PC MMO Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising has been rescued by developer Heatwave Interactive, which has acquired the game as well as multiple licenses for its engine technology. Now, development is back underway.

Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising has been on indefinite hold since the closure of its original developer, Perpetual Entertainment.

But thanks to this new acquisition, Heatwave now has all of the assets and information pertaining to Gods and Heroes, including source code, as well as server logs and contact info for the 100,000 beta testers who participated in the game's 2007 closed beta.

"I knew of the game, I knew the company, I knew the people, and when I heard about the legal process of the company shutting down and the assets had been cleared and they were available, I took a look," Heatwave CEO Anthony Castoro tells Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.

Castoro says that the company has plans to resume development of the game, and is not planning to release it until it's ready. "It needs more love and it's been a little time, so we want to make sure it's more modern," he says. "We're going to spend the next couple months deciding what to keep, what to improve, what to change, and we're going to be asking the players to give us their thoughts on that."

"We'll put it right into production, get it back into beta testing," continues Castoro. "We're not just going ot pick it up and make sure it runs and turn it on."

Despite some internal conflict, Stargate Worlds developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has decided to declare bankruptcy, as shareholders file a complaint against its former chairman and CEO.

The company has faced challenges obtaining enough funding to finish Stargate Worlds. As a stopgap, it released PC third-person shooter Stargate Resistance, hoping proceeds from the title would help it "ride out the economic wave," as it said late last year.

However, it seems that the studio's challenges have become overwhelming: "Cheyenne Mountain’s corporate structure has undergone some dramatic changes in the last few weeks, and that has resulted in various actions such as the filing for Chapter 11," said the company's subsidiary, developer FireSky, in a statement on the official Stargate Worlds forums.

The statement suggests that perhaps not all of the company's steerage is on board with the bankruptcy decision: "Certain parties believed that was the right thing to do, other parties do not and this is still being evaluated and may be rescinded," says FireSky.

The spokesperson indicated that the bankruptcy, if it proceeds, could simply allow for a debt restructuring and not a shutdown nor hindrance of daily operations. "This will all be sorted out in the legal and proper manner, and all of us on the development side of things hope it’s done as quickly as possible," adds the statement.

Zynga's Farmville, easily the most popular game and application on Facebook, has reached more than 81 million monthly active users on the social network since launching last June. The farm simulator also boasts nearly 30 million daily active users.

Farmville reached this milestone after hitting 70 million players in December 2009 and 60 million in October 2009, indicating a growth of more than 10 million new users every eight weeks in the past four-month period, according to a report from Facebook news and app metrics site All Facebook.

The game likely owes a great deal of its growth to the increased userbase of Facebook; the social network now boasts more than 400 million registered users, up from 350 million users in December 2009. The site's 50 million jump and Farmville's 10 million gain both represent a 14 percent increase in their respective user counts.

Zynga has made several noteworthy moves to expand Farmville beyond Facebook while still allowing players to interact with users on the social network via Facbeook Connect. Late last year, the developer created a standalone site for the game at Farmville.com, and earlier this month, it released the title through the MSN Games portal.

The news also follows just a week after Zynga opened a new development studio in Bangalore, India, where it plans to establish a team of around 100 employees. The Bangalore branch will work on producing both games and their underlying web architecture. The company opened another development studio in Los Angeles three weeks ago, too.

As it celebrates its recent 50 millionth iPhone game download and the release of its first Facebook game (MMA Pro Fighter) late last year, developer Digital Chocolate announced three executive promotions designed to support the company global expansion and increased focus on social games.

The studio appointed Ilkka Paananen, previously the managing director of the company's European operations, as its new president. Paananen was the CEO and co-founder of mobile developer and publisher Sumea, which Digital Chocolate acquired in 2004. "Ilkka is one of the best minds and top leaders in our industry," says CEO Trip Hawkins.

Digital Chocolate named Marc Metis, who held executive roles at SanDisk, Atari, and Acclaim before joining the developer in early 2009, its new Chief Marketing Officer. The studio also promoted Social Games director Saurin Shah to vice president, where he will lead a manage a "new and growing" social game team.

Metis's group is charged with launching Digital Chocolate's new virtual item platform that features NanoStar characters -- or digital characters players can purchase and use across multiple games from the company -- that turn into different virtual items in different social games.

Hawkins comments, "I am blessed by these colleagues and by our management team in general and we look forward to building an even stronger global company this year."

