1）据日经新闻报道，韩国发行商Nexon最近正准备在东京证券交易所上市，该公司估值已达13亿美元，计划于12月份进行IPO。

如果Nexon实现这一目标，它将成为日本今年影响力最大的一次IPO。

Nexon美国公司不久前公布的财报显示，公司第三季度营收比2010年同期增长29%，连接9个季度实现营收增长。

该公司目前最主要的Facebook游戏是根据网游《冒险岛》而开发的《MapleStory Adventures》，尽管这款Facebook游戏仍处于测试阶段，但9月份高峰时期的MAU已超过300万，DAU也接近50万。但据AppData数据显示，该游戏目前MAU已下滑至160万，DAU也仅剩21万。该公司表示将于本月结束游戏测试。

MapleStory Adventures MAU DAU(from AppData)

据观察者所称，Nexon进军Facebook游戏领域的历程并不顺利，之前有传闻称Nexon将发布一款游轮管理游戏《Wonder Cruise》，但现在仍处于前期测试阶段，已经从原来的6000 MAU下滑至最近的248.

另一款Facebook游戏《KartRider Rush》表现稍好，最近MAU为11万，DAU为2万，而一个月前的MAU则是7万，DAU不足1万。但仍然不敌游戏原版本《跑跑卡丁车》，后者在韩国同一时刻玩游戏的用户多达23万。

Nexon在10月份发布了《Zombie Misfits》（目前仍处于测试阶段），这款与Antic Entertainment合作开发的塔防游戏在短短两周内就获得了10万MAU和2万以上的DAU。

该公司在今年8月向发行商及开发商6waves Lolapps投资（数额不明），在3月份向社交游戏公司A Bit Lucky投资500万美元。从总体上看，Nexon最近在Facebook平台的MAU为180万，DAU超过25万。

2）据business insider报道，Facebook首席执行官马克·扎克伯格在最近的媒体采访主动谈及游戏话题，他称现在的游戏产业格局已经发生巨变，许多游戏公司都在进军社交领域，但尽管很看好游戏产业的发展，Facebook仍然不准备自主开发游戏。

Mark Zuckerberg(from games)

他表示Facebook最好还是集中精力和资源为游戏、音乐服务等小型产品打造一个优化的生态圈，假如Facebook成立自己的游戏工作室，可能就会使公司偏离原来的核心产品——社交网络和平台。

3）社交游戏开发商Funzio日前宣布游戏行业元老、前EA高管Jami Moledina将加入公司团队，担任Funzio业务开发副总裁。

Moledina之前曾任EA Partners业务开发主管，参与发行了《Brutal Lengend》、《摇滚乐队》和《Shank》等游戏。除此之外，他还担任过游戏开发者大会（GDC）执行主管。

他称自己在过去几个月中思考了游戏行业发展现状，认为未来占据主流的游戏必将是那些跨平台、无技术或价格障碍的产品，Funzio是有可能实现梦想的初创企业之一，他将在自己的新岗位上向社交游戏领域引进更多传统游戏。

Funzio目前有65名成员，在今年5月融资2000万美元用于开发Facebook、iOS和Android跨平台游戏。

4）日本社交游戏公司DeNA近日宣布进军韩国市场，通过韩国最大的门户网站Daum（游戏邦注：其每月页面浏览量达200多亿次）推出Mobage Korea平台。

dena-daum(from spapp.jp)

这其合作由DeNA今年在韩国成立的子公司DeNA Seoul处理完成，这个新平台将锁定韩国智能手机用户，预计于2012年第一季度发布。

DeNA Seoul将通过Daum现存的3800万注册用户，以及韩国最大移动广告网站AD@m每月100多亿次的页面浏览量，把Mobage Korea推向数千万新用户，两者还将在Daum网页和应用中合作推广Mobage Korea服务。

5）手机社交游戏公司ngmoco执行制作人Chris Plummer最近宣布，公司即将发布一款手机社交RPG游戏《SkyFall》。

SkyFall(from games)

玩家在游戏中有三种角色可供选择：盗贼、法师和战士。不同角色有不同的道具和技能，玩家可以升级攻击力、防御力、能源（巫术或魔力值等）以及运气（用于躲避敌人攻击）这四种属性。

SkyFall(from games)

进入游戏后，玩家可点击屏幕上的地图开始探索之旅，在游戏世界中还会遇到多种NPC角色，这些NPC会告知玩家关于游戏世界的背景故事，或者向玩家分配一些任务。该游戏的战利品屏幕设置有点耗时，玩家必须亲自点击每件道具才能拾取物品。道具存放的时间过长可能会变质，但玩家可修复道具，或者到附近城镇变卖多余道具以购买新道具。（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: Nexon Filing for $1.3 Billion IPO

Kathleen De Vere

South Korean game publisher Nexon is eying an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange that would peg the company’s value at $1.3 billion dollars according to TechCrunch’s translation of Japanese newspaper Nikkei. The offering is scheduled for next month.

