1）日本社交游戏巨头DeNA宣布将与《吃豆人》开发商Bandai Namco于10月1日成立一家合资企业BDNA，新公司将落户东京，注册资金为1亿日元（约合130万美元）。

namco-bandai-DeNA-mobile-partnership(from gamerant)

这项合作的愿景是将Bandai Namco的电子游戏开发特长与DeNA的社交游戏经验相结合，Bandai Namco将掌握BDNA公司75%的控制权。

Namco Bandai自去年7月起就开始向DeNA旗下的Mobage、Yahoo Mobage平台供应游戏，今年7月还宣布其投放Mobage的热门游戏《Gundam Royal》的功能性手机用户突破300万。

除了Mobage之外，Bandai Namco还针对掌机、日本功能性手机和iOS移动设备开发游戏。

2）谷歌去年收购的工作室LabPixies日前向Google+平台发布了两款休闲游戏《Flood-It!》和《Sudoku Puzzles》。

Flood-It!(from insidesocialgames)

这两款游戏虽然也支持邀请好友的功能，但其实际的上社交功能仅有积分排行榜一项。《Flood-It!》是一款要求玩家点击6种颜色填满格子的益智游戏，而《Sudoku Puzzles》则是一款要求填写数字的日式逻辑益智游戏。

3）Tin Man Games创始人Ben Britten在日前的澳洲独立游戏大会Freeplay 2011上发言表示，开发者不应寄希望于自己制作的首批游戏就会赢利，因为这些处女作通常都是蹩脚游戏。

Indie-Tin-Man-Games(from pc.mmgn.com)

他称大学游戏课程的一大好处在于，它们迫使学生制作一系列游戏以了解整个游戏开发过程。他认为空有游戏想法而无动手能力并不可取；在开发项目之前，创建游戏原型非常关键，其次就是项目选择。他不主张开发者首先创建自己心目中的游戏，建议人们不要选择那些需要耗时两年之久的游戏作为首选项目。

Britten还提出了一个有违人们直觉的看法“失败很了不起！”，并引用“正确的判断来自经验，而经验源于失败的判断”这句老话说明失败并不可怕，只有经历失败方可掌握开启成功大门的钥匙。

4）电子游戏开发商Ecko Code正向Facebook发布一系列根据Showtime电视剧《Weeds》、《Dexter》和《The Borgias》改制的社交游戏。该公司创始人是Marc Ecko，在2006年成立时主要针对PlayStation 2、Xbox平台开发掌机游戏。尽管其传统游戏《Gettip Up:Contents Under Pressure》声誉良好，但赢利情况却不容忍乐观，因此在2009年与Showtime电视网络合作，转战iOS游戏领域，开发了《Dexter》授权游戏。

Weeds Social Club(from insidesocialgames)

该公司推出的首款Facebook游戏是与Lionsgate Entertainmnet共同发行的《Weed Social Club》（开发商是Mytopia），玩家在游戏中需扮演电视剧《Weeds》主角Nancy Botwin东躲西藏地种植和出售大麻。该游戏目前仍处于初级测试阶段，预计于本周进行公开测试。

Ecko Code副总裁Marc Fernandez表示，公司今后还会进军网页多人游戏和平板电脑游戏领域，零售游戏是一个难以盈利的业务，所以他们才转向数字发行渠道、移动及免费游戏。

5）以色列手机社交游戏平台Skiller日前宣布将向每名使用Skiller SDK或将Skiller SDK与其手机游戏绑定的开发者奖奖励1000美元。开发者可免费使用Skiller SDK及其社交云服务，集中精力创建游戏逻辑，而无需担忧社交功能绑定的问题。

该平台目前用户遍及200多个国家，已向J2ME、Android和黑莓推出社交游戏服务，未来还将推出WP7和iPhone版本。

6）在本周MAU增长最快的Facebook游戏榜单中，《模拟人生社交版》和《The Smurfs & Co.》位于前两名，而《Pokerist Club》则超越《Zoo World 2》排名第三。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

本周榜单几乎鲜有新面孔出现，有两款中文游戏进入前20名榜单——《FarmVille》中文版和《我的王国》，这种情况较有罕见，因为多数中文版游戏一般只出现于DAU榜单，极少出现在前20名MAU榜单中，《FarmVille》目前仍是Facebook最大的中文游戏。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）DeNA Forms Joint Venture With Bandai Namco In Japan [Social Games]

by Dr. Serkan Toto

DeNA just announced it will establish a joint venture with video game powerhouse Bandai Namco Games on October 1. The new company, which will be called BDNA, will be based out of Tokyo and capitalized at 100 million yen (US$1.3 million).

