Ottawa-based online gaming company Go3 has merged with Wizard Productions, a Jordanian social game developer specializing in massively multiplayer online titles for Middle Eastern markets. With the merger, the two will combine their sales, games, technology, and employees.

Founded in December 2008, Wizard Productions offers licensing, localization, hosting, and white-labeling services in addition to its catalog of MMORPG, MMORTS, and MMOFPS titles. The studio prides itself as as "one of the few companies in the Middle East region that actually produces Arabic games from scratch."

Wizard Productions has already shipped nine games -- such as Arabian Hitman, Arabic Mafia and Terrorism Warfare -- which has brought in a total of 300,000 registered users and attracts over 1,000 new players a day. Its titles generate more than 40 million page views per month.

The developer believes its merger with Go3, which was completed last September but wasn't formally announced until recently, is designed to combine the Canadian company's experience in the browser-based gaming market with its own strengths. Go3 was established in 2007 and has released various English titles on iPhone and Facebook in North America and Europe.

"This merger enables us to service our gamers more effectively as well as penetrate the American and European social gaming markets.” says Wizard Productions's CEO Afif Toukan. “Today’s agreement enables us to build upon the years of experience the two companies have with social games production and management to make sure our players continue to enjoy the game play as we expand our business."

[Industry veteran Richard Garriott is tackling social gaming with new company Portalarium, and believes some of the learnings from his past experience -- such as the relevance of story -- can inform the space.]

"Fundamentally, I'm a story guy," says Richard Garriott, Ultima creator, space traveler and now founder of social game company Portalarium.

At DICE, he took the stance of "correctly articulating what I thought the challenges to doing good story were, which is that it's almost never done well and it's rare that the marketplace has rewarded good story," as he explains in a new feature interview at sister site Gamasutra.

"That being said, I actually think what takes games out of being an irrelevant way to spend some time and puts it into literature and meaningful life experience is to put good story in it," he says. "And so for me personally, I think it's a really big deal, and I think it absolutely can be done on online interactive environments just like we barely are able to do it now in solo player gaming experiences."

"But it's definitely a big challenge," Garriott adds.

In today's feature, Garriott discusses how he hopes to tackle a wide range of social gaming issues, as he turns his attention from MMOs in the wake of short-lived Tabula Rasa, his last project with NCsoft.

He sees the social gaming space not just as a business opportunity, but as a place to aim his expertise and experience from the early days of gaming and the MMO revolution alike.

"I believe that my group, which helped start gaming back in the early days of Origin and Ultima that helped begin and grow the online gaming space, which has been the main motivator for the last 10 years, is perfectly suited to also jump in to contribute here with this new emergence," he says.

And many developers from that era feel the same, from Sid Meier and David Crane to Steve Boyd, who are entering the space, Garriott asserts, "Because we did it. And I think everybody else is still a little too egotistical to realize it.

"

Syncopate, a Moscow-based publisher working on massively multiplayer online games, announced its opening today. The firm plans to bring Chinese and Korean-developed titles to Russia, CIS, and European countries through its upcoming GameNet platform. It is also considering bringing Russian browser-based MMOs to China and Korea.

Syncopate's co-founders, Oleg Sambikin and Ilya Verigin, defected from another Russian online game publisher last year, Innova Systems (Atlantica Online, Lineage 2), which they also co-founded. The two expect to raise an initial investment of $20 million, both from founders and outside backers. They expect Russian and Asian companies to participate as potential investors.

Sambikin, who is serving as Syncopate's chairman, says the company hopes to release five to ten new games annually. He considers Russia, CIS, other European countries, and Turkey as the most promising markets for the publisher, and describes Syncopate's planned portfolio as online games for a wide range of users, from professional gamers to casual players.

The publisher will begin the using its publishing infrastructure by August 2010 and will launch its GameNet platform by January 2011. The platform is designed to link up to the company's games, expand their content, and unite the players in one big community". The company believes it can take as much as a 30 percent share of the MMORPG market in Russia and CIS over the next three years, and also make up a share of the European market.

Verigin and Sambikin believe their knowledge of the Asian online games market give them an advantage in evaluating the "investment attractiveness" of Russian and international projects, which will help in developing the GameNet service. Syncopate also plans to provide financial assistance to Asian developers and start-ups, possibly even acquiring those firms.

Prepaid card distributor GMG Entertainment announced an exclusive partnership with Meteor Games to sell cards for the social game developer's Island Paradise Facebook title at retail stores nationwide.

