Consumers are trimming their spending on traditional subscriptions like newspapers and magazines -- but they aren't scaling back their subscriptions to entertainment content, says the NPD Group's latest tracking study.

14 percent of U.S. consumers have a subscription to an online game like World of Warcraft, the study says, as overall monthly spending on entertainment subscriptions rose 7 percent year over year to $115 per capita.

In particular, newer kinds of subscription-based services, new technologies and products like Internet service, satellite radio and fiber-optic television are drawing consumer dollars, says NPD, based on the familiar principle that in lean times people seek entertainment value per dollar.

For example, the smartphone boom means mobile data plan subscriptions rose to 9 percent of the U.S. consumer base versus 6 percent last year.

Although print media still enjoys more subscribers than online games, the number of newspaper subscribers fell by 2 percent year over year to 29 percent, as of August 2009, however, and magazines fell from 43 to 41 percent.

“Despite concerns that the recession would cause consumers to reduce spending on entertainment subscription services, most forms of subscription entertainment are doing just fine," says NPD analyst Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD.

"Consumers are clearly looking to the value offered by entertainment subscriptions and like what they get for their money; plus, new technologies and products have helped bolster data plans and other newer kinds of subscription-based services."

Publisher Nexon America and communications services provider Vivox have partnered to offer free voice chat to players for MMO first-person shooter Combat Arms.

Players can use Vivox's services in all of Combat Arms's eight modes. In cooperative modes like Fireteam, One Man Army, and Spy Hunt, they'll share one channel for their matches, whereas Elimination, Elimination Pro, Capture the Flag, Quarnatine Mode, and Search & Destroy provides a channel for each team.

Combat Arms's voice chat channels are created and deleted on-demand. Players can push-to-talk with individual volume and mute controls, and can also see who's online and available to chat via presence and activity indicators.

Developed by Doobic Studios and launched last July, the game has more than three million registered users. It's a free-to-play first-person shooter like Counter-Strike and other similar PC titles, but the game also offers an item shop in which players can purchase virtual guns, equipment, mercenaries, and default primary/secondary weapons with real money.

"Our players have been asking for this feature and now they’ve got it," says Nexon America's marketing VP Min Kim. "And with Vivox as our partner, they’re getting the very best in-game voice chat service possible without paying a dime. Having voice available allows for an even more immersive combat experience."

DreamWorks Animation Online says Kung Fu Panda World, its browser-based virtual world modeled after the company's animated film Kung Fu Panda, will launch in early 2010. The team has worked on adapting the movie for more than two years now.

Targeting children aged 8- to 12-years-old, Kung Fu Panda World has players creating characters with one of three kung-fu styles Monkey, Panda, or Tiger. They can take explore the world's Asian-flavored settings, meet characters from the 2008 movie, take part in treasure hunts, and chat with others (Kung Fu Panda World has monitored chat and other parental controls options).

The virtual world's primary offering, though, is its selection of arcade-style games and other activities that invites players to kick alligators, pick off falling almond cookies, skip stones on a river, and more. Players can battle against each other with Kung Fu Face Off, a Magic the Gathering-esque card game; or play cooperatively with Kung Fu Beats, a Guitar Hero-style rhythm game.

Second Life's Global Provider Program (also known as the Gold Provider Program, not to be confused with the Gold Solution Provider Program) could be effectively dissolved now that companies are no longer operating the virtual world in the initiative's key countries.

Linden Lab initially planned to maintain regional partnerships in Brazil, Korea, and Germany to provide support and localization for Second Life in those non-English markets. While the company's agreement in Germany with Bokowsky and Laymann wasn't clarified, Brazilian partner Kaizen Games quietly backed out of its participation last March (the virtual Mainland.Brasil estate created as part of the program still exists).

Barunson Games, the Second Life partner in Korea, also revealed last week that Linden Lab let its contract expire in October 2008. The Seoul-based company attempted to negotiate an extension for the contract, but gave up after a year without results. Like Mainland.Brasil, the virtual Sera Korea estate continues to exist, though it's unclear who services it.

Prior to the contract's expiration, Linden Lab stopped providing Second Life in Korean and even closed kr.secondlife.com, its Korean language home page for the virtual world, directing visitors to its English-language site instead. "Korea is not one of our immediate priorities for localization," said a company spokesperson, according to a report from Massively.

Every week, we'll examine the most popular Facebook applications (according to MUA, monthly active users), as well as the social network's up-and-coming apps that have picked up the most users in the past seven days.

The biggest Facebook "gainer" was Zynga's FishVille, which picked up 8.3 million new users this past week, bringing the aquarium simulator to a total of 9.2 million users since its launch two weeks ago. Note that the was inaccessible for several days during that period after the social network suspended it for scam-like Cost Per Action offers.

