1）EA在日前美国洛杉矶的E3展会上正式宣布将推出《模拟人生》的Facebook版本《The Sims Social》，该游戏将由《模拟人生》制作班底The Sims Studios和EA Playfish共同开发完成，但目前并未公布游戏正式上线时间。

the-sims-social(from insidesocialgames.com)

据EA Play Label执行副总裁Jeff Karp所称，这款社交游戏不同于《模拟人生》的MMO版本（游戏邦注：该版本于2008年关闭），支持玩家创建自己的虚拟角色，而非采用人工智能的虚拟人物来填充游戏环境，并在同步多人模式中与好友进行互动。该游戏的盈利解决方案仍是常规的“游戏免费，道具收费”模式，主要贩售个性化的装饰品和功能选项。该项目所遇到的难题之一，就是如何在设置同步玩法体验的同时，支持玩家的异步活动。

2）据socialbakers观察，欧洲已经取代北美，成为Facebook用户最多的地区，目前用户已达2.05亿，而北美则是2.03亿。这种迹象表明欧洲将成为世界排名第一的Facebook用户大陆，不过socialbakers同时也指出亚洲的Facebook用户增长速度远超其他地区，但短期内其用户总数仍难敌欧洲地区。

continent-users-last-year(from socialbakers.com)

3）在本周MAU增长最快的Facebook游戏排行榜上，Digital Chocolate上线刚满一周的新游戏《Army Attack》位居榜首，观察者认为该游戏与Zynga新作《Empires & Allies》将展开激烈角逐（游戏邦注：据称该游戏目前的MAU超过了50万）。而Kabam的战争题材策略类游戏《Global Warfare》本周却仅新增2000的MAU，与该榜单前20名席位失之交臂。本周榜单的旧面孔是位于第三名的Playdom游戏《Gardens of Time》、Gaia Online推出的《Monster Galaxy》（位居第二），而新面孔则是Wooga的《Happy Hospital》（第12名）、BitRhymes的《Salon Street》（第19名）。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

4）传统视频游戏公司雅达利最近与开发商Liquid Entertainment合作，推出了一款拥有完整盈利方案和社交功能的Facebook游戏《Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter》。

这款回合制多人角色扮演游戏支持玩家个性化装扮自己的角色，并招募其他玩家结成一个历险组织，攻进地下城杀死怪兽并收集箱子中的道具。与其他角色扮演游戏一样，该游戏也采用道具贩售模式创造收益，目前正处于早期测试阶段，计划于今年夏天发布。据AppData数据显示，雅达利目前的三款Facebook游戏的MAU是6000，DAU仅299。

John Schappert(from venturebeat.com)

5）Zynga宣布聘请EA前高管John Schappert担任公司首席运营官，负责监管Zynga游戏工作室、移动部门及行政工作等相关事务。Schappert于2009年加入EA任其首席运营官，是一名经验丰富的电子游戏元老，曾带领EA据展数字游戏、手机游戏及Facebook游戏业务，使其数字游戏业务在上一财年（截止3月31日）中创造了8.33亿美元收益。

6）由少年企业家创办的在线游戏公司Mind Candy日前宣布，其锁定儿童用户的虚拟世界《Moshi Monster》目前注册用户超过5000万，其中1500万来自北美地区（游戏邦注：其1月份用户为3500万，在不到4个月时间中又增加了1500万）。该游戏支持儿童用户在一个社交环境中收养6种虚拟宠物，并通过解谜赢取虚拟货币，个性化装饰自己的庞物和房间，与好友进行互动和交流。

Moshi Monster(from lirinini.com)

该游戏快速发展的部分原因是它开拓了线下产品业务，推出了主题玩具、书籍、电子游戏、集换卡（trading cards，指小朋友收集、和朋友交换的卡片）等周边产品，甚至在英国和澳大利亚推出了“Moshi杂志”，并宣布儿童娱乐公司Spin Master已成为其玩具制造合作伙伴，并将于今年夏天在北美地区推出玩具产品，甚至还准备开发这款游戏的音乐、在线旅游、电视节目和电影项目。

7）索尼在线娱乐宣布将出让Facebook游戏《Dungeon Overlord》的所有权，让该游戏开发商Night Owl Games全权接管项目运营。据AppData数据显示，该游戏今年1月刚露面时的MAU曾经高达9万，但后来下滑至2.7万。Night Owl Games公司在新闻通稿中表示，他们将通过创新方式增强用户体验，但并未提及挽救该游戏的具体操作细节。据称这款处于转型期的游戏将于今年夏天结束测试并正式上线。

dungeon_overlord(from insidesocialgames.com)

