1）RockYou日前宣布收购澳大利亚社交游戏开发商3 Blockes Studios。据AppData数据显示，3 Blockes Studios目前总共推出了四款游戏，MAU将近20万，DAU是1万左右。RockYou称，3 Blockes Studios将主要负责开发策略和战争类Facebook游戏。3 Blockes Studios目前最大的游戏项目是《Galactic Trader》，该游戏结合了贸易、战斗和寻宝等游戏机制，总体风格与Kabam的策略游戏相似，也主要锁定硬核游戏玩家。

galactic trader(from socialtimes.com)

RockYou尚未公开具体收购交易额，仅表示3 Blockes Studios将与公司在1月份收购的Playdemic一样保持独立。RockYou内部工作室将继续开发《Zoo World 2》，该游戏目前已进入封测阶段。

2）AppData日前公布了2011年5月份Facebook游戏DAU、MAU前25名排行榜，Zynga游戏《CityVille》、《FarmVille》、《Texas HoldEm Poker》、《FrontierVille》囊括DAU前五强席位，但奇怪的是，尽管Zynga上个月与Lady Gaga携手展开大规模的推广活动，《FarmVille》的DAU反而略有下滑。Playdom于4月份推出的《Gardens of Time》则名列第七（游戏邦注：该游戏上月排名是第16名）。

Top-25-DAU-June-2011(from AppData)

在MAU榜单中，《Gardens of Time》则打败Zynga旗下的《Café World》和《Mafia Wars》，晋升至第五名。

Top-25-MAU-June-2011(from AppData)

3）就在Zynga刚发布所谓的Risk游戏与《CityVille》的合体——《Empires & Allies》这款游戏时，其竞争对手Playfish也正紧锣密鼓地制作Facebook新游戏《Risk Factions》。

Playfish母公司EA在2010年时向Xbox Live平台推出了《Risk:Factions》，所以观察者认为这款Facebook游戏有可能是《Risk:Factions》的移植版，用户现在可通过该游戏的Facebook页面报名参与游戏测试。

Risk Factions on Facebook(from games.com)

4）在6月1日DAU增长最快速的Facebook游戏排行榜上，Digital Chocolate的最新游戏《Army Attack》一跃登上榜首，同样值得注意的是排在第三名的Foursquare这个Facebook版本的“社交游戏”。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

观察者提醒业界注意观察接下来几周中，《Army Attack》与Zynga最新力作《Empires & Allies》之间的力量对比。这两款游戏在风格和玩法元素上具有相似之处，均要求玩家组建军队，都属于异步回合制的策略类游戏。社交游戏领域最近也开始出现了回归传统视频游戏风格的趋势，越来越多开发商在游戏中融入了实时策略和MMO游戏风格，另外这两家公司都聘用了不少视频游戏元老，所以出现这种情况并不令人意外。

Platinum Life Country(from games.com)

5）美国乡村电视（Country Music Television，简称CMT）日前进军社交游戏领域，与Heatwave Interactive联合推出Facebook游戏《Platinum Life Country》。玩家在游戏中要扮演新兴乡村歌手的角色，在卡通版Dolly Parton、Trace Atkins、ColtFord、Rascal Flatts等真人乡村歌手及其画外音的指引下，前往不同地点参与演出，使自己成长为舞台新秀。玩家还可以在游戏中通过iTunes购买并欣赏这些乡村歌手的音乐，并通过游戏中的电影院播放音乐视频，以及CMT电视节目。该游戏还支持玩家个性化地装饰建筑，并在前往演出的途中收集道具，访问好友的歌星粉丝社区。

Hero City(from insidesocialgames.com)

6）《Hero City》是一款由Paprika Lab在四月末推出的新游戏，虽然没有进行大规模的市场推广，但已在上周自然攀升到Facebook新晋游戏榜单之首。据AppData数据显示，《Hero City》目前的MAU是76.7405万，DAU是8.9571万。从目前的用户数量发展趋势来看，《Hero City》的MAU有可能在一周内突破100万。

Hero City---MAU & DAU

这款游戏结合了城市建设玩法，玩家可建造并升级建筑，并网罗天下英雄强化自己城市的实力，以便更好地完成游戏任务。该公司首席执行官John Kim表示，他们深受漫画书和电影中的英雄主义的影响，所以决定将这一元素引进城市建设游戏。《Hero City》目前主要通过贩售游戏中的虚拟货币、资源、特殊建筑和超级英雄等内容创造收益。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）RockYou Acquires Australian Social Strategy Game Developer 3 Blokes

By AJ Glasser

Social game publisher RockYou announced the acquisition of Australian social game developer 3 Blokes Studios this morning. The developer currently has a library for four games and just under 200,000 monthly active users and a little over 10,000 daily active users, according to our traffic tracking service, AppData.

