Social gaming and apps developer RockYou announced its raising of another $10 million from previous investor Tokyo-based SoftBank, as well as the acquisition of a majority stake in RockYou Asia, its joint venture with the Japanese corporation.

Headquartered in Redwood City, RockYou has so far amassed $127 million in financing since the studio opened in 2005. SoftBank, which injected $50 million into the company last November, says this new investment further demonstrates its "commitment to social networking and to RockYou's unique role of engaging the world through social media.

The developer, SoftBank, and GungHo Online Entertainment (Ragnarok Online DS) established Tokyo's RockYou Asia Inc. in February 2009 with the intent of producing social apps to match "the evolved methods of utilization of the [social network services] which are spreading rapidly throughout Asia."

RockYou says it's worked with developers throughout Asia to monetize, license and publish their local games globally. It adds that with the success of its joint venture in social gaming markets like Japan, Korea, and China, it plans to further extend its operations in Asia.

The firm's social games and apps currently attract more than 280 million monthly users worldwide, as well as 15 billion monthly global impressions. RockYou Asia has so far released several titles geared toward users in Asian countries such as RockYou Battle Monsters, Umajin RockYou, Usaru Biyori, Crime World, Hug Me, and Speed Racing.

"We've always been very excited about the Asia market and believe that the market for social applications will really heat up in the coming months," says RockYou founder Jia Shen. "With the further alignment between RockYou and RockYou Asia we can have an increasingly significant impact on the Asia Social Gaming market and further engage the world through social media."

Shanghai-based firm The9 Limited, best known for operating and publishing massively multiplayer online RPGs in China such as Soul of the Ultimate Nation and Granado Espada, released a new soccer game for the web and social networks called Winning Goal worldwide.

To promote this internally-developed title, The9 has signed on Argentine soccer superstar and current manager of the country's national team Diego Maradona to endorse the product. The studio did not disclose the value of its deal or to what extent Maradona will promote the title, though he is featured prominently on Winning Goal's Chinese site.

Winning Goal's release comes just a week before the 2010 FIFA World Cup kicks off in South Africa, and just after the debut of several other soccer games on Facebook, including Electronic Arts/PlayFish's EA Sports FIFA Superstars, Watercooler's Epic Goal, and Playdom's Bola.

In Winning Goal, players manage a soccer team, recruiting new players, building up their skills, and playing in matches against the computer, friends, or others online. You can also make virtual bets on players and real-world soccer games, including league games and even the World Cup, to level up your team members.

The9's CEO, chairman, and now president Zhu Jun appears to have an interest in the sport, as he has previously invested in a soccer club in China, according to a report from Trading Markets. His company also recently announced a partnership with China Mobile Game Base to produce mobile and online titles with World Cup themes.

Zynga's wildly popular social game FarmVille is making the jump from social networks to iPhone, bringing with it in-app purchases from the game's virtual item marketplace.

"FarmVille is our most popular game and we're excited to bring it to the most popular gaming platform in the world," said Zynga CEO Mark Pincus today at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, attended by Gamasutra.

The iPhone app will sync up with players' FarmVille farms on other platforms, like its native Facebook, maintaining friends lists, game progress, and other data.

It will be available "in time for the one-year launch anniversary" of the original game, meaning it should appear on iPhone by June 19.

"Zynga is a remarkable phenomenon," added Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Following the launch of Metaplace's My Vineyard for Facebook, founder and design veteran Koster says social games will follow a path similar to core games, with established genres undergoing thematic evolution.

Koster spoke as part of a new feature at sister site Gamasutra, Targeted Focus, Broad Audience?, which seeks to examine the increasing necessity for carefully targeted themes in casual and social games.

His company recently released its farming game for Facebook, My Vineyard, which moves from the generalized theme of FarmVille into a much more carefully chosen niche.

"In order to appeal to wine lovers, we paid attention to the actual process of wine-making rather than sticking slavishly to the established farming model," said Koster. "And because it's a social game, players can get together for wine-tasting parties and there's a fairly significant level of user creativity in that the vineyards can be decorated and built out."

Metaplace's motto is "Next-Generation Social Games", and he sees this as a natural evolution of the market -- parallel to one core games went through long ago.

