1）社交游戏开发商Zynga宣布登陆爱尔兰，在都柏林开设新工作室Zynga Dublin。据当地媒体报道，该工作室或将成为Zynga最大的欧洲工作室。爱尔兰工业开发署文件显示，Zynga Dublin将主要负责客户支持、社群管理、IT、人力资源、商业智能等服务，以及关于法语、意大利语、德语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语、土耳其语、印尼语和韩语等内容的文职工作。由此可以看出，Zynga都柏林工作室将主要推出经过本土化处理的游戏。

zynga-logo(from wallstreetcn.com)

2）据companiesandmarkets.com最新报告显示，社交游戏已成为在线游戏产业发展最为迅速的领域，在2014年之前其平均年增长率将达27%，排在其后的是休闲游戏和在线游戏领域（MMO游戏领域曾是2009年在线游戏市场最大的营收来源）。

该报告预测，全球电子游戏市场（包括硬件和软件内容）在2014年之前的平均年增长率将达5.1%。其中软件内容的收益将占最大份额，在线游戏市场的发展将快速超越PC和掌机游戏领域。在线游戏市场的领头羊Zynga在2010年的收益超过8亿美元，该公司目前估值约80亿美元。

3）游戏元老Richard Garriott（Portalarium联合创始人）在最近的媒体采访中声称，Zynga游戏《FarmVille》虽然人气很旺，但其用户界面设计却让人不敢恭维，可能不会对轻量级的新手玩家产生吸引力。而《CityVille》的表现虽然超过《FarmVille》，但其游戏界面同时显示的内容过多过于繁杂，很可能造成用户消化不良。

Richard_Garriot(from voig.com)

他同时还指出，由于Facebook已经充斥大量界面风格与《FarmVille》和《CityVille》相似的社交游戏，所以这一平台未来更受欢迎的当属硬核类社交游戏。他透露自己的首款主流社交游戏《Ultimater Collector》将于今年夏天在Facebook、Hi5、iPhone和iPad平台发布。Portalarium最近发布的首款社交游戏是《Port Casino Poker》。

4）除了宣布将推出《模拟人生》的Facebook版本《The Sims Social》，EA在今年的E3展会上还播放了将与孩之宝公司合作出品的另一款Facebook游戏《RISK:Factions》预告片。这款策略类社交游戏目前还处于封测阶段，从预告视频来看，该游戏风格与《星际争霸2》颇为神似。

RISK_Factions_Logo(from gamespot.com)

5）据《华尔街日报》报道，Keas Inc.和Redbrick Health Corp两家公司打算通过向企业提供采用社交游戏机制的服务，帮助提高员工身体健康，从而减少企业对员工的医疗支出。这类服务鼓励企业员工完成一系列身体锻炼的目标，或者培养健康饮食习惯，在公司同事之间，或与其他公司成员展开竞争，顺利完成任务者可赢取该服务所提供的奖品或其他奖励措施。

gaming for health(from designmind.frogdesign.com)

6）《Shadow Fight》是一款由欧洲社交游戏公司Nekki于五月初发行的Facebook游戏，现已跻身Facebook新晋游戏前20名。据AppData数据显示，《Shadow Fight》最近的MAU是39万8425，DAU是4万4879。它是一款功夫题材的竞技游戏，玩家可选择一个虚拟人物的剪影代表自己，在实时决斗环境中与好友过招。如果玩家邀请好友参赛，并完成了“Daily Checklist”任务，那就可以赢得虚拟货币Rubies作为奖励。该游戏目前尚未绑定Facebook Credits虚拟货币系统。

Shadow Fight(from insidesocialgames.com)

7）由TheBroth公司开发的社交游戏《Planet Domo》上周刚在Facebook新晋游戏榜单（MAU不足100万的新游戏）露面，本周接替Digital Chocolate新作《Army Attack》（游戏邦注：该游戏已突破100万MAU，因此不在本榜单之列）成为MAU增长最快的Facebook游戏。据insidesocialgames所称，Zynga新游戏《Empires & Allies》一直“无缘”此榜单的原因是，它在发布一周之内就已突破100万MAU。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

