1）Facebook社交游戏开发商Kabam最近通过谷歌等投资者融资8500万美元，并将利用这笔资金扩大公司在亚洲团队规模，聘请更多开者和进行收购交易。访公司本轮融资其他支持者包括Performance Equity Management LLC和SK Telecom Ventures，英特尔投资、Canaan Partners和Redpoint Ventures。

kabam-logo(from-app100.net)

Kabam主要锁定Facebook硬核游戏玩家，该公司成立已有5年，原名Watercooler但在2010年更名为Kabam，去年团队规模由原来的25人扩增至400人。Kabam主打游戏包括《Dragons of Atlantis》、《Kingdoms of Camelot》以及《Global Warfare》等，每月MAU是720万。

Kabam--MAU DAU(from insidesocialgames.com)

2）美国艺电最近又有一名高管——前国际发行执行副总裁Gerhard Florin流向了社交游戏领域，加入了法国社交游戏发行商Kobojo团队，担任该公司董事会主席。这是美国艺电在本月发生的第三起前高管加入其他社交游戏公司的事件。Kobojo在今年4月份刚融资750万美元，目前的MAU是340万，其代表游戏《PyramidVille》的MAU是150万。

Facebook Credits(from hk-facebook.blogspot.com)

3）Facebook宣布为绑定Facebook Credits虚拟货币系统的开发商增加PayPal支付选项，对于面向许多仅支持PayPal国家的开发商来说，这项措施极大提高了其计费方式的弹性。Facebook称添加了PayPal选项后，采用Facebook Credits的开发商现在可面向包括土耳其、印度和日本在内的22个国家开放支付服务。

4）美国俄克拉荷马州共和党议员Tom Coburn最近发表了一份报告，指责美国国家科学基金会（简称NSF）将纳税人的血汗钱滥用于研究“不知所谓”的调研项目。例如，将31.4863万美元用于研究“社交网络在人类互助协作过程中所发挥的作用”，并耗资60.4755万美元调查MMO游戏《无尽任务2》中的“群体动态”现象，另外还赞助300万美元支持游戏专家Bonnie Nardi撰写以《魔兽世界》为研究主题的书籍《My Life as a Night Elf Priest》。

abc-news-nsf-farmville（from games.com）

5）据MCV报道，美国艺电透露公司正在开发以电视剧《辛普森一家》为题材的Facebook游戏，但没有公布具体细节，仅表示将于9月份发布该游戏。除此之外，该公司还将把《模拟城市》引进Facebook平台，MCV猜测这两款游戏都可能由Playfish开发完成。这个消息引起了行业的密切关注，不少人好奇《模拟人生》登陆Facebook平台是否将对Zynga旗下的《CityVille》造成冲击。

simpsons arcade（from games.com）

6）以游戏为核心的社交网站Raptr目前共有800万用户，不久前宣布融资2700万美元，并于最近调整了网站定位。Raptr以结合了Digg、Facebook和Xfire功能的游戏社交新闻平台的面目重新上线，支持用户与他人分享自己在玩的游戏，获取与这类游戏有关的个性化新闻和内容，还可以上传相关游戏的视频、截屏等内容，而Raptr客户端也可以由此搜集玩家的游戏数据，根据匹配信息助用户找到游戏玩伴。观察者认为，Raptr目前的用户数量与Facebook相比只是小巫见大巫，但该平台从游戏入手的方向确实可取，Zynga或许也可以考虑这种策略。

Raptr(from techcrunch.com)

7）社交网站Tagged虽然在2007年败下阵来，没有成为社交网络领域的先驱，但该公司最近已将战略重心转向社交游戏，成立了内部社交游戏工作室，并聘请前EA Pogo高管Andrew Pedersen执掌该业务大权。

据该公司联合创始人及首席执行官Greg Tseng所称，Tagged第一款游戏是2008年发布的《Pets》，原本主要用于吸引用户访问其网站，结果却成功收获了40万DAU。在2009年之前，该平台主要通过广告赞助创收，在2009年引进虚拟货币和订阅付费服务后，其广告收益急剧缩水，但在2010年公司收益达到3250万美元。今年打算利用5000万美元将原来50人的团队，扩增至150人，新游戏工作室也将掀起一轮招聘潮。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Google Leads $85 Million Investment Round in Social-Game Startup Kabam

By Ari Levy

Google Invests in Social-Networking Game Startup Kabam

Kabam CEO Kevin Chou says the company has created “hard-core games that have a very distinctly social flavor.”