Prepaid and financial payments products provider Blackhawk Network has expanded its Digital Content category to make prepaid cards for online entertainment available at more than 10,000 Gift Card Mall locations (e.g. Safeway, Sears, Kmart) across North America.

The company's digital card partners allow consumers to make purchases at a wide range of online destinations including virtual worlds, MMOs, social networks, casual games, and digital music sites. With the cards, users can buy virtual goods, subscriptions game tokens, and more. Earlier this month, Blackhawk announced a partnership with Microsoft to sell Xbox Live prepaid cards.

Based in Pleasonton, California, Blackhawk has offices in the U.S., Australia, Canda, France, Japan, Mexico, and the UK. Its Gift Card Mall reaches more than 165 million people each week through its network of grocery, big box, convenience, drug, and specialty stores, and its products are also available through Internet retailers.

"By expanding our digital brands into our grocer and retail alliance partners, we're giving consumers more options in purchasing our prepaid cards as a gift or for their own individual use such as budgeting," says Blackhawk Network's SVP and co-founder Talbott Roche.

She adds, "Our alliance partners have always had a strong footprint when it comes to successfully marketing and selling prepaid cards and we thought it was a natural extension of our business to expand into the gaming and entertainment sector."

[Sister site Gamasutra's columnist Phill Cameron checks out would-be Ultima successor Mortal Online, and explains why its odd wasteland, realistic elements and frontier spirit are so compelling.]

When you get past the uncomfortable hilarity of seeing your character's genitals on the creation screen, you start to realize exactly what Mortal Online's main design ethos is. This is not a place of half measures. Starvault, the developers, aren't planning on appeasing anyone, and aren't going to chase a rating a few slots beneath what they want for the game just to get a few extra sales. No, this is a game where your characters have genitals. And that takes balls.

That's not to say it's attempting to accurately portray a Feudal system of Medieval Britain or anything as trite as that. Mortal Online is a fantasy MMO through and through, complete with dragons, magic and chainmail. It's not trying to simulate our lives any more than fantasy should, but instead creates a layer of truth that makes being in that world a little more faithful than we're perhaps used to.

You're thrown into the world with little more than a few rags and a hatchet, and given absolutely no indication of what you're supposed to be doing. The list of skills gives you a little idea -- simple skills like woodcraft and mining lie there dormant, waiting for you to expand and build them. So you approach the nearest tree and begin to hack.

It's from here that everything starts to make sense. You cut down wood to turn into a bow, or the handle of a weapon. You mine stone and that allows you to make the head of a hammer, or a crude axe. You then use these new found tools to kill yourself some animals, and suddenly you've got leather and fur, and you can make some clothes.

WildTangent Launched BrandBoost, a new advertising platform enabling marketers to reward gamers with complimentary game play and digital goods for social games, massively multiplayer online titles, and virtual worlds.

BrandBoost builds on the company's Sponsored Session advertising model, which allowed users to pay for gaming sessions with either WildCoins tokens (purchased with real money) or viewing ads from brands like Proctor & Gamble, Kraft, General Mills, Toyota, Disney, Sony, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, and Activision.

WilTangent notes that it's already deployed the platform on Sony Online Entertainment's free-to-play MMO Free Realms, Outspark.com, and OMGPOP.com. It also plans to announce additional partnerships with social game developers that will extend the company's strategy to social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

The new platform is designed to work with various setups; after viewing an advertisement, users can unlock a free game session in a downloadable game, a free one-day subscription to a subscription-based MMO, or virtual items, boosts, and special in-game privileges in social games, MMOs, and virtual worlds.

BrandBoost's ads typically comprise of a video with a branded, interactive skin; they can also include branded mini-games that users play before accessing the main game content. The experience is supplemented with companion ads that run before and after the experience, and the platform supports third-party ad serving and targeting capabilities, too.

WildTangent points to a recent Nielsen survey of 27,000 consumers indicating that more than 85 percent of gamers prefer not to pay for digital game content, arguing that brands have a "significant opportunity" to play a role in the online games ecosystem. The company adds that in its own game network, 95 percent of consumers chose to access content for free by engaging with brands.

"BrandBoost enables brands to address the enormous scale of social gaming and virtual worlds with engagement based advertising that is non-intrusive and delivers tangible value to gamers," says WildTangent's EVP David Madden. "We've created a paradigm in which gamers are seeking out ads because they know that their experience will be enhanced with access to content that is typically behind a paywall."