"Once you had your first perfect first-person-shooter mechanic, it became apparent that you could apply it to different time periods in history, to science fiction themes, to fantasy themes, and so on. "That's the same thing that's going on here," he said.

"If you compare farming to first-person shooters, you can now take farming and add social elements and decorating elements and multi-player elements," Koster added. "A bit of genre hybridization is going on and the games are getting a bit broader as that happens."

The advantage in social games is attracting a slice of the audience who might not be attracted to a more general game: "users... may be interested in doing so because it lines up perfectly with one of their hobbies," according to Koster.

The full feature, Targeted Focus, Broad Audience?, explores the phenomenon in greater depth. It also includes comments from Playdom's general manager of international operations, Lloyd Melnick, and Michael Thornton Wyman, CEO of Tucson, AZ-based developer Big Splash Games, developers of the Choclatier series and is live today on Gamasutra.

As this October's GDC Online -- formerly called GDC Austin -- prepares for first content announcements, the Texas-based show (part of the UBM Techweb Game Network, as is this website) has added Playfish and Electric Bat execs to BioWare, Nexon, SOE, and Zenimax notables on its Advisory Board.

The GDC Online Advisory Board, which is also helping oversee the newly revealed Game Developers Choice Online Awards, is intimately involved in selecting content for the October 5th-8th show at the Austin Convention Center.

Board members individually rate each GDC Online lecture submission. They also meet in person multiple times yearly to decide final lectures and keynotes from submissions and invitations -- making sure GDC Online remains the leading worldwide game industry event to concentrate specifically on social games, free-to-play titles, MMOs, and more.

At last week's GDC Online board meeting in Austin, existing board members were joined by new recruits in the form of Sebastien de Halleux, VP of EA Interactive and Playfish co-founder, and Cindy Armstrong, Webzen and SOE veteran and Electric Bat Interactive CEO.

Following Electronic Arts' $300 million acquisition of social game company Playfish in November 2009, De Halleux -- who helped head up the Pet Society creator -- now works on "monetization, business development, and relationships" with key partners across the division’s three business units, Playfish, Pogo and EA Mobile.

Armstrong, who has been a high-profile executive in the online games space for many years -- previously as CEO of Webzen America and Vice President of Business Development at Sony Online Entertainment -- is currently president and CEO of Electric Bat Interactive, who are working on online 'layered reality gaming' including WebLords and Weblings.

The duo joins leading figures from the online game industry on the active Advisory Board which includes Gordon Walton and Rich Vogel of BioWare Austin (Star Wars: The Old Republic), online design notable Raph Koster (Metaplace), Nexon America VP Min Kim (MapleStory, Combat Arms), and Schell Games' Sheri Graner Ray (the newly announced The Mummy Online).

Also represented on the board are Sony Online Entertainment's John Blakely (DC Universe Online, PoxNora), ex-Disney and current Hangout Industries exec Mike Goslin, EA Mythic GM Eugene Evans (Warhammer Online), ICO Partners' Thomas Bidaux, and Zenimax Online's Matt Firor.

Following last week's Advisory Board meeting, first lectures for GDC Online should be announced in the near future, with invitations in the process of being extended to many more of the online game industry's leading players.

More information on the major online game event, which will include an Expo Floor with the major companies in the space, the GDC Online Awards, and co-located Summits on notable topics like iPad/iPhone games and 3D stereoscopic games, is available at the official GDC Online website.

Building on the ongoing growth of its free-to-play online multiplayer game League of Legends, independent developer Riot Games has opened a new Dublin office to provide better support and publishing infrastructure for its European operations.

"The game has been received really well in Europe, and that growth has largely mirrored US growth," Riot CEO Brandon Beck told Gamasutra in advance of today's announcement. "Going into Europe has been an opportunity to get close to our users and improve the quality of service there."

More concretely, Riot plans to take its European publishing in-house, bringing it in line with its domestic situation, and to help with issues like localization, community relations, marketing, and network support. Game development, however, will remain in the US.

Previously, League of Legends was published in association with Frame Telecom's GOA video game division, which handles games like Electronic Arts and Mythic's Warhammer Online.

