1）据insidesocialgames报道，Zynga日前宣布向Facebook推出新款Ville游戏《CoasterVille》（该游戏随后也将在Zynga.com上线）。

玩家在这款主题公园管理游戏中要从一小块游乐场起步，建造出世界上最大的主题公园。该游戏由Zynga洛杉矶工作室开发，该工作室之前曾推出《Empires & Allies》。

与其他Ville游戏一样，《CoasterVille》同样涉及扩地与管理社区元素，但其中的关键部分则是过山车，玩家在建设过程中可以自主选择过山车的轨道方向。

报道指出，主题公园模拟游戏目前在Facebook并不算盛行题材。6waves在3月份发行了由Noisy Duck开发的《Rollercoaster Mania》，它在5月份最高峰时的DAU为16万，但目前DAU已降至4万。

2）Superdata最新报告指出，10月份在Facebook玩社交博彩游戏的玩家，同比9月份下降了8.5%，此类游戏收益也同样有所下滑。

但Superdata认为这种情况并不意味着社交博彩游戏发展已经陷入瓶颈状态，因为这可能是因为用户在为即将到来的假期季省钱而缩减了在此类游戏中的投入。

《Zynga Slingo》在10月流失了1500万用户，对此类Facebook游戏的表现造成了重要影响。

值得注意的是，目前仍有31%社交游戏玩家在体验社交博彩游戏，而如果不是受到《Zynga Slingo》流量下滑的影响，这一用户比例还有可能达到32.6%。

Superdata估计社交博彩游戏市场规模已达17亿美元，预计到2016年这一数据将增长至24亿美元，如果各国政府放宽在线赌博政策，这一数据涨幅可能更高。

3）据insidesocialgames报道，Facebook日前根据用户评价及用户粘性评选了2012年热门社交游戏，本年度排名第一的是《SongPop》这款音乐问答游戏。

西班牙开发商Social Point的社交手机游戏《Dragon City》位居第二，Top Free Games的《Bike Race》位居第三。

今年有56%的社交手机游戏入驻Facebook，另外44%则登陆了iOS和Android平台。

Zynga今年有6款游戏上榜，其中首款游戏是位居第六名的《FarmVille 2》（目前是Facebook流量第一的游戏）。

本年度最受好评的Facebook社交游戏名单如下：

1.SongPop（FreshPlanet）

2.Dragon City（Social Point）

3.Bike Race（Top Free Games）

4.Subway Surfers（Kiloo）

5.Angry Birds Firends（Rovio）

6.FarmVille 2（Zynga）

7.Scramble with Friends（Zynga）

8.Clash of Clans（Supercell）

9.Marvel:Avengers Alliance（Playdom）

10.Draw Something（Zynga）

11.Hay Day（Supercell）

12.Baseball Heroes（Syntasia）

13.ChefVille（Zynga）

14.CSR Racing（NaturalMotion Games）

15.Candy Crush Saga（King.com）

16.Matching With Friends（Zynga）

17.Legend Online（OASIS GAMES）

18.Jurassic Park Builder（Ludia）

19.Dungeon Rampage（Rebel Entertainment）

20.Pockie Ninja II Social（NGames Limited）

21.Jetpack Joyride（Halfbrick）

22.Social Empires（Social Point）

23.Bilve Fethet（Peak Games）

24.Ruby Blast Adventures（Zynga）

25.Pyramid Solitaire Saga（King.com）

4）据Techcrunch报道，Facebook日前宣布Facebook.com现在MAU在100万以上的应用数量超过了350款。目前有将近20万款iPhone和Android应用绑定了Facebook功能，在iPhone前十名热销应用中就有9款采用了Facebook功能（游戏邦注：8月份时iPhone热销应用前十名有8款应用绑定了Facebook，6月份时则是7款应用）。

Facebook8月份时宣布拥有2.35亿Facebook游戏玩家，以及1.5亿应用访客，现在则表示每月有2.2亿用户访问App Center，每月有2.51亿Facebook游戏玩家。

此外，在iOS前400名畅销应用中，有45％以上采用了Facebook SDK。

5）在本周DAU增长最快的Facebook游戏排行榜上，Zynga游戏《ChefVille》位居本周DAU增长最快的Facebook游戏榜单第一名，新增10万DAU，增幅为3％。

