Clubv3, a new developer and publisher based in Douglas, Isle of Man, announced its opening and intention to create branded games for major social network services such as Facebook and Hi5, which will start releasing this June. The company was founded by directors and game industry veterans Dominic Mason and Richard M Holmes.

Mason is also director at AtomFire Productions, a multi-platform game and virtual world developer (Adventures in Time, dPals). Prior to that, he managed teams at The Digital Learning Company and Epic. Holmes, before joining Clubv3, has worked at developers such as Eidos, Global Core Sports, and Kompart. He's also CEO of IncaGold GmbH.

The duo boast that they have experience in "making mass-market appeal games, integrating brands, and localising products for multiple languages and territories." Their company looks to take a "consultative approach" that will allow partners to bring products to market rapidly through its team.

Clubv3 has already implemented a platform for its social network games with integrated microtransactions, 3D avatars, and a development system designed to be flexible and dynamic. The developer is working on its own original products but is also serving as a third-party developer for a number of products it considers high profile.

"After initially developing and integrating our various technology platforms, we have started working on the initial line-up of games which will be going live from June on Facebook," says clubv3 director Dominic Mason.

He adds, "Thanks to our platform-led development approach we can bring products to market quickly and effectively. This allows us to concentrate on ensuring the design effectively in attracts players and is easy to adapt and expand after launch."

South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism introduced two new policies designed to limit the amount of time younger gamers spend with massively multiplayer online titles. Those policies include a "nighttime shutdown" that restricts underaged users from playing MMOs after midnight, and a slowdown system that reduces connection speeds after a period of time.

The government agency hopes these new measures will help eradicate what it sees as the rising and widely publicized problem of video game addiction in teens, according to a report from The Korean Herald. It is targeting MMORPGs, as the Ministry believes those titles require the most investment in money and time from gamers.

The nighttime shutdown policy is designed to prevent younger gamers from accessing online during a six-hour blackout period. The policy offers three options for setting that period: midnight to 6AM, 1-7AM, and 2-8AM. The slowdown scheme will cut internet connection speeds dramatically after younger users stay logged on too long.

The agency is already testing the slowdown system in four titles, including Nexon's free-to-play games Dungeon Fighter Online and Dragon Nest, and plans to eventually extend the feature to a total of 19 MMORPGs. The Korean Herald says those 19 titles represent nearly 80 percent of the domestic online game market.

The policies will be implemented in the second half of 2010, affecting other Nexon-published MMOs like MapleStory, Mabinogi, and Baramue Nara (Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds). NCsoft's popular Lineage series was noticeably absent from the list of titles slated to incorporate the policies.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism also plans to establish a countermeasure preventing younger gamers from setting up MMO accounts with their parents's resident registration number sometime in the the first half of 2010.

Developer and publisher Rockstar Games launched its beta for Red Dead Redemption: Gunslingers, a social game tie-in to its upcoming console game Red Dead Redemption, on Facebook.

Red Dead Redemption is a sequel to western third-person shooter Read Dead Revolver and is slated to release for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on May 18th. Gunslingers takes a different approach for its gameplay, as its an "RPG social game experience" in which players duels against friends, foes, and strangers.

Gunslingers has players creating a character and bio from one of three classes (Outlaw, Fast Hands, and Sharpshooter), challenging opponents to duels (shootouts shown in quick video sequences), collecting different achievements, gaining experience with each battle, and managing their character's stats after leveling up.

Gamers can also round up a posse of friends to level quicker, or leave messages or taunts on each others's character profile walls. Gunslingers offers friends-only leaderboards and global leaderboards, so players can compare their skills and characters against their acquaintances or other gamers worldwide.

Red Dead Redemption: Gunslingers is available to play for free here. You can see several screenshots of my own cowboy character, Raekwon The Chef, after the break:

PopCap has a new CTO in Adobe tech veteran Frits Haberman. After 20 years with Adobe, where he was most recently VP of Core Technologies, he'll now contribute his experience to the casual game developer's tech strategy.

Haberman has held strategy and management roles for Adobe products like Photoshop, Flash and Acrobat, and he's also worked with RealNetworks on engineering initiatives for its casual game portfolio.

"Frits brings strong leadership and deep management experience, with a long history of products that focus on the user experience as it relates to technology and vice versa," says PopCap EVP of Studios Ed Allard, to whom Haberman will now report. Allard says Frits' "passion for gaming" also makes him a good fit for PopCap's goal to "expand our own cross-platform offerings to stake out a leadership position in social gaming and emerging technologies like the iPad."

