1）EA旗下社交游戏开发商Playfish（游戏邦注：《宠物社区》为其作品）宣布聘请Planet Moon Studios前首席执行官Aaron Loeb担任其旧金山分公司总经理。Loeb于2001年加入Planet Moon，起初担任工作室制作人一职，他在游戏行业有近10年的丰富经验，作品包括《Infected》、《Smarty Pants》和《Giants: Citizen Kabuto》。他在新公司主要负责原创及品牌社交游戏的开发，同时开展分公司的快速扩张计划。

Aaron Loeb

2）Sokikom（游戏邦注：公司于2008年成立，坐落在美国亚利桑那州）针对1-6年级学生开发的数学社交学习游戏《Frachine》《Opirate》和《Treeching》成为第17届年度最佳教育软件奖的大赢家。Sokikom是公认的最佳小学生在线多玩家数学游戏开发商。Sokikom创始人及首席执行官Snehal Patel表示，作为一家年轻公司，Sokikom能获此殊荣，他十分开心，公司的宗旨是，为那些受困于数学科目的学生提供有趣、浓厚的学习氛围，同时培养学生的团队协作精神以及卓越才能。

3）日前有消息称，Playdom成立自己的游戏门户网站Playdom.com，网站目前有两款可供独立体验的游戏（游戏邦注：两款游戏分别为《Wild Ones》和《City of Wonder》），无需借助Facebook、MySpace或者其他平台。和Zynga的FarmVille.com一样，Playdom尝试开拓一个自主掌控的游戏空间，无需受限于Facebook平台，如选择Credits作为唯一支付货币。Playdom计划未来几个内将所有游戏转移至Playdom.com平台。如果这样的话，其和Zynga则持有相同的想法，即挣脱Facebook束缚，创建自己的社交网站。

Wild Ones

4）“社交化”俨然是当前媒介的最大热词。人们天天挂在嘴边，但鲜有人知道社交媒介的最大推动因素——游戏，指的就是《Farmville》和《黑手党战争》之类的游戏。社交游戏日渐演变为用户上线的重要方式。游戏之所以颇受广告商青睐是因为用户在全球范围内急剧增加，广告商每次开展活动都能获得可靠的用户反馈参数。从用户体验角度来看，社交游戏环境也同以往大不相同。社交游戏普遍是妈妈级玩家，她们大多是趁孩子上学空挡或者忙碌之余体验游戏。（游戏邦注：以上观点来自于RadiumOne美国东海岸销售总裁，其曾和微软、雅虎等公司的数字媒介主管共事）

5）最新报告显示，游戏玩家在游戏之外的品牌和热议话题方面占据举足轻重的位置。据MocoSpace用户调查显示，游戏玩家在社交网站的朋友比非游戏玩家多3倍。那么游戏玩家为何如此重要呢？MocoSpace首席执行官Justin Siegel表示，这些用户的平台粘性更高，他们更愿意同时也拥有更多内容同其他玩家分享，他们积极活跃，因此拥有更多尚待挖掘的元素。但是虽然游戏玩家颇具社交性，且愿意交流体验，他们的粘性还是需要进一步强化，因此品牌公司需要高度关注体验内容。

Monsterz' Revenge

6）Astro Ape Studios日前宣布公司即将推出游戏《Monsterz’ Revenge》，这是一款这iOS免费游戏。这款休闲游戏富有浓重的社交游戏色彩。游戏简要内容：快餐连锁店占领了Monsterz的墓地，Monsterz通过开展可怕的食物斗争进行复仇，玩家得通过战车逐一摧毁快餐连锁店。玩家每摧毁一家餐馆，就能赋予“得来速”新的含义（游戏邦注：这款游戏将于4月28日同玩家见面）。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Monsterz' Revenge

1）Planet Moon’s Ex-CEO Aaron Loeb Joins Playfish To Lead U.S. Branch

Electronic Arts-owned social game developer Playfish (Pet Society) announced its hiring of Aaron Loeb, previously the chief executive at Planet Moon Studios, as the new general manager of its San Francisco branch.

Loeb has nearly 10 years of experience working in the games industry at Planet Moon, joining the developer in 2001 as a producer, then rising up the ranks to COO and eventually CEO. While he was there, he worked on more than a dozen titles like Infected, Smarty Pants, and Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

He remained at the developer until earlier this year when Planet Moon ran into financial troubles and sought legal action against unnamed parties who owed it “a substantial amount of money”. MMO company Bigpoint then stepped in to absorb all of Planet Moon’s staff into its San Francisco studio.

