1）德国社交游戏开发商Wooga（游戏邦注：《Bubble Island》和《Monster World》为该公司作品）如今在Facebook平台的每月用户高达2000万。从每月用户规模来看，Wooga是Facebook第4大社交游戏开发商。Wooga于20个月前踏入社交游戏领域，近几个月来，公司用户规模已赶超Digital Chocolate，PopCap和RockYou等众多Facebook游戏开发商。Wooga创始人及首席执行官Jens Begemann表示，公司未来将致力于制作高质量的独特游戏体验，力争年底成为Facebook平台的第2大游戏开发商。

wooga

2）Flickr联合创始人斯图尔特·巴特菲尔德（stewart butterfield）的初创工作室Tiny Speck在B轮融资中筹得1070万美元（游戏邦注：两轮融资共计1700万美元）。Tiny Speck目前正在开发《Glitch》，这是一款针对Facebook和手机平台的社交游戏，具有浓重的动画风格。《Glitch》已开发了18个月，上周款游戏进入内部测试阶段，此轮融资（主要来自于Andreessen Horowitz和Accel Partners两家风投公司）将用于游戏的下步开发。

3）《The Two Towers MUD》是上世纪70年代左右的一款老牌在线探险游戏，游戏除了在其官方网站嵌入PayPal按钮之外，没有融入其他商业元素，完全靠粉丝支持（游戏邦注：游戏1994年开始演变为免费版本）存活下来。如今玩家可以在Facebook平台体验这款游戏。开发商此举意在希望基于文本的角色扮演游戏能够在以点击式图片游戏为主导的Facebook游戏市场中占有一席之地。如果用户是《魔界三部曲》的忠实粉丝，那么该款游戏定会让其垂涎欲滴。但对于一般Facebook游戏玩家来说，游戏繁琐的细节着实令人颇为头痛，再来就是控制键，这款游戏的控制完全是通过打字实现。

facebook game the two towers

4）Facebook俨然成为了一种社会现象，就连网站创始人最初也没料想到小小网站竟能够在市场占据一片天地。汽车制造商近来对于Facebook平台情有独钟。日本丰田汽车公司打算在风靡Facebook平台的社交游戏中植入产品广告。丰田公司称其已和EA签订协议，未来将会在《Monopoly Millionaires》中植入Toyota Prius 和Toyota Prius Eco-Greenhouse两款产品，产品将化身游戏虚拟道具。EA营销解决方案全球总监Joy Taylor表示，大富翁和丰田是全球两大知名品牌，二者能够结合，他很开心。

Monopoly Millionaires

5）Gree是日本主要的社交网站，而Mig33则是一个新兴手机社交平台。日前二者携手拓展各自的社交平台，实现互惠互利。此次结盟将会帮助Gree开拓日本以外的市场，而新加坡社交网络Mig33（游戏邦注：该平台颇受亚洲和其他发展中国家青睐）则可以同日本用户见面。如今Gree平台的游戏开发商可以充分利用Mig33用户，反之亦然。Mig33将在其智能手机设备中植入Gree平台。因此Gree平台的游戏将可以轻易接触到Mig33手机平台的4700万注册用户。

1）Wooga Hits 20M Users, Now Fourth Biggest Facebook Game Dev

German social game maker Wooga (Bubble Island, Monster World) now has 20 million monthly users on Facebook, and is the fourth biggest game developer on the social network in terms of monthly audience size.

Wooga entered the social game space 20 months ago, and has expanded its total userbase to overtake Facebook developers like Digital Chocolate, PopCap, and RockYou in recent months. The company’s userbase is now larger than that of Playdom, the developer purchased by Disney last year for as much as $763 million.

Playdom’s monthly user count has plunged from around under 20 million users to 17.8 million in the last couple of weeks. Most of Wooga’s recent growth, meanwhile, has been driven by the newly released gem puzzler Diamond Dash, which picked up almost 3 million players just in the past month.

According to AppData figures, Wooga’s audience numbers are still behind Zynga’s (268.7 million users), Electronic Arts/Playfish (36.1 million users), and CrowdStar (27.8 million users), but the ambitious developer says it is “striving to become the second largest developer of social games on Facebook by the end this year.”

“Capturing 20 million active users in just 20 months and surpassing Playdom to become number four in the world is a stunning accomplishment,” says Jens Begemann, founder and CEO of Berlin-based Wooga, which has around 70 employees.

Begemann continues, “We will remain focused on producing high quality games with a unique game experience for the future. With our ambitious team, we aim to become number two by the end of this year.” （Source：Gamasutra）

2）Tiny Speck Closes $10.7 Million Second Round on Social MMO Glitch, Entering Closed Beta

Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield’s startup game studio, Tiny Speck, closed a second round of funding today to the tune of $10.7 million. This brings the developer up to $17 million total in funding.

Tiny Speck is developing a free-to-play game called Glitch that uses both Facebook and mobile components to supplement its core browser gameplay. Players enter a world that lives inside the minds of eleven giants and must shape it using the tools that the game provides. Glitch relies heavily on its animation style and, like Flickr’s community-oriented APIs, the developer plans to roll out APIs from Glitch to its players so that they can incorporate the game’s art in other mediums.

Glitch has been in development for 18 months. Tiny Speck’s second round of funding will go toward developing the game as it enters closed beta next week. This round was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Accel Partners. The first round came from Accel with participation by Andreessen Horowitz and angel investors.（Source：Inside Social Games）

3）Lord of the Rings ‘The Two Towers MUD’ enters the Facebook arena

Set during the second novel of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, ‘The Two Towers MUD’ is a type of old school online adventure game that has been around since the 1970s. Aside from a PayPal button on its official site, the game is a non-commercial effort made and maintained entirely by fans, for fans. Moreover, it’s been freely available online since 1994, but now you can also access the game from Facebook. By doing this, the creators hope that this will be “a new inventive way for text based roleplaying games to get their foot back in the door since the takeover of point and click graphical Facebook games.”