Former CTO and PopCap co-founder Brian Fiete is transitioning to a new role as Technology Fellow, the company says.

Says Habermann: "PopCap has created a flourishing business model by mixing creative passion with technological excellence, and I'm looking forward to helping the company scale its rapidly growing technology vision on a diverse set of platforms."

"I'm particularly looking forward to applying my experience with Flash and growing large technical organizations to PopCap's plans in the social gaming arena, where there's still so much to be learned and created," adds the new CTO.

Game Developer Research, the analysis arm of leading video game industry publications Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra, has released the results of its ninth annual Game Developer Salary Survey, calculating an average American mainstream video game industry salary in 2009 of $75,573, a decline of more than 4% from 2008’s figure of $79,000.

The Game Developer Salary Survey is the only major publicly-released analysis of salaries in the worldwide video game industry, providing an exhaustive breakdown of salaries and benefits at major game studios by discipline, job function, experience level, region and gender.

After a record game industry average salary in 2008, this past year saw the first case on record of a significant average salary decrease, as consumer confidence suffered in the midst of a recession and employers looked to cut costs wherever possible. Despite that, this year did not dip below 2007's figure, and 2009 still boasts the second-highest average salary ever.

With the changing face of the game development community, which includes a growing independent segment and a proliferation of new business models, for the first time, this year's full Game Developer Research report includes new special sections dedicated to accurately portraying today's game developers.

"The Indie Report" consists of average reported income and development specializations of those who develop games alone, work with small independent teams, or work as individual contractors. More information on this part of the report will be released in the near future. In addition, "Developer Histories and Outlooks" provides a snapshot of how game developers see their industry's past, present, and future.

Highlights of specific findings per category for the survey, which are available in further detail in the newly published April 2010 issue of Game Developer magazine, are as follows:

Tetris Friends Online Games, the official web-based Tetris game site for North America, surpassed 1 million players shortly after the launch of its new community-based game Tetris Arena.

Tetris Online Inc. says the site, which debuted in in March 2009 as a free-to-play hub for users to enjoy various modes of the falling block puzzler, is the first official online portal for play Tetris in North America.

The new Tetris Arena game is a real-time multiplayer experience in which up to six users face each other simultaneously in a single match. The mode uses a ranking system designed to promote fair matching of new and old users with similarly skilled players. Gamers can also create private rooms to play with friends.

Tetris Arena offers an in-game chat feature and the ability for up to 10 other users to watch a match in progress without actually joining in. Players can use in-game magic items (purchasable with real money or virtual currency they earn from playing) during matches to "customize" the game experience.

"We're excited about the launch of Tetris Arena because it signals the first step in providing our registered users with the ability to play against their growing network of friends on Tetris Friends Online Games," says Tetris Online president and CEO Minoru Arakawa. "With the addition of Tetris Arena, we are making significant strides towards becoming a premier social gaming destination on the Web."

Redwood City, CA-based social games and applications developer RockYou (Zoo World, Birthday Cards)says it will expand its presence in Asia and is "actively" seeking out developers to acquire in China, which it currently believes is more important than attracting more users in the region.

Speaking at a social gaming summit in Beijing last Friday, RockYou's chief technology officer and co-founder Jia Shen said social games are less lucrative in China than in other markets due to what he described as the lack of openness of social networks sites, such as Tencent, in China.

Shen argued that social gaming portals in China have big userbases but require a revenue cut of 40 to 50 percent for games distributed on its web sites, which he said is more than the standard in other markets. He added that while a large number of Chinese gamers pay to play for titles, they spend much less.

"For something a Chinese user is willing to pay one Renminbi [for], a user in the U.S. would pay $1," said the CTO, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. $1 is equal to approximately 7 RMB.

He also told attendees at the summit that RockYou is looking for opportunities to acquire or partner with Chinese developers and assist them with overseas distribution. The company currently has a partnership with Chinese studio CafeJoy to distribute Casino World internationally. "We’re looking at the talent here," commented Shen.

Founded in 2005, RockYou produces applications, games, and widgets for Facebook, MySpace, and Chinese social networking sites. The firm has so far raised $117 million from VC backers and was rumored as a possible acquisition target for Shanghai-based MMO operator Shanda, but Shen said those speculations were "just rumors."