值得注意的是，《吃豆人》克隆版本《Pacman》也排到榜单第17名，这款山寨游戏并未植入任何收费功能。日本发行商Namco Bandai的官方版《吃豆人》也于近日登陆Facebook平台，并采用了Contiue虚拟货币盈利模式，重塑《吃豆人》的经典街机游戏体验。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Slainte! FarmVille-maker Zynga opens Dublin office

by Joe Osborne

TweetRaise your stouts, because Zynga has officially landed on the Emerald Isle. The monolithic social games studio has opened its Dublin, Ireland office, and Irish Times reports that it will soon become the company’s largest European office. Zynga announced that it was expanding into the land of green rolling hills and dark frothy brews in October of last year. Zynga Dublin joins the recently established Zynga Mobile UK–formerly known as Wonderland–and Zynga Germany.

Irish Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton said that Ireland could become a world leader in online gaming, but it’s going to take smart policies, according to the Irish Times. While Bruton shows caution in Ireland’s increasingly digital future, IDA chief executive Barry O’Leary is openly optimistic.

“Zynga is a very welcome addition to the digital media industry cluster in Ireland with many of the world’s leading ‘born on the internet’ companies having established significant operations here,” O’Leary told the Irish Times. “With an ever increasing number of such companies locating in Ireland, we are well established as the internet capital of Europe.”

What exactly Zynga Dublin will be up to, such as making new games, is unknown at this point. But judging from the job openings in Dublin on Zynga’s job board, it looks like it will be a customer and networking support office. We’ve contacted Zynga for comment.

Update: IDA Ireland released a statement regarding the new office, and shed some light on exactly what’s to go down there. “The office encompasses customer support, community management, and support functions such as IT, human resources, business intelligence, and CS content management in languages including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Indonesian and Korean,” IDA Ireland said. It looks as if the name of Zynga Dublin’s game is localization, which makes sense considering the company is reportedly approaching IPO. Zynga COO of Game Studios added, “We are excited to officially launch our office in Dublin to service our international players with customer care and community management in multiple languages.”（source:games）  

2）New Estimates on Social Gaming Industry Growth

By Gary Merrett

According to a new report available on companiesandmarkets.com, social gaming is the fastest growing sector within the online gaming industry, exhibiting an average annual growth of 27% to 2014.

Following social gaming is casual gaming and massively multi-player online gaming. MMO gaming was the largest revenue contributor to online gaming in 2009. The report, The Video Gaming Industry Outlook, forecasts that the global video gaming market, including hardware and software, will expand at an average annual growth rate of 5.1% until 2014. Software revenues will account for the majority share of market value. The online gaming market is expanding rapidly and gradually surpassing the PC and console gaming segments. Zynga, the leader in online gaming, is reported to have made over $800 million in 2010 revenues. According to a leading marketplace that permits trading in privately held shares, Zynga is currently valued at around $8 billion.（source:socialgamesobserver）  

3）Ultima’s Richard Garriott: FarmVille’s interface is ‘pretty @#$% clunky’

by Joe Osborne

Zing! In an interview with Gamasutra, Richard Garriott, also known as Lord British of Ultima Online (and Portalarium co-founder), had some choice words for Zynga’s most popular social games:

FarmVille, FrontierVille and CityVille. While Garriott had nothing but praise for FrontierVille, led by industry veteran Brian Reynolds, he told Gamasutra:

So when I looked at FarmVille. It’s super popular. You go play it and you go, ‘Wow, this UI is actually pretty damn clunky.’ It’s actually hard to use, it’s confusing to use, so if I was a beginning user, a light user I’m going like, ‘Wow, it’s just not that elegant.’

CityVille has surpassed FarmVille, even in popularity — which was the most popular game in the world. But I look at it and go, ‘It’s actually too much for me.’ Literally, there is so much going on the screen concurrently; I can’t keep up. I mean there are stars bouncing around and things to click on and, literally, I find the game overwhelming.

Garriott went on to conclude that, because a majority of social gamers interact with interfaces similar to FarmVille and CityVille (and more than likely those exact games), Facebook gamers will eventually converge with the hardcore crowd.