本榜单前8名游戏均新增10万左右DAU，Nordeus的《Top Eleven Be a Football Manager》排名第二，新增4％流量；《FarmVille 2》排名第三，新增1％流量；Playtika游戏《Slotomania》位居第四，新增5％流量；King.com最近发布游戏《Pet Rescue Saga》排名第五，新增5％流量。

6）据《华尔街日报》报道，Zynga日前向美国内华达州博彩管理局提交相关申请，计划由此进入监管严格的真钱赌博市场，这是Zynga申请获得赌博许可证而迈出的第一步。预计这一申请过程约12-18个月，该公司之前已同英国公司bwin.party合作，将于2013上半年推出首款真钱博彩游戏。

游戏行业律师Mark Clayton表示，在内华达州如果你想推出赌博性质的在线扑克游戏，就必须达成相关交易（例如收购一家赌场），但这种交易可能面临“监管不确定性”的挑战，因此内达华州推出了可助企业扫清一些监管障碍的资质，以便后者成功达成相关交易。（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）CoasterVille is Zynga’s newest “Ville” title

Mike Thompson

Zynga today announced the launch of its newest “Ville” title, CoasterVille.

The game is a theme park management sim, which is a new direction for the “Ville” franchise. Players are given a small fairground and tasked with building the world’s greatest theme park complete with themed lands, shops and rides. CoasterVille was developed by Zynga’s Los Angeles office, which previously developed Empires & Allies for mid-core audiences.

Zynga Los Angeles General Manager Amir Rahimi tells us games industry veterans comprise the development team and, “the core group of us grew up with theme park building games. We thought we could adapt them into a really fun way for the social gaming space.”

Like the other “Ville” titles, the game is based on laying out and managing a community. Users place different types of structures around their property, and the layout plays a large part in how successful the park is. Essentially, areas with a high amount of foot traffic will generate more happiness. An example of this Rahimi showed us was a larger park where the central square was filled with shops and rides, which were all doing brisk business, while an outlying area with less foot traffic was going way slower.

Of course, the titular roller coasters play a major role in the game. Players can build and expand a coaster, which is based on one of the game’s various land themes (we got to see three themes in the demo: fantasy, frontier and jungle adventure). When a coaster is built, players are able to choose what direction the tracks will go and then can continue to build the ride one section at a time. After a new section of track’s been laid down, users can modify them to include exciting features like loops, corkscrews and enclosed sections. Even after a coaster’s been fully built, it can be re-designed at the drop of a hat; all players have to do is drag and drop the segments into new areas. This modular construction mechanic will allow users to dynamically adjust the layout of an area.

Players will also manage the area outside the park, mainly on a small stretch of road housing business that generate construction resources and hotels used to house guests once a resort reaches a certain size/fame milestone. Meanwhile, the main entrance and stores are the main producers of coins, the game’s soft currency. Rides and businesses operate on a timer, so they need to be turned on in order to attract guests or satisfy their need for things like food and bathroom breaks. Players can also “boost” (speed up) a ride, which attracts more guests towards it, but will actually make them sick if they boost an attraction too many times.

Aside from the standard social features where players can visit their friends’ parks, the game incorporates one’s friends into their parks’ populations. The game mixes and matches players’ friends’ names and creates characters using combined first and last names; Rahimi tells us he once found a guest with his wife’s first name and his boss’s last name. When players mouse over a specific guest, a bubble with the character’s name and what they want/need is displayed.

Rahimi also filled us in about what some of the post-launch plans for the game. Within a couple of months, the game will expand to let players build a full vacation resort next to the park.

In addition to that, there will soon be an option to construct a park mascot who can tour around friends’ parks and generate additional fame.

Theme park sims aren’t terribly prevalent on Facebook, even though the PC game market has been well-saturated with them for the past couple of decades. Back in March, 6waves co-published Rollercoaster Mania from developer Noisy Duck, which peaked in May with 160,000 daily active users. Since then, the game’s fallen to 40,000 DAU. As a result, it’s probably fair to surmise that Zynga will have the top-performing theme park social game within a few weeks.