Along with many other additions to the free-to-play MMORPG, Runes of Magic's upcoming expansion Chapter III: The Elder Kingdoms will add marriage system that allows for both traditional and same-sex virtual marriages.

Though gay marriages are recognized in only a few states in the United States, Runes of Magic's Western publisher Frogster has given no indication that it will remove the feature for its North American release. Notably, Taiwan, where the game's developer Runewaker Entertainment is based, does not legally recognize same-sex unions.

The studio has already implemented a wedding chapel in the expansion, but it hasn't clarified if users will be required to go through the fuss and planning of an in-game ceremony. As in real life, players's characters will receive tangible benefits once they're wed, such as the ability to use a ring to teleport to their partner.

"You will be married and somehow connected to the other player," said Frogster's PR manager Philipp Senkbeil, according to a report from consumer site Videogamer. "Of course you can only be married with one person at the same time. It's even possible to have gay couples, so no need to just have a male and female character. Two male characters and two female characters can marry each other."

Chapter III: The Elder Kingdoms is scheduled to release for free in May. The game will raise the character level cap to 60, expand skill trees, and introduce hundreds of new quests. It will also add three cities, three minigames, a battlefield, instances, guild quests, guild drill rounds, runes, mounts, and more.

UK studio Jagex, which develops and publishes free-to-play, browser-based 2D MMORPG Runescape, generated £38.4 million in revenues ($59.3M) and £18 million in profits ($27.8M) during the March 2008 to March 2009 period.

In the 12-month cycles prior to that period, the company earned revenues of £32.3 million ($49.9M) and profits of £14.5 million ($22.4M) in 2008, £28.1 million ($43.4M) and £15 million ($23.2M) in 2007, £16.9 million ($26.1M) and £10.2 million ($15.7M) in 2006, and £5.2 million ($8M) and £2.7 million ($4.2M) in 2004.

94 percent of the $59.3 million revenue Jagex picked up in the 2009 term, or $55.4 million, was from subscriptions to Runescape, according to a report from Games Brief, which pulled its numbers from documents filed with the UK Government Business Department's Companies House. The remaining 6 percent, or $3.3 million, is from ad revenue (some of which is presumably through Jagex's online game portal FunOrb).

Though Runescape is free-to-play with advertisements displayed alongside the game screen, users can subscribe to remove the ads, enable a fullscreen mode, build a virtual house, and access extra quests, skills, activities, and more. Launched in 2001, the game now receives more than 10 million users, one million of which have paid subscriptions.

Games Brief also notes that Jagex managed to maintain a 47 percent operating margin despite having spent "tens of millions of pounds" on a new MMO titled MechScape, which the developer eventually announced as cancelled last October. The company has since launched a browser-based MMO strategy game titled War of Legends, which features microtransactions.

Organizers of this October's GDC Online game conference in Austin have confirmed Summits to run parallel with the major event, including one and two-day events dedicated to game development on Apple’s iPad, 3D stereoscopic games, iPhone games and video game narrative.

The summits, to be held on the first two days (October 5th and 6th) of the four-day event, will present key in-depth business and technical advice in these major up-and-coming facets of the game industry, ahead of the online game-centric Main Conference content.

The newly revealed topics to be presented at the Game Developers Conference Online (formerly known as GDC Austin) this October include the following:

iPad Gaming Summit

Debuting at GDC Online, the one-day iPad Gaming Summit, paired with the iPhone Games Summit, will provide an abundance of key facts and advice for all those working on the iPhone and iPad platforms.

Sharing key business learnings to top technical takeaways from developers already surging to major success on this already extremely competitive format platform, the iPad Summit provides a springboard into the world of iPhone/iPad game development.

Farmville developer Zynga filed a lawsuit against third-party, real-money-trading marketplace PlayerAuctions.com over the unauthorized sale of virtual currency/goods for Zynga games and the use of its copyrighted images.

In Zynga's free-to-play titles on Facebook, players earn in-game cash and digital goods through playing games, participating in offer-based ads, or spending real money through first-party options. The company's Terms of Service restricts players from selling virtual currencies or goods for real money to each other, and prohibits third-party services from selling them, too.

Zynga's lawsuit, which was filed with the California Central District Court last week, accuses PlayerAuctions.com of advertising and selling virtual currency/items for titles like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Texas HoldEm Poker, and alleges that the service transfers those purchased goods within the games themselves using player-to-player trading features.