Interestingly, RockYou made a point of stating that 3 Blokes Studios would head up development of strategy and combat-driven Facebook games. This genre was previously under-represented on Facebook, likely because larger social game developers and publishers viewed strategy as too demanding of time for their core demographic. With Zynga and Digital Chocolate releasing semi-casual strategy titles in the last week, however, it seems like strategy is becoming a more attractive genre to social game developers and publishers.

3 Blokes Studios’ largest game, Galactic Trader, is published by 6waves. It’s an involved strategy title that combines trading and combat gameplay mechanics with a bit of treasure-hunting as players explore grid spaces for resources. It seems to be more akin to Kabam’s style of strategy game, which tends to appeal to dedicated hobbyists as opposed to casual players.

The price of the acquisition was not made public. 3 Blokes Studios will remain an independent studio much like RockYou’s Playdemic, which was acquired in January. RockYou’s internal games development continues with Zoo World 2, which just entered closed beta ahead of launch.（source:insidesocialgames） 

2）Top 25 Facebook Games For June 2011

By AJ Glasser

New games make strong showings in our Facebook game leaderboards provided by our traffic tracking service, AppData. Going into June 2011, many of our top games in daily active users and monthly active users from May move down the list to make room.

We begin with the top 25 games by DAU, which gives us an idea of which games have the potential for highest retention rates when compared to a game’s MAU. This figure is vulnerable to sharp fluctuations in the short term as a result of ad campaigns or marketing and to external factors such as holidays or weekends when players may take a break from routine play.

Gardens of Time makes a splash here at number seven after debuting at number 16 last month. The game launched in early April and so far has maintained a healthy growth pattern that makes it a regular on our weekly top 20 lists of fastest-growing games by both DAU and MAU. Interestingly, FarmVille saw a slight loss in DAU this month despite an extensive Lady Gaga promotion toward the end of May that gave the game a temporary lift.

Next, we examine the top 25 Facebook games by MAU, which tells us which games have the largest potential reach. We also monitor MAU as an indicator of a game’s overall health in the long term as the number tends to experience more gradual shifts than DAU.

Again, Gardens of Time draws attention with its debut on this list at number five, which puts it ahead of Zynga’s Café World and Mafia Wars. Monster Galaxy also turns up ahead of these titles thanks to a slow burn growth pattern that routinely puts it on our weekly top 20 fastest-growing games by MAU lists.（source:insidesocialgames） 

3）Risk Factions on Facebook: Is this Playfish’s answer to Zynga’s Empires & Allies?

by Libe Goad

While Zynga has launched a Empires & Allies, which is best described at Risk meets CityVille, competitor Playfish is hard at work on a new game called Risk Factions on Facebook.

Playfish’s parent company EA made a game called Risk: Factions for Xbox Live in 2010, and it’s likely that this is just a Facebook rendition of the same game. If you go to the game’s Facebook fan page, you can give up your email to get a chance to take part in the game’s beta. （source:games）  

4）Army Attack Leads This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Games by DAU

By AJ Glasser

Looks like we spoke too soon about Playdom’s Deep Realms possibly gaining ground in daily active users. It falls off this week’s list of fastest-growing games by DAU, as recorded by AppData, to be replaced by Digital Chocolate’s new game, Army Attack.

At number two on the list, we see the Facebook version of mobile social network Foursquare, which sort of a strange addition to a social games list. Technically it is a game because it rewards points and badges to people for “checking in” to locations with their GPS-enabled devices. Its “Facebook game” label, however, is tenuous at best because you don’t really play Foursquare on Facebook so much as use Facebook to get to Foursquare. In any case, the Facebook Foursquare app has had a troubled history and today’s DAU spike seems to be a temporary high in an overall low.

Be sure to watch this space in the next four to six weeks for an emerging growth race between the rapidly up-and-coming Army Attack and Zynga’s just-released Empires & Allies similar to what we saw in the hidden object genre with Gardens of Time and Mystery Manor. Army Attack and Empires & Allies share a genre and similar gameplay elements, asking players to build up structures that produce military units to send into battle, much like classic real time strategy video games. Unlike classic RTS games, however, both Army Attack and Empires & Allies make use of asynchronous turn-based combat to better suit the Facebook audience. At this time, only Empires & Allies claims a live feature that allows players to attack friends’ armies.