8）据《华尔街日报》报道，万豪酒店（Marriott Hotels）宣布将推出一款Facebook游戏《My Marriott》，以吸引求职人员加入万豪大家庭。该游戏玩法与Facebook平台上的《Cafe World》和《Restaurant City》相似，但该酒店发言人表示，这款游戏更具有“现实感”。

My Marriott(from games.com)

9）资深游戏设计师及Stupid Fun Club工作室创始人Will Wright日前表示，他将根据科幻小说家布鲁斯·斯特林（Bruce Sterling）的短篇小说“Maneki Neko”，在一年时间内开发一款智能手机、平板电脑及Facebook游戏。他称自己认为传统而冗长的开发周期在今天并无多大意义，因为它会过度消耗开发者的精力和财力。

will_wright(from gamedynamo.com)

Wright于2009年离开Maxis公司并与EA共同组建了自己的开发团队Stupid Fun Club，主要专注于开发游戏、电影、电视和玩具等跨传媒领域的原创项目。

farmville-visi-facebook(from pocketgamer)

10）继与Lady Gaga进行品牌营销推广之后，Zynga游戏《FarmVille》日前又与投资服务品牌Capital One公司携手进行为期7天的合作，如果玩家在游戏的农场中植入一个特殊的Visigoth雕像，就可以双倍收获所有水果、鲜花、树木和蔬菜所产生的积分。另外，玩家还可以获得自己虚拟形象的Visigoth装备，并通过在游戏中观看Capital One的视频内容而赢取游戏虚拟货币。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）EA’s Sims Studio & Playfish Bring The Sims to Facebook in The Sims Social

By AJ Glasser

During its Q4 earnings report earlier this spring, EA said its experience with Dragon Age Legends on Facebook was enough to motivate the developer/publisher to bring many of its other established franchises to the platform. Today, EA announces that the popular life simulation series, The Sims, is the next of its intellectual property to get the Facebook treatment.

Launched on PCs over a decade ago, The Sims is a series of single-player games that allows users to manipulate virtual people in virtual houses — and later, towns — to do just about anything. The game is know as a “sandbox” where the player isn’t required to complete any sort of gameplay objective in order to achieve a winning condition. This open-ended gameplay sounds perfect for a social game or massively multiplayer online game; however, The Sims experienced failure in the MMO space with the now-defunct The Sims Online.

Jeff Karp (pictured in Sim form) tells ISG that The Sims Social is going to be different. As Executive Vice President of the EA Play Label at EA, he oversees internal developer The Sims Studio, which took over from original Sims developer Maxis when The Sims Online shut down in 2008.

As for monetization, Karp says we can expect to see familiar free-to-play conventions built around monetizing premium decoration or customization options. He also hinted that there would be quest completion items, but could not specify what form quests might take in the game, as its still in the very early stages of development. We know that while gameplay is non-linear, there will be a levelling system for each player’s Sim. Players may also be able to “start over” with a Sim as part of gameplay, or for a fee, which is similar to the character re-specialization feature in Dragon Age Legends.

Some of the questions EA is still struggling to answer for The Sims Social include how they will build a synchronous gameplay experience that still supports asynchronous activity. For example, Karp wasn’t sure what would happen if we flirted with his character while he was not online — would we have to wait for him to log back in to accept our advances, or would the AI guess his character’s reaction for him? Would his character even appear in our game if he weren’t online at the time? While accepting my friend request allows our Sim to enter his Sim’s house, is there any way he could temporarily lock us out if, say, he were sick of us peeing on his lawn?

The Sims Social is being designed in collaboration between EA’s internal Sims Studio and EA Playfish. It’s due out “soon,” with Karp telling us to Like the game’s Facebook page in advance of more news.（source:insidesocialgames）

2）Europe becomes largest continent on Facebook

Europe has became the largest on Facebook, ousting North America now with 205 million Facebook users (June 5th, 2011). North America follows with 203 million users.