Furthermore, Zynga says the site sells those digital items and cash at "prices that are substantially lower than the prices paid by users who obtain their 'virtual currency' or 'virtual goods' from Zynga". With Texas HoldEm Poker, for example, players can buy 75,000 chips from Zynga for $5 or 1 million chips from PlayerAuctions.com for $5.45.

Playerauctions.com sells in-game currency, power-leveling services, game guides, items/equipment, and even accounts for a number of popular MMOs, including World of Warcraft, Aion Online, EverQuest, Final Fantasy XI, and others -- all of which forbid the unauthorized third-party sale of these virtual goods and services.

The Farmville developer also says the site is using its trademarks and copyrighted images without permission to advertise the sale of the virtual currencies and goods, according to a report from the Los Angeles Intellectual Property Trademark Attorney Blog. The studio has asked for injunctive relief and is suing for damages in an amount Zynga hopes to prove at trial.

Korean game developer SmileGate has licensed Emergent Game Technologies' Gamebryo engine for an in-development PC title, Emergent said Wednesday.

While not as high-profile in the West, SmileGate is responsible for the Asian title Cross Fire, a first-person shooter MMO game for PC that's downloadable in seven countries including China, Korea and also the U.S. SmileGate also created the MMORPG Sephiroth for PC.

In China, Cross Fire saw 1.8 million simultaneous users, which Emergent and SmileGate said broke the previous record for domestic FPS games. The companies did not reveal details of SmileGate's upcoming GameBryo PC game.

Technology from Emergent's Gamebryo and Gamebryo Lightspeed engines are used in over 300 games, including Fallout 3, Civilization Revolution and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

The director of mobile and online games at Blue Fang (Zoo Tycoon), Eduardo Baraf, says that transitioning a developer from long development cycle packaged games to short projects for iPhone and Facebook is possible only in a flexible environment.

"Even though we were all under the same roof, each team had its own culture, identity, processes and even work hours. This independence and autonomy, more than anything, was critical to building the foundation of our group and preparing Blue Fang for the move to an online, mobile, and social world," writes Baraf, in the latest feature at sister site Gamasutra: From Two Years to Two Months: Transforming a Studio.

Though the developer had shipped both popular PC (Zoo Tycoon) and Wii (World of Zoo) games -- and intends to keep that business rolling -- there was a recognition that today's landscape required more, which lead to the hire of Baraf to run its mobile/online division and directly to Facebook game Zoo Kingdom and iPhone game Lion Pride.

Lion Pride was developed in seven weeks; Zoo Kingdom was targeted at Facebook in November 2009 and launched in February 2010.

"The key to delivering a high quality product in a limited amount of time is clearly defining the objectives of the project (this is not scope), dispersing this to the team, and having centralized decision making," writes Baraf. "Many people confuse project objectives with project scope. This is an important point. The objectives of a project are the concrete goals of development -- the target you shoot the arrow at. The scope of a project are the parameters of development, which must be flexible and change to ensure you hit the target."

To learn more, you can read the full feature, From Two Years to Two Months: Transforming a Studio, which details more of the relevant process changes between large and small-scale, fast development for new platforms, and which features case studies of the development of Zoo Kingdom and Lion Pride.

Casual and social gaming publisher iWin announced that its Family Feud game based on the long-running TV game show has reached more than 1 million monthly active players in less than 30 days after its "quiet" launch on Facebook.

Developed by Backstage Technologies Incorporated, the social game takes after the TV show produced by FremantleMedia North America and has players trying to think of the most popular responses to survey questions previously posed to 100 people. Family Feud has more than 11,000 survey questions so far, with new content added weekly.

The Facebook game allows gamers to play alongside friends and family on the social network; they can earn bonuses if their Facebook friends help them reach a certain level in the "Fast Money" round. Backstage is also developing a framework that will enable players to collect and trade Family Feud-themed virtual goods online.

"Our aim when creating the game was to embrace the social element of Facebook and combine it with the long-standing principles of the show," says iWin's VP of Technology David Fox. "Players will be able to interact with others, share amusing survey questions and barter for rare prizes - and what better platform to do this on than Facebook."

Chinese mobile and social game developer Dinglepharb Studios announced a partnership with Heyzap, a social games distribution platform, to expand the launch of its upcoming free-to-play Woldtown virtual world beyond Facebook and to the rest of the internet.

