge, or as Reynolds put it, "Twenty-year-old-single-malt-scotch-drinking terms."

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GDC organizer Think Services announced that Klaas Kersting, CEO of German browser game pioneer Gameforge, will keynote the business track at the 2009 Game Developers Conference Europe.

Gameforge is best known for free browser-based RPG Ikariam, and at GDC Europe, he'll give a talk entitled "Changes in the Games Industry - Free-to-play vs. Payment Models," where he'll share his thoughts on the success of the revolutionary free-to-play model Gameforge uses.

In his keynote, Kersting also present the history of Gameforge, the advantages of different payment models, and the differences between Europe and Asia in terms of attitudes toward gaming and cultural backgrounds.

Kersting and Alexander Rosner founded Gameforge in 2003. In addition to Ikariam, the company's responsible for OGame and Metin2 have attracted more than 75 million gamers worldwide.

"Gameforge develops pioneering and groundbreaking technologies in the browser-based game sector, which is driving the whole industry," said event director Frank Sliwka. "GDC Europe is focused on delivering content that appeals to a global audience, while presenting content that represents and showcases the European development community."

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China's Ministry of Commerce has extended its governing reach into online realms, limiting in several ways the trade and conversion of virtual currency.

According to a press release issued by the ministry, virtual currency may now only be used to purchase virtual goods and services, and may not be used to buy real-world goods.

Furthermore, minors are prohibited from buying virtual currency, and virtual currency gambling is a punishable offense.

The measure is most significantly aimed at QQ coins, units of virtual currency issued by Tencent, which have become not only the most widespread online currency China, but are even increasingly used for the purchase of real-world items.

As a result, QQ coins are frequently converted to Chinese yuan, and vice versa. They are also used for purposes of money laundering -- an activity against which the Chinese government says it will become increasingly vigilant in the wake of the new regulations.

The ministry cites online industry expert Cui Ran, who it claims predicted "an impact on the financial system" if the continuing trends were not averted.

While the primary goal of the new rules is to curb the growth in currencies that heavily cross over into the real world, like QQ coins, it may also have an effect on "gold farming" in more traditional MMOs, as that practice relies greatly on the conversion between virtual and real-world moneys.

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[We're pleased to announce another set of confirmed lectures for September's GDC Austin, which WorldsInMotion.biz is closely involved in helping with - we hope you'll consider joining us in Austin this September for six tracks of online game learning and inspiration.]

After debuting initial free-to-play online game lectures from Sony Online (Free Realms), Gaia Online and Rebel Monkey (CampFu), September's GDC Austin 2009 event has revealed subscription MMO-specific talks spanning Star Wars: The Old Republic, DC Universe Online, EVE Online, and more.

The first set of lectures announced for GDC Austin span the gamut of 'connected games', from traditional high-profile subscription MMOs through free-to-play online games, social network games, and even online components to console games.

The event, to be held September 15th-18th, 2009 at the Austin Convention Center in Texas, now includes six online-centric 'tracks' for the Main Conference, which takes place Wednesday 16th to Friday 18th.

These tracks, which span design, business & marketing, social networking & community, services, programming and production, have a number of lectures focused on the core, AAA subscription-MMO space. Initial highlights from these include:

- BioWare Austin's 'Come and See the Elephant - Challenges Encountered Growing an MMO' will talk about strategies "pertaining to process and technology" that the much-vaunted firm's technical director Bill Dalton utilized in helping to make the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Continue reading "2009 GDC Austin Announces First Subscription MMO-Centric Sessions" »

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In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Crystal Dynamics, Trion and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Continue reading "Round Up: Gamasutra Network Jobs, Week Of June 26" »

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To find out what's required for a successful social gaming platform, the 2009 Social Gaming Summit brought together four panelists from four of the biggest social networks, including Facebook, to find out what they consider to be the key to their platforms and the success of social gaming.

The discussion took place after a panel of social game-makers, including Zynga and Playfish reps, debated making games for social networks.

It included Jason Oberfest of MySpace, Gareth Davis of Facebook, Andrew Sheppard of Hi5, and James Liu of Chinese company OPI -- which operates the Xiaonei social network. The panel was moderated by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

The discussion was particularly relevant to game developers because, with games such as Restaurant City and Farm Town grabbing millions of unique users on social networks -- users that can then be monetized using microtransactions -- it's an increasingly fertile area for game creators to play in.

Continue reading "Social Gaming Summit: The Platform Holders Speak" »

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