In his new position heading the UK-based firm’s studio in San Francisco, Loeb will oversee the development of original and branded social games, and manage the “rapid expansion” planned for the branch.

EA’s Playfish is currently the second biggest social game developer on Facebook (behind Zynga) based on audience size with a total of more than 36 million monthly active players, according to AppData. Its popular titles include Pet Society, Monopoly Millionaires, and several EA Sports releases. （Source：Gamasutra）

2）Sokikom’s Social Learning Math Games Honored as Top Online Multi-Player Math Game for Young Learners

Sokikom’s online math social learning games for children in grades 1-6, Frachine, Opirate and Treeching, are winners in the 17th Annual Best Educational Software (BESSIE) Awards, sponsored by ComputED Learning Center, San Diego’s leading computer education resource. Sokikom was recognized in the Best Online Multi-Player Math Game for Early Elementary category.

The BESSIE Awards target innovative and content-rich programs and websites that provide parents and teachers with technology to foster educational excellence. This is the first BESSIE for Sokikom, which will officially launch in summer 2011. Based on the nationally recognized standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Curriculum Focal Points for Grades PreK-8 and the new Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, Sokikom games are designed to provide intense student engagement, which leads to higher math achievement. The fun and educational math games emphasize real-time cooperation and collaboration to engage students to develop their skills and help each other learn.

“It is thrilling for Sokikom to earn this honor as a young company,” said Snehal Patel, founder and CEO of Sokikom. “Our mission is to provide students who may be struggling with math an opportunity to engage with the subject in a fun, yet intense environment, all while cultivating teamwork and excellence. Winning the BESSIE is confirmation our games are targeting that goal. We are proud to put the 17th Annual BESSIE Award on our mantel.”

Sokikom currently includes three games: Frachine, which focuses on fractions; Opirate, which emphasizes mathematic operations; and Treeching, which concentrates on the principles of measurement, geometry and algebra.（Source：Prweb）

3）Playdom Pushes Its Own Games Portal

A mid-morning tweet from Playdom directed us to a new Playdom.com games portal where two of its games are playable without the use of Facebook, MySpace, or other platforms. As with Zynga’s FarmVille.com, Playdom appears to be experimenting with running games in an environment that it controls — without the requirements that come with the Facebook platform, such as using Credits as the exclusive paid currency in games.

At the moment, only Wild Ones and City of Wonder are available on Playdom.com as completely independent playable experiences. The developer’s other titles, ESPNU College Town, Social City, Bola, Market Street, Sorority Life, Mobsters, World Series of Poker, Gardens of Time and Deep Realms, are linked to their existing platforms through a Playdom.com landing page (the long-standing format for the site).

Note that Playdom games aren’t pure cross-platform play experiences where you can keep a consistent game running between Facebook and MySpace. In other words, a Facebook Wild Ones player looking to migrate to a Playdom.com hosted game would have to start the game over completely and register for a Playdom.com account. This will likely impact players using the mobile version of games that allow for light cross platform play between iOS/Android and Facebook/MySpace in a similar fashion.

Regarding Credits, you won’t see the currency on the new site (although Facebook has only recently begun testing Credits for games off of Facebook). Payment options in Wild Ones and City of Wonder include Tapjoy’s offer wall, credit card, PayPal, Ultimate Game Card, Amazon Payments, Coinstar, prepaid cards, or pay-by-mobile with Zong and Paymo.

It could be that Playdom plans to add its entire games catalog to Playdom.com in the coming months. If so, it and Zynga have similar ideas about breaking away from Facebook to form their own social games networks. Zynga has most prominently been pursuing this idea with a reported $500 million round of funding closing ahead of plans to launch Zynga Live sometime this year. In the last few weeks, the FarmVille developer already introduced an in-game virtual currency system outside of Facebook in the form of RewardVille and earlier this week it added a Fan Army site, which could be used as an infrastructure for Zynga Live user profiles.

With Facebook Credits becoming mandatory for all social games by July, many social game developers are being forced to end existing relationships with payment service providers. As evidenced by the laundry list of ways you can pay for things in Wild Ones and City of Wonder, Playdom can maintain its current pay systems through its own site. Another added benefit of running its own show is that Playdom can make payment options available to parents of younger players in a way that Facebook cannot. This could be a crucial connection for Playdom to make, being that parent company Disney’s audience tends to skew toward a younger demographic with limited access to money.