At #2, Happy Aquarium, a similar app from rival developer CrowdStar, picked up 1.9 million new users for a total of 27 million. Quiz creator application Quiz Monster, which was #2 last week, dropped off the list to #59, while Lyore Network's Quiz Bone remained popular and moved up a spot to #3 with 1.3 million new fans.

Funcom said Tuesday its sales fell 68.5 percent during the fiscal third quarter, as earnings for the Age of Conan studio swung to a loss compared to the same quarter a year ago.

The Norwegian-headquartered company attributed the lower revenues to a tough comparison to Q3 2008, when the PC MMORPG Age of Conan launched. Age of Conan subscriptions are currently Funcom's main source of revenue.

The firm also said that revenues for the game Anarchy Online are "slowly declining," which contributed to the decrease in revenues.

Revenues were $5.6 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2009, down from $18.07 million from Q3 2008. Funcom said the quarterly revenues fell into its previously guided range of $5 to $6 million.

Losses for the quarter were $9.59 million compared to a profit of $2.16 million a year ago. Funcom said earnings were negatively affected by "market cost, participation on exhibitions and provision for lease of offices." An impairment charge against Age of Conan also negatively impacted earnings.

Not to be left behind by its major rivals announcing big investments and acquisitions last week, social games developer Zynga revealed that it picked up $15.18 million in a new round of funding that attracted previous backers.

Combined with Zynga's previous financing rounds, which brought in $29 million last July and $10 million in January, the FarmVille developer has so far raised $54.1 million in venture capital. Participants for this third round include Foundry Group, Kleiner Perkins, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. amd Zynga execs Mark Vranesh, Vishal Makhijani, and Reggie Davis.

The funding news follows just two weeks after controversy surrounded Zynga over its scam-like "Cost Per Action offers" advertised with its apps. The company vowed to rid its games of any misleading promotions, but they popped up again in its recently launched FishVille, provoking Facebook to temporarily suspend the aquarium simulator.

Zynga then announced it would remove all CPA offers, including legitimate ones from companies like Amazon and Netflix, until it could control and specify which ads appear with its games. FishVille has also since reappeared on Facebook, where it's picked 8.3 million new users in the past week, but that hasn't stopped at least one law firm from investigating a possible class action lawsuit.

The developer's new capital is the latest in a month filled with big news from major players in the social games space -- Electronic Arts announced a $300 acquisition of Playfish (Pet Society) a few days ago, and soon afterwards Mafia Wars developer Playdom raised $43 million, which it spent on purchasing Green Patch Inc. and Trippert Labs.

Social games/apps company and ad platform RockYou secured $50 million from new investor Softbank in a Series D round, bringing the Redwood City-based outfit's total funding to $119 million since launching in late 2005.

The company's games and applications (e.g. Super Wall, Vampires) appear on a variety of social networks: Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, Bebo, and more. It's also introducing Gifts, a new virtual goods app that enables users to purchase digital gifts for their friends, on MySpace today.

RockYou also operates an advertising network across those networks. The publisher's games, apps, and ads currently draw a total of 213 million users per month, and the company plans to use its new funding to expand that reach by increasing game advertising and overseas operations.

“Softbank was looking for us to be a little more aggressive in our application releases, especially in the Asian market,” says RockYou's Sales VP Lisa Marino, according to a report from VentureBeat. “They wanted us to fundamentally grow more quickly, and so that was the impetus for this deal.”

CrowdStar International Limited publicized its agile business model as the social games developer released its second major title in two months. Happy Pets, which the company launched on Facebook just last Thursday, is already expected to reach 1 million daily active users within a few days.

Founded in 2008 and employing fewer than 20 workers, the start-up says it emphasizes "developing and monetizing high quality flash based social games on Facebook which currently use direct payments as the only means of monetization."

In Happy Pets, players adopt kittens, nurturing them until they grow into cats. Crowdstar notes that the game's focus is on caring for pets instead of preparing them for sale.

Its first big success, Happy Aquarium, debuted on the social network last September and attracts 7.5 million daily active users. The developers previously released apps also include trivia game Know-It-All-Trivia, social causes game Save the Reef, and strategy RPG WW II.

MMOs constitute 14 percent of all time spent playing video games in the U.S., according to survey results from a new international study. Console games, by comparison, claimed 34 percent of game playing time in the States.

TNS and Gamesindustry.com conducted surveys with more than 13,000 respondents aged eight years and older in the U.S. UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium for "Today’s Gamers MMO Focus Report". The groups gathered data on the total time participants spent with a variety of video game platforms, including consoles, PCs, online gaming portals, and mobile phones.

The study found that an average of 5.5 hours a week per player is devoted to massively multiplayer online experiences in the States, compared to 4.9 hours for console players and 4.8 for casual game portal players. Of the U.S.'s online population surveyed, 21 percent said they play MMOs. 45 percent of those count themselves as paying MMO players, while 30 percent have spent money on casual game portals.