If Nexon meets its goals, it would be the biggest IPO Japan has seen this year. The announcement comes days after Nexon America reported its third quarter revenue was up 29% over 2010’s numbers, the ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth for the company.

While Nexon may best known as an online gaming company responsible for its hugely successful multiplayer online games (MMOs) like MapleStory, the company has been making an aggressive push into social gaming this year.

So far the company’s biggest hit has been MapleStory spin-off MapleStory Adventures. While still be in beta, the Facebook game peaked with more than 3 million MAU and almost 500,000 DAU in early September. However, since then the game has begun to lose steam, dropping to 1.6 million MAU and 210,000 DAU according to AppData. Nexon has said it plans to bring the game out of beta this month. Below is the traffic trend for MapleStory Adventure for the 30-day period between August 30 and September 30:

The transition to developing Facebook games has not been entirely smooth for Nexon. In September it was rumored that the company would be debuting a cruise ship management sim called Wonder Cruise, but the game failed to launch and has since stagnated. The game is technically still in pre-beta testing, but has dropped from 6,000 MAU to just 248 according to AppData.

KartRider Rush has fared much better than Wonder Cruise with 110,000 MAU and 20,000 DAU, up from 70,000 MAU and less than 10,000 DAU a month ago. Even so, the game is still eclipsed by MapleStory: Adventures and nowhere near as popular as its parent game, KartRider, which sees as many as 230,000 thousand people playing at once in its native Korea.

Nexon’s most recent game, Zombie Misfits, launched in October and is still in beta. The a tower defense title was co-developed with Antic Entertainment and has seen strong growth according to AppData, hitting 100,000 MAU and more than 20,000 DAU in just over two weeks.

Nexon has also solidified its commitment to the social gaming space in recent months through strategic funding. The company invested an unspecified amount in developer and publisher 6waves Lolapps in August and $5 million in social gaming company A Bit Lucky in March. Overall Nexon, currently sees 1.8 million MAU and just over 250,000 DAU across all its Facebook games.（source:insidesocialgames）

2）Facebook’s Zuckerberg ‘pretty sure’ company won’t make social games

by Joe Osborne

Riiight. We’re onto you, Mark. Jokes (momentarily) aside, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) and COO Sheryl Sandberg told journalist Charlie Rose during a PBS interview that aired Monday night that Facebook will not build its own social games, Business Insider reports. However, it’s interesting to note that the Big Z is the one who led the conversation into games, and continues to praise them.

“One thing that we haven’t talked about at all here are games, right,” Zuckerberg told Rose. “I mean, games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga.”

Despite his deep enthusiasm for social games, the Facebook chief said, “No, I’m pretty sure we’re not going to build any games.” That is, after Rose repeatedly interrupted the guy … jeez. Zuckerberg went on to elaborate that Facebook is better off focusing its resources on creating a single ecosystem for smaller products, like games, music streaming services and more.

The guy kind of has a point. For Facebook to start its own game studio, it would draw focus away from the company’s core product: a social network and platform. （source:games）

3）Industry Veteran Jamil Moledina Joins Social Dev Funzio

by Tom Curtis

Industry Veteran Jamil Moledina Joins Social Dev Funzio

Game Advertising Online
Social game developer and Crime City creator Funzio has announced that industry veteran and former Electronic Arts executive Jamil Moledina will join the company as vice president of business development.

Prior to joining the company, Moledina served as director of business development for Electronic Art’s EA Partners program, which published notable titles such as Brutal Legend, Rock Band, and Shank, among others.

Moledina also spent several years as the executive director for the Game Developers Conference, which is owned by Gamasutra parent company UBM TechWeb.

Detailing his reasons for joining a social game startup, Moledina told Gamasutra that over the past several months, he contemplated the state of the games industry and “came up with a picture of the future where the dominant players presented games to audiences free from the friction of platform, technology, device, or price barriers.”

“Looking at the future that way, there were only a handful of companies that had the vision and the execution to make that future happen,” Moledina said. “Of those narrow choices, Funzio was the startup that could, as demonstrated by their first game Crime City being a hit on Facebook, Google+, and iOS. I really didn’t have a choice, I had to jump.”

Moledina said that in his new position, he hopes to introduce different, and perhaps more traditional products into the social space.

“I’m not sure that social games have to be very different from digitally downloaded or other lovingly crafted and designed games from the console and PC markets. Clearly, people love high quality entertainment, they are organically drawn to it,” he said.

“We’re at a very early stage in social games, where the model of cute, simplistic play attracts a wide audience. However, one can deduce that there is also an unmet market need for AAA action experiences.”

Currently, Funzio has 65 employees, and in May of this year, the company secured $20 million in funding to put toward cross-platform Facebook, iOS, and Android games. （source:gamasutra）

4）Mobage Goes To Korea, Via Daum [Social Games]

by Dr. Serkan Toto

DeNA has announced an interesting move to enter Korea today: Mobage Korea will be established in the gaming- and mobile-crazy nation via Daum, one of the country’s biggest web portals (yes, portals are still popular in Asia).

The deal was done through DeNA Seoul, a subsidiary DeNA set up in June this year.

