Continuing their Game Developers Conference 2010 free video lecture series, show organizers have debuted well-received lectures on social/free to play games by Ngmoco's Neil Young and Moshi Monsters' Michael Acton Smith.

The two new lectures, both highly rated by GDC attendees, are part of a free bi-weekly update published at the GDC Vault website, and feature video technology that allows users to simultaneously view a presenter's slides alongside video and audio of their presentation.

Firstly, organizers are presenting Neil Young's Business & Management Track keynote from GDC 2010, 'Things to Unlearn Moving From Traditional Development to the New Digital World'. Young, who is CEO & founder of iPhone/iPad centric publisher/developer ngmoco (TouchPets, We Rule, Rolando) "talks candidly about the challenges that traditional game developers face" in this new market.

Young, who was previously a long-time EA executive (Majestic) discusses "transitioning from long development cycles, packaged goods and the one time sale to the essential new models of games as a service, virtual goods, data driven design & minimum viable products" in this highly-rated GDC lecture.

Less than six months its acquisition of the studio, Playdom (Mobsters, Sorority Life) has announced that it will close almost all of social game developer Green Patch's currently running titles, including (Lil) Green Patch, next month due to a lack of resources to support the releases.

The only title Green Patch will continue to keep open is (Lil) Farm Life, which the developer says will receive "much more attention." Its other releases such as (Lil) Style Pop, (Lil) Blue Cove, (Lil) Eco Racer, and gardening simulator (Lil) Green Patch, will no longer be available on Facebook as of June 10th.

Though (Lil) Farm Life has been losing players in recent weeks, the game remains Green Patch's most popular release with around 3.2 million monthly active players, according to figures from AppData. (Lil) Green Patch was also once the top-ranked game on Facebook a couple years ago but now claims only about 364,000 players.

Green Patch was one of the first studios Playdom picked up after raising $43 million in a Series A round of funding last November. The Mobsters developer has since purchased and invested in at least five other studios: Merscom (The Crazies), Trippert Labs (Fighter Jets), Offbeat Creations (Super Farkle), Three Melons (Bola!), and Argentinian firm MetroGames (Music Challenge).

"The main reason to discontinue these games, including Lil Green Patch, is that we no longer have the resources to support Lil Green Patch in the way that makes sense for us and for our players," says a company representative. "Our different studios are working on both existing and new games, and at this point, we are not able to support the Green Patch games to the degree that we expect of ourselves."

The free-to-play business model seems to find the most success with social, casual game players. But plenty of core titles are gaining ground in successful implementations. One of these is Riot Games' League of Legends, a multiplayer PC title that's something of a spiritual successor to WarCraft III mod Defense of the Ancients.

As of February 2010 -- three months after launch -- Riot Games' League of Legends, has seen 1 million downloads, and company president Marc Merrill tells us it's monetizing even more strongly than plenty of social games.

In this interview, Merrill talks Gamasutra through the intricacies of supporting a free-to-play userbase in a game like League of Legends, the ways that the team has grown, and the direction in which Riot Games hopes to build from here.

What have you done since launch, in terms of live support and improving monetization?

Marc Merrill: We launched our in-game store to kick off monetization, which is exciting. A big focus for us throughout 2009 was just getting a product ready to go to market. We looked at the initial feature set for launch as our minimum buyable product -- the start, as opposed to the end, of League of Legends.

Our entire team has actually grown since launch, and we continue to be pretty much 100 percent allocated to League of Legends. We've added five or six new champions, which are totally different. We've [recently] rolled out a new three versus three map mode into matchmaking, which had been in practice testing for a long period.

There's a whole bunch of new features that will be bundled and rolled out as a major update called “Season One,” which will kick off the hardcore competitive scene and get us into more e-sports competitions -- features like draft mode, ranked games, matchmaking, leaderboards, and ladders, which our players have been asking for.

Veteran developer (Civilization II, Rise of Nations) and Zynga chief game designer Brian Reynolds discusses the differences between making traditional and social games -- which he calls "really exciting" to work in.

Speaking to Gamasutra in a new feature-length interview, Reynolds says that he likes his new position, which he took last year. Compared to massive current productions, which aren't always focused on design, working at Zynga is "just game mechanics; straight game mechanics. That's cool!"

However, his mindset from working on traditional PC games had to change, says Reynolds. "I spent 18, 19 years designing traditional games, particularly strategy games, and it was all about fun," he explains. "Fun was the number one thing, and, once you'd made the game fun, you knew you were gonna succeed; if you didn't make the game fun, you knew you probably weren't going to succeed very well. Everything was based around that."