The idea is to combine Bandai Namco’s (decade long) expertise in making video games with DeNA’s expertise in making social games. BDNA will be 75% owned by Bandai Namco and led by a mixed team of Bandai Namco and DeNA executives (new DeNA boss Isao Moriyasu, for example, will join the board).

Namco Bandai has been providing games to DeNA’s Mobage and Yahoo Mobage since July 2010. In July this year, the company announced its hit game Gundam Royal for Mobage on Japanese feature phones hit the 3 million player mark.

Apart from Mobage, Bandai Namco is also producing games for consoles, Japanese feature phones (i.e. for i-mode) and iOS devices.（source:serkantoto）

2）Google+ Adds Casual Single-Player Games from LabPixies

By AJ Glasser

Google+ Games got a bit bigger recently with the addition of Flood-It! and Sudoku Puzzles, two casual titles from Google’s LabPixies, which was acquired last year.

The two games are unique additions to the platform on account of how solitary they are. Though both Flood-It! and Sudoku Puzzles ask players to invite friends to play, the only actual “social” feature included in the games is a leaderboard displayed below the game. Flood-It! is a puzzle game where players click a series of six colors, trying to “flood” adjacent squares on the board in 25 moves or less. Sudoku Puzzles is a Japanese logic puzzle game where players try to fill in missing numbers inside a grid to achieve a configuration where each column, row, and sub-grids contain all digits from 1 to 9.（source:insidesocialgames）

3）Tin Man Games’ Ben Britten: Why ‘Failure is Awesome’

by Saul Alexander

“Finish your game,” is the distilled wisdom that Tin Man Games founder Ben Britten chose to give the audience at Australia’s indie game conference Freeplay 2011, as part of the “One Piece of Advice” series of micro-lectures.

Britten’s approach to lecturing is jovial, but blunt. “If you’re hoping to make a bunch of money on your first couple of games, don’t, because you won’t, because they’ll probably suck,” he said.

The best thing about games courses at universities, Britten said, is that they force you to finish making a number of games to get a handle on the entire process.

“Talk is cheap. I go to a lot of gaming events, and people come up to me and say ‘I’ve got this great idea for a game’, and I’m like ‘Yeah, that’s great – I want to see your game.’”

Why is it so difficult to finish a game? Britten showed the audience a very unscientific graph, which demonstrated the internal processes a game designer might go through as they strive to make their game.

“This moment of creation, when you go from nothing to something, that’s like a spike of awesomeness,” he said, pointing to a massive peak that reached close to the top of the “awesomeness” axis. “So you get your prototype, and that’s awesome as well, but it lasts for longer … it’s fun and exciting and interesting.”

But the process of creation can act as a “crucible” for more ideas, Britten warned, and there can be a temptation to keep piling every new thought that you have on top of the original concept.

“When I first started with game stuff, I was just a prototype whore. I’d make this prototype and it was kind of fun and took like two days … and I was like, ‘Oh, what if I add this one thing,’ so I’d adjust the prototype,” and on and on it continued like this, he said.

“So how do you stop being a prototype whore, and start finishing games?” Britten asked rhetorically, before offering the first option: add menus to your prototypes and release them. “It sounds silly, but … it will introduce you to all those other bits and pieces of the game puzzle – the distribution, releasing, feedback, all that stuff.”

Beyond the prototype, project selection is of utmost importance. “Don’t pick projects that are going to take you two years as your first project. Don’t try to build your dream game first,” he said.

