1）投资银行Digi-Capital最新报告预测，2011年第三季度电子游戏领域的投资数额将近2010年同期的两倍，全球游戏公司兼并和收购交易超过2010年同期的两倍。

Digi-Capital总经理Tim Merel表示，多数投资、兼并和收购行为发生在社交、手机、网页MMO和云游戏领域。

该报告还指出，掌机游戏发行商“难以适应”产业转型，尽管这一领域的投资仍在增长，但主流掌机游戏发行商更关注少量产品，向其投入更高的市场营销预算，其所获投资金额并非获得成功的重要保证。

global game leaders(from venturebeat)

中国、日本和韩国在线游戏市场获得重大发展，预计在今年底，中国将统领整个世界游戏市场，占据全球在线、手机游戏营收49%的份额，而欧洲将占据17%，日本占14%，但北美市场的地位依然不容忽视。

2）社交游戏开发商Crowdpark日前通过欧洲的Target Partners、Earlybird Venture Capital等机构在第二轮融资中筹得600万美元，目前总共融资800万美元。

crowdpark_infographic_dynamic_betting(from insidesocialgames)

该公司今年推出的游戏《Bet Tycoon》（原名“Crowdpark-Betting Game”）在经常出现在今年夏季的前20名Facebook新晋游戏榜单，玩家在游戏中要以虚拟货币对一些热点文化现象（游戏邦注：例如体育比赛结果）下注，他们要用Facebook Credits兑换虚拟货币，如果赢得赌注，赢得更多虚拟货币，但不可将这些虚拟货币拿去兑换Facebook Credits。据AppData数据显示，这款游戏目前MAU是48万，DAU为2万。

Crowdpark表示将用这笔资金扩大团队规模，并向其他平台拓展业务，公司最近成立了旧金山工作室，将在未来三个月将手机平台发布一款向体育比赛结果下注的新游戏。

3）据pocketgamer报道，法国游戏发行商Gameloft近日确认一批《Order & Chaos Online》玩家在Facebook和手机平台帐号被黑的消息，并称公司正对此事进行调查，但并未透露具体情况。

order-chaos-online(from wireless.ign.com)

目前受此影响的具体帐号数量仍不明确（games.com报道称已有5万名Facebook玩家帐号被黑），但Gameloft论坛已充斥大量玩家的抱怨和不满，不少人要求Gamelolft在解决问题之前彻底关闭游戏项目。据报道所称，黑客可能由此轻松获取玩家的登录信息，掌握玩家与他人的交流和交易情况。

4）游戏发行商及IndiePub母公司Zoo Entertainment最近债务缠身，收到了Panta Distibution LLC公司的117万美元催款通知。

ZOO-indiePub Logo(from marketwire)

据报道，该催款通知称Zoo没有履行两家公司在6月份达成的“最小付款额度”协议，但Zoo却称已和对方协商将延迟付款。

据gamasutra报道所称，Zoo最近麻烦不断，如果到2月份时还不提交最少250万美元的负资产抵押，甚至有可能被纳斯达克证券交易所退市。除此之外，Zoo还被股东指控在去年虚报净收益和股东资产；由于首席执行官Mark Serement从掌机游戏领域向数字运营模式的“艰难”转型，该公司在截止6月30日的这一季度已亏损至少1000万美元。

Zoo在上个月宣布即将推出IndiePub发行平台（游戏邦注：该平台号称“独立开发者的Steam”），以便独立开发者向iOS、Andorid、Windows、Mac和Flash平台快速发布游戏。

5）《Triple Town》原先是一款投放于亚马逊Kindle eReader的连线消除游戏，其开发商Spry Fox近日宣布将该游戏移植到Facebook和Google+，并将在不久后推出一个手机版本。

据gamezebo报道，该游戏Facebook版本目前已有15万玩家。

triple_town(from next-gen.biz)

6）Facebook近日在好友邀请菜单中新增了一个“前50名好友”选项，支持开发商优化游戏邀请过程，提高用户留存率。

Top 50 friends(from insidesocialgames)

以《Ravenskye City》这款游戏为例，在好友邀请菜单中，用户“选择前50名好友”对话框，系统就会自动选择出现在好友列表中的前50个名字。该对话框会根据一般好友过滤器和开发商创建的额外过滤器（例如Ravenwood Fair Friends）筛选用户名称，但玩家也可以选择手动添加好友名称。

不过观察者指出，这种“前50名好友”的邀请机制仍然有待完善和改进，毕竟由系统自动提供的前50名好友并不一定都玩过某款Facebook游戏，所以他们未必都会接受邀请。