This means that it seems as though for some time to come, Europe is going to be the largest Facebook continent, but if we look at the yearly development, we see Asia is already growing much faster then the other countries. There will be some interesting development to come, but for now, congrats to Europe and obviously to Facebook.（source: socialbakers）

3）Army Themed Strategy Games Top This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU

By AJ Glasser

Digital Chocolate’s Army Attack tops our top 20 fastest-growing games in terms of monthly active users as tracked by AppData after just over a week’s worth of life on Facebook. A reporting delay from Facebook prevents us from determining just how its growth stacks up against Zynga’s rival game, Empires & Allies, but we think it’s shaping up to be a pretty tight race with Empires & Allies claiming over half a million MAU as of today. Interestingly, Kabam’s army-themed strategy game, Global Warfare, almost placed at number 20 this week at just 2,000 MAU shy of ousting Zombie Lane.

Farther down the list are some familiar favorites, including Playdom’s Gardens of Time and Gaia Online’s Monster Galaxy. Newcomers include wooga’s Happy Hospital and BitRhymes’ Salon Street.（source:insidesocialgames）

4）Atari Brings Dungeons & Dragons to Facebook this Summer in Heroes of Neverwinter

By AJ Glasser

Console video game developer/publisher Atari has a few forays into Facebook games with its arcade-type titles like Asteroids, but until now, it hasn’t brought in any of its more complex franchises. Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter, developed in collaboration with Liquid Entertainment and brand oversight from Wizards of the Coast, will be Atari’s first big plunge into the space with a complete array of monetization and social features.

Core Gameplay

Heroes of Neverwinter is a turn-based multiplayer role-playing game where players customize a character and then recruit other characters to form an adventuring party. This party ventures into dungeons to kill monsters and collect items from chests, which can then be used to upgrade the character’s combat statistics or to buy new items and equipment for their character.

Like EA2D’s Dragon Age Legends, Heroes of Neverwinter also encourages players to recruit friends’ characters to their party, which creates unique social interactions as players “shop” among their friends for those with the ideal character class and level to make up the best possible party.

Monetization

Heroes of Neverwinter monetizes much the same as other Facebook RPGs through the sale of premium items, gameplay boosts and shortcuts to advance beyond what the player has already unlocked.

The game features a standard currency, gold, and a premium currency in the form of Astral Diamonds, which can be bought with Facebook Credits. Astral Diamonds are also the means to buy “packs” of content for the Dungeon Workshop, such a “vampire pack” that unlocks all the undead monsters for the player to create an undead type of dungeon.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, Atari currently enjoys 6,000 monthly active users and 299 daily active users across its three games. This is Liquid Entertainment’s first Facebook game that we know of.（source:insidesocialgames）

5）Zynga hires EA’s No. 2 exec, John Schappert

Dean Takahashi

Zynga, the leading maker of social games, confirmed that it has hired John Schappert as its chief operating officer. Schappert is the former chief operating officer of Electronic Arts, which is one of the biggest makers of console video games.

Schappert’s move is one more example of the transformation happening in the game business: Users are flocking to social games such as Zynga’s CityVille and FarmVille games. Executives such as Schappert are weighing their options betting that social, casual games are the way of the future. He will report to chief executive Mark Pincus. Owen Van Natta, formerly executive vice president, is now chief business officer.

Schappert will be responsible for day-to-day operations, including Zynga’s game studios, mobile division and administrative functions, according to the bio.

Schappert, who joined EA as and chief operating officer in 2009, is a seasoned executive when it comes to making video games. At EA, he helped engineer the company’s expansion into digital game businesses such as free-to-play games, mobile games and Facebook games. EA says it is on track to generate $833 million in digital game revenue in the fiscal year ending March 31.

Schappert had a long history at EA. He started programming games in 1991 and co-founded the Tiburon game studio in 1994. There, his team made the Madden NFL sports games for EA. Then EA bought Tiburon in 1994 and Schappert rose through the ranks to take the No. 2 job. He left in 2007 to join Microsoft to head its Xbox Live online gaming service. Then he rejoined EA in 2009, replacing John Pleasants, who left EA to join Playdom.（source:venturebeat） 

6）Moshi Monsters, The Social Networking Game For Kids, Passes The 50 Million Users Mark

Rip Empson

On Monday, Mind Candy announced that Moshi Monsters has passed the 50 million registered users mark, with 15 million of those users in North America, and is one of the fastest growing children’s entertainment brands in the world. In February, Moshi Monsters had racked up 35 million users, so in less than 4 months, the game has added another 15 million.

For those unfamiliar, Moshi Monsters is a game that enables kids to adopt one of six virtual pet monsters that they can customize in various ways and add the monster to their own virtual room, which can be outfitted with virtual goods. Kids can then navigate their way around “Monstro City”, and solve puzzles to earn virtual currency, which they can use to personalize their monsters and their personal rooms, or communicate with friends in a social networking environment.