Launched in August 2009, Island Paradise allows players to create and customize a virtual tropical island getaway. The game managed to gain more than 10 million registered players as of last January, ant it currently has 6.8 million monthly active users, according to figures from AppData. Meteor says Island Paradise enjoys over 2 million active daily players.

This deal's announcement comes two weeks after Meteor revealed an exclusive partnership with ad platform Hydra for managing its new player acquisition efforts on Facebook and overseeing its ad inventory of some 600 million monthly impressions. Hydra pledged to grow Meteor's userbase on a cost-per-action model and help the studio monetize that userbase.

GMG distributes prepaid game cards, a popular alternative for younger consumers who want to buy virtual goods/currency in free-to-play online games but don't have access to a credit card, for a number of companies in North America., including AdventureQuest, Meez, Stardoll, and others. The company also announced its international expansion to the UK and Canada three months ago.

"Partnering with GMG allows us to potentially extend the reach of our games to a whole new audience, as well as making it easier for our current fans to purchase credits for their favorite games," said Adam Powell, CEO and Creative Director, Meteor Games. "It’s important to us to continually expand our offerings to our loyal community, and working with such a reputable company is another step forward on our exciting journey to the top of the social entertainment industry."

Eskil Steenberg is a one-man show. The chatty, perpetually-smiling Swede first made a big splash at GDC 2009 when he unveiled his self-made set of intuitive procedural generation tools, and now he's just launched LOVE, a multiplayer open-world game he hopes will showcase the fruits of his labor.

LOVE, with its massive persistent universe and team base-oriented collaborative gameplay, resists definition. Its distinctive Impressionist painter vibe has roots in Steenberg's roots as a graphic artist -- although it's programming with which he fell in love.

"And when I started programming, the first thing I wanted to do was make better tools for myself," he tells Gamasutra. "And from there, I got uber-technical, and uber-into graphics programming, so I really wanted to make something using my tools. I thought that I had some tools that were really cool, that could really speed up the way that games were made, but I wanted to prove it."

Thus LOVE was born, an enormously ambitious and expansive design for a first project. "I've sort of part-time worked for some game companies and helped them with some tech issues, but I'd never designed a game or made any games myself -- which is kind of weird," he admits.

Why Do It?

"I just am fairly knowledgeable, I guess, when it comes to programming," he says. "Really, making any game is about taking all the ideas for the things you need and coming up with a collection of ideas... people ask me where did I get the idea [for LOVE], and I usually say it's not an idea -- it's lots and lots and lots of ideas," he explains.

Major record label Universal Media Group and social gaming developer Conduit Labs announced a partnership to integrate UMG's vast catalog of licensed songs into free-to-play titles on Facebook like Music Pets, Super Dance, and Loudcrowd.

Under this new deal, Conduit Labs will offer players of its games to discover, collect, and recommend music tracks from popular artists. The developer believes record labels can profit from this type of business model through direct sharing of virtual goods revenue, as well as opportunities for buy the songs they're listening to.

Founded in 2007 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts (with an office in New York), Conduit Labs specializes in creating games around a music theme. Its most popular title, Music Pets, has player creating and raising a virtual pet, which they can feed music. The pet learns its owner's music tastes and fetches them new songs that they think the user will like.

The studio describes Music Pets as a "breakout success", as it picked up more than one million users less than 30 days after launching. It now has over 1.2 million monthly active players. Conduit also says Music Pets is currently one of the top 20 fastest-growing games on Facebook.

"Conduit has created a truly dynamic platform for consumers to discover and enjoy music," says David Ring, executive vice president of Business Development and Business Affairs for UMG's eLabs. "And no one is better positioned to take full advantage of the many opportunities unfolding in social gaming than UMG."

Ring adds, "Our incredible roster of chart-topping artists and deep catalog provide our partners and consumers with a wealth of well known artists and brands that create real value and provide for a more engaging experience."

Nottingham-headquartered developer Monumental Games has lost a £2 million ($3.2 million) grant, and must close its Manchester, UK studio, according to media reports.

COO Paul Mayze confirmed the news to UK trade site Develop, indicating that some staffers will likely lose their jobs in a "very difficult business decision." He said, however, that the studio would try to preserve jobs: "We are doing what we can, but there’s a lot of factors in play."

According to the report, the Football Superstars developer failed to hire the 22 staffers it was required to add in order to obtain the grant pledged to it by Maven Capital Partners at the beginning of this year.