What's most interesting about social games to Reynolds is that the social element itself is generally more important than the fun. "It's the quality of the social interaction, and it's because the social interactions are with your real friends, not just people that you met online," he adds.

Reynolds says that working this way is a "huge learning curve", and that for traditional developers entering the social space, "the most important thing is humility; it's coming in and realizing that it's not about the same thing."

Reynolds continues, "You've got to come in and embrace the socialness of it and learn the socialness of it. There will be a place for your knowledge of game mechanics, but you've got to kind of unlearn that first, particularly unlearn the idea that that's the most important thing, that that's what it's all about. Then you'll find ways to integrate it in."

The full feature-length interview, Brian Reynolds On His Social Transition, is live today at Gamasutra.

With a year now passed since the comany launched Free Realms for PC, Sony Online Entertainment announced that it will show off its PlayStation 3 edition of the family-friendly, free-to-play MMO at next month's E3 trade show (June 15 to June 17).

The developer/publisher initially announced Free Realms for both the PC and PS3 platforms in July 2007, planning to release the former in winter of that year and the latter in Summer 2008. The MMO didn't launch on PC until April 2009, though, and SOE has kept quiet on the console edition while building up the computer version's audience.

SOE hasn't given up on the project, though, as it passed this note to consumer site Kotaku late last week: "Free Realms for the PlayStation 3 is very much in development and, you heard it here first, fans can be prepared to see the first demo in action in June at E3!"

Since Free Realms's PC debut, the fantasy-themed MMO has picked up more than 10 million users, 2 million of those just in last March. The game offers a variety of activities and minigames -- e.g. virtual pets, kart racing, and a trading card game that can be played with virtual cards or offline with physical card decks sold at stores -- for gamers of all ages.

SOE has several announced online games in the works for both PC and PS3: The Agency, a spycraft MMO shooter; DC Universe Online, an MMORPG based on DC comics properties like Superman and Batman; and Magic: The Gathering - Tactics, an online version of the popular collectible card game.

Mobile/social developer and publisher Moblyng revealed that it raised $2.65 million in funding from existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures and Deep Fork Capital, bringing its total amount raised to $10.65 million since the Redwood City,CA-based company opened in 2006. It also announced a partnership with social game developer Playdom.

Moblyng's platform enables it to publish the same game across various smartphone platforms (iPhone, Android, WebOS, and more) and on Facebook. The firm's new deal with Playdom will allow it to publish the developer's social network titles like Mobsters and Sorority Life on those mobile platforms for Symbian, Blackberry, WebOS, and android devices.

The mobile platform company has previously partnered with other social game developers like LOLapps but also publishes its own games, such as Dungeon Quest, M:Poker, M:Mafia, and M:Vampire. It's worked with Latino social network QuePasa, too. In the past year alone, Moblyng has seen more than 5 million downloads for its games.

"[The Playdom deal] is really big for us because it validates our technology," said Moblyng CEO Stewart Putney, according to a report from VentureBeat. "Our architecture lets us develop a game quickly and make iterations of it as quickly as web-based game developers can."

RealNetworks's GameHouse division launched GameHouse Fusion, a social gaming platform allowing users to play titles across a variety of networks and devices (Facebook, MySpace, mobile phones, PCs, and other internet-connected platforms). It announced support from media and tech companies like Comcast, MySpace, Qualcomm Incorporated, Mattel and PopCap Games, too.

GameHouse Fusion is designed to enable players to connect with their friends and gaming communities, play GameHouse's catalog of titles, receive notifications and news feeds, purchase and spend virtual currency, access leaderboards, join in multiplayer games, and chat live across different social networks and online devices.

The company says its platform also turns single-player experiences into multiplayer games as it gives developers the opportunity to add options for meeting new gamers, creating tournament challenges with friends and online communities, and design virtual awards like customized trophies for winners.

The first release built on GameHouse Fusion is a new and free Facebook app from the company that offers over 1000 games. It serves as a centralized location for connected game experiences that will eventually stretch across to other platforms and take advantage of GameHouse Fusion over time. The RealNetworks division notes that other social apps will follow in the coming months.

GameHouse claims that with its platform's SDK, developers can publish their games once to distribute it to popular PC gaming portals and major social networks. The company plans to put out SDKs for Brew and Brew MP in the third quarter of 2010, and for iPhone, Android, other mobile phones, internet-connected TVs, and other devices later this year.

