Social sports game developer and publisher Quick Hit announced that more than one million users have registered for Quick Hit Football since the game launched its open beta five months ago. The company also announced a new distribution agreement with IGN design to broaden Quick Hit Football's reach.

Along with its one million-plus users, Quick Hit Football has received six million visits and 35 million minutes of gameplay. The free-to-play title is a football simulation game that allows users to take on famous coaches and draft legendary players. Gamers can also earn fantasy and coaching points, then expand their persistent teams.

Quick Hit was founded in April 2008 in Foxboro, Massachusetts with the goal of filling "a massive void in the sports industry" by combining head-to-head competitions with fantasy sports to create an accessible, playable online experience. Quick Hit Football is the company's first released title.

By making the game accessible through IGN's network of sites (Direct2Drive, FilePlanet, AskMen, and IGN.com), Quick Hit believes this deal will keep players exposed to Quick Hit Football during the sport's off season and provide a stronger platform for when the game's 2010 season begins.

"Quick Hit Football continues to explode, and our partnership with IGN will only drive more awareness for Quick Hit among the gaming community," says Quick Hit CEO and founder Jeffrey Anderson.

Online media company Yahoo signed an agreement to acquire Citizen Sports, a social applications and games developer allowing users to interact and stay up to date with their favorite sports through social networking sites and mobile devices. Though neither company disclosed financial terms, Yahoo expects to complete the acquisition in Q2 2010.

Founded in 2004 and based in San Francisco, Citizen Sports offers a variety of social and mobile products designed to help its community play fantasy sports, fill out brackets, check live scores, and read news on games like football, hockey, soccer, baseball, hockey, and more.

Citizen Sports has already released 719 applications on Facebook alone (e.g. Bracket Challenge, Premier League Fantasy Football, New York Yankees Faithful), reaching nearly 1.6 million users on that platform, according to metrics from AppData.

As part of the deal, Citizen Sports will integrate Yahoo! Sports's content into its products. Yahoo believes that this purchase will strengthen its "social strategy of enriching, aggregating, and distributing social content from across the entire Web", enabling it to offer a customizable social experience.

Yahoo! Sports will integrate Citizen Sports's applications to allow fans to "broadcast their allegiances, create or join a conversation with friends and fans, and cheer for their teams" on its site. The company also expects this acquisition to transform its site into a "more personally relevant experience" that engages users more and creates new ad opportunities.

"Yahoo is in a unique position to combine our deep expertise in content and aggregation technology to offer a highly personalized social experience," says Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Yahoo's Consumer Products Group.

He continues, "Sports has been among the earliest online categories to experience rapid social proliferation, and the combination of Citizen Sports leading products with our world-class sports experience on Yahoo! Sports is a win-win for sports fans globally."

ChangYou.com (US) Inc., the North American subsidiary of Chinese online games operator ChangYou.com Ltd., announced a deal with PlaySpan to use the firm's UltimatePay product in Dragon Oath (known as Tian Long Ba Bu in Asia) and upcoming MMORPG Blade Wars (known as Blade Hero 2 in Asia).

UltimatePay offers more than 85 global payment methods for virtual currency and in-game goods including credit cart, PayPal, mobile, and PlaySpan's Ultimate Game Card. With the service integrated into its Changyou's games, Dragon Oath and Blade Wars players in the U.S., Europe, and Malaysia can make premium content purchases through UltimatePay.

Dragon Oath is a 2.5D martial arts-based MMORPG based on popular Chinese novel Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils. The free-to-play title launched in North America last year but was published in China in 2007. It currently claims more than 75 million registered global players.

Blade Wars is also a fighting-based 2.5D MMORPG, offering 99 different combat postures and a feature that allows players to set their own rules for in-game fighting. The game launched in China last September, and ChangYou's U.S. division says it will release in Western markets "soon."

"Changyou is poised to take advantage of PlaySpan’s UltimatePay to give its players greater access to join the adventure," says ChangYou.com (US) Inc.'s general manager Mr. Martin Tan. "UltimatePay gives us the ability to deliver enhanced experiences through premium content and serve a growing base of gamers who need alternative forms of payment like the Ultimate Game Card."

Online golf gaming environment World Golf Tour raised $10 million in its third round of funding, and revealed a partnership with the U.S. Golf Association to become the group's exclusive platform provider for its virtual golf championships. Japanese private equity firm JAFCO Ventures led the financing round, with existing investors also participating.

World Golf Tour offers an online community with 12 virtual courses based on real locations (e.g. St. Andrews) and sponsored tournaments, all working toward delivering an "authentic golf experience". It also provides a social experience by letting users play golf in parties of up to four and text chat with each other during their game.

The free-to-play, browser-based 3D game has attracted more than a million registered users and 500,000 monthly active players across 180 countries since its demo launched in 2007. World Golf Tour is monetized through banner ads, in-game ads, and micro-transactions (players can buy balls to play and will have to replace them when they're lost in virtual water hazards).

WGT plans to devote its new funding to expanding its presence in overseas markets and moving into the social game space. It's trying out a simplified version of World Golf Tour on Facebook, which has already brought in 2,000 users without any viral components implemented. The firm doesn't plan to discontinue its standalone game site, though.

"We are testing different game mechanics to see what works," said WGT's CEO Yuchiang Cheng, according to a report from VentureBeat. "For us, Facebook will be a way to build awareness. It’s a mistake to scrap the original destination site. There are companies out there who are jumping on the gold rush bandwagon. For us, it is a marketing channel."

Alongside WGT's financing reveal, the U.S. Golf Association, the national governing body of golf in the USA and Mexico, announced that it entered into "a long-term relationship" with the company. As part of their partnership, the USGA and WGT will co-host a Virtual USGA championship each year, in which players can compete in a tournament on the USGA's site.