THQ Inc. and THQ*ICE have launched a "Side-Scroller Showdown" promotion that promises to reward participants to reward gamers with a $5 game credit for Dragonica Online or for its free-to-play MMO rivals (e.g. MapleStory, Dungeon Fighter Online), depending on which they decide is the better experience.

THQ*ICE, a joint venture recently established by Los Angeles-based publisher THQ (Darksiders, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010) and Chinese developer/operator ICE Entertainment (Sangokushi Online) is putting $50,000 toward this new promotion and says it's confident that Dragonica Online's quality will win over players once they try the game out.

Interested players have until March 9th to register for the "Side-Scroller Showdown", which will have gamers exploring Dragonica Online, picking a winner, and collecting their reward. The first 10,000 participants to complete that process will receive a $5 game credit for a rival game or for Dragonica Online. If they choose the latter, they'll also receive a special Side-Scroller Showdown gift pack.

Developed by Barunson Interactive, Dragonica Online launched in North America and Europe (under gPotato Europe) last October. The free-to-play 3D MMORPG has players creating customizable adventurers in one of four classes, exploring the monster-filled land of El Grego, joining parties with friends to complete quests, and battling others in player-versus-player modes.

"In order to even think about running an aggressive event like this you have to be very confident in the quality of your product," says THQ*ICE CEO Eddie Chen. "Whether they’re playing MapleStory or any other free-to-play side-scrolling MMO, we are 100 percent confident that those who join the Side-Scroller Showdown will see that Dragonica Online offers gameplay, combat, visuals, community and plain simple fun you can’t find anywhere else."

The UBM TechWeb Game Network -- the organizers behind the Game Developers Conferences, the double Webby Award-winning Gamasutra.com website, and Game Developer magazine -- has announced a key acquisition expanding its services to game creators and gaming website publishers in the form of online game advertising network Game Advertising Online (GAO).

The ad network, which has been running since 2006, now reaches 50 million unique worldwide viewers and serves more than two billion ad impressions a month, according to Quantcast-compiled data.

GAO is a Top 150 Quantcast network that is already a major choice for a number of leading free-to-play online game creators, thanks to its formidable reach and leading tools to track cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA) and return on investment across each of the network's video game-related and entertainment websites.

The network is notable for its user friendly self-service interface for advertisers to carefully manage their spend. Funds can be quickly deposited via PayPal or bank wire and advertisers are able to easily fine-tune their campaigns to pay only for placements that perform to their requirements. GAO’s service provides a cost-effective mechanism for online game firms to attract users to their games and monetize.

Game Advertising Online's ad network itself comprises a number of leading worldwide game-related and entertainment websites, each receiving a robust click-based return for banners served via the company's proprietary ad server and bidding-based advertising system. GAO enables publishers to monetize their premium and/or remnant inventory with quality banner ads that are highly targeted to their audience, producing high click-through rates and enriching website content.

This acquisition is a reflection of UBM TechWeb’s commitment to helping game creators maximize success in their business, making it natural fit for the UBM division. Going forward, the company believes that both the advertiser and publisher sides of the business will expand due to consumer demand in the online game market. In particular, it believes that a robust worldwide user acquisition pipeline is key to the success of many online game businesses, from smaller indies through to large multi-national online game firms.

San Francisco startup Hooked Media Group launched Yoo-Mee, a social gaming platform enabling publishers to integrate games with social features on web sites, social networks, and mobile devices using a simple embed code, and also enabling developers to reach new audiences with their titles.

Developers can integrate their games with Yoo-Mee to add one-on-one competitive and group tournament features to their games, as well as allowing players to keep track of high-scores, virtual currency, and social media connections. Studios can also access another revenue stream through paid currency transactions implemented in their releases.

Publishers can embed the games on their content-filled pages, which Hooked Media Group says will increase page views and traffic through increased engagement and directed traffic through social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter). They will also receive a cut from revenues generated at their websites from microtransactions in the embedded games.

Players earn two types of virtual currency through Yoo-Mee-enhanced games: Tokens, a loyalty currency that they receive by playing games, inviting friends, and competing with others; and Gold, which is purchased and used in one-on-one challenges to earn real money. Users can even wager against each other in these online game matches.