7）据GDC China报道，EA BioWare高级创意总监Paul Barnett将出席11月12日-14日GDC China 2011 “在线游戏开发和业务”主会场，发表主题为“遍及全球和因地制宜：Paul关于在线游戏开发的个人见解”的主题演讲。

Paul Barnett(from GDC China)

保罗•巴尼特参与制作的知名游戏包括《Cosrin传奇》、《英雄王国》，以及的大型多人在线角色扮演游戏《 战锤Online：决战世纪》，代表作是《战锤：幻想战役》和《网络创世纪》。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Report: Video Game Investments Doubled In 2011

by Mike Rose

A new report from investment bank Digi-Capital has found that the number of video game investments in 2011 is nearly double that of 2010, while the number of global games mergers and acquisitions in 2011 is more than double that of 2010.

As part of the Global Games Investment Review 2011′s third quarter transaction update, Digi-Capital managing director Tim Merel explained that most of these actions have been occuring as part of the social, mobile, browser-based MMO and cloud gaming sectors.

As well as this shift to online and mobile games, the report noted that many major console publishers are “struggling to adapt” to the rapidly growing sector, and therefore are not driving investments as much.

Merel said that, according to the company’s study, “now is a great time for the strongest independent online/mobile games companies to either invest for growth, or take advantage of the market to look for strategic exits.”

The report did note that console game investment is still accelerating, but that investment has “no guarantee of success, with major console publisher strategies appearing to have converged on fewer franchises, refreshed more often with higher marketing budgets.”

Elsewhere, the report noted that there has been “significant activity” in online gaming from China, Japan and South Korea, and that China should be dominating the global games market by the end of the year.

Digi-Capital suggested that China will take 49 percent of the worldwide revenue share for online and mobile gaming, while Europe will take 17 percent and Japan 14 percent. However, the report did note that North America “remains important” in the sector.（source:gamasutra）

2）Crowdpark Bets on Forecasting Algorithm for Facebook Game, Scores $6M Round for Mobile Development

AJ Glasser•

Berlin-based social betting game developer Crowdpark has raised a $6 million second round of investment led by Europe’s Target Partners with participation from previous investor Earlybird Venture Capital. This brings the developer’s total funding to $8 million.

Crowdpark made some ink earlier this year with Bet Tycoon (formerly titled “Crowdpark – Betting Game”), consistently landing in our top 20 emerging Facebook games category toward the beginning of the summer. The game allows players to place bets of virtual currency on a range of topics in popular culture (e.g. the outcome of sports games) or on customized private topics (e.g. “Is Jane from accounting dating John from the mail room?”). Players pay in Facebook Credits to receive a pool of virtual currency, which is then placed on bets. Players receive virtual currency whenever they win a bet; but per Facebook policy and many online gambling laws in various countries, this cannot be converted back into Facebook Credits.

As the actual process of the game isn’t very visual, Crowdpark included this infographic with the press release announcing the funding to illustrate the process:

Over the next couple of weeks and months, Crowdpark plans to update Bet Tycoon with content that makes it feel more like a traditional Facebook game — such as a player progression system and a storyline where the player is encouraged to become the ultimate betting tycoon.

Where Bet Tycoon really gets interesting is in the dynamics of bets in real time. Using Crowdpark’s forecasting algorithm, the game shifts the winnings and odds of a bet depending on how the actual event being bet on plays out. At any point during a football game, for example, a player could cash out before losing a bet completely to recoup some of their virtual currency.

It’s this piece of technology that investor Target Partners found especially compelling. Target partner Waldemar Jantz tells us that the company had never before invested in a social game — only in technology The combination of social game and betting (without actual gambling) was also a factor that convinced the firm to invest in Crowdpark. Earlybird Venture Capital is best known in the social games industry for backing Peak Games, a Facebook game publisher-developer that has the lead on Turkish, Middle Eastern and North African markets.

Going forward, Crowdpark’s Ingo Hinterding says the new round of funding will go toward hiring on staff and expanding into other platforms. The developer recently opened an office in San Francisco and plans to release a new game for mobile platforms centered on sports betting in the next three months. At some point after that, Crowdpark hopes to release a third product that leverages dual-screen players that like to watch an event on one screen (say, a TV) while monitoring their bets on another (like an iPad). Hinterding also says Google+ may be a possible platform for the developer, “once we’ve seen the numbers.”