"This was due to a major groundswell of community feedback -- they wanted the same level of direct community interaction that US users have," Beck explained. "It was something we couldn't ignore."

After scouting a number of European cities, Riot settled on Dublin, thanks to its status as an "emerging hub for online game servicing," meaning there's plenty of experienced local talent to recruit. "And because it's close to the Guiness factory," Beck added.

This September, BioWare plans to open its own online game support facility in Galway, on Ireland's opposite coast. Riot's new Dublin location is kicking off with only seven employees, but Beck says the studio "definitely plans to expand on that."

The company's total employee count has already nearly doubled since League of Legends launched last October, with more than 70 staffers in the United States, and Riot says it doesn't plan to stop growing in the near future.

"We intend to continue to grow and expand upon League of Legends really aggressively, more than is usual or typical for a game post-launch," said Beck. "That's to support the growth we've had and the desires of users to expand the experience and the feature-set. We've got a larger live development team than we had at any point on the game pre-launch."

Further out, Beck says Riot is considering building up new studios in the United States, and he hinted Riot will be announcing new game projects "in the coming months."

NHN USA's hardcore online gaming portal ijji.com launched its Facebook Connect integration platform, which will enable ijji gamers and Facebook users to connect, socialize, and share their in-game achievements across the two sites.

With the integration of Facebook Connect, a set of APIs set up by the social network for third-party sites/apps/devices, ijji.com users can login with their Facebook accounts. They can also post updates on their activities across platforms, send invitations, and see which of their Facebook friends are ijji members, too.

To promote this new feature, ijji will reward users who sign in and take advantage of Facebook Connect between before June 25th with in-game prizes in select titles (Soldier Front, Lunia, and Alliance of Valiant Arms). Players who publish updates to their Facebook page and earn the most achievements will receive even more virtual goods and currency.

Launched in 2006, ijji.com has more than 10 million unique registered users, which it's attracted with free-to-play online games targeting hardcore players and using a microtransactions model. Some of the portal's most popular titles include Lunia, Soul of the Ultimate Nation, Drift City, Gunz The Duel, Soldier Front, and Alliance of Valiant Arms.

"Times are changing, and our community is too - avidly using social media technologies to help bring their gaming experience to another level," says NHN USA's Marketing VP Calvin Yang. "We are growing with them. As we have always promised our players, ijji.com will continue to evolve with the industry whether it is gaming or social media - our community deserves only the best."

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment signed an exclusive deal with the Lego Group to distribute developer NetDevil’s family-friendly MMO Lego Universe at retail worldwide in the second half of 2010.

Lego Group VP of Lego Digital Henrik Taudorf Lorensen said the deal would be “mutually beneficial” for Warner and Lego, as well as consumers. Warner has a relatively extensive distribution network that Lego can leverage.

Lego Universe, which NetDevil originally revealed in 2007 as a 2008 release, is aimed at all ages and will encourage players to build their own digital creations and share them online in Lego-inspired worlds. The game, which runs on Emergent’s Gamebryo engine, is currently in closed beta.

NetDevil is the MMO company behind games such as Auto Assault and the upcoming Jumpgate Evolution. The Louisville, CO developer is owned by Gazillion Entertainment.

WBIE has experience in publishing and distributing Lego-based games. Its subsidiary studio TT Games is the developer behind titles such as Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman and Lego Indiana Jones.

“We look forward to expanding our relationship with the Lego Group beyond what we've already established with the successful TT Games' titles,” said WBIE president Martin Tremblay in a statement.

Social video game startup Yoostar announced four key additions to its executive team, each well established in the gaming industry and coming from companies such as Majesco, Sony Online Entertainment, Magmic, and Acclaim.

James Bartolomei, previously vice president of North American Sales at Majesco and Sales VP at Eidos Interactive, joins Yoostar as its North American Sales VP. Nicholas Reichenbach, who was Publishing EVP at Ottawa-based mobile studio Macmic Entertainment, is now Yoostar's Content Acquisition vice president.

The firm's new chief technology officer Philippe Clavel comes from Sony Online Entertainment, where he was in charge of web infrastructure for all of the company's game portals and commercse web sites, such as EverQuest 1 and 2, Free Realms, and Clone Wars Adventures.

