1）社交游戏开发商Zynga日前与卢卡斯影业合作，将在10月份把后者旗下著名的《夺宝奇兵》电影角色印第安那·琼斯引进新款社交游戏《Adventure World》。但Zynga没有公布具体合作细节，只知道卢卡斯影业不会参与游戏内容的开发环节。

adventure-world(from videogamesblogger.com)

这是卢卡斯影业自1991年推出《夺宝奇兵3圣战奇兵》以来，首次未介入基于该角色的游戏内容制作的合作项目。

2）日本社交平台Mixi将于9月30日关闭三款PC端社交游戏，这三者注册用户均超过70万（甚至还超过100万）。

这三款游戏分别是RockYou亚洲工作室推出的《Speed Racing》（截止9月16日，注册用户达72万左右），Drecom推出的《Happy Aquarium》（71万用户），以及热酷的农场游戏《Minna No Nouen》（140万用户）。

Happy Aquarium(from japanesevw.blogspot)

据观察者所称，社交游戏最近频频撤出Mixi的原因在于，开发商很难在基于PC端的Mixi平台实现收益。Mixi在前几周还调整了其内部信息通告和news feed系统，导致社交游戏更难进行病毒式传播。

需注意的是，这些游戏项目仅在PC端的Mixi平台关闭，Mixi有80%的综合浏览量来自手机平台。

3）社交游戏开发商Kabam日前宣布任命Steve Klei为公司首席财务官。Steve Klei此前在Jigsaw公司任职（游戏邦注：Jigsaw已被社交企业巨头Salesforce.com以1.75亿美元收购），拥有25年的金融行业和管理工作经验。kabam最近还与派拉蒙公司合作，将推出以电影《教父》为题材的社交游戏《The Godfather: Five Families》，据AppData资料显示，Kabam最近用户数据如下：

kabam-kingdoms-of-camelot(from paidcontent.org)

·MAU：877万7052

·在过去一周中新增10万1847的MAU

·DAU：106万6384

·在过去一周中新增3万6631的DAU

·Kabam的头号热门游戏《Dragons of Atlantis》最近MAU为397万4642

·第三热门游戏《Kingdoms of Camelot》（曾被IGN票选为2010年最佳Facebook游戏）最近MAU为126万9256

4）据gamasutra报道，传媒巨头新闻集团旗下的英国传媒公司Shine Group日前收购社交游戏开发商Bossa Studios，将利用后者优势针对社交平台开发游戏内容以及跨平台内容。

Monstermind(from joystiq.com)

Bossa Studios日前宣布将于9月22日向Facebook推出首款游戏《Monstermind》。新闻集团在今年初成立Making Fun部门，正式进军社交游戏发行领域。

5）据AppData资料显示，EA Playfish推出的《模拟人生社交版》问世仅一个月左右，目前已是Facebook第二大热门游戏，其MAU已超过4380万，DAU达1088万。

the-sims-social(from cheat-onlinegames.com)

Playfish创始人及联合总经理Kristian Segerstrale向媒体表示，通过将EA最著名的游戏品牌推向Facebook，Playfish与模拟人生团队重新定义了社交游戏的内涵，《模拟人生社交版》在未来数月还将推出更多新功能。

6）硬核社交游戏网站Raptr日前宣布其DAU已超过100万，注册用户逾1000万。Raptr可绑定玩家的PlayStation Network、Xbox Live、Steam、任天堂以及移动帐号，然后通过搜集数据，支持用户创建一份玩家资料，与好友分享内容，找到新的游戏玩伴。

Raptr(from venturebeat)

该公司成立于2007年，已通过Accel Partners、Founder’s Fund、DAG Ventures和Tenaya Capital等支持者融资2700万美元。

7）在本周的新晋游戏榜单上，Kabam实时策略游戏《Edgeworld》位列第一（目前MAU为88万），意大利足球模拟游戏《FantaBook》（MAU为58万）以及《Fluffy Birds Flash》（MAU为87万）分别居于第二第三名。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

Adventure World--MAU & DAU(from AppData)

Zynga新作《Adventure World》在过去一周中的MAU为54万8827，DAU为24万7547。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Zynga, Lucasfilm Partner For Indiana Jones Social Game

by Frank Cifaldi

FarmVille creator Zynga has partnered with Lucasfilm to bring its popular Indiana Jones character into a social game.

The company announced Friday that a “very special integration” will be made with its new Adventure World and the character starting in October.