Mayze did stress that the Manchester closure "doesn't fundamentally affect" its operations, nor will its Nottingham or Pune, India studios be affected. In January at the time of the grant award, Monumental was believed to employ over 100 developers around the world.

Founded in 2005, Monumental develops console titles like MotoGP 09 and 10 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but it mostly works on PC MMOs -- in addition to CyberSports' free-to-play Football Superstars, it has self-published hunting game Hunter's World.

EA Sports announced the launch of Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, its browser-based 3D golf game featuring renown but recently troubled professional golfer Tiger Woods. The free-to-play title is available to play without a disc, game installation, or additional peripherals/controllers.

Developed by EA Tiburon, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online first debuted in May 2009 and has received a series of closed and beta sessions since. Players from more than 200 countries participated in the open beta and helped test the game, playing a total of over two million rounds of golf.

EA Sports says that community will continue to play an "integral role" in the online game's evolution, influencing new course releases, tournament enhancements, and other key features. The MMO's server architecture is designed for feature additions driven by player feedback.

While Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online is free-to-play and allows non-paying users "unlimited access to featured courses", players can also subscribe for a monthly or yearly membership ($9.99 and $59.99 respectively) for extra features like custom tournaments.

Players can also purchase points packages ($9.99, $19.99, and $39.99), which are used for in-game microtransactions, such as buying rounds of golf or Pro Shop items. Users with annual memberships will receive unlimited rounds on all available courses and a package of points they can spend on Pro Shop items.

The Pro Shop offers virtual apparel, gear, and clubs that players can buy, some of which improves their in-game performance. While players can buy those items with real-world money, they can also purchase them with in-game currency earned through regular on course play.

Other key features in Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online include group tournaments, which allows players to challenge their friends in customized, and private tournament matches; instant messaging with friends; and two new golf courses, Harbour Town Golf Links and Oakmont CC, added to the previous roster of eight.

Since EA Sports launched the series with Tiger Woods PGA Tour '99 in 1998, the franchise has sold over 25 million units worldwide. Despite recent controversy concerning Tiger Woods's personal life and extramarital affairs, EA Sports has repeatedly affirmed that it will continue associating its PGA Tour series with the professional golfer.

"Consumers have an increasing appetite for authentic gaming experiences online and EA Sports is driving innovation and growth in the online gaming category, from consoles to mobile devices and the web," says EA Sports President Peter Moore.

He continues, "The launch of Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online signals a shift in the traditional distribution model and will change the way that people will be able to access and enjoy their favorite video games for years to come."

Copying a practice employed by social game developers, MapleStory publisher Nexon America is now allowing customers to earn free NX, the universal virtual currency for its MMOs, by participating in offers with the company's business partners.

In Nexon America's free-to-play titles like MapleStory, Mabinogi, and Combat Arms, players purchase virtual goods or customizations with NX, which they buy using real world money. With offer-based ads, however, they can now earn NX for free in exchange for participating in consumer surveys and contests.

Nexon partnered with offer-based ad networks Super Rewards, Sometrics, and Peanut Labs for its offers and promotions. The offers include deals for entertainment, electronics, books, and gifts from bands like AT&T, Netflix, Footlocker, and Disney. Each offer or survey lists an amount of NX that players can earn if they participate.

Many free-to-play game developers on social networks like Facebook and MySpace have taken advantage of offer-based ads as an extra revenue source for some time now. Some companies offer new takes on the idea, rewarding players with free virtual currency after they watch a video or shop at participating online retailers.

Though FarmVille developer Zynga and several ad networks came under fire last year for running scam-like offers that added unauthorized charges to users' credit cards and mobile bills, those companies have since made efforts to clean up the practice, and offers still remain popular with players looking to earn free virtual currency for their favorite social games.

"This new program provides an opportunity for our players to take advantage of the in-game NX item shops while enjoying our free-to-play games," says Nexon America's Business Development VP Won Il Sue. "Our business partners have done a great job of presenting an exciting and high-level set of offers and fun contests and surveys. This makes earning free cash to use in Nexon games easy and fun."

NeoPle's PC multiplayer action RPG Dungeon Fighter Online has attained a registered user base of 197 million, publisher Nexon said today, with the game fully launching in North America this June.

Dungeon Fighter is a free-to-play side-scrolling beat-em-up with RPG elements, reminiscent of Capcom's mid-1990s Dungeons & Dragons arcade games. Nexon earns revenue for the title by selling "NX," a virtual currency that can be used to purchase a variety of in-game items.