And Yoostar's fourth addition, director of product development Shawn Rosen, has more than 17 years of experience in the video game industry, with ten of those years spend at Acclaim Entertainment; there, he was involved in the design, production, and management for titles like the Dave Mirra series, Forsaken, and Shadowman.

These four additions come just a couple weeks after Yoostar revealed its new CEO and president appointment, Acclaim co-founder Gregory Fischbach. The New York City-based developer says all of these executives will play important roles in the launch of its "next-generation social video game platform."

Yoostar is currently partnering with a "leading video game developer" to create a console version of its Movie Karaoke system, which it will show off at E3 next week. The company is also working on a title called Yoostar2 that combines "Hollywood movie content, Yoostar's proprietary special effects technology, and the power of console computing."

"We're doing more than porting the Yoostar experience over to consoles, we're creating something entirely new--a Social Video Game that bridges the worlds of social gaming, consoles and user-generated video content," says Fischbach. "So we're building a team of exceptional players with deep experience in video games, content acquisition, social media and technology."

Social gaming developer Digital Chocolate has received a multi-million dollar revolving line of credit from Bridge Capital Holding, a subsidiary of Silicon Valley business bank Bridge Bank, for "general corporate purposes".

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in San Mateo, California, Digital Chocolate has raised a total of $43.8 million across three investment rounds, the last of which secured the developer $22.5 million in June 2006.

The publisher has put out more than 80 titles on Xbox Live, the web, and mobile phones across over 80 countries. It recently expanded its focus on mobile/online products to social games, releasing Facebook titles like MMA Pro Fighter, NanoStar Siege, Millionaire City, NanoStar Castles, NanoTowns, Safari Kingdom, and Tower Bloxx.

To support that shift and its global expansion, Digital Chocolate promoted three of its directors -- Ilkka Paananen to president, Marc Metis to chief marketing officer, and Saurin Shah to vice president -- last February.

"Digital Chocolate is emerging as one of the new leaders in mobile and social games," says Digital Chocolate founder and CEO Trip Hawkins. "Bridge Bank will help us grow faster. They have confidence in our performance to date and the strong market position we are building."

Berlin-based virtual currency monetization platform SponsorPay raised $5 million in a Series A round of funding led by Hasso Plattner Ventures, with previous backer Team Europe Ventures also participating.

The company, which specializes in delivering a payment system for users to purchase virtual currencies and goods in free online games/applications, says it will devote its new financing toward accelerating its growth both in Europe and in international markets.

Established in April 2009, SponsorPay has grown rapidly in its 14 months of operation, now serving local advertising offers to more than 150 million users across 100 countries. Just last February, it acquired its primary competitor GratisPay, also based in Germany.

The firm has also picked up more than 150 partners, such as Gameforge, Bigpoint, Gala Networks, AeriaGames, Innogames, Frogster, and many other major European publishers that monetize their free-to-play titles through microtransactions.

SponsorPay has recently signed contracts with international online gaming companies like China's 6waves and Perfect World, too, and says it expects to work with a minimum of 50 percent of the largest U.S.-based publishers by the end of 2010.

"We have four times the publishers, three times the staff and double the offers for most European markets than our closest competitors," says SponsorPay co-founder and chief revenue officer Janis Zech.

Zech adds, "Most importantly, we consistently generate up to five times more revenue from European traffic when compared with our US-based competitors. Now, it is time to use this clear value proposition to monetize publishers who are not based in Europe but have traffic here."

BigDoor, which develops a platform that integrates game-like mechanics and virtual economies into websites and mobile apps, raised $5 million in its second round of financing led by Foundry Group.

Foundry Group specializes in making investments in early-stage Internet and software startups. With this funding deal, the VC firm's managing director Brad Feld will join BigDoor's board of directors. Feld also serves as a board member for companies like Zynga, Gnip, Gist, Oblong, and Standing Cloud.

"BigDoor should become the standard platform used by companies to implement game mechanics," says Feld. "There can be multiple orders of magnitude difference in how virtual economies are implemented, and BigDoor’s platform has the ability to help companies get it right."

Based in Seattle, BigDoor provides a white label platform that lets companies add game-like mechanics and loyalty programs in their products, implementing features like points, badges, levels, leaderboards, virtual currency, and digital goods.

