本周社交游戏界最大的新闻是zynga开始开拓facebook之外的新市场，联手yahoo旗下包括yahoo邮箱在内的各个服务，通过yahoo的用户基数继续拓展旗下的各项游戏。通过与yahoo的本次结盟，zynga真正走出了开拓facebook以外市场的步伐。

电子艺界

Yahoo! today announced a partnership with Zynga that will integrate Zynga’s social games across the Yahoo! network.  The partnership puts Zynga games in front of 600 million Yahoo! users and creates new ‘ports’ of Zynga’s games that use the Yahoo API so players can see their updates across Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger.  The games will be released in the coming months and there aren’t any details about which games will specifically be released.  Read on for more information from the release.

美国电子艺界与旗下公司playfish推出了南非世界杯的应景游戏“世界杯超级星秀”，该游戏原本定价6.99美元，在推出不久后计价调整为4.99美元。

2010_fifa_world_cup_logo

The buzz has been growing and growing, and just in time for the World Cup of Soccer, Playfish and FIFA have launched their new FIFA Superstars game on Facebook, and it’s good. The game is a soccer management game, and doesn’t have any live gameplay yet, but the simulation mode looks fantastic and the game uses the FIFA license to include every real soccer player and team you can imagine. If you enjoy soccer, you’ve got to give this one a shot.

根据Playspan的研究称13%的美国在线用户平均在线花费99美元，而这些花费大多用于在线游戏或者一些数字传媒方面的支出。并且呈现了逐步递增的趋势，从2009年的87美元上升到2010的99美元。

The growth of the virtual economy, enabled by free to play games, has been stellar worldwide as the proliferation of social games, digital media, web-enabled devices and sophisticated payment platforms enable connectivity and access to virtual goods for audiences worldwide. 13 percent of Americans, specifically, spent an average of $99 (a 14% increase from the year before) according to an annual study by research firm Frank N. Magid Associates and Playspan, a leading monetizations solutions provider. Read more after the jump.

The annual research describes media and entertainment consumption as related to virtual goods expenditure. The study revealed that 13% of the individuals surveyed had purchased virtual goods in the previous 12 months, with the mean of digital good purchase up 14 percent from $87 in 2009 to $99 in 2010. The average transaction for digital goods purchase was $50 in 2010, a rise of nearly 70 percent from 2009.

音乐人Steve Kirk因为制作了farmville song而成为游戏音乐的热门人物，farmville song因为farmville游戏的火爆，每天都收听的次数达到2000万次以上。据称该主题曲只有简短的30秒钟。

Seeing as Zynga’s Farmville has almost 70,000,000 monthly active users and somewhere between 20,000,000 and 25,000,000 players a day, we can assume that whoever wrote the Zynga theme song has written one of the most listened to audio tracks of the year.  Well, I did some research, and Zynga hooked me up with the man behind the Farmville theme song: Steve Kirk.  I got in touch and asked Steve a few questions about the song and how he got involved in writing music for Zynga’s most popular social game.