The game's astonishingly high registration count is due in large part to its success in the Chinese market, where it launched in November 2007. The game was originally released in Korea in August 2005, and has been slowly making its way to other territories in beta and then full localized form.

Dungeon Fighter Online recently achieved two million concurrent connections in China--a world record for any game. It has also reached 200,000 concurrent connections in South Korea.

The game has been in an open beta phase in North America since last September, in preparation for its official launch.

Research firm Second Shares estimates that Farmville developer Zynga would be worth $5 billion if it went public today, and that the public company will generate some $525 million in revenue in 2010.

Second Shares, which is comprised of former equity analysts posting commentary and research on social media companies, describes Zynga as "the clear leader in social gaming", with the developer's titles reaching 237 million monthly active users and currently holding six of the top seven spots of Facebook's most popular games.

Along with its $5 billion valuation of Zynga, 9.5 times its forecasted revenue for 2010 (compared to EA's recent acquisition of Playfish for $300-400 million, up to 8 times that studio's 2009 revenue), the group predicts the developer will be worth $10 billion and generate $1.6 billion in annual revenue by 2015.

The firm argues that Zynga has several advantages over its competitors thanks to its reach, scale and deep pockets, such as its cross-marketing opportunities: "As the dominant social gaming company with [237 million monthly active users], Zynga has the unique ability to market their games to a massive audience (i.e. their users) for free, a huge advantage that should not be underestimated."

Second Shares continues, "New game developers often have marketing budgets of 50 percent of the cost of developing the game (according to John Pleasants, CEO of Playdom), but that doesn’t buy much next to Zynga’s ability to market to [237 million monthly active users] for free." The group also notes that Zynga is able to rapidly imitate other successful games and can churn out more titles than most other developers.

Despite its favorable predictions, Second Shares points out several risks that could prevent Zynga from performing to expectations. For instance, Farmville, the company's most popular game and Facebook's most popular application with more than 80 million monthly active users, represents an estimated 50 percent of Zynga's revenue. The firm believes Zynga could lose that userbase and revenue depending on the game's evolution.

The firm adds that with Facebook recently moving game notifications from the news feed to a dedicated games dashboard page, Zynga has lost a "major source of free advertising". It also points out that four of Zynga's six major hits on Facebook -- Farmville, Cafe World, Texas Hold'Em, Mafia Wars, Petville, and Fishville-- seem to have peaked in terms of user base or are in decline.

Non-profit Armchair Revolutionary launched its new site combining social gaming and social activism with the hope of supporting science and technology projects. The site looks to crowd-source social activism by allowing participants to micro-finance social ventures from Play4Change Lab.

Play4Change Lab is billed as a group dedicated to developing commercial-grade video games that promise social change and incorporate new technologies/ideas like location--based software, embedded sensor networks, augmented reality, micro-transactions, virtual goods, and more.

The Hollywood Hill, a "social change organization for film, television, music, and gaming professionals", established the new group with USC's Game institute. Play4Change's advisory board includes notable game industry figures such as Robin Hunicke, Mark Deloura, Doug Church, Adam Sussman, and several others.

Users who've registered on the Armchair Revolutionary site can take quizzes, upload photos, decorate their profile pages, and donate to "world changing" technology research projects. Powered by Live Gamer's virtual economy platform, the site invites players to contribute Kredz, its virtual currency, to those projects (with donation amounts starting at $0.99).

The Armchair Revolutionary site will direct user-funding to Play4Change Lab, as well as post news and progress reports on the group's game development and try to increase public awareness of issues behind targeted social issues. The site will also fund documentary film projected developed by The Hollywood Hill.

The newly launched site features three games so far including Make Waves, a game that incorporates "sensors, simulation, and augmented reality for a social activism tool that aids ocean sustainability"; and Hack Your Body, which "equips users for the fast-approaching Genomics Revolution, supporting the Personal Genome Project, development of software for DNA analysis, and a commercial documentary film."

Armchair Revolutionary's third completed game currently available is End Of Darkness, which seeks to bring users together to "support three of the world's leading energy and micro-financing organizations (E+Co, Grameen Foundation, Selco India) in launching the first publicly financed international clean energy company selling and servicing low-cost solar power kits to the world's poor."

Cryptic Studios' website still says that the company is developing the MMORPG Star Trek Online for PC and consoles, but Star Trek Online's executive producer said console versions of the game are no longer in the works. The PC version released in February.