With the extensible platform's open API, publishers, developers, content providers, and advertisers can create and manage their own virtual economy and game mechanics. After registering to access the platform, users can see sample code, as well as analytics and administrative tools.

BigDoor's CEO and co-founder Keith Smith comments, "We are thrilled to have partnered with Foundry. Brad has a deep understanding of game mechanics and virtual economies, and will be a huge asset to us as we aggressively expand our platform."

When veteran strategy game designer Brian Reynolds left Big Huge Games for social gaming giant Zynga, it made waves -- the Rise of Nations and Civ II designer wanted to make Facebook games?

Now, a year later, Zynga -- which has 215 million monthly unique players over all of its Facebook titles, and is struggling with declines in some of its top titles like Farmville -- is rolling out the fruits of Reynolds' efforts later today.

The new title is FrontierVille, a Facebook-based Wild West strategy, resource management and family life sim that the company proudly trumpets as containing several "firsts".

These include more persistence in the game world, the ability for a user to create a family, and numerous game systems aimed at increasing social depth in a way more complex than simple (and recently somewhat curtailed) notifications to friends lists.

Virtual goods firm Viximo announced the launch of a new social gaming distribution platform that will allow developers to integrate their titles into the company's multiple social networking sites.

Viximo's distribution network attract more than 60 million monthly users on BlackPlanet, Quepasa, Multiply, Zorpia, and others. Social networks that partner with Viximo not only receive access to its games and application catalog, but can also set up virtual currency systems and enable third-party development.

As for developers, the Cambridge-based company says they will be able to reach users across its multiple networks with a single implementation of their game, thanks to its platform. It's already revealed several partnerships with studios like IGG, Playtaki, Frosmo, Synapse Games, and Mob Science.

Kevin Xu, a developer at free-to-play online gaming portal IGG (Tales of Pirates, Angels Online), says that Viximo's distribution platform "mitigates [its] risk, lowers costs, opens new channels, and drives user adoption across a wider network of communities."

"Social game developers see both need and opportunity to expand beyond one dominant community, but until now it has been difficult and costly for them to manage their own distribution and integration across multiple communities," says Viximo president and CEO Dale Strang.

"Viximo’s solution seamlessly integrates social games across our network of communities, enabling game developers to quickly and easily expand onto more sites while providing our social networking partners with content that drives revenue and user engagement."

Second Life creator Linden Lab will lay off approximately 30 percent of its staff as part of a restructuring designed to improve its "geographic and cost efficiencies", and extend its virtual marketplace to browsers/mobile apps.

The San Francisco-headquarted company says it wants to increase focus on its consumer business and make investments that will make its virtual goods marketplace more accessible and popular with users through browser-based and mobile applications.

Its restructuring and 30 percent staff reductions will come as Linden Lab merges its product and engineering divisions, consolidates its software development teams in North America, and "reconfigures" its customer support group to provide more scalable services.

Founded in 1999, the company currently has some 350 workers across U.S., Europe, and Asia. Though many other virtual worlds have been in decline in the past year, Second Life's population has actually grown, reaching its monthly unique user peak in March at 826,000 users, a 13 percent year-over-year jump.

The virtual world company also recently reported a record quarter for user-to-user transactions in Second Life for the first three months of 2010, as those transactions reached $160 million, a 30 percent increase over the amount recorded during the same period last year.

Linden Lab says that this restructuring better aligns the company with two longer-term goals aimed at making Second life more accessible and relevant: creating a browser-based virtual world experience (thus eliminating the need to download software), and extending the virtual world to popular social networks.

"We've emerged from a two-year investment period during which, among other things, we've spent a considerable amount of time improving reliability and the overall user experience," says Linden Lab EO Mark Kingdon.

He adds, "Today's announcement about our reorganization will help us make Second Life even simpler, more enjoyable, relevant and engaging for consumers starting with their first experience. It will also enable us to invest in bringing 3D to the web and will strengthen our profitability."

Online game developer Quick Hit, Inc. has acquired a license from the National Football League to incorporate the league's 32 professional teams into the studio's free-to-play title Quickhit Football.