“Zynga is proud to announce that we’re teaming up with Lucasfilm to bring Indiana Jones – the KING of lost idol hunting, bull whipping, holy grail-ing and flying (but not landing) – to your favorite adventure game. Adventure World: An Indiana Jones Game will be coming soon to a browser near you,” Zynga wrote in a blog post.

Indiana Jones, once a major video game franchise, has not seen a new title since 2009′s LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues.

Details on this new project are so far vague, but assuming that LucasArts is not involved in the development of this content, it may be the first time that the Lucasfilm game development subsidiary has not been involved in an Indiana Jones game since 1991′s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

First revealed weeks ago, Zynga’s Facebook title Adventure World is a social puzzle game that encourages exploration. It brings more traditional computer game elements to Zynga’s portfolio of titles.（source:gamasutra）

2）Mixi Loses Three Social Games With 700K/1 Million Users Each [Social Games]

by Dr. Serkan Toto

Registered users≠active users≠paying users: Mixi is about to lose three social games (on its PC platform) with more than 700,000 or even one million registered players each.

Apart from RockYou Asia’s Speed Racing (about 720,000 registered players on September 16), Happy Aquarium by Drecom (710,000 players) and Rakoo’s farming simulation Minna No Nouen (1,400,000 players) will be shut down on September 30.

The background here is that according to what I am hearing from Japanese social game developers, social games on Mixi for the PC are very hard to monetize. In the last few weeks, Mixi also tweaked its internal notification and news feed system, essentially making it more difficult for social games to go viral.

Again, these games are being shut down on Mixi for the PC only: Japan’s biggest real-identity social network sees 80% of its page views coming from cell phones.（source:serkantoto）

3）Kabam Appoints New CFO To Oversee Expansion

By Azam Khan

Companies progress forward by maintaining stability yet occasionally instituting dynamic change in leadership. Kabam, a major player in the social gaming space, announced Steve Klei will be assuming the role of Chief Financial Officer. At a time when social innovation is gripping tightly on the gaming industry, Kabam is making big plays in their growth as a company. More after the jump.

Steve Klei held his last position at Jigsaw where he presided over its acquisition by giant social enterprise Salesforce.com for $175 million. To put it bluntly, Klei is a man who understands the finance game. We covered Kabam’s inheritance of $85 million from Google’s venture arm. After managing the Jigsaw acquisition, Klei will be managing the $85 million to oversee growth. Other than the hiring of new talent and possibility of future acquisitions, a large chunk of the funds will most likely be allocated towards Kabam’s expansion into Asia.

“Steve Klei is a world class CFO, and adding his fiscal leadership will strengthen our executive team as we move our business to the next level,” said Kabam CEO and co-founder Kevin Chou. “Steve’s proven expertise leading corporate financial operations and scaling large, high growth companies from startup through IPO makes him the perfect fit for Kabam as we build and expand our operations.”

With 25 years of professional financial and executive experience, Klei has spent the last 15 years as CFO for several different SaaS companies. Jigsaw, for example, tripled its revenue, one of the largest revenue multiples in the SaaS industry. With a data-center being built in Las Vegas to support heavily increased bandwidth, Kabam is situating itself for large market share capture.

Klei comes to Kabam at an interesting point in time as the mid core gaming giant has signed a deal with Paramount Digital Entertainment recently to bring The Godfather: Five Families (movie franchise) into the world of synchronous social gaming, placing a bet on branded IP games.

Some reported facts about Kabam courtesy of Appdata:

• MAU of 8,777,052

• Over last 7 days, MAU has risen by 101,847

• DAU of 1,066,384

• Over last 7 days, DAU has risen by 36,631

• Dragons of Atlantis is Kabam’s top ranked app with an MAU of 3,974,642

• Kingdoms of Camelot (IGN’s best voted Facebook game of 2010) is currenly ranked 3rd with an MAU of 1,269,256

I’m going to be paying close attention to Kabam and its future endeavors. To appoint a man such as Steve Klei as CFO, it is expected that the company will be managing a significant sum of resources to produce exciting innovations. For more information, check out Kabam.（source:socialtimes）

4） News Corp’s Shine Group Acquires Social Games Studio Bossa

by Mike Rose

Shine Group, the British media company wholly owned by American media conglomerate News Corporation, has acquired social games company Bossa Studios, marking a continuation of News Corp’s foray into the world of game development.

As part of Shine Group, Bossa Studios will be creating gaming content exclusively for social network sites, while developing cross-platform content assets.

