1）社交游戏公司Booyah日前宣布任命前孩之宝首席运营官Jason Willig担任公司新COO。Willig之前主要负责监管EA孩之宝的运营工作（游戏邦注：其此前还曾任职于Lucasarts、Gas Powered Games和Vivendi Games）。Booyah首席执行官和联合创始人Keith Lee表示，Jason加入Booyah管理团队对公司而言是一大胜利。Jason的渊博知识和丰富经验将加快Booyah在社交/手机领域的发展和开发步伐。

booyah

Booyah坐落于美国旧金山，由前暴雪公司行业先锋Keith Lee、Brian Morrisroe和Sam Christiansen于2008年创建。该公司现有员工50人，资金方面主要依靠Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byer的iFund、Accel Partners及DAG Ventures。

2）坐落于华盛顿的休闲游戏公司PopCap日前出乎众人意料，收购了社交游戏工作室ZipZapPlay。两家公司的结合大大提高了PopCap对于自身发行Facebook游戏的期望，公司预测截至2011年底将会推出4-5款Facebook游戏。PopCap联合创始人表示，ZipZapPlay是社交游戏领域最好的团队之一，收购该工作室大大扩充了公司的开发资源。依托风投资本的ZipZapPlay工作室驻扎于美国硅谷。据PopCap表示，ZipZapPlay将继续保持公司品牌名称、管理阶层和员工队伍。

popcap

PopCap的Vechey（游戏邦注：其负责此次收购）表示，这是公司的长期战略之一，ZipZapPlay将帮助他们进一步延伸社交游戏的定义。据悉，PopCap游戏总共拥有日活跃用户500万，游戏下载次数高达15亿。

3）Playdom隐藏物品游戏《Gardens of Time》连续两周雄踞MAU增长迅速榜单之首，而wooga的《Diamond Dash》则退居第四（游戏邦注：Digital Chocolate的《Zombie Lane》与King.com的《Bubble Saga》分别位居第二和第三）。中文版游戏《Boss Vegas》则同上周新兴Facebook游戏榜单如出一辙依旧维持第五。《Bubble Saga》是款比赛型电子游戏，但其超出了3回合比赛的狭隘定义。游戏中玩家需射击由簇拥于花朵周围小球所组成的面板。物理因素在游戏中起着十分重要的作用，射击小球堆将会促使面板跟着旋转，给玩家带来不同的彩球组合。

top gainers

4）电子游戏租借服务网站GameFly日前更新其同名iOS应用，新增社交网络功能，旨在帮助玩家实现相互交流。日前发行的GameFly 2.0应用添加了社交功能，用户可以创建自己的个人资料页面，同时浏览其他GameFly用户的资料。通过应用的Activity标签，用户可以发表游戏相关评论，回应其他用户的帖子。应用还模拟了Twitter功能，能够跟进其他游戏玩家。用户可以在App Store免费下载GameFly iOS应用。而GameFly网站的服务费用为每月16美元，且每次只能租借一款游戏。

5）LOGIN Conference是在线游戏开发商的年度大会，每年于华盛顿贝尔维尤（游戏邦注：其为美国东部城市）举行。今年为大会第5年，LOGIN日前宣布本次大会将为Facebook游戏开发专门拨出1天时间开展追踪会议。大会时间为5月16日-5月18日，而Facebook Game Developer Boot Camp将于5月18日举行。追踪会议主要讨论病毒式传播的当前工具、参数、虚拟交易及其他对于转战社交游戏领域开发商至关重要的话题。

LOGIN Conference

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

1）EA’s Hasbro COO Jason Willig Joins Social Games Developer Booyah

Social games company Booyah has announced the appointment of former Hasbro COO Jason Willig as its new chief operating officer.

Willig originally oversaw operating activities for EA’s Hasbro business unit. He has also held positions at Lucasarts, Gas Powered Games and Vivendi Games.

Keith Lee, CEO and co-founder of Booyah, noted, “Adding Jason to the Booyah executive team is a huge win for us. His depth of knowledge and experience will help accelerate Booyah’s continued growth and development within in the social/mobile industry.”

Based in San Francisco, Booyah was founded in late 2008 by ex-Blizzard industry veterans Keith Lee, Brian Morrisroe and Sam Christiansen.

The company now employs over 50 people, and is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byer’s iFund, Accel Partners, and DAG Ventures.（Source：Gamasutra） 

2）PopCap acquires studio for ‘next-gen social games’

‘Five Facebook releases before 2012′ as social dev ZipZapPlay is bought

Washington-based casual games stronghold PopCap has made the surprise acquisition of social dev ZipZapPlay.