That makes Quickhit Football, which does not include current players licensed from the NFL Players Association, the first official NFL-licensed video game outside of Electronic Arts since EA locked down league exclusivity in 2004.

EA's deal covers console and PC games, including those with online multiplayer, but does not include solely internet-based games. That allows Quick Hit, which has raised at least $13 million in venture capital, to operate its license outside the jurisdiction of the EA agreement.

Quick Hit design director Brandon Justice is particularly aware of that achievement: he worked on Visual Concepts' NFL 2K5, the last NFL game made by Visual Concepts -- or any other non-EA developer -- since the deal was struck.

"The NFL loves working with exclusivity, but for gamers, competition breeds quality," Justice told Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra in advance of today's announcement. "For gamers, having the 2K and EA products at the same time pushed each of those teams. We [and EA] each wanted the higher Metactritic. EA's made strides since they made the deal, but I think a lot of gamers feel they haven't had to push themselves as much."

GDC Europe organizers have announced major new speakers for the August event in Cologne alongside Gamescom, with 2K Czech talking Mafia 2, PopCap on Bejeweled Blitz, an all-star level design talk, and a keynote from Chinese online game powerhouse Tencent.

Following major recent talks announced from Heavy Rain's David Cage, InstantAction's Lou Castle, and the creators of Crysis 2, APB and Split/Second, the new talks further expand the leading European video game conference, which takes place on August 16th-18th in Cologne, Germany.

Some of the notable new speakers for the conference (which is created by the UBM Techweb Game Network, as is this website) include the following:

- Level designers from major games Brink, Mirror's Edge and Alan Wake combine for the collaborative talk 'The Tao of Level Design: A Study of 3 AAA Games', with Splash Damage's Neil Alphonso, EA DICE's Elisabetta Silli and Remedy's Mikael Kasurinen posing the following question: "Are level design approaches for radically different games inherently similar, or do accepted methods need to be drastically altered to fit the unique nature of the project?"

Social games developer Playdom plans to expand its audience in Europe with localized versions of its "top titles", starting with its recently released arcade-style soccer game Bola.

The Silicon Valley-based firm didn't specify any other planned titles for this initiative, though it has a number of popular games on both Facebook and MySpace, such as Sorority Life, the Mobsters series, Tiki Resort, and many others.

Playdom plans to make Bola and other games available in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. It's already released a beta version of Bola in English, and says it will have options for all of those languages "shortly".

Bola, which currently has more than 3.5 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to figures from Appdata, was originally a title from Three Melons, the Argentinian developer Playdom acquired last March for an undisclosed sum.

"In 2010 thus far, Playdom has acquired Offbeat Creations, Three Melons, Merscom and Acclaim," says Playdom CEO John Pleasants. "We're building a formidable line-up, and steadily increasing our free-to-play games. We're now able to make our games even more accessible throughout Europe, with Bola leading the way.

He adds, "Bola is an easy-to-play soccer game where players build and manage a team, then challenge their friends to a nail-biting tournament of fast feet, devastating slide tackles and amazing goalie saves. Combining arcade play with resource management, it's one of the best football offerings on Facebook, and one we expect will be embraced by European football fans as well."

Viacom division MTV Networks Asia and Singaporean developer GigaMedia Limited announced plans to co-develop and jointly publish a massively multiplayer online game based on animated TV series SpongeBob SquarePants.

The title, which will launch in multiple languages across China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and India, is Viacom's first game project with a studio outside of the U.S. It's designed to appeal to various audiences within Asia, particularly online casual gamers.

MTV Networks Asia points out that this is the first MMO based on the extremely popular and heavily merchandised Nickelodeon property. The SpongeBob SquarePants creative team at Nickelodeon Animation Studios intend to work with GigaMedia to develop the game's environments and avatars.

The SpongeBob SquarePants MMO will feature a free-to-play model in which users can purchase items from an online store to customize their experience, as well as videos and simple Flash-based games designed for users of all skill-levels and ages.

"Partnering with GigaMedia on the development of a SpongeBob SquarePants MMOG allows us to bring the residents of Bikini Bottom into a whole new world -- one that is tremendously popular in Asia and presents unlimited creative and business opportunities for the franchise," says MTV Networks Asia's Digital VP Jihee Nam.