"[Star Trek for consoles] is something we can readily do in terms of technology," said Star Trek Online executive producer Craig Zinkievich in a VideoGamer.com report. "We've had it up and running on certain consoles, and had plans and designs in order to take advantage of those platforms."

"But as it stands right now it's a little difficult to make that final leap on the business side of things," he added. "So, currently, just like Champions, the console version of Star Trek Online is on the back burner."

At the end of March this year, Jack Emmert, CCO at Atari-owned Cryptic, said that there "are no current plans for a console version" of the superhero MMORPG Champions Online, although the studio had been working on console iterations. He implied that the studio had run into an obstacle in Microsoft's ability to address issues related to running an MMO on Xbox 360.

There are few examples of console MMOs, as it's the always-connected, open PC platform that remains the primary destination for the genre. Sony Online Entertainment is currently developing The Agency and DC Universe Online for PC and PlayStation 3.

Square Enix released the MMO Final Fantasy XI on console, and is developing Final Fantasy XIV for PC and PS3, officially. Funcom's Age of Conan, released in 2008 on PC, is apparently still in the works for Xbox 360, despite a long period of development.

[Is hate good for game design? Should the rich exploit the poor in online games? Ernest Adams investigates the extreme end of game design in free-to-play MMOs in his latest feature at sister site Gamasutra.]

How far is too far? Can free-to-play design butt up against the ethics of game design? And will games with troubling designs lead to stringent regulation of the game industry? These are the questions posed by veteran game designer Ernest Adams in his latest Designer's Notebook column, Selling Hate and Humiliation.

In a 2009 lecture at the Virtual Goods Summit, GameVision president Zhan Ye told Western game designers that their Chinese peers had leapfrogged them in terms of getting payment from gamers in the free-to-play context -- by appealing to their psychology.

Said Ye, "The goal is to create a highly dynamic community, in which a lot of conflicts, dramas, love, and hate can happen. If it helps to create the tension -- the conflicts, the dramas -- fairness can be sacrificed. If we believe that a game world is a reflection of the real world, then the concept of fairness in the game should not be taken for granted."

That's hardly the most controversial statement he made.

In the full feature, Adams explores more of Ye's research, which looked at Chinese MMOs that encouraged rich players to hire bands of poor players and form them into armies and other tactics to get people to shell out in the games.

Adams also explores Baron's Theorem of online world design: "Hate is good. This is because conflict drives the formation of social bonds and thus of communities. It is an engine that brings players closer together."

You can read the full feature, The Designer's Notebook: Selling Hate And Humiliation, right now on Gamasutra.com.

Ahead of Karos Online's launch in North America and Europe tomorrow, publisher NHN Corporation announced that it will use PlaySpan's UltimatePay microtransactions platform for the free-to-play 3D MMORPG.

Under this agreement, Karos Online players across the world can purchase virtual goods/currency and make in-game payments using more than 85 global payment options including mobile and cash-based options, as well as PlaySpan's Ultimate Game Card. You can see screenshots of an in-game transaction after the break.

Developed by Korean studio Galaxy Gate (Laghaim, Last Chaos), Karos Online is a fantasy-based action MMORPG set in the world of Asmara. Players take on the role of a hero looking to defeat a curse of darkness infecting the world while ascending to "ultimate glory by becoming the mythical Karos warrior".

Gamers can take part in questing, guild clashes, and mass PVP while fighting to control Fletta, Asmara's vital energy source. NHN also advertises that the game features a wide variety of class skills, visual combat effects, and end-game content for guilds, such as castle sieges and resource control points.

"Karos Online is poised to lay siege to Europe and North America," says Dong-min Lee, director of International Business Team at NHN. "UltimatePay will enable gamers everywhere to join the adventure. We want to ensure that everyone has the ability to experience the fantastic premium content offered in Karos Online, and UltimatePay provides that capability."

Engine tech company Emergent has a new licensee in Korean developer Entwell, which will use Emergent tech to develop an MMORPG.

Emergent, maker of the Gamebryo and Gamebryo Lightspeed engines, has made visible strides among online developers in Asia in recent months; at the end of March, Korea's EYA Soft revealed it would develop its free-to-play 3D MMORPG Iris Online using Gamebryo.

And just before that, Emergent announced two more Gamebryo licensing agreements with Shanghai-based Goldcool and Seoul-based JoyMaster Interactive, both of which are working on online role-playing games.

Emergent says it aims to support development of single and multiplayer games alike in any genre, and promises "dedication to providing a one-stop cross-platform toolset" for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC.