PopCap has for years been considered a buyout target itself, though in recent months rumours have spread the Bejeweled company is seeking stock market floatation.

The combined dev workforce has improved PopCap’s expectations for Facebook game releases, with the firm now predicting “four or five games available on Facebook by the end of 2011”.

PopCap co-founder John Vechey said the ZipZapPlay team “is one of the best in the social games space, and combined with our existing group in Seattle gives us the opportunity to dramatically expand our development resources”.

The VC-funded ZipZapPlay, based in Silicon Valley, will keep its brand name, executives and workforce, PopCap said. There was no mention of studio departures, though that cannot be ruled out.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

PopCap said the acquisition positions the firm for “further growth and continued success in one of the hottest digital games categories”.

‘NEXT-GEN SOCIAL’

In a prepared statement, PopCap revealed high ambitions to usher in a new generation of social games.

PopCap’s Vechey, who oversaw the buyout, said the buyout was part of a long-term strategy.

“ZipZapPlay can help us further evolve and expand the definition of social games,” he said.

Jason Kapalka, PopCap chief creative officer, suggested that ZipZapPlay is a “great cultural fit” with the Peggle developer.

“Their next game is very innovative and exciting – we believe it has the potential to be a step forward in the evolution of social gaming,” he added.

PopCap is internally ranked as the third most popular Facebook developer, with some five million daily active users across its games.

Its games have been downloaded over 1.5 billion times.

“We’re elated to join the leading casual games developer and help grow PopCap’s presence in the social arena,” said ZipZapPlay founder Curt Bererton.

“PopCap’s focus on innovative gameplay and user experience meshes with our own design philosophy. We can’t wait to put our heads together with PopCap and start creating the next generation of games for Facebook and other social platforms.”（Source：develop-online）

3）Diamond Dash Slowing Down On This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU

Playdom’s hidden object game, Gardens of Time, is at the top of our fastest-growing games by monthly active users for the second week in a row while wooga’s Diamond Dash sinks to number four behind Digital Chocolate’s Zombie Lane and King.com’s Bubble Saga. The Chinese language version of Boss Vegas, however, is the real story as the game appears at number five on our list just after claiming the top spot on last week’s top 20 emerging Facebook games.

Bubble Saga is a match type arcade game that classes out of our narrow definition of match-3 because it asks players to shoot at a “board” of bubbles clustered around a flower. Physics play a crucial role in the game as shooting at the bubble cluster causes the “board” to rotate accordingly, offering the player a different set of colored bubble targets. Look for our review of this three-week-old title later this week.（Source：Inside Social Games）

4）GameFly Adds Social Features to IOS App

GameFly wants to help the users of its mobile app broaden their social life. The video game rental service updated its eponymous iOS app this week, adding social networking capabilities aimed at helping gamers connect with one another.

GameFly bills itself as a Netflix for video games. With the service, members rent video games, which arrive through the mail. As with Netflix, GameFly members can keep the rental for as long as they like, returning it via the mail in order to move on to the next game in their queue. GameFly’s mobile app lets subscribers look up video game news and information, watch trailers, and manage their rental queues from their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

GameFly 2.0, released this week, adds a social element to the app. Users can create profile pages for themselves and browse profiles of other GameFly users. From the app’s Activity tab, users can post comments about games and respond to other users’ posts. The app also adapts the Twitter-esque feature of being able to follow other gamers. The features should help GameFly members discover new people to challenge via Xbox Live, Wii, and PlayStation Network, according to GameFly co-founder and senior vice president of business development and content Sean Spector.

“It’s really about connecting gamers to games and game behavior,” Spector said.

The GameFly iOS app is a free download from the App Store. The service itself starts at $16 a month for a one-game-at-a-time rental.（Source：pcworld）

5）2011 LOGIN Conference adding Facebook Game Boot Camp

The LOGIN Conference is an annual online game developer event held in Bellevue, Washington. Going on its fifth year, LOGIN has just announced that there will be an entire day-long track devoted solely to the development of Facebook games. The conference is held from May 16 through May 18, 2011, and the Facebook Game Developer Boot Camp will take place on Wednesday, May 18.

The Facebook Game Developer Boot Camp, a day-long track, takes place Wednesday, May 18th. The track will cover topics such as current tools for virality, metrics, monetization and many others which are of significant and growing importance to a wide range of game developers looking to make the move into social games — or to fine-tune their social game development they already have.

Given that social games are a major portion of online gaming as a whole, this will be a welcome addition to the conference. Developing games for Facebook is quite different than developing other online games, and this boot camp will teach interested game developers how to branch out into making games for this popular platform.（Source：Games.com）