Besides the fact that Moshi Monsters books from Scholastic and Topps trading cards are already on shelf in the U.S., the company is also working on music, live tours, TV shows — and even a Moshi Monsters film. It probably wouldn’t be crazy to speculate that Moshi Monsters Happy Meals are on the way, too.（source:techcrunch） 

7）SOE sells Dungeon Overlord to Night Owl Games, game to launch out of beta this summer

by Brandy Shaul

TweetWe first brought you a detailed look at Dungeon Overlord, then Sony Online Entertainment’s hardcore strategy title on Facebook, back in January. Since its launch, Dungeon Overlord peaked at a high of just 90,000 monthly players, and has now plummeted down to 27,000 monthly average users, according to AppData (let’s not forget that a recent service outage could be blamed for some of the drop). Whether Sony is just trying to escape a sinking ship, or if it’s trying to place the game in more capable hands, we don’t know, but what we do know is that the company has now announced that it has sold all rights of Dungeon Overlord to Night Owl Games, the developer of the project.

Determined to keep the game alive, Night Owl Games hopes to further user experiences in “new and exciting ways,” according to a company press release. While there were no new details as to what new features would be added to the game to achieve that goal, we do know that the game will officially be taken out of beta into a full launch sometime this summer. Hopefully, an ad campaign will accompany the launch, helping to raise user numbers.（source:games）  

8）Want to work for Marriott Hotels? Play the Facebook game first

by Joe Osborne

Employee training videos are so yesterday. Marriott Hotels has made a Facebook game, titled My Marriott, that’s said to release this week with the intention of attracting potential employees to apply to become a member of the Marriott team, Wall Street Journal reports. We had no idea there was such a demand for hotel employees, but alas, here we are, recruiting them through … Facebook games. And we’re not sure whether Facebook games have the same gripping effect on gamers as the US military might have with its America’s Army PC shooter, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

The game enlists players in running the kitchen at a Marriott Hotel, and the general play looks a lot like Facebook staples Cafe World and Restaurant City. However, Marriott told WSJ in a detailed interview that the game will be “more realistic.” The company says it will roll out other aspects of running Marriott hotels later on, but expect to be commandeering cooks at the Marriott kitchen this week. Until then, check out WSJ’s full preview of the game right here.（source:games） 

9）Pre-E3: Will Wright Developing Smartphone Game Based On Sci-Fi Short Story

by Mike Rose

Respected game designer and Stupid Fun Club founder Will Wright has revealed he is working on a game inspired by one of science fiction author Bruce Sterling’s short stories.

Based on Sterling’s ‘Maneki Neko’ story, the game is likely to be released on smartphones, tablets and Facebook in around a year’s time, according to news site Eurogamer.

Explaining his inspiration, Wright said, “[Sterling] describes a karmic computer that’s keeping a balance of payments between different people, and causing them to interact with each other in interesting ways to improve their lives even though they’re strangers.”

“They earn karmic points that are redeemed by having somebody else help them,” he continued.

Regarding the short development cycle planned for the game, Wright said that he doesn’t believe it makes sense to go through long development cycles anymore.

“Unless you can get something to market within a year, at least an initial version within a year, you’re hosed,” he noted. “So that’s the new model for development, which has totally changed my thinking.”

“Almost any project I want to work on is going to be something I can at least get some version out there in about a year and then iterate from there.”

Wright left Maxis back in 2009 to create his own development team, Stupid Fun Club, co-owned by himself and EA, with the aim to focus on developing new cross-media IP for games, movies, TV and toys. （source:gamasutra） 

10）Capital One teams up with Zynga, brings double mastery to FarmVille

by Anthony Usher

Following its successful partnership with Lady Gaga, FarmVille creator Zynga has teamed up with financial services brand Capital One to bring a special Visigoth statue to your farm.

To get your hands on the exclusive double mastery-giving statue, you first have to follow FarmVille’s instructions and ‘like’ Capital One’s Facebook fanpage.

You can then place it on your land and gain access to double mastery points on all fruits, flowers, trees, and veggies for a seven day period.

As seasoned players will already know, if you successfully reach a new level of mastery – each crop has three – you’ll be rewarded with coins, experience points, and a special surprise.

As part of the partnership you’ll also have access to exclusive branded Visigoth outfits for your male or female avatar, which are available through the game’s market for free.

Finally, you can earn yourself some ‘fast cash’ by watching a Capital One TV spot.（source:pocketgamer）