Garriott also revealed in the interview that his first major social game, Ultimate Collector, will release sometime this summer across several platforms including Facebook, Hi5, iPhone and even iPad. Then, Garriott will focus on Lord British’s debut on Facebook in Lord British’s New Britannia (a working title), which he has yet to reveal a release date for. Portalarium recently released it’s first game to test the waters, Port Casino Poker.（source:games）  

4）Social Gaming Roundup: E3, Zynga, Health, & More

By Christopher Mack 

EA Adds to Its Social Games Lineup — Electronic Arts made some social game announcements at E3 this week, showing off a Facebook version of one of its most popular franchises with The Sims Social, which we highlighted earlier this week. EA is also teaming up with Hasbro to bring yet another title to Facebook in the form of RISK: Factions. The social strategy game is currently in closed beta, but EA did display an amusing trailer at E3, spoofing that of Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II.（source:insidesocialgames）  

5）Beyond FarmVille: Social Games To Improve Health.

By Brian Gormley

Venture-backed providers of online social-gaming services are trying to stir U.S. workers to improve their health through a mix of competition, cash and peer pressure.

BloombergVenture-funded outfits such as Keas Inc. and Redbrick Health Corp. aim to help companies cut their health-care costs through games that make it fun, and profitable, for employees to exercise, eat healthfully, and take better care of themselves. Redbrick, which started offering the games in 2009, and Keas, which is going live with its service today, compete with Virgin HealthMiles Inc., part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, which introduced its social-gaming service in the U.S. in 2006.

While individuals may not be sufficiently motivated to solve weight and other health problems for their own sake, they may be willing to do so for a team, especially one that is competing for cash, prizes and bragging rights. The social-gaming services these companies offer enable workers to compete with people in their own company, or with those of another business, based on their ability to exercise regularly or complete other tasks to improve their health. Employers choose the prizes or incentives they want to offer in exchange.（source:wsj）  

6）Shadow Fight Brings Stylized Martial Arts Combat to Social Games on Facebook

By Pete Davison 

Shadow Fight is a new game from experienced European social games publisher Nekki for the Facbeook platform. The game launched in early May and since that time has made itself a regular on our weekly top 20 list of emerging Facebook games.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Shadow Fight currently has 398,425 monthly active users and 44,879 daily active users.

Shadow Fight is a martial arts competitive fighting game with a stylized “silhouette” aesthetic. Players choose a shadowy avatar to represent themselves and compete in a series of one-on-one battles against opponents drawn from their Facebook friends list. Players aren’t directly competing against their friends in real-time; all the choice of friend as opponent means is that following victory, the player is able to post a message on their friend’s wall saying that they “beat” them, thereby encouraging the friend to join in the game also. It is also possible to play with two people on one keyboard — the second player also chooses to represent themselves as one of the Facebook user’s friends, though this does not affect the other player’s statistics if they are also a Shadow Fight player.

The game features a standard currency of Coins, which can be used to purchase three different traditional martial arts weapons for use in some tournaments. It also monetizes with a premium currency of Rubies for purchasing Energy boosts, stronger versions of the three weapons and magical items to assist in defeating strong “boss” opponents. Rubies can be acquired in several ways; they are awarded for inviting friends and completing a “daily checklist,” but can also be acquired by exchanging Coins or purchased via credit card and PayPal. The game does not support Facebook Credits at this time.（source:insidesocialgames）   

7）Planet Domo Tops This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

By AJ Glasser

Just one week after first appearing on our list of emerging Facebook games as tracked by AppData, TheBroth’s Planet Domo lands in the top spot while Digital Chocolate’s Army Attack does indeed graduate from the list after breaking the 1 million monthly active user mark earlier this week. If you’re at all shocked that Zynga’s rival game, Empires & Allies, didn’t make the list this week — don’t be. The game broke 1 million MAU within a week of launch.

Moving on down the list, we see two of EA’s sports social games gaining some ground with EA Playfish’s World Series Superstars snagging second and PGA Tour Golf Challenge landing farther down at number 16.

Debuting on our list this week at number 17 is an unofficial Pac-Man clone from Telaxo called Pacman. The app appears to suffer from some naming confusion, referring to itself as Ghostman in-game and in the URL. In any case, it’s very obviously an unlicensed copy of the original Japanese arcade game that features no monetization, a single leaderboard for tracking the scores of friends and a control scheme designed entirely around the arrow keys. A licensed version of Pac-Man by license holder Namco Bandai recently hit Facebook with a new monetization strategy built around an “insert quarter to continue” gameplay  loop made famous by classic arcades.（source:insidesocialgames、）