The biggest factor gamers consider when deciding what titles to play are whether the MMOs are free to play and recommendations they've heard for friends. Respondents said they consider friends as more important sources of MMO information than news sites, blogs, print magazines, and TV.

Online games publisher Wicked Interactive has chosen Vindicia's Cashbox to power its Suba Games online gaming platform. The company will use Cashbox to process all customer payments including credit card, debit card, and PayPal transactions.

Vindicia, an on-demand billing solutions provider, says Wicked Interactive chose its product after a competitive review that tested Cashbox's "flexibility in supporting multiple payment methods for its free-to-play games, worldwide reach, and focus on customer acquisition and retention."

Founded in 2008 and based in Canada, Wicked Interactive operates several MMORPGs such as Priston Tale and Ace Online. Its Suba Games portal offers a collection of free, browser-based MMO games, each accessible through a single Suba profile. Wicked Interactive joins several other notable online game publishers that've partnered with Vindicia, like Cryptic Studios, Realtime Worlds, and Outspark.

"CashBox was designed with successful online game publishers like Wicked Interactive in mind," says Vindicia chairman and CEO Gene Hoffman. "The Internet feeds a much more dynamic, social gaming experience and Vindicia CashBox will support Wicked Interactive in their mission to provide top quality free-to-play MMO games to its community."

Gravity Bear, the new social games studio founded by vets from Flagship (Hellgate: London, Mythos), announced its first title, Battle Punks, an original 3D fighting game featuring a fantasy setting and launching on Facebook.

In the game, players create custom avatars and battle other players in a variety of locations ("festive towns, shadowy forests, gloomy swamps, and beyond") to win weapons, spells, experience, and treasure. They can outfit their characters before each match with Battle Items they've collected, picking appropriate weapons for different encounters.

The studio partnered with SQLstream for the project, using the analytics company's technology for monitoring and studying metrics in real-time. Gravity Bear believes SQLstream's tools will help with the deployment and growth of Battle Punks, as the developer can use the data to make adjustments that suit players' needs and tastes.

"Our goal with Battle Punks is to help people have fun and deeply memorable experiences with their friends through games," says Gravity Bear co-founder and CEO Phil Shenk. "This is the primary mission of Gravity Bear, so our first title is designed from the ground up to be a shining example of that philosophy of community and fun. We can’t wait to build a new community of people who simply love games as much as we do."

Battle Punks is expected to enter its open beta phase during the 2009 holiday season. You can see a couple screenshots for the upcoming title after the break.

Abandon Interactive Entertainment released Freaky Adventures, the company's largest content update for its toy-based MMO Freaky Creatures, launched last March. The update introduces Player vs. Environment gameplay to Freaky Creatures, along with new enemies, powers, and more.

Freaky Creatures combines online multiplayer gaming, collectible action figures, virtual worlds, and social networking. The game offers free membership with limited access, as well as premium subscriptions with more features for $6.99 a month. Players purchase a starter pack from a retail location for around $19.99, which includes two action figures and a flash drive that gives them access to the game.

Once they create and customize their creatures with different parts and powers, they can battle them against others, take on missions, build a lair, join tournaments, form teams, trade items, read comics, play mini-games, and socialize with their friends in the community.

With Freaky Adventures, players are encouraged to explore new environments (e.g. Veseran Jungles, Towering Plateaus, and Ssorak Ruins), where they will encounter "strange life forms, items ,and enemies, each with its own specific abilities and powers." A new world map is also available for accessing more than 40 missions.

"Freaky Adventures incorporates inventive gameplay, missions and environments that will appeal to our dedicated community and new players alike," says Abandon's COO and president Jamie Ottilie. "This new content allows players to experience an already-robust online game in a completely different way."

Mobile payments provider announced new partnerships with twelve game companies from the online and social game space, including Outspark and NHN. The new agreements enable Boku to offer mobile payments for virtual goods and currencies purchases to almost 200 million registers users across more than 250 games.

The San Francisco-based startup's new partners on the Facebook platform include 6Waves Ltd., Snap Interactive, and Zoosk Inc. In the free-to-play space, the company is now aligned with Cie Studios, Cyberstep Communications, Inc., GameDuell, IGG, Inc., King.com, NHN USA Inc. (ijji), NTREEV, Outspark, and PerfectWorld Entertainment Inc.

Those developers and publishers join the 1,000+ direct mobile payment partnerships Boku has signed since launching in June. Its existing clients include Playfish, Slide, TheBroth, Hive7, PageFad, and many others. The company notes that it has direct relationships with four of the top 15 application developers on Facebook, and that five of the top 15 Facebook games uses its mobile payments to sell virtual goods.