He adds, "SpongeBob SquarePants is Nickelodeon's best known property within Asia and we're extremely proud to oversee the development of the MMOG with local business partners. We look forward to working hand in hand with GigaMedia on bringing SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward, Gary, and Sandy Cheeks to life in an entirely new and incredibly popular online world."

Free-to-play online games will generate over $7 billion worldwide by 2015, more than double the industry's revenue for 2009, according to a new study published by research firm DFC Intelligence and microtransactions company Live Gamer.

Their study projects that in North America and Europe alone, revenues for titles like Free Realms, RuneScape, and MapleStory, which operate on a microtransactions-based model, will more than triple from around $800 million in 2009 to over $3 billion by 2015.

Live Gamer and DFC's report, "Consumer Trends in Virtual Goods and Downloadable Gaming in North America and Europe", surveyed almost 5,000 gamers in North America and Europe in January and February 2010 to formulate these predictions.

The companies also analyzed more than seven years of Live Gamer microtransaction data from multiple countries, including South Korea, U.S., Japan, Germany, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

During their research, the firms also found that the top Korean free-to-play games that require a large client download typically convert more than 10 percent of their users into paying customers, compared to simple social games on sites like Facebook that convert less than one percent of their players.

DFC and Live Gamer argue that with lower customer acquisition costs on social networks, games can still generate a satisfactory amount of revenue despite having a large volume of non-paying users.

"The free-to-play model is increasing in popularity at an astounding rate, both in the US and worldwide," says Live Gamer co-founder and president Andrew Schneider.

He adds, "We'’re seeing average revenue per paying user top $28 per month across the 145 titles that Live Gamer powers around the world. With engaging games and a solid monetization strategy in place developers and publishers can see great success leveraging item-based business models."

Every other week, we examine the most popular Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at the top titles and developers on the social network to see who's attracting or losing players.

Almost all of the top 20 games on Facebook continued to lose users in the past two weeks, with Zynga's FarmVille taking the biggest hit: now down to 66.6 million players (surely an unlucky number) from its already deflated count of 75.5 million in our last count.

Since its peak of 85 million users last March, before Facebook enacted changes to its application notification system to curb the "spam" many apps depend on for the viral growth, the farming simulation game has shed more than 18 million users.

Zynga's Texas HoldEm Poker, currently the second most popular game on the social network with 28.3 million players, fared much better as it climbed up a spot and actually brought in some 200,000 new users since late May, but the same can't be said for the studio's other releases.

The developer's Treasure Isle (#4), Cafe World (#5), Mafia Wars (#6), PetVille (#8), FishVille (#10), and YoVille (#16) each gave up a significant number of gamers, some as little as 300,000 but most closer to Treasure Isle's loss of 3.7 million.

Electronic Arts/Playfish's social titles -- Pet Society (#9), Restaurant City (#13) and Hotel City (#15) -- suffered similar troubles, losing 1.5 million users, 1.9 million users, and 3 million users in the past two weeks respectively.

The only winner here in recent weeks is Mindjolt Games, a portal for more than a thousand casual online titles, which managed to jump from #14 to #7 with 5.5 new monthly active users for a total of 18.4 million -- but only after losing 13.1 million players in April.

You can see the full list of the top 20 Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts after the break:

Digital Development Management, a talent agency specializing in servicing video games and developers, launched a Connected Games division that will cater to supporting the "creative, technological, and financial demands" of social gaming studios.

Established in 2005 and serving clients in North America and Europe, DDM offers IP development, sales services, research, and presentation guidance. It's contributed to high-profile games like Need for Speed: Shift, Enslaved, Overlord, SOCOM, and Tango Down.

The company says that by tapping into its publisher and developer relationships, its Connected Games division will implement initiatives that can help the game industry "transition and innovate products that have rich game play mechanics connected across multiple platform devices."

DDM has already helped several of its clients evolve their social gaming strategies. It recently worked with Planet Moon Studios (Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter) to launch the developer's Everybody Plays program to make multiplatform games playable across social networks, consoles, PCs, and smartphones -- with each version sharing attributes and cross-promoting each other.