In March it unveiled updates to its Gamebryo LightSpeed development platform, adding new features and establishing a "Kickstart" program for more transparency on the devkit.

Apple is increasing its focus on gamers with a new social gaming network for iPhone and iPod Touch that draws cues from console gaming counterparts, the company revealed during a Thursday media event at its Cupertino, CA headquarters.

Apple's SVP of iPhone software Scott Forstall said that the company will introduce later this year "Game Center," a social gaming network that includes automatic matchmaking, achievements, leaderboards and other features.

"A lot of developers have come to us and said there are a bunch of different social networks out there," Forstall said at the Gamasutra-attended event. "When you want a social network, the most important thing is that our friends are on it [and it's] built-in... that everyone can unify and be on the same social network."

Forstall said that Game Center is more about adding value to its mobile products, not creating a new business model. "There's no money to be gained or no competitive advantage to be gained from having your own social gaming network," he said.

As for the inclusion of achievements, a potential big attraction for gamers, he said "we're still looking at different options" in how to handle the feature.

Forstall did not reveal an exact release date for Game Center, only saying there will be a "preview" in OS4 which will be available this summer on iPhone and iPod Touch. OS4 will hit iPad this fall, while the SDK for OS4 is out today.

The exec presented Game Center in the context of iPhone and iPod Touch games, but with OS4 hitting iPod, iPod Touch and iPad later this year, Game Center is destined to go across all devices. Forstall said that there are over 50,000 game and entertainment titles on App Store currently.

Runaway, a new game development studio based in New Zealand and focused on creating "meaningful online games for social networks", formally announced its opening and its first title, Flutter. Tim Nixon, previously CEO of Straylight Studios (The Kitchen, The Kitchen), heads the new company.

Based in Dunedin, Runaway set up office in 2009 as a division of documentary film company NHZ. The company says it produces "original social game experiences inspired by the incredible world around us." Flutter, for instance, takes place in the Amazon Rainforest and has players experiencing the lifecycle of tropical butterflies.

In Flutter, gamers can explore the rainforest as a butterfly, build up their collection of butterflies, and breed more butterflies as they nurture an ecosystem of flora and fauna. Runaway expects to release bi-monthly chapters, each introducing new species, plants, decorations,a nd challenges starting with a Beta this May.

"Our team is dedicated to creating stand-out social game experiences," says Runaway director Tim Nixon. "We've put a lot of time into crafting a world and style that will not only appeal to mass audiences, but give a sense of purpose and meaning to their play through the games attachment to an incredible real world environment that is under a very real threat."

You can see a trailer for Flutter after the break:

Research and consulting firm Pearl Research says that in 2009, the online game market in China grew 35 percent to $3.9 billion -- building on a 63 percent jump in 2008.

Pearl Research managing director Allison Luong says that, similar to the West's Facebook gaming boom, much of the growth is being driven by Chinese social networking sites like QZone, Renren and Kaixin001. "These games are starting to cannibalize some of the advanced casual games on the market," she says.

And the firm projects continued growth. According to Pearl's new research, the online game market in China is predicted to exceed $6 billion in 2012.

Some of the region's most popular games see more than 1 million peak concurrent users, finds the research. These include games like NetEase's Fantasy Westward Journey, Giant's Zhengtu Online, Tencent's Dungeon and Fighter and Cross Fire -- and, despite its regulatory struggles in its transition to NetEase operations, Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Tencent was the top operator in the region for 2009, with $792 million in revenue. It's followed by Shanda Games, with $704 million, and then NetEase, with $493 million. Perfect World saw $314 million, and Changyou reported $268 million in revenue for the year.

Nonetheless, there could be regulatory obstacles ahead for virtual goods. Pearl says virtual money is "under increasing scrutiny with a series of laws designed to tighten their use," like restrictions on what items can be purchased (only virtual goods) and how virtual currency may be allocated (not through lottery-based activities).

384 million Chinese are using the internet -- that's only 29 percent of the market. 70 percent of the internet users are under 30, and this is also the group most likely to seek out online entertainment like games, music and chatting, which Pearl asserts will be a net boon to the online game market.

Fielding questions on Kongregate, CEO Jim Greer shared a wealth of data about the core-targeted social gaming portal and revealed that his company is not only breaking even but expects to be consistently profitable in 2010.