It also points out that developer partners have access to data collection and analytics capabilities that could help them better understand player demographic information and behavior, so they can adjust their monetization options (in-game advertising, sponsorships, micro-transactions and licensing programs) accordingly.

"GameHouse Fusion is truly a game changing platform, providing consumers access to thousands of great games and a community of millions of other players," says Gamehouse president John Barbour. "It offers our developer partners the opportunity to make all games social – even those not originally designed for social interaction – on virtually any screen."

He adds, "With the unmatched set of multi-platform development and distribution assets we have built over time, GameHouse is leading the transformation of digital games to mainstream social entertainment for the masses."

Seoul-based MapleStory developer and publisher Nexon Corporation announced its purchase of Korean MMO company NDoors Corp. (Atlantica Online), a deal that will see the firm incorporated into Nexon as a subsidiary.

As part of the acquisition, Nexon will pick up a 67 percent stake of Ndoors, including the shares of former chairman Seong-Mun Kwon. The MapleStory publisher believes that buying the company will put it in a position to increase its enterprise value and strengthen its core capabilities by absorbing Ndoors's development teams.

Founded in 1999 as Intizen co., Ltd and also based in Seoul, NDoors has licensed several of its MMORPGs cross Europe and Asia. Its U.S. arm, NDoors Interactive, has published three free-to-play MMOs: Atlantica Online, WonderKing Online, and Luminary: Rise of the Goonzu. Neither Nexon or NDoors have disclosed how this acquisition will affect the latter's branches in Japan and the States.

In 2009, Ndoor's consolidate revenue was ₩40.5 billion ($36.33 million), while its operating profit was ₩15.6 billion ($14 million). Its overseas revenues account for 72 percent of the MMO company's total sales.

"Nexon has been carrying out ongoing investment in the companies with outstanding development efforts," says Nexon CEO Su-Min. "Ndoors, as well as an excellent development capability with domestic and international publishing capabilities would be a big help to expand NEXON's portfolio and to carry out a global expansion policy."

Social media/gaming ad company Offerpal Media announced the beta launch of GamePoints.com, a site where users earn points for taking part in offers, which they can redeem for virtual currency in hundreds of games and different social networks.

Social media/gaming ad company Offerpal Media announced the beta launch of GamePoints.com, a site where users earn points for taking part in offers, which they can redeem for virtual currency in hundreds of games and different social networks.

The site works similar to current systems, in which players earn free virtual currency in a specific social game by completing surveys, signing up for trial subscriptions, and taking part in other ad offers. GamePoints.com, however, adds an extra step that allows users to redeem Game Points in more than 1,500 games and apps across various social networking platforms, virtual worlds, MMOs, and other gaming sites.

Users earn Game Points by shopping from participating retail partners (e.g. Macy's, Gap), taking advantage of coupons or discounts from advertisers (e.g. Netflix, Disney), completing online surveys from market research firms, trading in unwanted gift cards, recycling used electronics through Gazelle, purchasing music through iTunes, buying movie tickets through Fandango, subscribing to magazines, and buying virtual currency.

This cross-game virtual currency system comes as Facebook prepares to launch its universal and possibly mandatory virtual currency Facebook Credits. The social network's own system, also currently in beta, will allow gamers to buy Facebook Credits, which they can then spend on buying virtual currency in games, a two-step process that at least one virtual payments company disagrees with.

Several major social game developers have already incorporated GamePoints.com into their games, including Zynga (FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Cafe World, etc.), Playdom (Mobsters, Sorority Life, Tiki Resort, etc.), Digital Chocolate (MMA Pro Fighter), Offbeat Creations (Be a Tycoon), and many others.

While Game Points is currently compatible with Facebook applications during the beta phase, Offerpal says that after its general release, users will be able to spend their Points on MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and other social networks, as well as standalone MMO and virtual worlds sites.

"Virtual currency has become an integral part of the online gaming experience, enabling consumers to purchase everything from clothes and accessories for their avatars to functional items that confer some type of advantage within the game," says Offerpal CEO George Garric.

He adds, "We continues GamePoints.com to empower online gamers with ways to earn virtual currency for free rather than having to pay for it, and to give them the choice of spending that currency wherever they'd like within our vast network."

UK-based RuneScape house Jagex has a new CTO, promoting five-year employee Nick Thompson to the role. Previously, he was head of Core Technologies.