As of press time, the company hasn’t responded to request for comment on the long-term plan for Playdom.com.（Source：Inside Social Games）

4）Sounding Off: Chris Emme “Social is the biggest buzz word in media today”

“Social” is the biggest buzz word in media today. Everyone talks about it, but few know about the largest driving factor of social media: Gaming.

This is the Farmville’s and Mafia Wars of the gaming world and are easily accessed through social platforms like Facebook, Bebo, Hi-5, Tagged as well as directly from sites such as IMVU, WeeWorld.com and Smallworlds.com. These games are free to play and easy to understand which makes their acceptance wide spread. For example, upwards of 60% of all people who participate or go to a social network site, do it explicitly for the purpose of playing a social game.

Social Gaming is emerging as a very important way that users are engaging online. The overall market is growing at an alarming rate, and the opportunity, as marketers, to learn more about this area is integral. Quickly fleeting are the days of simply relying on banners to engage with your audience, social gaming allows integrated ways to get a brands message or product into the actual experience. From full brand integration into a game ( a lot easier than you might think ) to offering your product for direct purchase in this marketplace to simply giving users the option to view your video, the marketing opportunities are enormous.

What makes this space so intriguing for advertisers is that the audience in every market around the globe and in every demo is exploding and there are solid metrics that are attained in every campaign. Whether you want to sell flowers online, drive Fans to your Social Media page, have users fill out a survey or watch your video or engage with your brand, this environment prices itself based on an action ( CPA ) in a lot of ways.

As far as the audience is concerned, social gaming is not the same environment that you think of when you think of “gaming” (think Farmville). The average user is a 36 year old Mother of two who plays when her kids are at school or when she has a break in her hectic schedule. That is to say, with the hundreds of games in the market, it is possible to target any demo and in any market that you can think of: you want moms in Brazil, you want teens in Germany, you want young professionals in Australia – you name it and you can find A LOT of them playing social games right now.

It is a controlled social environment where you can be assured that your brand and message will be delivered in the manner in which you intended. （Source：Portada）

5）What’s a social gamer worth? You may be surprised

According to a recent MocoSpace user poll, gamers have three times more friend in social networks than non-gamers and that they spend three times longer on-site than non-gamers. Combined with data from Nyppex LLC, which found that game developer Zynga grew 81% in Q4 2010 and has now surpassed gaming king Electronic Arts (EA) in value.

What makes gamers so valuable?

“They are generally more engaged with the platform and because of that they are willing to share more, and they also have more to share with other users,” said Justin Siegel, MocoSpace CEO. “They aren’t passive, they are active and engaged users so there is more to tap into with them.”

Even though gamers are more social and more willing to talk about their experiences, they still have to be engaged. To do that, brands need to be context sensitive. Slapping a banner up on a social gaming page won’t engage these consumers; in-game and relevant ads will engage them. And, added to that, is an appetite for more content.

“Like any kind of content there is some degree of shelf life,” said Siegel. “As gamers burn through the existing content they do look for more. I don’t think they are starved for content at this point, but by the same token, they are always looking for newer or additional content.”

They key is to improve upon what is already out there. Today’s platform and social gamers don’t want their next game to be a replica of something from 1999 or even 2009. They want new, different and better.（Source：Bizreport）

6）Upcoming Casual iPhone Game: Monsterz’ Revenge Coming April 28

Astro Ape Studios today announced the upcoming Monsterz’ Revenge, a free-to-play game for iOS. This casual game features heavily on social gaming. Here is more info:

Fast-food chains are taking over the Monsterz’ graveyard and they’re getting revenge in a fearsome food fight. Players will try to destroy each fast-food joint using a battle car, giving new meaning to the term “drive-thru” as restaurant franchises are demolished, one by one. Battle cars can be customized and upgraded by playing a variety of mini-games. Fellow Monsterz can also be recruited to lend a hand in the quest for vengeance against fast-food domination.

Before you can defeat the cookie-cutter behemoths in battle, you will have to earn coins, potion points, and energy. Cook your own dishes, capture wayward humans that wander into your territory, and complete a variety of exciting mini-games to level-up your character.

Monsterz’ Revenge is filled with a rich variety of gameplay elements:

• Stunning graphics, including an interactive background and tons of customization options.

• Nine different characters to unlock, each with unique power-ups, mini-games, and items.

• Five addictive mini-games that help level up the battle car, with more to come.

• Ability to visit friends’ graveyards, view their car garage, and send them gifts.（Source：Mobiletechreview）