When you begin, you’re asked to choose a name, gender, allegiance (‘freedom’ versus ‘service’), and race. There’s eight races to choose from (dunlending, eorling, dunedain, edain, hobbit, sindar, silvan, and dwarf), and all have richly detailed histories to read up on. This all sounds simple enough, but if you’ve never played a MUD, it can be overwhelming because there’s lots of required reading. MUDs are basically interactive walls of text.

After you’ve read all the historical biographies of each race and have made your choice, the game will give you a summary of what’s currently going on in Middle-Earth: The Date is March 15, 3019, Third Age. Frodo and Sam are presumed dead. Gollum is believed to be the culprit, but no one can find him. Minas Tirith is besieged. Faramir was wounded in battle, and his father Denethor sits depressed in his tower. The Rohirrim have joined the Battle of the Pelennor. Aragorn is said to be on his way. And so on.

If you’re a diehard Lord of the Rings fan, this stuff should make you drool. But for the average Facebook gamer, such details are going to fly over heads. Another problem, are the controls — it’s all done by typing. So for those of you who remember a time before point-and-click, when the only way you interacted with your computer was through a keyboard, then you should feel right at home. On top of that, there’s no graphics (unless you count ASCII art), music or any sound effects (this means bring your own soundtrack). Oh, and forget about casual play, because if you’re idle for too long (roughly 15 minutes), the game disconnects you from the server and unequips all your belongings

I chose to play a silvan (a species of elf) named “Kelsiera” and after I first got booted, I discovered a nice bloke named Aradir who helped me put all my stuff back on. In fact, Aradir and plenty of the other characters will be holding your hand the entire time you’re setting up to play. There’s also other players and admins floating around who can help. Whether you’re in it for the classic gaming nostalgia, Tolkien geekery, or just out to try something new, once you’ve completed the tutorial (which involves learning tons of keywords) the rich-text world of Middle-Earth definitely opens up.（Source：Games）

4）Toyota Models, Prizes in Facebook Monopoly Game

Facebook has become a phenomenon in itself long before the launch of The Social Network (to be politically correct, the movie wouldn’t have been made hadn’t it been for the huge success of the social platform). But what the creator of Facebook would have never envisioned was that his little website would become a market place of its own.

Automakers have grown, only recently, very fond of Facebook. There isn’t a single brand worth mentioning that hasn’t launched at least one of its new models online, on Facebook. Some have even set up virtual dealerships there, in the hopes of drawing in more customers. And others, like Toyota, plan a bit of product placement in the free-to-play social games that have flooded Facebook.

The Japanese automaker announced today it signed an agreement with notorious game developer Electronic Arts that would allow it to place two of its products, the Toyota Prius and Toyota Prius Eco-Greenhouse into the Monopoly Millionaires game (a game released by EA in February 2011, access it by following this link). The two models will become, for the next 12 months, giftable virtual items.

“MONOPOLY and Toyota are two iconic brands and I’m delighted to help bring them together,” said Joy Taylor, global director, Marketing Solutions at Electronic Arts.

“Toyota, and Prius in particular, has a huge, devoted following that will get genuine value out of this partnership. We’re connecting one of the world’s most loved cars, with one of the world’s most loved games, on the world’s largest social media platform. It’s very exciting.’（Source：Autoevolution)

5）Mig33 and Gree team up to extend mobile social networks across Asia

Japan’s Gree is a major mobile social network in Japan. Mig33 has a growing platform in emerging countries. Today, the two are teaming up to extend their networks for mutual benefit.

The alliance will help Gree (spelled GREE) expand beyond Japan’s borders, while Singapore-based Mig33 (spelled mig33), which is big in Asia and emerging countries, will get access to users in Japan. Game developers who have games on either platform will have access to users on either platform now, as the platforms will be compatible. Both companies will thus be able to rapidly expand their “mobile first” strategies, where they target regions where mobile phones are more important than computers.

Mig33 will adopt Gree’s platform for smartphones. That means that games previously developed for the Gree mobile social network will now be easily adapted to run on the mobile phones of Mig33’s 47 million registered users. Gree previously struck a bargain with China’s vast mobile social network operator, Tencent.

Mig33’s audience is different, since it has focused on getting users for its mobile social network in places such as India, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. While other big players focus on smartphone markets, Mig33 has focused on the owners of humble feature phones, which are older but still have the ability to play simple games. Now game makers can create social games and other apps based on Mig33’s virtual economy and distribute them across a bunch of territories they couldn’t otherwise reach.

“Mig33 is thrilled to partner with Gree, as this opens up tremendous opportunity for social game developers everywhere,” said Steven Goh, CEO and co-founder of Mig33.  “Today’s announcement changes the face of social gaming throughout Asia, as the millions of mobile users in emerging markets far beyond China and Japan are now within reach.”

Mig33 doubled down on games in November with the launch of its Game Developer Program, which allows developers to create games using a free-to-play business model, where players can start playing games for free and pay real money for virtual goods in small transactions. Mig33’s current developer Kooky Panda, a developer based in Beijing, said it is delighted at the alliance.

Mig33 was founded in 2005 and it is a former DEMOgod award winner. It has raised $34 million from investors including Gree, Pak Sugiono Wiyono Sugialam, Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and DCM. Gree has more than 24 million users and was founded in 2004. Based in Tokyo, it offers users a variety of mobile services on top of their smartphones.（Source：Venturebeat)