Thompson is a 20-year industry veteran, beginning as a production manager and working since then in roles like director at Dreamforge Software and engineering manager at MicroProse UK. Jagex says his work has been key to the company's success and that of free-to-play fantasy MMO RuneScape, which has over 10 million users.

"Jagex continues to remain at the cutting edge of the video game industry and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to take on the role of CTO and particularly looking forward to the prospect of evolving our market leading online game platforms and technology," said Thompson.

The company also operates the FunOrb online casual portal, and recently revealed its first steps into third-party publishing with War of Legends. It's also entered the iPhone space starting with Bounce Down.

"Nick embodies the very essence of Jagex DNA; smart, passionate, honorable and hard working, so it’s only fitting that the CTO role is championed by such a high caliber individual moving forward," said CEO Mark Gerhard.

Blizzard's Battle.net platform will integrate with Facebook, letting players of all its games on the service use their friends lists on the social network to populate their Battle.net friends lists.

The integration will roll out starting with StarCraft II, and will be tested alongside that game's ongoing beta. As to whether the Battle.net integration will use Facebook in other ways -- as do games that let players post scores and activity updates to their profiles -- Blizzard says that other features will be announced at a later date.

"We're pleased to be working with Facebook to integrate their platform with Battle.net to enhance the social-entertainment experience for our players," says Blizzard COO Paul Sams.

Blizzard's broad ambitions for Battle.net were part of why StarCraft II, just dated for July 27, will be hitting later than initially forecast last year. The company has said the new Battle.net is intended to be "integrated with StarCraft II more tightly than any previous Blizzard game."

Analysts widely expect StarCraft II to be a hit; most recently, Cowen's Doug Creutz predicted 5 million units in the game's first year.

Blizzard plans to extend Facebook integration to its other titles, says Sams: "This new functionality will make it easier than ever to connect with friends on Battle.net and play StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games together."

Tableau Software, which specializes in business intelligence solutions, announced that social game developer Zynga has chosen its products for the studio's data visualization and real-time interactive data analysis.

The firm's business intelligence software allows companies to create browser-based, interactive data visualizations, business dashboards, and analytics. Users can share their work with "just a few clicks", allowing others to view and interact with the data in their browsers.

Tableau's products are built to scale to "organizations of virtually any size or reach", a detail Zynga likely appreciated, as the developer's games (e.g. Farmville, Mafia Wars) reach more than 235 million monthly active users. Tableau says its business intelligence suite captures up to three terabytes of data daily fromthose users, and helps the developer uncover insights from its massive volumes of game data.

"Analytics are core to our business -- Zynga's 235 million active users produce a huge volume of data which our analysts use to improve the game experience for our users," says Zynga'e Analytics general manager Ken Rudin. "We need a business intelligence solution that will enable any of our employees to quickly analyze and understand how our user and game data can be leveraged to help us create the most compelling social games.

He continues, "Tableau Software was the ideal choice for a number of reasons; it's powerful, highly interactive, easy to integrate into our existing infrastructure and makes it much easier to identify actionable insights and share them throughout the company."

MySpace has hired Manu Rekhi, formerly a product marketing manager at Google and the head of product strategy at social game developer LOLapps, as general manager of the social network's games initiative.

The News Corp.-owned site has made an effort to bolster its game offerings in recent months, launching a new MySpace Games Gallery section designed to make it easier for users to discover and share games. The site also introduced new analytics tools and announced an upcoming iPhone app allowing users to play MySpace games on their phones.

The company hopes to replicate the success rival social network Facebook has had with attracting users and keeping them engaged at its site through social games. Recent data from research group ComScore indicates that users on Facebook spend twice the amount of time at the site as MySpace users do.

During his time at LOLapps, developer of Facebook titles like Band of Heroes and Diva Life, Rekhi helped transform the company from a quiz/gift app maker to a game studio. before that, he spent more than four years at Google working on the company's OpenSocial platform and other products like Gmail, Calendar, Orkut, and ads.

"He'll be a really strong force for us to encourage more game-play and have better relationships with publishers of games and fine-tuning the MySpace system for allowing discovery," said MySpace co-president Mike Jones, according to a report from The Los Angeles Times.

E-commerce company Digital River announced its acquisition of Fatfoogoo, an in-game and online commerce service provider specializing in virtual goods, with a cash transaction of approximately $10 million.

Founded in 2006 and based in Vienna, Austria (with offices in the UK and U.S.), Fatfoogoo offers its clients the ability to implement publisher-to-player and player-to-player transactions in online games and virtual worlds through white label turnkey solutions or individually configured modules.

