1）科技博客gigaom最近根据AppData数据，对《Draw Something》、《Words with Friends》等游戏用户粘性（DAU/MAU）进行比较，指出《Draw Something》目前用户虽然已经下滑，但用户粘性仍保持在25%左右，而《Words with Friends》则高达40%——相当于约半数月活跃用户每天都在玩这款游戏。

draw something vs words with friends(from gigaom)

Zynga头号热门游戏《CityVille》目前用户粘性远低于17%，《FarmVille》则是20%左右，《CastleVille》用户粘性约23%。

cityville vs farmville vs castleville(from gigaom)

2）日本手机社交游戏公司DeNA中国子公司及人人网日前宣布进行合作，将通过Mobage游戏平台为人人用户引进更多游戏。

Mobage现已针对日本、中国、韩国和西方市场推出本土化的第一、第二和第三方游戏，其日本平台目前注册用户已超过4000万，运营游戏超过2000款。

DeNA于2011年向Android、iOS平台推出Mobage中国版本，该平台目前有近40款游戏。

3）据games.com报道，Konami日前向Facebook推出新款游戏《Puzzle Chasers》，玩家需在两种模式中完成多项拼图益智游戏。其中的“故事”模式以一些故事为背景，允许玩家选择自己想填充的空白拼图，若能在规定时间内准确拼出形状就能赢得奖励。

Puzzle Chasers(from games)

而“闪电”模式则更具挑战性，要求玩家完成特定的任务，而非自主选择拼图内容。

4）《上古卷轴Online》创意总监Paul Sage在最近采访中表示，他认为现代MMORPG战斗模式缺乏创新（游戏邦注：《上古卷轴Online》是Zenimax Online首款游戏，该工作室与《上古卷轴》开发商Bethesda Game Studios是姐妹公司）。

Paul Sage(from article.wn.com)

据其所称，这类游戏的战斗模式的创新停滞不前，这也是他们面临的一大挑战。他称玩家通常会认为MMO拥有特定的玩家模式，但Zenimax则希望打破MMO理念的束缚，他认为MMO并非一种游戏机制，它本身也并非一种游戏类型，MMO游戏并不一定存在RPG元素。

Sage称MMOPRG首先要有极具吸引力的RPG元素，要让玩家觉得爱不释手。另外他还指出《上古卷轴Online》中的社交层面甚为关键，它是游戏设计的基石之一。

5）据gamasutra报道，日本社交游戏公司GREE最近与Take-Two子公司2K合作，向其手机社交游戏平台推出《Sid Meier’s Civilization》和《Sid Meier’s Pirates!》。

2K中国工作室也将根据这两款游戏制作新款智能手机游戏，另外2K还将与日本开发商Cyberagent合作向GREE日本平台推出《NBA 2K》游戏。

6）在本周的DAU增长最快Facebook游戏榜单上，King.com作品《Candy Crush Saga》持续领先，过去一周中新增50万DAU，增幅为19%。

Zynga游戏《Bubble Safari》新增48万DAU，增幅为52%；PlayQ游戏《Bubble Blitz》位列第三，新增37万DAU，增幅为59%；另一款King.com游戏《Bubble Witch Saga》新增30万DAU，增幅为5%；EA游戏《模拟人生社交版》新增30万DAU，增幅为11%。

Top gainers this week-DAU(from AppData)

《模拟人生社交版》最近的流量增长可能与其推出的邀请好友重访游戏的限时奖励活动有关，此外最近公布的《模拟城市社交版》消息可能也是用户重新对其产生兴趣的原因之一。（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）Which Facebook apps are people really using?

By Rani Molla J

User engagement can be a very slippery statistic. Although sites and apps like to talk about how fast their unique visitors are growing, it’s more important to know how many of those users are actually using the site regularly.

Using AppData, which measures the usership of Facebook apps through the Facebook API, we determined “stickiness” for a handful of popular apps. Stickiness is the ratio of daily active users to monthly active users—or, the percentage of monthly users that use the app every day. It’s an excellent way to gauge an app’s popularity. We compared some competing apps that users mainly access through Facebook — Viddy and Socialcam, for example, and Draw Something vs. Words with Friends — to see which have higher user engagement. Here are the results.

Viddy vs. Socialcam

Facebook’s recent purchase of photo titan Instagram raises the stakes for the obvious next technology in line: social video. Viddy and Socialcam, both launched over two years ago, are battling for usership, brands and celebrities. With 6,600,000 daily active users and 54,100,000 monthly active users and a stickiness of 12 percent (compared to Viddy’s 1,500,000 DAU, 35,000,000 MAU and 4 percent stickiness) Socialcam is clearly in the lead.