Using Facebook Connect, Heyzap's platform enables developers to port their Facebook games to other websites without losing social graph, "viral loops" (e.g. sending virtual gifts, inviting friends), and monetization features. People can integrate the game into any website by copying and pasting a simple embed code, similar to Youtube.

Woldtown is scheduled to premiere on Facebook in spring 2010 and is based on a popular Chinese social game called VVDragon. In the virtual world, players are introduced to a race of miniature and magical dragons that can fly, morph into different objects, and throw pies at each other.

Gamers can play as one of 24 Wold avatars, earn WoldCash by completing jobs and quests, explore 100 different locations, and enjoy minigames. They can spend WoldCash to upgrade pies (to throw at others), throwing abilities, and shields to protect against pies thrown at them.

Under this agreement, Woldtown will appear on Heyzap's network of 175,000 sites. Users can log into any of those sites and play the game with the same statistics, virtual goods, and social connections as if they were playing it through Facebook.

"With such an innovative and fun-to-play game as Woldtown, we definitely had the millions of Facebook users across the world in mind, as the vibrant colors and fully 3D world is unlike anything the platform has ever seen," said Dinglepharb Studios CEONathan Agulto.

He adds, "But we didn’t want to limit our users to only those with Facebook accounts, and Heyzap’s one-of-a-kind technology and incredible industry partnerships will allow us to showcase Woldtown to an amount of people and sites that simply wouldn’t be possible on our own."

Online game developer and publisher True Games Interactive revealed plans to release Mytheon: Assault of Gaia, an iPhone tie-in to its upcoming MMORPG, in North America this spring for $2.99. It intends to release the mobile title in Europe, China, and Korea afterwards, too.

Assault of Gaia is a Tower Defense-style title in which players must protect the temple of Gaia from enemies (Skeletons, Cyclops, Minotaurs, and even gods)), building and managing a series of towers that shoot at invaders. The game offers three different settings: Kraken, which is set within temple ruins; Hades, a lava-filled underworld; and the Greek Parthenon.

Unlike the free iPhone adaptation for MMORPG Warrior Epic, which True Games worked with developer Good Game Productions to create, Assault of Gaia offers a new, complementary gameplay experience instead of a streamlined version of the full game. The publisher did not reveal whether it worked with Good Game Productions again or with another studio for this project.

The full Mytheon MMORPG is developed by Petroglyph and is currently in its closed beta phase. Set to launch this spring, the Greek mythology-themed game has players challenging gods by casting spells, summoning minions, and creating structures that will aid them in combat.

"We're very excited about bringing the Mytheon brand to the iPhone" says True Games's New Business and Product Development director Peter Cesario. "Though mythology can be very deep and complex, we have worked hard on the development side to create a fun and addictive mythology experience that can be enjoyed on the go."

Sony has canned plans for its online PSP service, "Room," a concept scaled down from the PlayStation 3's online virtual environment, PlayStation Home, the company's Japanese arm said today.

Announced just over six months ago at last year's Tokyo Game Show, Room was to feature cartoonish avatars gathering together in virtual rooms to chat, write blog posts, customize their appearance, share pictures, and participate in other social activities.

While no release date was ever announced for the program, and it was never confirmed for the North American market, Sony had been running a closed user beta test of Room. That test was ended with a brief Sony statement revealing the cancellation of Room's development.

Sony gave no specific rationale for the move, only saying that it would continue to develop networked services for PlayStation 3 and PSP, and that it would take Room beta user feedback into account going forward.

As many as 140,000 World of Warcraft players have queued to purchase the subscription-based MMORPG's recently introduced virtual items: a $25 Celestial Steed mount and a $10 Lil' XT pet.

As many as 140,000 World of Warcraft players have queued to purchase the subscription-based MMORPG's recently introduced virtual items: a $25 Celestial Steed mount and a $10 Lil' XT pet (priced at €20 and €10, respectively, for Europe).

Added to the online Blizzard Store yesterday, the digital goods immediately attracted a high volume of orders, so much so that the shop began placing interested buyers in an automated queue to allow "controlled batches of visitors to finalize their purchases on a first-come, first-served basis."

Within six hours after Blizzard added the items to its store, the number of gamers queuing to buy one of the virtual animals jumped up to 80,000, according to a report from unofficial fansite Wow.com. That number reached more than 140,000 several hours later, and users waited an estimated seven hours to complete their purchase.