Minneapolis-headquartered Digital River offers a platform for online businesses, including software and game publishers, to handle a range of tasks like site development and hosting, order management, fraud management, export controls, tax management, physical and digital product fulfillment, multi-lingual customer service, advanced reporting and strategic marketing services.

The two companies will integrate their solutions to provide game publishers with an in-store platform and turn-key technology for operating an in-game marketplace. They plan to offer support for in-game store global payments, inventory management, virtual goods and currencies, electronic wallets, peer-to-peer marketplaces, and auction capabilities.

Digital River's Fatfoogoo business unit will continue working out of Vienna and will deliver its tech both as an integrated part of its parent company's e-commerce offerings for games and as a standalone solution. As part of the purchase, Fatfoogoo's shareholders have an "earn-out opportunity" based on the unit hitting certain performance targets.

"The sale of virtual goods through micro transactions continues to grow in popularity with consumers and is establishing new revenue models for the games industry," says Digital River CEO Joel Ronning. "With the addition of fatfoogoo, we've strengthened our commitment to the gaming marketplace."

"We believe the combination of our in-game and in-store commerce solution along with our subscription management capabilities will be unmatched in the industry. This partnership continues our promise to provide existing and future clients with the leading e-commerce technology and expertise they expect from Digital River."

Online game developer and publisher Sony Online Entertaniment announced the launch of The Agency: Covert Ops, a social game tie-in for its upcoming spycraft-based PC and PlayStation 3 MMO first-person shooter The Agency, on Facebook.

Developed by SOE's Tuscson studio -- SOE Seattle is handling the full MMOFPS -- Covert Ops is an action game designeed to give players a taste of the PS3/PC version by allowing them to create and customize avatars with spy gear/clothes, build and decorate a virtual headquarters, and purchase gadgets, weapons, and more through an in-game shop.

They will also be able to play minigames (e.g. safe-cracking, bomb defusing, code breaking, etc.), take on missions to fight super villains and their henchmen, and recruit their friends for group missions. The game allows players to publish their accomplishments and avatar snapshots on their Facebook wall, too. You can watch a trailer for the game after the break.

Covert Ops is the second title SOE has released on the social network, the first being turn-based strategy game PoxNora, another project from the Tuscon team launched two months ago (SOE acquired Tucson, AZ-based developer Octopi and its PoxNora game in 2009). It currently has some 86,000 monthly active users, according to AppData.

"The Agency: Covert Ops is unlike other Facebook games out there right now due to its stylized look and feel along with its deep story line," says SOE president John Smedley. "It's a great way for Facebook users to play a casual game with exciting missions, great mini-games and even the ability to share achievements with your Facebook friends. It's the ultimate in spy-genre Facebook gaming."

As THQ managed a successful turnaround for its most recent fiscal year, the company is keeping a close eye on development costs going forward.

In a conference call attended by Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra after THQ's quarterly results, the publisher said that a relatively low initial investment in the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 MMO means that the game can reach breakeven more easily, as the low-cost Metro 2033 turned profit.

Currently, THQ-owned Vigil Games is working on a Warhammer 40,000 MMO, a title that THQ CEO Brian Farrell said on the company's most recent financial results call is coming along nicely. And with a low initial investment, Farrell said that subscriber figures don't have to be huge in order for the game to be a success.

"One of the reasons that we think our costs are under control here is because we think we're building this game right," Farrell explained. The exec said that the game will initially cost on the high-end of a non-MMO triple-A retail game.

"We started with a very small and experienced MMO team who gave us the very wise advice to prove out all the technology and world-building tools before you start adding to the team and really ramping up all of the content that an MMO requires. That's why we think our budget is going to be very competitive."

San Carlos, CA-based developer Hive Media announced its Collaborative Content Delivery Platform for branded social games, which it says "cost-effectively accelerates the time to bring" branded titles to market.

With the Collaborative Content Delivery Platform, content owners can create branded social games by uploading video, graphics, and text into one of several game templates for role-playing, location-based, and avatar-based games. Hive believes this streamlined process cuts down on the amount of time and money typically spent on developing a new game.

The platform is designed to combine Web 2.0 technologies with dynamic advertising and content updates, enabling content providers and advertisers to create story-driven social games. Hive adds that it integrates with the existing production processes and workflows of content providers to extend their brands to social networks.