Advertisers can sponsor game plays and tournaments on their network, and their ads (which can target according to demographic, content, and gaming genre) will be pre-rolled before games start or will be displayed alongside the games. The startup says that marketer messages will have multiple exposures due to Yoo-Mee's social media features, like players posting their scores or challenges social media sites.

Founded in 2008, Hooked Media Group is backed by $4.5 million in funding from backers U.S. Venture Partners and Altos Ventures. You can see a couple screenshots of the Yoo-Mee platform/player in action after the post break.

"We are creating a more emotionally invested experience for casual gamers. Yoo-Mee makes any game social by creating a community experience around each game," says Hooked Media CEO Prita Uppal. "Developers can integrate their existing games into Yoo-Mee, web publishers can embed a full game experience onto their sites, and everyone benefits from additional revenue."

Korean MMO company Bluehole Studio has formed a new Seattle subsidiary called En Masse Entertainment that will focus on localizing and marketing online games to Western audiences.

En Masse was formed in 2009, but formally announced itself today. It claims veterans of Blizzard, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, ArenaNet and NCsoft among its staff. These include former NCsoft CTO Jae-Heon Yang as CEO and longtime Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo contributor Patrick Wyatt as COO, among others.

"We’ve brought together ‘best of breed’ experts in the fields of technology, online gaming, branding and localization who have a shared vision for global MMO games that deliver on the highest levels of quality and cultural relevance," says Yang.

Former Aion producer Brian Knox will be senior producer for En Masse's first title, an MMORPG called Tera. Yang calls the game "one that we feel deeply passionate about and will reflect our approach and commitment to the Western gaming community."

Bluehole will launch Tera in Korea this year, and En Masse will prepare it for Western markets further on. It promises "rich graphics and animations", a dynamic battle system and six races that collaborate for the good of the world.

Social games and apps developer Strategic Design Network has acquired PayoutHub, a white-label widget enabling publishers to integrate cash tournaments into their online games, for an undisclosed sum.

SDN president Seth Goldberg says that this purchase will help diversify his company's revenue streams while it prepares to launch its upcoming social games, according to a report from VC news site Venture Beat.

Founded in 2009 an based in Austin, SDN maintains a number of "arcade sites" like Driving Game Toyz and Zombie Games Toyz that act as portals for themed and free online games. It also has east two social game project in the works, Kingdoms and Pirates of Somalia, and just launched a quiz creation application on Facebook called Fo’ Shizzle My Quizzle.

PayoutHub's widget allows developers to offer cash prizes for skill-based online games by hooking their titles into the widget's API. More than 45 live games currently use the widget (including virtual worlds, console releases, mobile titles, and social games), and PayoutHub has partnered with over 30 publishers (including SDN).

PayoutHub is based in New York and was also established last year. Though its founders say they're happy with the deal and believe it's a strategic fit with SDN, co-founder Brad Hargreaves will leave the company to join New York venture firm Tipping Point Partners.

Online game operator NetEase, which has faced a number of issues with running World of Warcraft in China due to issues with local government agencies, revealed that its WoW director Li Riqiang has resigned. He joined the company in 2003 and led its marketing department.

NetEase announced the project chief's departure in a formal, written statement sent to the press but did not detail for his replacement, according to a report from local financial newspaper National Business Daily translated by China-focused research firm JLM Pacific Epoch. A representative added that the operator also had no plans to appoint another employee who would be responsible for speaking to the press.

Since taking over WoW in June 2009 from former operator The9 as part of a new deal with Activision Blizzard, NetEase has faced a number of challenges launching the MMORPG. Transferring the title to its servers required two months of downtime and an extended closed beta, which analysts say costed the company a significant amount to sustain without player revenue.

The operator then fell into more trouble when China's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) ordered to take WoW offline and refuse new account registrations due to "gross violations" of regulations. With the Ministry of Culture's (MOC) blessing to run the game, NetEase refused GAPP's request. MOC followed up that refusal by holding a press conference chastising GAPP.

Despite the public power struggle over China's burgeoning online games business, both government bodies eventually settled their differences last month and reportedly decided on a punishment and fine for NetEase, allowing the company to continue operating World of Warcraft.

Riqiang's resignation follows just a couple weeks after NetEase temporarily suspended new user registrations, a move likely designed to appease GAPP, which announced shortly afterward that it would accept the company's license reapplication for the operation of The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft's first expansion pack, in China.