It is unclear whether or not Digital Chocolate and Zynga were aware of each other’s games while in the early development phases. We observe that as more developers from traditional video games arrive in the social games space, many of them eventually try to recreate the genres with which they are most familiar. The RTS and generalized strategy genre is one of the oldest in video games; so it’s not difficult to imagine that two companies staffed with ex-core video game developers could come up with similar social games without external market influence. Doesn’t mean some espionage didn’t happen — we are talking about strategy, after all.（source:insidesocialgames）  

5）CMT Platinum Life Country: A star-studded country music experience in the form a Facebook game

by Libe Goad

Country Music Television (CMT) is strapping on its cowboy boots and taking a big step into social gaming with a new Facebook game called Platinum Life Country, created in conjunction with Heatwave Interactive. In the game, you’ll play a rising country star who must work his/her way to the top by performing in different venues, relying on the help of mentors — cartoon versions of real-life country stars like Dolly Parton, Trace Atkins, Colt Ford, Rascal Flatts, etc.

Platinum Life Country is more of a country music experience than a standard Facebook game (I’ll get into the dirty details on all of the ‘game’ stuff in a minute), and that’s probably one of the more interesting parts of this new CMT venture. In addition to celebrity mentors, who all contributed their likenesses and voice-overs to the experience, you will be able to listen to a non-stop loop of a dozen or so country music hits from the likes of Dolly, Taylor Swift, Thompson Square and Rascal Flatts — all of which can be purchased from iTunes from inside the game. An in-game movie theater will play music videos directly in game, along with episodic content from CMT TV shows and play host to “special, first-look unveilings” as artists come out with new singles. Keep an eye out for TV/Broadway star turned country crooner Kristin Chenoweth, who will be one of the new artists featured in the game.

The main thrust of the Platinum Life Country game involves taking your wannabe star on tour, having them performing in different venues (many of them real-life locations like the Grand Ole Opry in NashVille) by way of an in-game map with highlighted cities across the US. Once your rising star hits the stage, a poker-style mini-game launches, and you’ll need to score a pair or better to have a successful show and earn virtual cash, experience points or ‘fame,’ energy, also called ‘Moxie,’ and unlock additional venues. Each performance costs one unit of Moxie, so you’re limited to how many times you can perform before you need to either buy more energy or wait for it to refill over time.

You’re also bequeathed a community for your star, which can be customized with buildings, greenery and items that you earn while on tour. Items in your community can be harvested on a regular basis for moxie, fame and cash — three items required to make your way through Platinum Life Country. If you friend other players in the game, you’ll be able to visit their communities as well, harvesting trees for resources and, if you like what you see, you’ll be able to reward them with ribbons, which come in handy later on.（source:games） 

6）Hero City Layers the Super Hero Genre on City-Building Gameplay, Developer Aiming to Build Distinctive Brand

By Pete Davison

Hero City is a Facebook game from developer Paprika Lab that soft-launched on the platform toward the end of April. Thought it hasn’t yet had a big marketing push, Hero City saw enough organic growth to come in at number one on our list of emerging Facebook games last week.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, Hero City currently has 767,405 monthly active users and 89,571 daily active users.

Hero City combines city-building gameplay and adds a layer of superhero camp on top. Players build and upgrade structures to improve the city and then collect superheroes to come live in their city. More superheroes means more advantages when undertaking the game’s quests, and will also give players the upper hand in player-vs-player gameplay, which the developer tells us is due to be added to the game soon.

Paprika Lab CEO John Kim believes that the superheroes give the game a unique spin over other city-building titles on Facebook. “As developers, we’ve grown up watching superhero comic books and movies where superheroes save the city and the world from villains,” he says. “So it seemed pretty natural to combine the superhero and city concepts together.”

The game is currently monetized through the purchase of “instant finish” items to complete buildings quicker, the purchase of in-game standard currency and resources, special buildings and superheroes. Facebook Credits are used as the game’s sole premium currency. The developer has experimented with using its own proprietary hard currency in its previous game Pirate Legacy, and Kim notes that there are “pros and cons to adopting each system.”

Hero City has enjoyed steady growth since its late April launch, with slightly larger jumps in MAU occurring at the start of the week for the last two weeks. At its current rate of growth,the game will pass a million monthly active users within a week.（source:insidesocialgames）