Games produced with the platform can include "viral features" for attracting players and encouraging recurring play. Content providers can also monetize their titles through virtual goods sales, in-game advertising, and branding partnership opportunities. Hive points out that it's partnered with Michael Bay’s The Institute and other companies to create social game tie-ins for TV shows.

In addition to premiering the Collaborative Content Delivery Platform, Hive announced its first upcoming social game, My Hollywood Studio, an RPG based on the "lucrative and risky world of filmmaking". Built on the company's platform, the Facebook game has players learning each phase of film, selecting genres, casting actors, dealing with budgets/locations/marketing, and more.

"My Hollywood Studio is the first of many games to come from Hive Media," says Hive Media CEO Brian Laing. "We are currently partnering with Michael Bay’s The Institute and working with popular cable programs and major consumer packaged goods companies to deliver their messages daily in deep, relevant and engaging ways."

He continues, "We believe the future of entertainment and marketing is in social games. Studios are excited to test out storylines and themes with broad audiences via our social games before committing to marketing campaigns as well as to release new content on our platform in parallel with upcoming broadcasts and premieres."

San Francisco-based Rixty, a cash-based alternative payment system for online titles, announced that it's eliminated its consumer fees associated with using cash to make virtual currency purchases in social games.

The company says that by removing these fees, it now provides a better value than other credit card alternatives, like paying for virtual currency through mobile phone charges. It adds that rival cash-based payment systems still charge customers fees for each transaction, too.

Rixty's service offers a microtransactions payment option to online gamers who don't want to use credit cards either because they either don't have them or prefer not to use them online. The firm notes that its system isn't tied to consumers's name and doesn't require a contract, which in turn helps protect their privacy, credit score, and checking account.

It also shared a couple statistics from its service, such as the average Rixty-using social gamer spends $28 a month through the system. Furthermore, almost two-thirds of social gamers who use Rixty are over the age of 30 years old.

Founded in September 2007, Rixty allows consumers to make purchases in online games, virtual worlds, and social networks by converting their cash into online credits at more than 20,000 Coinstar kiosks and participating convenience stores. Since launching its payments system in 2009, the firm has added support for more than 100 MMOs and thousands of social/casual games.

"Consumers should not have to pay a fee for their cash purchases online," says Rixty founder and CEO Ted Sorom. "If you spend $12.99 you should get $12.99 worth of the things you buy. With Rixty, users no longer receive less than what they spend on social games – it’s a win all around for gamers with cash and coins and publishers looking to provide the best user experience."

Social game studio Zynga and 7-Eleven are teaming up for a promotion that will offer codes for exclusive virtual goods in the developer's titles with purchases made at the convenience store chain, starting May 17th.

While neither company has made a forma announcement about the promotion, 7-Eleven has created a placeholder site with the following message: "7-Eleven has teamed up with your favorite Zynga games to offer exclusive gifts with purchase for the players of FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and YoVille. We'll see you at 12 a.m. on May 17 to start redeeming codes for virtual Zynga items."

And though it's still unknown what products are part of the promotion, fansite FarmVille Freak, which discovered the placeholder page, believes the store chain will sell collectible and limited edition candy, slurpees/big gulps, chips, water bottles, ice cream, and other items branded after FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and YoVille.

Presumably, the exclusive virtual goods will include items with 7-Eleven branding, such as this unreleased 7-Eleven tower for FarmVille. It's worth noting that this isn't the first time the convenience store has partnered with Zynga; it also sells prepaid cards for buying virtual currency usable in the developer's games.

Also, video game publisher Electronic Arts kicked off a similar year-long promotion last January with Dr. Pepper, giving away virtual goods for games like The Sims 3 and Mass Effect 2 through redeemable codes included with more than 500 million Dr. Pepper bottle caps and fountain cups.

"More people have played FarmVille than have played Mario", asserts Zynga VP Bill Mooney, discussing the social game market and his company's methodology during GDC Canada.

This is scary to Farmville GM Mooney because a bigger audience means more eyes on you should you fail. But Zynga started small: "Three years ago there were four people," Mooney said. "Two years ago there were 30 people, and now we’re over 900."

The market has grown very quickly, Mooney said as he showed a slide showing that in the last few years, social gaming has grown 324 percent, while more traditional online gaming has grown 7 percent (social games and online games weren't specifically defined).

As has been said many times before, friends represent the main sticky aspect for social games. Zynga tested the number of days players stay in FarmVille versus the number of friends they have –- and people with over 100 friends stay an average of 80 days. Below that number of friends, players spend less time playing.