The size of Kabam’s workforce has jumped to 400 from 25 early last year.

Kabam Inc., the maker of Facebook games such as “Kingdoms of Camelot,” is getting $85 million in a financing round led by Google Inc. (GOOG)’s venture arm, helping the startup expand in Asia, hire developers and make acquisitions.

The investment, co-led by Pinnacle Ventures, values Kabam at about $500 million, according to two people with knowledge of the deal who asked not to be named because the valuation is private. The Redwood City, California-based company has raised $125 million since it was founded in 2006.

Kabam lets users play its games for free on Facebook, similar to the approach Zynga Inc. has used to reach a multibillion-dollar valuation. Both companies make money by charging for virtual items — a market that’s expected to more than double to $20.3 billion in 2014, from $9.3 billion last year, according to ThinkEquity LLC. The difference with Kabam: It’s targeting so-called hard-core gamers, who spend hours pursuing complex adventures, often on video-game consoles.

“We’ve created hard-core games that have a very distinctly social flavor,” Kabam Chief Executive Officer Kevin Chou said in an interview. “Compared to buying the latest console game and having to pay upfront at a retail store, they pay only if we deliver them entertainment value.”

The latest investment also includes financing from Performance Equity Management LLC and SK Telecom Ventures, a unit of South Korea’s largest mobile-phone company. Kabam’s earlier investors — Intel Capital, Canaan Partners and Redpoint Ventures — also contributed to the round. Chou, 31, declined to comment on the valuation.
Formerly WatercoolerStarted five years ago as Watercooler, the company changed its name to Kabam in 2010, when it shifted its business from sports and media to social games. The size of its workforce has jumped to 400 from 25 early last year. （source:bloomberg）

2）Another former EA executive, Gerhard Florin, heads for social games

by Joe Osborne

Alright, now this is just getting awkward. EA has lost yet another former executive to social games, and not to its own social games division, Playfish. Gerhard Florin, formerly executive VP of international publishing for EA, has joined French social games publisher Kobojo as chairman of its board of directors, Gamasutra reports. In fact, Kobojo, who just raised a sweet $7.5 million in April, made the position just for Florin, who left EA in 2010 due to family concerns. This is the third time this month that a former EA executive has reportedly joined a social games company.

Kobojo enjoys a 3.4 million monthly players, with PyramidVille, its Egyptian-themed mega hit, accounting for 1.5 million of that, according to AppData. A press release says that Florin will largely focus on bringing Kobojo to an international audience, and help localize its titles for other Europeans from its headquarters and a new studio in Spain.（source:games）

3）Facebook Announces PayPal Payouts to Developers for Credits Revenue

By AJ Glasser

Facebook announced this morning that developers signing up for Facebook Credits now have PayPal as a payout option, increasing the flexibility developers have for monetzing apps through Facebook Credits.

This is of particular importance to developers in countries where PayPal is really the only trusted payout option for developers. Payout is the means by which a developer converts in-app currency exchanges to real money that the developer can then deposit into its bank accounts. Facebook says that the PayPal option now doubles the number of countries where developers can begin integrating Facebook Credits to 22 countries total, including Turkey, India and Japan.（source:insidesocialgames）

4）Republican Senator slams FarmVille research for costing US taxpayers $315K

by Jenny Ng

Last month, Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn declared, in no uncertain terms, for more senators “with gonads” to help him fight the federal budget crisis. As for his own efforts, he’s released a 73-page report, called “Under the Microscope”, criticizing the National Science Foundation for funding “questionable” projects with US taxpayers’ money.

In a televised report by ABC News, the coverage highlights the $1.5 million robot that takes 25 minutes to fold a towel, research that involved making shrimp run on treadmills, and the nearly $315K used to study whether FarmVille had real effects on human bonding:

Michigan State researchers were provided $314,863 to study “The Role of Social Network Sites in Facilitating Collaborative Processes.”127 According to the funding request, the researchers wanted to use social networks to study how undergraduate students collaborated online and to analyze “aggregate behavioral patterns on Facebook.”128 The study did not examine whether or not spending too much time playing Farmville with strangers on-line had any impact on Facebook users’ relationships with their own family or friends in the real world.