Despite the rise of microtransaction-based, free-to-play MMOs (e.g. Dungeon Fighter Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online), Blizzard has given no indication of plans to do away with its paid subscription model -- understandable considering the publisher has over 11.5 million subscribers worldwide (U.S. gamers pay around $13.95 to play WoW each month).

Blizzard, however, began experimenting with purchasable virtual animals last November by selling two in-game pets priced at $10. The strategy seems enormously profitable -- if all 140,000 of those queued users (not counting players who completed their transactions) purchased the $25 Celestial Steed, Blizzard would have made some $3.5 million after just a day.

And if none of those World of Warcraft members bought the Celestial Steed and purchased pets instead, the company would have still brought in at least $1.4 million. It's likely many purchased the virtual flying horse, though, as it's the first rideable mount made available through the shop, and it allows players to travel faster in the world than they would on foot.

Electronic Arts founder and Digital Chocolate (NanoStar Castles) CEO Trip Hawkins predicts that the worldwide virtual goods market could generate more than $100 billion in ten years based on a forecasted explosion of growth in the West.

"An estimated $7 billion in virtual goods were sold in China last year, and another $1 billion in the Western World," says Hawkins in an essay posted on his Digital Chocolate blog. "What gets me intrigued about this is the fact that the West is just getting started and we have 8.5 times more Gross Domestic Product than China."

"That should generate enough buying power to suggest that when the West is comparable to the 2009 China market, it might be a $60 billion market in the West alone. At that point on a global basis including all of Asia it would likely exceed $100 billion. And I have no doubt of this; I expect it to happen in this decade."

The CEO noted that despite his prediction, the social game industry is "not so good" right now, what with new Facebook policies hampering the viral growth many applications once enjoyed through "spammy" notifications, invites, and bookmarks. He says several publishers have lost millions of customers, and most games have declined in audience size.

Hawkins argues that last year's formula of "viral growth through aggressive spam" doesn't work anymore and that developers will need to put out richer, more entertaining, and more meaningful games in order to motivate players to recruit their friends to join them.

"Going forward, spammy isn’t going to cut it," he adds. "Shallow gameplay isn’t either; or games that don’t monetize. Lack of funding for marketing will be another killer. Walled gardens, or depending on any one platform will be a business liability and a negative for consumers."

"The industry has a ton of potential but has to overcome these issues. The $7 billion spent on virtual goods in China last year should give us great hope, but let’s not screw it up."

Facebook has teamed up with ad networks TrialPay and Peanut Labs to test offer-based advertisements as a payment option for Facebook Credits, the universal virtual currency for social games and applications hosted on its platform.

With offer-based ads, players can earn free digital cash for their favorite social games by participating in a variety of sponsored activities, such as signing up for trial subscriptions, watching commercials, completing surveys, or even just shopping at selected online retailers.

The offer-based industry came into fire late last year after some companies were accused of running scams disguised as legitimate offers, motivating Facebook to suspend Zynga's FishVille for several days and reportedly ban at least two offer providers, Gambit and Tatto Media, from its apps and games.

While the Facebook Credits system is currently in its testing phase and is currently implemented with games from only a few selected developers (e.g. CrowdStar, Playdom and RockYou), the social network is taking care to keep its offer as clean as possible by hand-picking which offers it wants to run with the virtual currency.

"We wanted to take a conservative approach with this test," says Facebook Developer Network director Ethan Beard, according to a report from Inside Facebook. "We work hard to make sure all advertisers and other providers are in compliance."

He adds, "What we do in the future will be determined based on the information we gather here. We want to get a better understanding of how we can help our developers be more successful in driving business on the platform."

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 THQ, Bungie, 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:

THQ/Kaos Studios: Senior FX Artist
"Along with the opportunity to live in one of the most exciting cities in the world, we create exciting titles like Frontlines: Fuel of War (PC/XBOX360) and our newest title Homefront! We also offer competitive salaries, comprehensive health benefits, and an excellent compensation package."

Bungie: UI Engineer
"Do you appreciate silky smooth UI experiences? Do you cringe at unintuitive menus and unresponsive controls? Do you have an eye for detail and polished experiences? Do you have mad coding skills and a deep love of video games? Then come help Bungie develop kick ass games by advancing the art and science of user interaction in an environment fueled by passion, creativity, and refinement!"