Mooney laid out Zynga’s methods for game creation (and sustaining), in eight steps.

1: Start Small

"The initial user experience is very small," he said. "They become hardcore, but they start very, very casual." You want to ease the players in. "You start from the smallest possible interesting piece," he continued. "It has to be fun for a single player, but it has to be something your mom can understand the first time."

The social interactions are clearly key. Zynga adds social actions from the very start of the user experience. This is because "when we add these actions, user engagement goes way up," he said. Gifting is an example, which he says "seems simple but it’s not. This is a mechanic we were convinced we understood a year and a half ago. And six months ago. And we’re still learning about it."

Just days after announcing its purchase of NDoors Corp., Seoul-based MapleStory developer and publisher Nexon Corporation revealed that it is negotiating to acquire Korean online game developer GameHI.

GameHI's president Kim Gun Il has talked with several companies about a possible acquisition, looking to find the one that suited his studio best before settling on Nexon, according to a report from MMORPG news. The two firms expect to confirm whether the purchase will go through or not by no later than June.

The developer's catalog includes several free-to-play MMOs like Dekaron, Sudden Attack, Metal Rage, Transpee, and Spring. Dekaron (pictured), a 3D fantasy MMORPG for PCs, is the most popular of them with more than 20 million registered users across 50 countries.

Just three days ago, Nexon announced its acquisition of another Korean company, Atlantica Online publisher and developer NDoors Corp., in which the MapleStory firm picked up a 67 percent stake in NDoors. Nexon will incorporate NDoors as a subsidiary, which it says will increase the company's enterprise value and strengthen its core development capabilities.

Developer and publisher Winch Gate Properties announced that it has released its source code and artistic assets for subscription-based sci-fi PC MMORPG Ryzom in partnership with the Free Software Foundation.

With Ryzom now open source, developers can access the source of the end-user client, content creation tools, and server in order to make modifications, add enhancements, or even create their own virtual worlds.

Winch Gate says it wants to ensure that the MMORPG continues to grow as a free software project, so it's released over two million lines of its source code under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPLv3).

The artistic assets -- which includes more than 20,000 high quality textures, thousands of 3D objects, animation tracks, and particle effects -- are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike and will be hosted in a new online repository by the Free Software Foundation, ensuring that derivative art will be available to free software projects.

Initially developed by French studio Nevrax, the sci-fi game launched in 2004 as The Saga of Ryzom. Several different companies have taken over operations for the game since then, implementing various paid and free subscription options; Cyprus-based Winch Gate is the latest owner of Ryzom, and employs several workers from the now defunct Nevrax in its staff.

Winch Gate says it will incorporate certain code changes and enhancements into the official version of Ryzom once its developers have reviewed the material to ensure quality standards, stability, and security. To help grow Ryzom, a group of community managers will managers will oversee patch submissions and feature requests.

The MMORPG's initial projects will include bug fixes, as well as porting the game to other operating systems like GNU/Linux and Mac. Winch Gate notes that the game's level and world data will not be released as free content, as their use will remain exclusive to Ryzom players.

"This is a unique opportunity for the free software movement and the emerging free gaming field to accelerate the production of free games and 3D worlds," says Free Software Foundation executive director Peter Brown. 'We recognize the importance of gaming and the current dominance of proprietary gaming software, so today represents a significant breakthrough from which our community can benefit."

Promoting the European trade fair's "Online World" concept, organizers for upcoming expo Gamescom announced that this year's show floor will feature new attractions and MMO companies from all over the world like Trion Worlds and NCsoft.

"NCsoft is on board and excitedly planning our gamescom presence for 2010. We have found gamescom to be an excellent opportunity to showcase our products and NCsoft employees enjoy speaking directly with players of all play styles at the show," says Véronique Lallier, MD of Publishing in Europe. "This is a key event for NCsoft; we will be there in force with news about our franchises and we look forward to seeing our players in Cologne."

Taking place alongside Game Developers Conference Europe, Gamescom 2010 will run from August 18 to 22 (open to only trade visitors on the first day) at Cologne Congress Center East in Cologne, Germany. Last year's convention featured more than 458 exhibitors from 31 countries and attracted over 245,000 visitors.

While several online game companies from around the world are already slated to exhibit, the show will also host major German outfits like BigPoint Games (BigPoint Portal) and Frogster Online Gaming GmbH (Runes of Magic). California-based Perfect World Entertainment will announce the launch of its new European portal at Gamescom, too.