The two companies co-hosted the first Virtual U.S. Open last year, bringing in hundreds of thousands of players and helping drive record visits to the real U.S. Open's official site. WGT will produce a tribute to Pebble Beach's historic golf moments by recreating famous shots from previous U.S. Opens, which will be available under the course section of USOpen.com.

"This partnership validates WGT as the leader in integrating virtual sports with live sporting events, providing strong real-world value to sports organizations and their sponsors," said Cheng. "From day one, we set out to bring high-quality virtual golf to the masses and grow the game of golf. It‘s an honor to have the USGA look to us to bring golf’s most challenging courses to the world for enjoyment."

After spending 15 years with Electronic Arts, executive Steven Chiang has left the publisher to join social gaming firm Zynga (FarmVille) as the president of its development studios.

"I am excited that Steven Chiang, a veteran of the video game industry who is strongly regarded for building high-quality games and scaling development teams and operations worldwide, has joined Zynga," said Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in a post on his personal blog.

Prior to Zynga, Chiang spent 15 years at Electronic Arts, where he was most recently senior vice president and group general manager of the company's EA sports division. There, he oversaw the popular Madden NFL series, helped re-launch the EA Sports site, and worked on upcoming online game Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online.

He also co-founded Tiburon Entertainment in 1994 near Orlando Florida. Electronic Arts acquired the development studio in 1998, renamed it EA Tiburon, and set the group to work on many of its franchises based on sports licenses, such as NASCAR, NCAA Football, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

With Chiang's departure, EA Sports announced two promotions. Andrew Wilson, who has lead the team's Global Online Group since last fall, will now oversee worldwide development for EA Sports. Pauline Moller, a 13-year veteran with Electronic Arts and most recently general manager of EA Canada, will step into the role of EA Sports's chief operating officer.

"The departure of Steve Chiang allows us to graduate this new generation of creative leadership," says EA Sports president Peter Moore. "Steve helped make a lot of great games with EA, and we understand his wish to try something different after nearly 15 years with the company."

He continues, "Andrew and Pauline represent an evolution in our creative team, they are a reflection of the deep bench of studio talent here at EA Sports, and they will help continue our commitment to the digital transformation of our sports business."

Mobsters developer Playdom has invested $5 million in Metro Games, a social gaming studio headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina. With the financing, Playdom's CEO John Pleasants joins the company's board of directors.

Playdom describes the Argentinian developer as "promising" and expects "explosive growth" from the company. MetroGames intends to use this Series A investment to expand its pipeline of games and to continue work on its Metrogames.com social gaming platform.

MetroGames has released more than 30 titles on Facebook, including games like Music Challenge, Waka Waka, Pixel Ranger, Word Island, and several others. The developer says it plans to put out 'many more" titles in 2010.

Since receiving $43 million in Series A funding last November, Playdom has opened its wallet to fund "aggressive plans to expand [its] social gaming footprint in 2010", including its acquisitions of Green Patch (Lil Green Patch), Trippert Labs (Fighter Jets), and most recently Offbeat Creations (Super Farkle).

"We are very confident MetroGames will become one of the world leaders in social gaming during this next wave of explosive growth in the industry," says MetroGames CEO Damian Harburguer. "We already have more than 30 games online across Facebook and our own social gaming platform and many more to be released during 2010. We are pleased Playdom has recognized our potential and chosen to invest in us."

Electronic Arts studio Black Box announced the closed beta launch of Need for Speed World, a massively multiplayer online take of its popular Need for Speed racing game franchise.

The company will give away access to the beta to thousands of gamers who sign up at world.needforspeed.com. Black Box says fans who are picked for this testing phase will not only receive an early look at the game but will have the chance to submit feedback its team can use to "add polish, finesse and tuning to the final product."

Billed as "the first MMO action racing game", Need for Speed World allows players to compete against others in online battles and police pursuits across a 150-mile open world setting. The 3D environment combines the fictional cities featured in the series's console games, Need for Speed Most Wanted and Need for Speed Carbon, to create the biggest racing world ever in the Need for Speed universe.

Since its debut 16 years ago, the Need for Speed franchise has sold more than a 100 million copies across many platforms and titles. Need for Speed World, which is co-developed by EA Black Box and EA Singapore, will release for PC some time this summer. You can see screenshots of the MMO action racing game after the break.

"Need for Speed World is the world's first MMO racer -- a completely new entertainment experience for speed junkies all over the world," says the game's senior producer John Doyle. "We have expanded Need for Speed's classic adrenaline fueled racing with an all-new power up system and deep RPG style progression to create a truly massive, socially-connected white-knuckle Need for Speed experience."

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Arkadium, which develops games for the casual, social, and advergaming markets, announced that Mahjongg Dimensions, its first release on Facebook, has reached more than one million monthly active users two months after its release. The company notes the title also maintains a strong percentage of daily active users.

Mahjongg Dimensions currently does not feature and ads or offers but is monetized through cross promotions to a downloadable deluxe version. The game will intrroduce purchasable virtual items and in-game power-ups, as well as a mobile version later this month.

The developer says that Mahjongg Dimensions's success proves casual game developers can make the leap to social, and adds that it plans to move further into social game development by bringing over the 300 titles it already has in its library. Of course, Arkadium doesn't plan to release them all at once; it plans to launch five more Facebook games in the second quarter of 2010.

"We are extremely excited to have exceeded the one million user mark in such a short time frame," says Arkadium CEO Kenny Rosenblatt. "Now that we have proven we can successfully build an audience on Facebook, our primary focus will be to further monetize it."

He adds, "Many of the 300 games in our library have the DNA to become great social games. We plan to follow the same recipe we did with Mahjongg Dimensions and replicate this success over and over again."

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