The Northampton, Massachusetts-headquartered firm is also working with PlayStation Home asset creator Heavy Water and independent developer 3G Studios (Brave Arms) on their strategies for producing games across multiple platforms.

"At a time when games are being played on various devices and screen sizes than ever before, the video game industry is at a crossroad to develop games that link multiple platforms and reach consumers with consistent and fulfilling game experiences," says DDM president Minton.

He adds, "In addition to our traditional DDM console representation business, the Connected Games group is looking to help publishers and our development teams truly maximize the global opportunities that the social games marketplace provides the industry and consumers."

Paris, France-headquartered Ubisoft launched a new digital publishing business headed up by former Games for Windows Live head Chris Early, according to a Friday report on VentureBeat.

The foundation of a new division focused on digital publishing reflects Ubisoft's previously-announced intentions of moving further beyond its packaged goods business, which releases games such as Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia and Ghost Recon.

“Our focus on digital publishing will be about operating games as an online service,” Early told the publication. Ubisoft has no substantial revenue coming from any online-centric business as of yet. Early admitted that Ubisoft "has some catching up to do," but said it has strong expertise in game and brand development that will aid the company moving forward.

As early as 2008, Ubisoft said that it would be putting more efforts into the digital space, as new online business models begin to become viable complements to brick-and-mortar retail. That year, the company acquired World in Conflict developer Massive Entertainment, stating that the company would help Ubisoft establish its online strategy, beginning with "light" MMOs.

Early was heavily involved with the Microsoft games business, including heading up Games for Windows Live, casual games and Xbox Live Arcade. He was laid off from Microsoft more than a year ago when the Xbox house made substantial staff cuts.

According to VentureBeat, Early's digital division will have its own resources and budget to create digital online games, and will also coordinate Ubisoft's efforts in the realms of Facebook, iPhone and other platforms.

Game publishers that are traditionally centered on packaged goods are making major corporate moves to online business models as Facebook games like Zynga's FarmVille take off. Notably, Electronic Arts acquired Pet Society developer PlayFish in 2009 for $300 million, plus a possible $100 million paid in earnouts.

Offer-based ad network Offerpal Media announced several new partnerships with online gaming companies, including Shanghai-based MMO operator The9, and casual games portal OMGPOP, that are integrating the firm's alternative payments platform.

Along with The9 and OMGPOP, competitive casual gaming site GameDuell and Snail Games USA, the North American arm of Chinese developer Suzhou Snail Electronic Co., have also signed up to adopt Offerpal's platform.

The four companies join more than 2,000 other developers and publishers that currently work with Offerpal to monetize virtual currency. Since the network's launch in 2007, it has reached more than 225 million consumers and issued over 1 trillion virtual points.

Offerpal's alternative patments platform allows gamers to earn virtual currency for free by participating in advertising offers such as free trials, special discounts, surveys, videos, shopping rewards, and more. "We are extremely honored to be selected by so many of the best and fastest growing companies in the gaming sector," says Offerpal Media CEO George Garrick.

Garrick adds, "Alternative payments provide tremendous value to our partners and their users. While our partners increase payment conversions and generate more revenues, their users can take advantage of our simple, convenient and trustworthy services to build up spending power and engage more deeply in the games."

Offer-based ad provider Super Rewards announced User Feedback Loop, a new feature for its "offer wall" allowing developers and publishers to customize their offer options to reflect users' preferences.

Offer walls are a selection of different advertisements/activities that players can take advantage of to earn virtual currency for a social game or application. Those offers can include completing surveys, signing up for trial subscriptions, watching videos, etc.

With this new User Feedback Loop feature, titles that have integrated Super Rewards payment platform will allow those consumers to provide feedback for which offers interest them the most, customizing the selection of adds that appear.

When users decide that they're not interested in a particular ad -- or that it's offensive/misleading/repetitive -- they can remove that offer and say why they didn't like it, providing feedback on their interests and preferences to Super Rewards. After those advertisements are removed, new offers appear on the Offer Wall to replace them.

"Because delivering unique and engaging game play is a top priority among game developers, Super Rewards has given users the power to provide instant feedback on which offers are of greatest interest," a representative for Super Rewards explained in a blog post. "The User Feedback Loop allows for more relevant offers to be presented to users, while enhancing user experience and engagement."