DeNA explains:

This Mobage Korea service will be focused primarily on smartphone users in South Korea and is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2012.

By leveraging Daum’s existing 38 million registered users, social graphs and AD@m, South Korea’s largest mobile advertisement network with over 10 billion monthly page views, DeNA Seoul will be able to bring Mobage Korea to millions of new consumers. The two companies will also collaborate to promote Mobage Korea on Daum’s websites and apps.

One idea is to make it possible for game developers to offer games to a bigger audience by using the Mobage API: once a game is on Mobage in a certain country with the right specifications, it can technically be deployed on any other Mobage platform, too.

Daum is a web and mobile powerhouse in Korea, boasting 20 billion page views per month across its properties – so if managed properly, there’s a potential for Mobage to expand its global user base (that’s the other idea).（source:serkantoto）

5）Ngmoco dives into a mobile world of magic with SkyFall

by Brandy Shaul

When thinking about mobile RPGs, exploration, an in-depth storyline and strong social features might not be the first things that come to mind. According to ngmoco Executive Producer Chris Plummer, however, that’s exactly what we can look forward to when it comes to the company’s soon-to-be-released social, mobile, free-to-play RPG SkyFall (phew, what a mouthful).

In the world of SkyFall, the planet is literally full of magic, down to its very core. Massive beams of magical energy and light shoot towards the sky from the center of the earth, giving the entire planet (along with its inhabitants) the power to wield it. The balance shifts, however, as a meteor shower event called a SkyFall occurs, which damages these beams or shuts some down altogether. The fictional universe of SkyFall is a rich one, with a complete history based on an ancient race of inhabitants that crafted massive buildings and statues. You’ll spend your time in SkyFall interacting with these buildings and exploring various dungeons on maps via an overhead perspective.

SkyFall’s gameplay setup is one surrounding exploration, as Plummer told us during a demo of the game last week. Exploration was the “spark of inspiration that set off the idea of the game.” You’ll start your experience fairly simply, by choosing one of three classes for your character: rouge, mage or warrior. Depending on the character class you choose, you’ll have access to different weapons and skill sets, and you can put points into four attributes as you level those characters up: attack, defense, source (magic, or mana if you prefer) and luck, which improves your ability to dodge attacks.

Once you’re set loose into the game, you’ll start your quest for exploration by tapping on squares on each map. Each tap requires energy, limiting the amount of time you can play in a single sitting, but some taps can remove multiple squares at once. Only as you clear this “fog” off of areas on the map will you be able to see the buildings, treasure chests and even enemies underneath. In this way, the game retains the random encounter setup seen in many traditional RPGs, but in other cases (when you clear out whole sections of the map with a single click) also gives you the slight ability to avoid them.

As you make your way through the world, you’ll run into various NPCs that will either give you more of a background story on the game’s world, or will send you out on quests. These quests can be to simply make your way through an area to talk to another character or can be the expected varieties of item fetch quests and the like. During many of these quests, you’ll be asked to interact with either forests or dungeons, two “interior” map-types. Forests are fairly safe, and are used mostly for item collection (chopping down trees for wood, collecting resources to make potions, etc.) while Dungeons are far more dangerous and “random.”

Unlike in the outer world, where cleared squares stay cleared permanently, dungeons can and will be retaken by enemies and the fog if you leave them alone for long enough. While these dungeons’ layouts themselves won’t change, Plummer did tell us that “you can leave a dungeon and a little timer appears on the dungeon. As long as you continue to explore while the timer’s going, it will not re-shroud, but if you leave it for a long period of time, it will get retaken by the enemies.”

During combat itself, you’ll have the ability to wield multiple weapons (longswords, daggers, staffs, etc.) to the total of two weapons and two spells, but will need to choose the specific weapon you want to attack with before your turn. Each individual weapon has its own “Attack Bar,” which you’ll set into motion at the beginning of your attack. A small marker moves from left to right across the bar, and by tapping again while in the bar’s green section, you’ll perform a normal attack (of course, the stronger the weapon, the more damage you’ll do). Critical hit zones are found in red on these Attack Bars, adding an element of skill and timing to your actions.

You can use potions during battle to refill some of your health, but if you happen to perish, you’re left with a single hit point and transferred back out to the main map where you can try again. If you succeed in battle, you’ll be taken to the loot screen, where you’ll have the chance of finding some of the 1,000 different loot items in the game. Most of these are gear items (weapons, clothing, etc.) that you can equip to your character, while others might be for quests or crafting. Crafting itself wasn’t available in our demo, but Plummer told us that you might eventually be able to craft “things like potions and consumables… even though we haven’t locked the final design of it.”

This loot screen is a bit of a time-consuming process, as you’ll need to tap on each individual item that you wish to claim, but this allows you to better manage your limited inventory (32 item slots to start, which can be expanded as you level up). Your items will decay over time, and can be repaired, or you can simply head into one of the many towns you’ll encounter to buy new items or sell those extra, seemingly random items that you’ve claimed along the way.（source:games）