The London-based group will also be working with existing Shine projects and properties.

Bossa revealed its first title today, Facebook tower defence title Monstermind, which will be launched on September 22.

Bossa co-founder Henrique Olifiers explained, “We wanted to create a game that tested the boundaries of current social games on the market and one that combined horror, adventure and action.”

“Our main aim was to make Monstermind fun and accessible to all, so we have provided players with intensive levels of tactical engagement and that all important spice of hard core gameplay, which won’t however alienate casual gamers.”

Earlier this year, News Corp entered the social gaming space with a new division called Making Fun, focused on publishing social games developed by independent studios.（source:gamasutra）

5）Playfish founder: We have redefined social games with The Sims Social

by Joe Osborne

The Sims Social is just an arm’s reach from being the number one game on Facebook, so this kind of logic is expected. In an interview with MCV, Playfish founder and co-GM Kristian Segerstrale said, “In bringing one of EA’s most popular game franchises to Facebook, Playfish and The Sims team have redefined the meaning of social in video games.”

While The Sims Social certainly treads some new ground in how Facebook gamers interact, it’s important to remember to chalk up much of the game’s runaway success to the brand it’s attached to. In just over a month since its release, The Sims Social has skyrocketed to become the second most popular Facebook game to date in both daily and monthly players, AppData reports.

Just last week, EA’s (which owns Playfish) proverbial secret weapon ousted Zynga’s iconic and ubiquitous FarmVille in daily players, but now the game has even more monthly players than the household name farming simulator with over 43.8 million and counting. The Sims Social has dipped a bit in daily players, but is just about 2.9 million fans away from beating out the might CityVille as the most played Facebook game daily.

“By combining Playfish’s expertise and passion for social play with the deep creative heritage of The Sims franchise and the insights of its creators, we feel we’ve brought something very special to life – and tens of millions of players around the world have responded with extraordinary enthusiasm over the last few weeks,” Segerstrale said to MCV.

The founder went on to say that new features to The Sims Social will land in the coming months. And we’re sure that if EA wants to host the top Facebook game overall, that those features will have to be even more groundbreaking than before. How’s about in-game marriages, eh? (Because we all know how well that’s worked elsewhere.)（source:games）

6）Raptr’s gamer social network surpasses a million daily active users

Dean Takahashi

Raptr, the social network for gamers, has reached more than a million daily active users and more than 10 million registered users to date, the company said. That shows the site is seeing continous healthy growth as it tries to become the social network of choice for hardcore game fans.

Raptr is a central hub for people to connect, share and discover content about the games they play. With your permission, Raptr links to your online gaming accounts — Playstation Network, Xbox Live, Steam, Nintendo — and mobile accounts. Then it gathers data and helps you build a gamer profile that you can share with friends and use to find people who like the same games that you do.

It’s like Facebook for gamers, and it works across platforms. Raptr can share anonymized data in aggregate form with game publishers and game web sites so that they can get a much better feel for the demand for games in real time. Raptr recently added a social news feed for gamers so they can keep up with personalized game information and friend activity. In three months, users have followed more than 500,000 topics related to upcoming game launches. Overall, Raptr analyzes more than 23 million gaming sessions a month and a billion minutes of game play a month.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company was founded in 2007 and has raised $27 million in funding from investors Accel Partners, Founder’s Fund, DAG Ventures, and Tenaya Capital. That large funding amount has enabled Raptr to explore how to get lots of users without worrying so much about monetization. Dennis Fong, founder and chief executive of Raptr, said in past interviews that he wants to get the service right and accumulate users before introducing monetization. That tactic is very Zuckerberg-like, since Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg did the same thing to turn his company into the dominant social network. It’s no surprise that Facebook and Raptr share Accel as a common investor.（source:venturebeat）   http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/15/raptrs-gamer-social-network-surpasses-a-million-daily-active-users/

7）Edgeworld, FantaBook Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games

By AJ Glasser

Kabam’s quasi-real-time strategy game Edgeworld takes the top spot on this week’s list of emerging Facebook games. Italian soccer sim FantaBook and Fluffy Birds Flash complete the top three.

If you’re looking for Zynga’s Adventure World, the newly-launching game is just shy of the full seven says of data needed to turn up on AppData rankings. In the past week, the game has grown to 548,827 monthly active users and 247,547 daily active users. Zynga announced a partnership with Lucasfilm today to launch an Indiana Jones integration within Adventure World in October.（source:insidesocialgames）