Zynga’s been seeing a good deal of success with its “Ville” games lately, thanks to the major traffic gains of FarmVille 2 and CityVille 2. That said, this is the first time the company’s launched an original “Ville” IP since it launched The Ville, which saw dramatic traffic losses after its summer debut.（source：insidesocialgames）

2）Social casino gameplay dropped in October, but it’s probably temporary

By Frank Cifaldi

The audience for casino-based social games saw a pretty steep drop in October, but that market is still expected to grow.

That’s according to new research from Superdata, which shows that 8.5 percent fewer people played social casino games in October versus September. Revenue declined similarly.

All eyes are on the rapidly-growing social casino market lately, which has more than doubled its audience in the last two years and could become the segment to watch in 2013. A decline could mean we’ve finally hit a plateau, but Superdata CEO Joost van Dreunen doesn’t think that’s the case here.

“The dip in I think is normal for the year,” he tells us by phone. “People are probably saving their dollars for the holiday season. On the spending side, people are probably more conservative.

“Is this the beginning of a trend? I don’t think so.”

One big factor for the decline is Zynga’s struggle to retain its Zynga Slingo players: the company lost 15 million of them in October.

An industry to watch

Those who haven’t been paying attention may be surprised to learn that an estimated 31 percent of social game players are playing casino games. And if it wasn’t for Zynga Slingo’s decline, that share would actually be around 32.6 percent.

Superdata estimates that social casino gaming is a $1.7 billion industry. By 2016, that figure is expected to grow to $2.4 billion, and could go even higher if online gambling regulations are lifted to allow real-money gambling (specifically in the United States, which generates the most social casino revenue despite having to rely on virtual currency).

Developers are becoming increasingly interested in entering the space, which has become so big as to spawn its own individual conferences.（source：gamasutra）

3）Facebook: SongPop is the top social game of the year

Emanuel Maiberg

Facebook today announced that according its users’ ratings and engagement levels SongPop is the top rated social game of the year. Facebook made the announcement during Le Web technology conference in Paris, France, where SongPop co-founders Romain and Mathieu Nouzareth started their careers.

The music trivia game was built with the social network for Facebook, iPhone and Android. You can read our review of the game here.

Spanish developer Social Point’s social mobile game Dragon City was No. 2 and Top Free Games’ Bike Race (another social mobile title) was No. 3.

It was a big year for social mobile games in general, with only 56 percent of the games available on Facebook, while the remaining 44 percent are social mobile games available on iOS and Android.

Zynga placed more than any other developer on the list with six titles, but its first entry is at the No. 6 spot with FarmVille 2 (which is currently the top-trafficked game on Facebook).

This is also the most international year for social games to date, with the majority of games developed outside the U.S., in countries ranging from France, Spain and the U.K. to Brazil, South Korea, Australia, and Turkey.

Top Rated Social Games of 2012:

1.     SongPop (FreshPlanet)

2.     Dragon City (Social Point)

3.     Bike Race (Top Free games)

4.     Subway Surfers (Kiloo)

5.     Angry Birds Friends (Rovio)

6.     FarmVille 2 (Zynga)

7.     Scramble with Friends (Zynga)

8.     Clash of Clans (Supercell)

9.     Marvel: Avengers Alliance (Playdom)

10.   Draw Something (Zynga)

11.   Hay Day (Supercell)

12.   Baseball Heroes (Syntasia)

13.   ChefVille (Zynga)

14.   CSR Racing (NaturalMotion Games)

15.   Candy Crush Saga (King.com)

16.   Matching With Friends (Zynga)

17.   Legend Online (OASIS GAMES)

18.   Jurassic Park Builder (Ludia)

19.   Dungeon Rampage (Rebel Entertainment)

20.   Pockie Ninja II Social (NGames Limited)

21.   Jetpack Joyride (Halfbrick)

22.   Social Empires (Social Point)

23.   Bil ve Fethet (Peak Games)

24.   Ruby Blast Adventures (Zynga)

25.   Pyramid Solitaire Saga (King.com)（source：insidesocialgames）

4）Facebook Talks App Traction: 350 Apps Have 1M+ Monthly Actives On Site; Facebook Now Integrated In 200K Mobile Applications

Sarah Perez

Facebook today announced new numbers related to Facebook app usage on its site, as well as its integration into mobile platforms like iPhone and Android. The company said that there are now over 350 apps on Facebook.com that each see more than 1 million monthly active users. The company also said that there are nearly 200,000 iPhone and Android applications which are integrated with Facebook, including 9 of the top 10 grossing iPhone applications.