Social network hi5 announced its acquisition of social games firm Big Six, adding several of the group's executives to its management team and strengthening its plans to expand the site's online gaming presence.

hi5 appointed Big Six co-founder and CEO Kevin Gliner as its new senior vice president of Production, and he is charged with overseeing all product management, site design, and content production at the company. Prior to Big Six, Gliner was CEO and co-founder of Knockabout games, a mobile game developer that worked with companies like Microsoft, Sony, Motorola, and others.

Big Six's co-founder and president Monty Kerr joins hi5 as vice president of Commerce and Advertising Platforms. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of casual games developer Red 5 Games and of real-money wagering services provider Glass Eye Entertainment. He also co-founded Knockabout Games with Gliner and worked at other companies like Microprose, Maxis, and Electronic Arts in design and development positions.

Chad Hansing, who was also CTO at the Big Six, will serve as director of Commerce Platform Engineering at hi5. He has a long history with Gliner and Kerr, working at Red 5 Games, where he was chief technology officer and co-founder; taking on the CTO role again at Glass Eye Entertainment; and co-founding Knockabout Games with the two.

The talent/technology acquisition comes three months after hi5 brought in WildTangent founder and former CEO Alex St. John as its new president and CTO. He also has experience working with Gliner, as the latter was once executive vice president of Product Development at WildTangent, managing a 115-person team and helping build the company's third-party developer program.

St. John expressed a need for hi5 to create original, unique games to find success in the social gaming space last November. He also pledged to help transform the social network into a social gaming and entertainment destination, a goal he should find more achievable with the company's Big Six purchase.

"This acquisition brings both great technology and great talent into our company," says Alex St. John. "These guys know more than anyone in the online gaming industry about building a highly reliable and scalable payments infrastructure, which we see as crucial to the next stage of social gaming and a key asset to our development partners."

To celebrate the classic game's 30th anniversary since its arcade debut, publisher Atari and social game developer have a free online version of Missile Command updated with social gaming features and more.

The remixed version of Missile Command retains the original concept of protecting cities by blasting incoming swarms of ballistic missiles (you can even play the original version at the mini-site), but adds new power-ups, enemies, achievements, leaderboards, and an online cooperative mode for up to eight players -- which Atari says is a first for the famous franchise.

To accommodate multiple players, the remake scales in difficulty based on the number of gamers and their level progression. Outside of the game, users can create profiles, chat with others, and can customize their profile photos (e.g. sunglasses, colorful borders) through microtransactions. Site visitors can also enter a sweepstakes to win a refurbished original Missile Command coin-op cabinet.

Based in New York City and established in 2006, OMGPOP operates an online gaming portal offering a collection of real-time multiplayer titles to its more than 2.5 million members. Its available titles include Balloono, Fourplay, Booya, and now Missile Command. Though its games are free, users can purchase coins with real money to buy virtual items from shops.

"Missile Command is a pop culture phenomenon that millions upon millions of fans have enjoyed throughout the years," says Atari president and CEO Jim Wilson. "The new Missile Command maintains the appeal of the original while bringing it to today's casual and social game players. It is an example of how Atari's games portfolio is well positioned for today's growing online games market."

CCP Games, developer of the spacefaring MMORPG EVE Online, opened a new UK studio, which is at work on "current and future" console projects, media reports say.

CCP plans to employ 10 to 20 staff at the new Newcastle studio, which is currently hiring positions in programming and quality assurance, according to a report on UK-based website GamesIndustry.biz.

Reykjavik, Iceland-based CCP's main source of revenue is EVE Online for PC, a game that has players create and modify ships, complete missions, and join virtual corporations that are part of a complex in-game economy.

CCP announced its expansion beyond the PC platform last year when it revealed the console-based first-person MMO Dust 514 at GDC Europe in August 2009. While a separate release from EVE Online, CCP said that Dust 514 players will take part in ground battles on planets that are part of the EVE Online universe.

Dust 514 has been in development at CCP Shanghai for around three years. The new UK studio will reportedly work closely with the Shanghai studio and the Iceland headquarters.

EVE Online originally launched in May 2003, and had around 300,000 active subscribers as of May 2009, the company said last year.

Social media monetization platform gWallet announced Brand Bar, a new format designed to give social game players quick access to available virtual currency offers through a persistent bar that sits above the gameplay area (see image after the break).

The brand bar is designed to appear on all pages for social games, displaying available offers (e.g. completing surveys, trial subscriptions) and videos that users can participate in to receive virtual currency that they can then spend in a game. With this setup, users will not have to seek out offers in a separate section of the game.