Specialty retailer GameStop recently acquired a majority interest in online gaming platform Jolt. The company develops and publishes license-based, free-to-play titles such as Playboy Manager and the Legends of Zork casual game (in partnership with Activision) based on the text adventure series. It also operates browser-based MMOs like Trukz and Utopia Kingdoms.

"Acquiring Jolt is significant building block in our digital business strategy," explained GameStop general manager Chris Petrovic, according to a note posted by subsidiary Game Informer earlier this month that was later pulled offline. "This is further evidence of our commitment to building a world-class digital business platform."

GameStop believes it can take advantage of Jolt's experience as a publisher, developer, and aggregator to create online games that fulfill needs major publishers aren't addressing, then offer those titles to its huge customer base.

Under the terms of the agreement, Jolt will remain at its current headquarters in Ireland, and GameStop will provide between €15-20 million ($22.4-29.8 million) toward the company's development over the next two to three years.

Irish newspaper The Sunday Business Post appears to have confirmed the deal, despite Game Informer's removal of the announcement, and speculated that the move will generate a significant number of new local jobs.

Tokyo-based software distributor and online games publisher Vector announced The Seventh Dragon (no relation to Sega and Imageepoch's Nintendo DS RPG with the same name in Japan), its first MMORPG to feature an English edition, launching on December 1st.

Known as Dragon Crusade in Japan, the free, browser-based title has players creating heroes and rebuilding castles previously destroyed by invading devils. They can grow the structures into huge cities, battle monsters, acquire new weapons, join guilds, and fight in player versus player battles.

The "persistent world simulation RPG" includes a couple interesting features, like its Beginner Protection, which gives newcomers a nine-day period during which other players cannot attack them. The Seventh Dragon also allows gamers to give instructions and set production commands that their characters execute while players are offline.

Established in 1989, Vector entered the MMO space in 2006 after purchasing publishing rights for MicMac Online in Japan. The company has since released MMORPG ArsMagna, acquired Gamespace 24 (Fairytale Land, Navyfield Neo) from Success Corp., and formed a capital and business alliance with MMO operator Gala Inc.

In our latest employment-specific 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 Relic Entertainment, Zoe Mode 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 this week include:

Relic Entertainment: Senior Director Of Development
"The Senior Director of Development executes the developmental strategy of the studio in accordance with the GM and THQ’s strategic and tactical objectives. Responsible for ensuring project development achieves operating objectives and financial goals; ensuring development efficiency and product timeliness, and otherwise ensuring consistency and process improvements across projects."

2K Games: Channel Marketing Manager
"2K Games develops and publishes top-line PC, console, and handheld entertainment software, with a strong concentration in three distinct categories: sports, high profile licenses and specialty product. Some of the hit titles in 2K's lineup include the critically-praised Bioshock, Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, and The Darkness. 2K Games is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc."

Sacramento-based law firm Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff (KCR) filed a class-action suit against Facebook developer Zynga, seeking upwards of $5 million in damages due to allegedly misleading lead generation ads featured in the latter's games.

The Cost Per Action (CPA) advertisements in question allow users to earn virtual currency for social games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars by completing surveys, taking quizzes, or signing up for trial offers. Some ads are for legit companies like Netflix and Amazon, but others resulted in unauthorized credit, debit, or mobile charges to consumers for as much as $165.

Zynga pledged to keep these misleading offers out of its games, but when an error with ad provider DoubleDing caused the offers to appear again in the developer's recently launched FishVille, Facebook temporarily suspended the game.

The developer responded by removing all CPA ads from its titles until it could identify which specific offers were showing up. FishVille was brought back online a few days afterwards.

Despite the company's promises, KCR began investigating a possible class action lawsuit last week, pointing to a recently unearthed video shot last Spring in which Zynga CEO admitting he did "every horrible thing in the book ... just to get revenues right away" as proof that the FarmVille studio was aware of the harm its offers caused players.

Offerpal Media, an ad provider for social apps and games, announced a new set of standards for its controversial lead generation offers, just as Facebook bans other providers like Tatto Media for their questionable ads.

The company's ads consist of special offers featured alongside free social games such as FarmVille, inviting users to fill out online surveys and sign up for subscriptions in exchange for virtual currency (as opposed to paying for the in-game currency directly). Advertising providers and game publishers generate a significant amount of revenue from the Cost Per Action offers.

Many of the ads provide a legitimate service or product to consumers (e.g. Netflix trial subscriptions), while other misleading offers brought on unauthorized credit, debit, and mobile charges to unsuspecting social games players, some of whom were unable to cancel the charges or services/goods that they were allegedly tricked into paying for.

The issue came to a head several weeks ago when TechCrunch's Michael Arrington confronted Offerpal and wrote a series of scathing articles about the social gaming industry's "lead gen scams". Offerpal co-founder and former CEO Anu Shukla responded by claiming that less than one percent of users complain about the offers.