Draw Something vs. Words With Friends

Zynga bought OMGPOP, the maker of Draw Something, in March. Since then, Zynga has started selling prime ad space on the app, and Draw Something’s user engagement has dropped to a still very respectable 25 percent. But not nearly as respectable as Words With Friends, which is at 40 percent — so that means, almost half of its monthly active Facebook users are spreading their words daily.

CityVille vs. FarmVille vs. CastleVille

Zynga has been making some big moves lately. This month, it joined with American Express for a Zynga Serve Rewards card, which offers users Zynga Farm Cash as opposed to more traditional rewards like actual cash or air travel.  Zynga also hired a Washington lobbyist firm to effect change in the real world as well. In its popular “ville” series of games,  CastleVille leads the pack when it comes to user engagement.（source:gigaom）

2）Mobage Games for up to 154 Million Chinese Users

By Sebastian Sujka

ShareTweet Japanese mobile social giant DeNA and 154 million users strong Chinese social network Renren have announced today that DeNA’s Chinese subsidiary (DeNA China) and Renren have entered into a partnership to bring mobile games from around the world to Renren users through DeNA’s social gaming platform Mobage. Mobage offers first-, second- and third-party games on four localized user networks across Japan, China, South Korea and the West. The original Mobage network in Japan currently serves over 40 million registered users with more than 2,000 titles.

DeNA launched Mobage China for Android in July 2011 and for iOS in November 2011, and nearly 40 titles are currently available on the platform. As a part of the alliance, DeNA China and Renren have opened a section for Mobage inside the Renren mobile app for Android, which displays Mobage games to users accessing Renren on Android-compatible smartphones. Renren’s Android app users can download games from the Mobage section and log in to Mobage with their Renren IDs.

“DeNA China’s goal is to bring high-quality mobile games from around the world to the ever-increasing smartphone users in China,” said Lou Fei, Vice President of DeNA China. “Mobage and Renren are complementary in terms of users and offerings, and DeNA hopes to pioneer China’s social gaming market together with Renren.”（source:socialgamesobserver）

3）E3 2012: Puzzle Chasers hunts down a new kind of Facebook game

by Joe Osborne

No one ever said that it was hard to try new things in the social gaming world–it’s just that not many have tried. Puzzle Chasers, a new Facebook game from Konami that’s a brand new property, gives it the old college try. What’s even better is that, on some levels, it succeeds, but more importantly where it counts: the play hook.

It goes without saying that Puzzle Chasers is a puzzle game, but what doesn’t is the fact that it is a jigsaw puzzle game. Players are tasked with completing various jigsaw puzzles in two different game modes: Story and Blitz, both of which approach the method of completing these puzzles differently.

The Story mode, for one, allows players to choose the empty puzzle pieces that they’d like to fill, presenting them with a few options. Of course, players are timed and rewarded for successfully matching puzzle pieces to the correct open shapes. With that comes the supposed motivation for completing said puzzles: a “romantic comedy” storyline surrounding two love birds on the run to stop an evil threat from stealing the world’s artifacts … or something like that.

Frankly, story in social games is a novel idea, but it’s terribly difficult to deliver a compelling or even entertaining story in a social game. Few Facebook games, in any, have come close to gripping me with the story they’re trying to tell, and based on a brief introduction to Puzzle Chasers, this puzzler falls into that group as well.

Then again, do players really come to Facebook games to be told a story, anyway? No, they’re there to be entertained through play, and that is something Puzzle Chasers does surprisingly well. Take Blitz mode, for instance, which is a more challenging take on what’s established in story mode. Instead of choosing which space to fill next, the game tells the player which space to fill. This serves to keep players on their toes, as do power-ups and rewards for streaks of successful matches.

Not only is Puzzle Chasers a pleasure to play, it’s not hard on the eyes either. It’s a shame that engaging, gripping story is so tough to create on Facebook, because the character art in Puzzle Chasers is just dying to be given a voice. Regardless, Puzzle Chasers is, at the very least, shaping up to be a refreshing addition to the stable of puzzle games on Facebook, something we’ll make sure of when the game launches later this month.（source:games）

4）Elder Scrolls Online director: MMORPG combat design lacks innovation

by Kris Graft

When Elder Scrolls Online’s creative director Paul Sage looks around at today’s MMORPG combat mechanics, he sees that something is lacking.

Asked about his thoughts on modern MMORPG combat design, he told Gamasutra at E3 this week, “There hasn’t been a lot of innovation in combat, from several games out there. I’m not going to name any.”