According to one of the researchers, the study found that people were initiating relationships with strangers because having more friends allows you to advance to a higher level in the game. But in other cases, interacting through the game provided the opportunity “to build on relationships that would otherwise have been left stale.”129

But FarmVille isn’t the only example of NSF-funded games research. Page 31 of the report says that $604,755 was spent on understanding MMO “group dynamics” for Sony Online Entertainment’s EverQuest 2. Another games researcher, Professor Bonnie Nardi, received no less than $3 million in NSF grants for studying World of Warcraft, which resulted in a book titled, “My Life as a Night Elf Priest”.（source:games）

5）The Simpsons and SimCity: Rumors say EA’s bringing both to Facebook

by Joe Osborne

Will it have Tomacco? Please tell me it will have Tomacco. EA has revealed that it’s working on a Simpsons Facebook game, set to release this September, MCV reports. Details on the game are scarce, but the site presumes that Playfish is working on it. MCV also found out that the veteran publisher will release a SimCity game as well, which we imagine Playfish is handling too. When EA mentioned that it would ramp up its efforts on Facebook recently, it certainly wasn’t joking

While SimCity will more than likely become a direct competitor to Zynga’s CityVille, the possibilities for what a Simpsons Facebook game would are nearly endless. Our wildest dreams guess is that it will be a social version of the classic arcade game you fed hundreds of quarters into at the local rollerskating rink. Come on, there’s no way we were the only ones.（source:games）

6）Raptr launches social news platform today, aims to compete with Facebook tomorrow?

By Joel Brodie

When Raptrrecently announced an additional round of funding for a total of $27 million, I was impressed and puzzled at the same time. On the one hand, $27 million is nothing to sneeze about. On the other hand, to only boast of 8 million users (that’s not active, mind you) with all that funding, is good spin but is actually sad. What is Raptr working on to justify all this funding, aside for the fact that founder Dennis “Thrash” Fong sure could play a mean game of Quake back in the day?

Part of the answer was revealed today. Raptr has re-launched its web site as a social news platform. A mash-up of Digg, Facebook, and Xfire for games, the new Raptr site is very well-designed.

Users can go to Raptr now to share the games they are playing and own, and then to get personalized news and content around these games. Users can submit new, videos, screen shots around each game.

Users can follow games as well as tell Raptr which games they are playing (adding to library). All the while, the Raptr client collects data on games you are playing and matches players together.

The plan is that Raptr will then make game recommendations based on all this player data, thereby competing in the wonderful world of games discovery.

Will it work? Maybe. The site is well-designed, but it’s a lot of information to sift through. In addition, Raptr continues to be very hardcore video game centric. Social games like CityVille are still considered “web games” and there is very little iOS games coverage as far as I can tell.

What’s most interesting to me is where does Raptr take its product next. With its new social game news community web site, its robust client base, and 8 million users, Raptr seems to have the opportunity to create a social network around games.（source:gamezebo）

7）Tagged Looks to In-House Social Game Development for New Growth

By AJ Glasser

Tagged may have lost the battle to become the predominate social network of the world back in 2007, but a shift in strategy combined virtual goods sales through its own virtual currency has the platform looking healthy in revenues and registered users. Now Tagged is looking to push growth even farther by formalizing its own internal social games studio led by vice president and general manager of social games, Andrew Pedersen, formerly of EA Pogo.

We knew Tagged was turning to in-house development last year when the platform launched its second game, Farm. By creating an actual in-house studio to manage the development, however, we see just how committed the platform is to the ideal of social games as a moneymaker. Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng explains the platform’s shift to social games as part of its goal set in introducing new people to one another through dating, interests, and games. The platform’s first game, Pets, launched in 2008 and began monetizing in 2009 when Tagged introduced its platform-specific virtual currency, Gold.

“Interestingly, [Pets] was just an experiment to see if games could make our site more engaging because social games had just started to take off on Facebook,” Tseng says. “And it did make the site more engaging [...]. It’s a game where you can buy and sell other users as your pets. There are about 400,000 daily active users and they make 5 million trades or purchases every single day.”

Tagged judges its success as a platform both through revenue and through new “connections” users make as a result of mingling on the platform. Prior to 2009, Tagged was entirely ad supported; but after introducing virtual currency and a premium subscription service in 2009, ad revenues shrank significantly. Tseng reports that in 2010, Tagged had its third straight profitable year at $32.5 million in revenue. This year, the company is aiming for $50 million and to increase its staff up from 50 to 150 people. Its new games studio will soak up some of the hiring spree.（source:insidesocialgames）