For comparison’s sake, Facebook in August said that it was in 8 of the top 10 grossing apps on iPhone, and in June it was in 7 of the top 10. It did not, however, reveal new numbers as to how many monthly app users it sees on Facebook.com or visiting its App Center, but in August it had 235 million monthly “gamers” and 150 million app visitors. (Update: Facebook has now told us that it sees 220 million people visiting the App Center each month, and more than 251 million people play games on Facebook.com every month.)

In addition, Facebook said today that over 45 percent of the top 400 grossing iOS apps use the Facebook SDK, which demonstrates Facebook’s traction even within the longer tail of mobile applications. The company specifically touted its involvement in several mobile and web apps, calling itself the “social building block” for apps like Deezer, Endomondo, Shazam, Pinterest, Kobo, TripAdvisor, Fab.com, Gogobot, and Foodspotting.（source：techcrunch）

5）ChefVille has this week’s blue-ribbon recipe as the fastest-growing Facebook game by DAU

Mike Thompson

Zynga’s ChefVille took the No. 1 spot this week among fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users, up 100,000 DAU for a 3 percent gain.

Actually, all eight of the top games on the list had traffic gains of 100,000 DAU, but for varying percentage gains. Nordeus’s Top Eleven Be a Football Manager continues to grow steadily, securing the No. 2 position with a 4 percent traffic increase. FarmVille 2 came in at No. 3, up by 1 percent. Playtika’s Slotomania grabbed the No. 4 spot with a 5 percent gain. The No. 5 placing went to King.com’s recently-launched Pet Rescue Saga, which grew by 5 percent.（source：insidesocialgames）

6）Zynga Makes First Move Towards Gambling In Nevada, Says Process Will Take More Than A Year

Anthony Ha View Staff Page Follow me on twitter Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media, advertising, and startups. Previously, he was a staff technology writer at Adweek, worked as a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and was also a reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing…. → Learn More

posted 1 hour agoCommentsZynga has applied for a “preliminary finding of suitability” from the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which the first step towards offering real-money gambling games in that state.

The news broke in the Wall Street Journal, and Zynga has confirmed it, though it notes that the process will take 12 to 18 months, and says that it sees gambling in the “broader U.S. market” as “further out on the horizon based on legislative developments.” The company also repeated that it plans to launch first effort in real-money gambling ( a partnership in the United Kingdom with bwin.party) during the first half of 2013.

Here’s the full statement from Chief Revenue officer Barry Cottle:

Zynga has filed its Application for a Preliminary Finding of Suitability from the Nevada Gaming Control Board. This filing continues our strategic effort to enter regulated RMG markets in a prudent way. We anticipate that the process will take approximately 12 to 18 months to complete.  As we’ve said previously, the broader U.S. market is an opportunity that’s further out on the horizon based on legislative developments, but we are preparing for a regulated market. We’ve also recently partnered with bwin.party to bring the highest quality real money gaming experiences to our UK players in the first half of 2013.

Over the past few months, as Zynga has finances have disappointed, CEO Mark Pincus has been pointing to real-money gambling as one of the main opportunities for Zynga’s future growth.

Update: I just got off the phone with gaming attorney and former regulator Mark Clayton, who gave me more of the legal context. He said that historically, in Nevada, “if you wanted to get licesned for a gaming project, you had to have a deal in hand” — such as the rights to purchase a casino.

On the other hand, securing a deal can be challenging when you’re facing with “regulatory uncertainty.” So Nevada introduced this concept of a preliminary finding of suitability, which allows a company to clear some of the regulatory hurdles before they make an actual deal. Basically, it’s an acknowledgment from the gaming board that the state are okay with that company doing business in Nevada, subject to the terms of the specific deal.

In other words, this is indeed the first step for Zynga to apply for gambling license, and eventually to offer real-money gaming in Nevada. Clayton also noted that in order to offer online poker, you have to either be a resort casino, or be an Internet gaming company that partners with a casino. He didn’t talk about Zynga specifically, but it sounds like a casino partnership is a likely course of action.（source：techcrunch）