Attracting some 8.5 million unique visitors who play a total of 21 million hours per month, Kongregate offers nearly 27,000 free games uploaded by indie developers. The company launched in October 2006 and has so far picked up $9 million after three rounds of funding from backers like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Greylock.

Greer explained that Kongregate stays out of the red by making around two-thirds of its revenue from advertisements and one-third from Kreds, the site's universal virtual currency for purchasing digital goods in MMOs on the site's platform. He expects the company to be "consistently profitable" this year.

"If it weren't for the 25-50 percent share of revenue we give to developers we'd be quite profitable," said Greer in an open Q&A session on community site Reddit. "Of course then we wouldn't have such good games... Among single player games, there are lots of developers making tens of thousands of dollars in their share of ad revenue."

While microtransactions account for a third of his company's revenue, the CEO notes that only around 1 percent of gamers who play freemium titles ever buy anything. Greer then added that some of the games on Kongregate's platform with virtual goods are on track to earn $500,000 to a million in total revenue this year.

Many Warhammer Online players were billed numerous times this month for their subscriptions to Mythic's MMO, resulting in charges that in some cases totaled hundreds of dollars.

The issue publicly surfaced by way of a lengthy thread on the official Warhammer Online forums, in which dozens of players complained about excess charges, overdrawn bank accounts, and bank fees.

Most players claimed to have been charged one or two dozen times, but one subscriber said he was charged 39 times, for a total bill of $625.56.

Mythic quickly acknowledged the fiasco with a post on the game's community site. The studio says it is working with its credit vendors to refund the fees as soon as possible.

"We have confirmed with our vendor that players who have been charged multiple times for their subscriptions should start seeing a reversal of charges within 24-36 hours," wrote customer service employee Andy Belford.

While such vendors do have the ability to reverse the charges, they cannot directly waive any fees that individual banks charge to account holders who dip into a negative account balance because of the error.

Mythic has instructed affected subscribers to first contact their financial institutions directly if any such fees remain in effect after 36 hours, and then to put Mythic in contact with those institutions if more support is needed.

[Gamasutra's Christian Nutt analyzes the most important features of OS 4.0 for game developers, and speaks with Riptide Games founder Brian Robbins and ngmoco's Simon Jeffery to find out their take. ]

Today at a Gamasutra-attended showcase in Cupertino, Apple unveiled details of iPhone OS 4, the latest iteration of the software that drives the basic functions of the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad device family.

Over 1500 new APIs are being added to the OS with this update, offering developers both substantial new challenges and opportunities.

Set to be released this summer, it includes some features profoundly relevant to game developers, and some that, while not directly relevant, are appealing and interesting enough to potentially drive adoption of the platform to even greater heights.

You can watch Jobs' keynote speech about OS 4 here.

The Impact of GameCenter

Most notably, Apple announced an Xbox Live-like service called Game Center, which will roll out in a "preview" form along with the OS 4 launch this summer before fully releasing this fall. Matchmaking, friends lists, achievements, leaderboards, and push game invites are all slated to be included in the service.

At the App Store's launch, Apple didn't seem to quite see the potential of games. Now, at this latest press conference, the company trumpeted "more than 50,000 game and entertainment apps" and made direct comparisons with Sony and Nintendo -- claiming the PSP has 2477 titles and DS 4321. It's been a trend, but Game Center cements Apple's support for its mobile OS as a home for games.

There are currently gaming social networking solutions for the OS from third parties -- notably OpenFeint and ngmoco's plus+ network, neither of which will be disabled by the OS 4 update, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, this morning. However, their days seem numbered unless those third parties can find other compelling commercial reasons to keep App creators using their solutions.

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 opportunities at 2K Marin, Tencent Boston 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:

2K Marin, Multiplayer Programmer
"Got what it takes to produce a cutting-edge AAA title? 2K Games seeks the talents of a seasoned and passionate Networking Programmer who enjoys a collaborative and creative work environment and is looking to work with like minded professionals to create truly amazing experiences."

Sledgehammer Games, Sound Designer
"Check out our brand new studio, headed up by industry veterans Glen Schofield as Vice President and GM and Michael Condrey as Vice President and COO, the leaders of the Dead Space franchise. They are joined at Sledgehammer Games by many award winning developers from across the industry. Sledgehammer Games is actively recruiting top industry talent to join their development team. Our studio based in sunny Foster City and is walking distance to plenty of restaurants and shopping, or one of our two free gyms."