Paul Sage is leading the creative vision for The Elder Scrolls Online, the first game from Zenimax Online. It’s the sister studio to The Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda Game Studios, home of hit single-player RPGs.

“One of the things we’re trying to do [with our MMORPG] is get that feeling of active and reactive combat. So my take is that you have to feel like, ‘This is really kind of like The Elder Scrolls’ [single player RPG] combat. It’s really active. I’m actually surprised, and it’s fun to play with other people.’

“I do think [combat] has stagnated from game-to-game, somewhat, but that’s why it’s a challenge to us. The gauntlet’s been thrown down. Can we make it fun? Can we make it compelling?”

Sage said Zenimax Online “absolutely” seeks feedback from developers at Bethesda. “We do talk back and forth. We send things to them and say, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’ And they’re really good at responding and saying, ‘We like this, but maybe if you tweak it this way…’ Bethesda has been absolutely fantastic about having us work with their IP.”

‘MMO’ is not game mechanics

Players have come to expect “MMOs” to play a certain way. But Sage said the studio is breaking away from the idea of an MMO as a genre of games. That frees up the development team creatively when thinking about how to implement satisfying game mechanics.

“An ‘MMO’ is not game mechanics, it’s not a genre in an of itself,” he explained. “You can have an MMO that has nothing to do with an RPG, necessarily.

“The big thing is that it has got to be a compelling RPG first,” he added. “There has to be growth mechanics that compel you. As a player, you have to have that feeling of ‘If I just stay up for another hour, I might get this one thing.’ And if you don’t have that feeling, it’s not what we want. We want you to be compelled to think ‘I want to find out that thing that’s around the corner.’”

Aside from strong combat, he said exploration is a big focus for The Elder Scrolls Online. Sage added that the social aspect of The Elder Scrolls: Online is particularly important, but said the studio isn’t revealing details of those features quite yet. “That is one of the cornerstones [of the game's design]. I will say that playing with your friends and meeting strangers, and being able to just do it in a way where you’re informed, it’s a big thing for us.” （source:gamasutra）

5）Gree partners with 2K to add Civilization, Pirates to its network

by Eric Caoili

Gree has partnered with Take-Two subsidiary 2K to add two more notable Western franchises, Sid Meier’s Civilization and Sid Meier’s Pirates!, to its mobile social games network.

Tokyo-based Gree has made plenty of efforts in recent months to strike deals with Western publishers to create games for its newly launched global network, signing agreements with Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed), Gameloft (Gangster), Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters), and CrowdStar (Top Girl).

2K’s studio in China will create new smartphone games based on the Civilization and Pirates franchises. It will work with Gree to introduce social features to those titles. 2K also intends to work with Japanese developer Cyberagent to bring its NBA 2K franchise to Gree’s platform in Japan.（source:gamasutra）

6）Candy Crush Saga beats out Bubble Safari for fastest-growing Facebook game by DAU

Mike Thompson

King.com’s Candy Crush Saga regained the top spot this week as the fastest-growing Facebook game by daily active users, gaining 500,000 DAU for a 19 percent growth.

Zynga’s Bubble Safari took the new spot, bringing in 480,000 DAU for a 52 percent gain. PlayQ’s Bubble Blitz came in at No. 3 with 370,000 DAU, a 59 percent increase. King.com’s Bubble Witch Saga looks like it’s starting to recover from May’s traffic drop, jumping up by 300,000 DAU for a 5 percent swell. EA’s The Sims Social also had a gain of 300,000 DAU, up by 11 percent.

The Sims Social’s been gaining traffic over the past few weeks after several months of decline. The traffic improvement seems to be due to the limited-time quests that players are inviting friends back into the game so they can all receive special in-game rewards. Also, the recent announcement about SimCity Social has likely renewed some interest in The Sims Social, as they’re both based on popular “Sim” computer games. Note that while SimCity Social has a tab in EA’s cross-promotion bar, the game is not yet live. We expect to see a lot of traffic to the game’s page in the lead-up to its launch, much as we saw for The Sims Social.

Four other games had gains greater than 20 percent. King.com’s Pyramid Solitaire Saga was up by 230,000 DAU for a 22 percent increase. Cookapps’s bubble shooter Buggle snagged 220,000 DAU, up 22 percent. Peak Games’s own bubble shooter Lost Bubble was close behind with 210,000 DAU for a 24 percent gain. Finally, Social Point’s Dragon City hatched 140,000 DAU for an 86 percent boost.（source:insidesocialgames）