Crowdpark is also launching a Social Betting Index on its own site to show the world what people are betting on. According to Hinterding, this information cannot yet be broken out by region or demographic, but this could be a feature added to the index at a later date.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, Bet Tycoon currently enjoys 480,000 monthly active users and 20,000 daily active users.（source:insidesocialgames）

3）Order & Chaos Online accounts hacked on both Facebook and mobile

by Joe Osborne

Here we go again. Pocket Gamer reports that French mobile and social game company Gameloft has confirmed that a number of Order & Chaos Online players on both Facebook and mobile devices have had their accounts hacked. Gameloft digital marketing and community manager Callum Rowley told Pocket Gamer that Gameloft is investigating the breach.

The exact number of compromised accounts is unknown as of this writing, but the Gameloft forums are filled with player complaints that urge the company to shut down the game entirely while it resolves the situation. According to Pocket Gamer, the most popular theory for how the hack–which appears to be exclusive to Order & Chaos Online–was possible is that someone used a “sniffer”, or a snippet of code that intercepts data sent to a device or network between players.

This way, the hacker can easily read the log-in information of the player with whom he or she chatted or traded with, the direct communications necessary to “sniff out” the personal data. However, this has yet to be confirmed by Gameloft, and is merely a popular theory spreading on the game’s forums. As far as we know, up to 50,000 Order & Chaos player accounts could have been compromised on Facebook, as that’s what AppData reports is the game’s monthly active player base. We’ve contacted Gameloft for comment.（source:games）

4）Zoo Entertainment Receives Default Notice On $1.17M Debt

by Kyle Orland

Troubled game publisher and IndiePub parent Zoo Entertainment reports it has received a notice of default from Panta Distibution LLC on $1.17 million owed under a June agreement.

The default notice says Zoo has “failed to comply with minimum payment amounts” under that agreement, but Zoo says it is talking with the company about obtaining a waiver allowing for extra time to pay.

Panta’s default notice is only the latest sign of trouble for the beleaguered Zoo, which was last month was threatened with delisting by the NASDAQ stock exchange if it couldn’t bring significant negative stockholder equity up to a minimum of $2.5 million by February.

Zoo is also the target of a class-action lawsuit brought by shareholders accusing the company of knowingly overstating net income and shareholder equity last year.

Filings for the quarter ending June 30 revealed the company lost just over $10 million during the period, a result CEO Mark Seremet attributed to a “rough” transition from budget console releases to a fully digital business model.

Last month, Zoo announced the impending launch of the IndiePub publishing platform as a way for independent developers to easily distribute their games on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Flash. （source:gamasutra）

5）Triple Town to expand into “Triple Town World,” get mobile versions

By Andrew Webster

The match-3 hit Triple Town has had a strange life, starting out on the Amazon Kindle eReader before moving on to social networks like Facebook and Google+. Now developer Spry Fox has revealed that Triple Town will be expanded significantly in the future, and that a mobile version of the game is very likely coming as well.

No details are available as to how the game will expand, but it sounds like Spry Fox has some pretty ambitious plans

“We definitely want to flesh out Triple Town,” Spry Fox’s David Edery told Gamezebo. “It’s just the core of what we see as a much larger game; a whole Triple Town World really.”

As for the mobile version, when asked if such a thing was being planned, Edery said simply, “yes.”（source:gamezebo）

6）New Facebook Game Invite Tool Streamlines Friend Requests Process

AJ Glasser

A new “Top 50 Friends” option in Friend Invite menus on Facebook streamlines the game requests process and could produce higher retention.

As spotted in the newly-launched Ravenskye City, the Invite Friends menu now displays a “Select Top 50 Friends” box that automatically selects the first 50 names that appear on the Friends list (which is organized alphabetically). This box appears both for the general Friends filter and for any additional filters the developer has created (such as Ravenwood Fair Friends) filter. If a player goes through their list to manually select friends, the number in the Top Friends filter decreases accordingly. This means that at any time, the player can add to the list of friends they’ve already selected with remaining invites.

The Friend Request portion of a social game is crucial to viral growth because it exposes new games to potentially receptive users, but it can be harmful to retention. For example, a player faced with an unsorted list of friends might opt out of sending Requests for fear of annoying a non-gamer friend. Players also may be frustrated by having to click individual boxes next to friend names repeatedly until they hit the maximum invite limit (which now appears to be 50 whereas a few months ago it was fixed at 30 for most social games). Both examples could hurt retention because it creates friction around the Request process — which most games rely on not only for recruiting new users but also for gifting systems.

This “top 50″ option in the Requests list will go a long way toward eliminating both concerns — particularly if developers craft better filters that return only those friends that have a history of exchanging gifts with the player. In its present state, inviting your top 50 friends as organized alphabetically isn’t very useful as there are no guarantees that those friends even play games on Facebook.（source:insidesocialgames）