The latest issue of WorldsInMotion sister publication Game Developer magazine, available for subscribers and for digital purchase now, includes a postmortem of Sony Online Entertainment San Diego's Free Realms, written by creative director Laralyn McWilliams.

Free Realms, a casual virtual MMO world angled at a youth and teen audience, is the latest new property from Sony's MMO-focused division. It was published by SOE for PC last April.

These excerpts from the April 2010 issue of Game Developer magazine reveal various "What Went Right" and "What Went Wrong" highlights from throughout the creation of the game, revealing how the company implemented an improved management style and dealt with a new shift to casual audiences.

Underestimated the Need for Iteration on Back-End Features

As any developer (or any Game Developer postmortem reader) knows, there's no substitute for iteration. But while most discussion of iteration deals with gameplay mechanics and core technical issues, the Free Realms team had a whole other area of concern.

"The effect a lack of iteration time has on elements like user interface or items is clear—but what about character login protocols? Chat filters? Web profile updating? Change management and migration across development, test, and live environments? Localization and live string updating? Item stack counts?

Artix Entertainment, a small and independent online game developer and publisher, announced that its free-to-play games have attracted more than 100 million registered users since the company launched its first game AdventureQuest in 2002.

Based in Land O' Lakes, Florida, Artix has received an average of 35,000 new players every day for the past eight years. The studio's catalog, which caters to fans of fantasy and science fiction, two MMOs (AdventureQuest Worlds and EpicDuel) and three single-player, browser-based roleplaying games (DragonFable, MechQuest, and AdventureQuest).

While Artix initially specialized in a variety of web-based, single-player RPGs, the company launched AdventureQuest Worlds in 2008. The Flash-based MMORPG has since picked up over 13 million players. The studio then expanded its MMO catalog last year with its acquisition of player-versus-player-focused fighting game EpicDuel.

The studio attributes its success to a combination of elements, including weekly updates for all of its games and player-inspired content/modifications. The company adds, "Artix understands that gamers want to play a game that they can relate to… a game that they would create themselves… and Artix delivers this in the form of browser-based video games."

"When Artix founder and CEO Adam Bohn was creating our first game, AdventureQuest, he just wanted 100 players to try out the game so he could say 'I made a real game!'," says Artix's business development manager Dan Vasile. "He never was very good at math."

Hamburg, Germany-based MMO publisher Gamigo will bring the The Witcher: Versus -- a free-to-play, Flash-based multiplayer interpretation of CD Projekt RED's popular single-player PC RPG The Witcher for Facebook, iPhone, and browsers -- to North America with several new additions.

Developed by polish studio one2tribe, The Witcher: Versus charges players with creating a character based on three classes (Witcher, Sorceress, and Frightener), exploring a world based on Andrzej Sapkowski's fantasy novel series The Witcher, and dueling other players (screenshots after the break).

Though The Witcher: Versus was initially launched in Eastern Europe in 2006, where it's attracted "hundreds of thousands of players", Gamigo has added several new features for the game's debut in North America, such as the ability to unlock items for the PC game's upcoming sequel The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

The game also now allows guilds to conquer fortresses, and offers new towns, travel routes, and dozens of quests about guilds and castle warfare. This browser-based version is designed so that players learn more about The Witcher's world as they complete story quests.

"Millions of players have already immersed themselves into the world of The Witcher and we are very excited to be opening a new chapter of this success story in collaboration with one2tribe," says Patrick Streppel, a member of Gamigo's executive board.

He continues, "The Witcher: Versus is based on the fascinating concept of action-packed strategic combat in a familiar RPG setting. We are also proud to be one of the first publishers to announce a cross-platform game playable in browser, on Facebook, and on iPhone."

Nexon America announced the introduction of farmland into its free-to-play "fantasy life" MMORPG Mabinogi, offering another example of the company adopting successful strategies from the social gaming space.

With the farmland update, players can rent a plot of land, plant various types of seeds, water and fertilize the seeds, and eventually harvest their crop, which they can use or sell for a profit. The company says players should make the most of the land while they have it as the number of plots is limited and leases for the areas expire after a week.

The virtual farming concept, of course, has seen a lot of popularity on social networks recently with games like Zynga'e FarmVille and its many clones. FarmVille is easily the most popular game on Facebook and has gained nearly 83 million monthly active users since launching last June.

Nexon announced the addition of farmland to Mabinogi just a few days after the company revealed another new feature that's proven successful in the social gaming space: offer-based ads the allow users to earn virtual currency for all of Nexon's online games by participating in offers like consumer surveys and contests.