According to gWallet, only two to four percent of users pause and leave a game to look for offers that will reward them with virtual currency. The startup believes that the Brand Bar eliminates unnecessary steps to find/access the offers and enables publishers to monetize a larger portion of players engaged with their games.

The company adds that advertising through the Brand Bar also gives marketers a chance to display logos, ads, offers, and videos directly on the gaming screen, essentially becoming a part of the in-game experience. More than a dozen titles have already integrates the Brand Bar, including games by Mobscience, Bubblefish, Clipwire Games, Poolhouse, Zen Gaming, and Chat Republic Games.

"While virtual currency is clearly a thriving industry, we still think there are ways that the process can be improved," says gWallet CEO and founder Gurbaksh Chahal. "Rather than force users to seek out offers and hunt and peck for the right one, we are bringing the offers to them. This not only streamlines the process for consumers, but also improves ad performance and publisher monetization, leaving a positive end result for everyone involved."

Online child protection solutions provider Crisp Thinking has signed nine new partners for its NetModerator product, including ZuCamp, Masher Media, WishB, Nemo Enterprises, Webbliworld, Rocket21, SmartBomb Interactive, Talentnation, and Flipoutz.

NetModerator is designed to automate the process of identifying and blocking online threats in online games and virtual worlds like child predators/cyberbullies in real-time, helping reduce moderation costs and directing live moderators to high-level threats. It's designed to catch obvious phrases, as well as evaluate the context and intent of potentially harmful conversations.

In developing the technology, Crisp analyzed millions of lines of chat logs from convicted predator cases to create its behavioral profiles, which are in turn used by NetModerator's pattern recognition software to look at factors like typing speed, syntax, and word choice in conversations. The company also updates its analysis engine regularly to detect new behaviors, use of languages and slang, and abuse tactics.

Since 2005, Crisp has analyzed more than 343 million messages in order to protect children from online threats. With its new partners, the company now has more than 30 customers, including Cartoon Network and Sony Online Entertainment, the latter of which announced it would incorporate NetModerator in its free-to-play MMO Free Realms last fall.

"The huge growth in popularity of kid-oriented online game and virtual world space in the last few years caught most people by surprise and most are still struggling with providing adequate security," says CrispThinking founder and CEO Adam Hildreth.

He continues, "The rapid expansion of our customer base is because, after looking at everything on the market, publishers are confident that that NetModerator for Kids and Teens is the best way to offer triple-A security while also keeping costs under control.

The upcoming MI6 game marketing conference in San Francisco has confirmed an array of new speakers and sessions, including NPD analyst Anita Frazier on social gaming, and 2K marketing executives Tom Bass and Matt Gorman on BioShock 2's successful campaign.

Presenting alongside Frazier in "The Impact and Monetization of Social Gaming" will be Odyssey LP managing director Erik Whiteford and OTX Research director Nick Williams. The research-focused trio will discuss this rapidly-evolving segment of the game industry, particularly how it relates to marketing.

In "The Full Story Behind BioShock 2: A Case Study," Bass and Gorman promise a "tell-all" about the high-budget -- and "highly-successful" -- launch of 2K Marin's anticipated sequel, addressing both the creative and strategic elements of the campaign.

Other presenters confirmed for MI6 2010 include Ubisoft marketing SVP Tony Key, Contagious deputy editor Jess Greenwood, OMD's U.S. CEO Alan Cohen, and Digital Domain commercials division president Ed Ulbrich.

MI6 2010, the fifth annual incarnation of the event, will take place April 1 at San Francisco's Grand Hyatt hotel. More information about the conference and its sessions is available at its official website.

Going free-to-play is paying off for Turbine, which says its Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited has gained over one million new players since its September 2009 launch -- as the game's paid subscriber base has more than doubled.

Turbine took formerly subscription-based DDO to a primarily free-to-play model last year with the Eberron upgrade, unveiling a microtransactions-driven store for in-game content.

The company says that its players transact in the new store at three times the industry average, and that the franchise's revenue has grown 500 percent since the change-over.

Users can still pay a monthly subscription for unlimited access to DDO's content. On the free model, they buy adventure packs, items and account-related services on an individual basis.

"The response from players to DDO Unlimited has been nothing short of phenomenal," said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc.