In addition to its attending publishers, Gamescom 2010 promises to feature "the latest developments in the area of online and browser games". The Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), for example, will have a community stand. There will be other country-specific community stands, too (e.g. France, Thailand).

This year's convention will also introduce a new "Browser Game Park" in which startups and recently founded companies can exhibit alongside each other. Those firms interested in exhibiting at the Browser Game Park will be able to take advantage of cheaper complete packages, an open stand design, and a common lounge area.

Also not to be missed, BigPoint CEO Heiko Hubertz is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech as part of GDC Europe, which will take place from August 16 to 22. On the 17th, the day before Gamescom 2010 kicks off, GDC Europe will focus entirely on online and browser games development. You can find more information about Gamescom 2010 at the fair's official site.

There are 200 million unique users playing games per month on Facebook, and they’re playing 4 games on average -- stats fast becoming familiar to anyone with an ear to the social gaming sphere. Does that mean it's time for a career change for traditional developers?

Super Rewards CEO Jason Bailey thinks so, and at GDC Canada, he laid out his mandate: "What I’m going to do today is convince you all to quit your jobs, and go make social games,” he said. “Because you really, really should.”

Super Rewards is an early virtual currency platform that supports Facebook, Myspace, and the MMO space, and the CEO has seen enormous opportunity in viral, social gaming.

"Everybody is moving to Facebook," he said. "My mother plays FarmVille, and I don’t think she played Monopoly as a kid, frankly."

Facebook has become mainstream, but as the space gets more crowded, it becomes more difficult to break in as a new developer. Still, Bailey says it's not impossible: “One of the biggest myths is that Facebook has shut down the viral channels,” he said, citing common dismissals of the platform that "oh, Facebook’s getting rid of notifications, the gold rush is over. Only Zynga can do it, only Playdom can do it. I’m going to have to dispel that."

In an exciting week for new job postings, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Bethesda, Playfish, and many 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:

Bethesda Softworks: Quest Designer
"Bethesda Softworks, one of the premier creators of entertainment software, has been producing quality games since it was first founded in 1986. As part of the ZeniMax Media Inc. family, Bethesda has access to some of the most talented artists, designers, and programmers in the industry. Bethesda Game Studios is the award-winning studio that won 2006 Game of the Year awards for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and 2008 Game of the Year awards for Fallout 3."

Playfish: Server Developer
"Playfish leads the social gaming industry in innovation and creativity with award-winning, category-defining games designed for friends to play together. The company has changed the way people play games by creating more social and connected experiences. To date, more than 200 million Playfish games have been installed and played by millions of people worldwide. Its games are amongst the most acclaimed and popular online, including Pet Society, Restaurant City, Hotel City, Country Story and Who Has The Biggest Brain? Playfish has development studios in London, San Francisco, Beijing and Tromso, Norway."

Recent changes in the way Facebook manages notifications has caused many of the most popular games on the social network to hemorrhage users -- Zynga's FarmVille alone lost more than 4.4 million monthly players in the past four weeks.

18 of the top 25 social games on Facebook (determined by monthly active users) lost players in April, and 12 of those relinquished at least one million users. MindJolt Games, which serves as a portal for more than a thousand casual titles, suffered the biggest losses as it ended the month with nearly eight million fewer gamers, now sitting at 13.1 million.

The shedding of players can be traced back to Facebook's decision to limit application notifications starting in March in an effort to make interactions with apps "more streamlined, clear, and less spammy for users".

Unfortunately for the developers of the games affected, many titles relied on those notifications for the viral growth of their user bases.

Even FarmVille, Zynga's most popular game and Facebook's most popular app, wasn't immune to the loss of players; the farm simulator went from 82.8 million monthly active users in the beginning of April to now 78.4 million gamers, according to a report from Inside Social Games.

Other big losers this week include RockYou's Birthday Cards (which seems more like an app than a game, though it's listed in the Games category), which dropped to 34.3 million monthly players after losing 5.6 million; and CrowdStar's Happy Aquarium, which now has only 19.5 million monthly users after losing 4.2 million.

Digital Chocolate CEO and Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins noted last month that developers will need to find new ways to grow their user bases without notifications: "The formula last year was viral growth through aggressive spam, but that no longer works."

He continued, "The spammy viral spread was also a free marketing department. With no more free ride, growth can only come from an efficient combination of legitimate virality and efficient marketing to help spread the good word."