Britten also offered a counter-intuitive thought, one that had popped up repeatedly over the course of the Freeplay weekend, but which hadn’t been expressed with such simple enthusiasm previously: “Failure is awesome!”

By way of elaboration, Britten offered a maxim that has been attributed to dozens of authors over the years: “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.”

The quote gets to the universal need that humans have to be reminded that, in a great many situations, failure is not only an option, it comes recommended. （source:gamasutra）

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36721/Tin_Man_Games_Ben_Britten_Why_Failure_is_Awesome.php

4）Ecko Code Focuses on Facebook With Showtime Tie-In Games Weeds, Dexter & Borgias

By AJ Glasser

Video game developer Ecko Code is launching a series of social games on Facebook based on leading Showtime original series Weeds, Dexter, and The Borgias.

Ecko Code began as a video game studio set up by entrepreneur Marc Ecko, who currently sits on its board of directors. The developer got its start on consoles with 2006 PlayStation 2 and Xbox game, Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. Though the game received favorable reviews, it wasn’t profitable enough for Ecko Code to continue developing for consoles. Through a partnership with TV network Showtime, the studio went into mobile games with a licensed Dexter title for iOS in 2009.

The Weeds game, Weeds Social Club, is the first of Ecko Code’s Facebook titles. The game is officially developed by Mytopia and published by Ecko Code in collaboration with show producer Lionsgate Entertainment. We took a look at the game in its early beta state, observing that while certain themes of the game were shared with the show, it was largely a standalone experience. Players take the role of series star, Nancy Botwin, and attempt to grow and sell marijuana while avoiding law enforcement. Most plot elements and other characters are omitted from the game and it’s not clear where, if anywhere, the game fits into the show’s continuity. Weeds Social Club will go into public beta as soon as this week.

As for the future, Fernandez says the developer will eventually move to web-based multiplayer games and tablet games.

“On Facebook we’re going to stick to Dexter, to Weeds, and to Borgias,” he says. “Thank God we made our money back on [Getting Up], but the retail games business is a tough business.

So we jumped to digital distribution, mobile, and now free-to-play. We’re not afraid to say ‘this isn’t working, let’s go find another niche.’”（source:insidesocialgames）

5）Skiller Announces a Special $1,000 Promotion Plan for Every Game Developer

Skiller, a leading provider of social mobile gaming platforms, announced today a special $1,000 promotion plan for every game developer, who develops a new game with Skiller SDK or integrate the Skiller SDK into his existing mobile games. The full promotion plan terms and conditions can be found in Skiller’s website.

The Skiller SDKs along with Skiller’s social cloud are offered free to game developers. The Skiller social cloud abstracts a number of crucial features such as multiplayer game-play server, authentication service, messaging, monetization and analytics services, so that game developers can concentrate on developing their game logic rather than worrying about the social integration.

Skiller recently released its Java SDK, which joins its immensely popular Android SDK release, thereby enabling game developers to introduce a new social dimension in their existing and upcoming games.

The Skiller platform currently hosts millions of games sessions each month, with players from more than 200 countries. Skiller users have experienced a truly social gaming experience over several mobile platforms, including J2ME, Android and Blackberry phones (WP7 and iPhone are coming soon).

Developers interested in learning more about Skiller’s special $1,000 Promotion plan for game developers should visit the special promotion webpage.（source:sfgate）   http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/08/22/prweb8725930.DTL

6）Sims and Smurfs Still Ahead on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Games by MAU

By AJ Glasser

The Sims Social and The Smurfs & Co. switch places in the top two, while The Pokerist Club edges past Zoo World 2 for a spot in the top three on this week’s list of fastest-growing games by monthly active users.

There’s not much in the way of newcomers to talk about this week, but we observe two Chinese-language games — FarmVille Chinese and Happy Elements’ My Kingdom — squeezing into our top 20. This is something of a rarity as most Chinese-language games only turn up in our rankings by daily active users, never quite reaching the size needed to claim spots on our top 20 rankings by MAU. FarmVille Chinese is still the largest Chinese-language game on Facebook to date:（source:insidesocialgames）