"We’ve known all along how great this game is and by implementing an innovative new model that put the players in charge of how they pay and play DDO Unlimited, we’ve successfully expanded our reach and injected new energy into the game," he continues. "Without a doubt, DDO Unlimited is a hit!"

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 ArenaNet, Sucker Punch 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:

ArenaNet: International Project Manager
"ArenaNet is seeking to hire an International Project Manager for a job opening on the International Product Team. The primary function of the International Project Manager is to manage and coordinate international projects for the ArenaNet Business team and to act as a primary contact for Asian partners. Other areas of responsibility include managing product localization, market research and data analysis."

Chinese World of Warcraft operator NetEase said Friday that its fiscal fourth quarter profits were flat year-on-year, but revenues jumped 62 percent to $189 million now that WoW is up and running.

NetEase had taken over Chinese operations for Activision Blizzard's WoW in June 2009, after competitor The9 lost its contract with the game publisher. But due to a licensing tangle with Chinese government regulators and server transfer issues, the game didn't launch in China under NetEase until September last year.

That makes its Q4, ended December 31, the first full quarter during which it operated the immensely popular World of Warcraft, Motley Fool reported.

The site also said that gross margins declined to 71 percent from 88 percent a year ago, due to big royalties owed to Activision Blizzard for using WoW. And while revenues saw a healthy spike, profits were flat at 571.8 million yuan ($83.8 million), compared to 575.9 million yuan ($84.9 million) a year ago.

A report from earlier this week revealed that NetEase WoW director Li Riqiang has resigned. The news came just after China's regulatory body the General Administration of Press and Publication approved the company's license reapplication for the operation of The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft's first expansion pack, in China.

Facebook says it's expanding its commitment to Facebook Credits -- a universal virtual currency system run by the social network allowing users to purchase digital goods in social games and applications (see image after the break) -- and revealed its payment terms for developers.

With Facebook Credits, which will be available alongside other virtual currency options from developers and payment providers, the social network will take a 30 percent cut of Credits spent, leaving developers to collect the remaining 70 percent of revenue. Facebook says it will use its cut to "[invest] heavily in the ecosystem."

The company recently expanded the Credits program to allow consumers to buy its virtual currency through PayPal. Other supported payment methods include various credit cards, 15 currencies, and mobile payments. Facebook believes this varied selection translates into "more people ready to spend, each with a higher likelihood of completing purchases".

Since moving into its beta phase (Credits began alpha testing in May 2009), the social network has tested the program with several big developers like Zynga, Playfish, RockYou, Crowdstar, Playdom, and 6waves, and will bring in more developers "over the next several months". Facebook says it plans to keep Credits in closed beta as it focuses on scaling the product to more users and studios.

"By providing a single, cross-application currency, our goal is to making transactions simpler for users, leading to a higher conversion rate for developers," says Deborah Liu, product marketer on the Facebook Developer Network team.

She continues, "... Our early testing has shown that users paying with Facebook Credits are significantly more likely to complete a purchase than the average Facebook user. These announcements and the continuation of our testing are part of our long-term commitment to you to build Facebook Credits into a product that is widely adopted by users and seamless to implement for developers."

According to a recent study by casual game developer PopCap, nearly a quarter of internet users play games on social networks -- but the age of those players can differ significantly across regions.

In its "2010 PopCap Social Gaming Research" report, the company found that fully two-thirds of social game players in the United States are 40 years of age or older, while the majority of players in the United Kingdom are under the age of 40.

The ages of 30 to 49 seems to roughly be the transatlantic casual gaming sweet spot. Both nations have at least 40 percent of their social gamers in those ages. And below 30, social game activity in the U.S. tapers off significantly, while the same is true in the U.K. for ages above 49.

Meanwhile, twice as many U.K. twenty-somethings (22 percent of those 22 to 29 years of age) play social games as in the U.S.

Young adults and teens in both countries are the least interested in playing games on sites like Facebook and MySpace: only 9 percent of U.K. casual gamers are 21 years of age or younger, and the proportion is only 4 percent in the States.

The statistics may reflect generational differences in the adoption of certain new communication trends in the two countries. It is possible older internet users in the U.K. have been less receptive to social networking and social gaming -- or that the younger generation in that country has simply picked it up even faster than in the United States.

Some demographics are less variable. The gender breakdown in both countries reflects a somewhat higher proportion of female users, with that imbalance slightly higher in the U.K.: 58 percent of U.K. social gamers are female, versus 54 percent in the U.S.