1）社交及手机游戏发行商Peak Games（代表作包括《Okey》）日前宣布已融资1150万美元，支持者包括Earlybird Venture Capital、Hummingbird Ventures以及其他战略投资者。该公司在今年5月的A轮融资中已筹得500万美元，在去年的种子轮融资中筹得250万美元。

Peak Games将利用这笔资金拓展业务、收购工作室、招募成员并获取新用户，同时还将向原生应用和HTML5等移动领域进军（游戏邦注：其首席执行官 Sahin之前还创立了一家手机游戏发行公司Funpac，并于2005年将其出售给Mynet）。该公司Facebook游戏目前DAU超过400 万，MAU达1600万，自今年5月以来增长了60%。据AppData数据显示，该公司已成Facebook第六大社交游戏公司。

该公司的用户主要集中于土耳其、墨西哥、巴西、中东和北非地区，最近刚收购两家土耳其硬核游戏工作室Uaykut和Erlikhan，并与RockYou、The Broth和MagnetJoy等公司进行合作，制作和发行这些公司游戏的本土化产品。

Peak Games在伊斯坦布尔、安卡拉、安曼、巴塞罗纳、柏林和旧金山均设有工作室。

2）Citigroup分析师Mark Mahaney最新报告指出，用户在Facebook的投入时间已达414亿分钟，首次超过谷歌搜索引擎（游戏邦注：该分析结果并未将上周Facebook改变分享机制，或发布TimeLine功能的情况考虑入列）。

报告表明今年第三季度，Facebook已经打破谷歌独霸局面，成为用户访问时间最长的网站。

3）英国分析公司Experian报告显示，新加坡用户每次访问Facebook时的投入时间最长，巴西用户投入时间相对较短。该报告调查了8个不同国家，每个国家Facebook用户每次访问投入时间的平均值如下：

*新加坡：38分46秒

*新西兰：30分31秒

*澳大利亚：26分27秒

*英国：25分33秒

*法国：21分53秒

*美国：20分46秒

*印度：20分21秒

*巴西：18分19秒

但如果从用户上网访问Facebook的比例来看，巴西用户比例最高，英国用户较对较低：

*巴西：18.9%

*新加坡：16.4%

*美国：15.4%

*法国：15.1%

*印度：14%

*新西兰：13.9%

*澳大利亚：13.1%

*英国：12.2%

Experian对Facebook的其他调查结果包括：

*Orkut仍是巴西第一大社交网站，其市场份额为43%，Facebook从去年8月至今年8月已收获16%的份额；

*从去年8月至今年8月，印度Facebook用户增长最为显著，Facebook在当地市场份额增长了88%；

*Facebook在美国市场份额同一时期的增幅是5%。

4）《Lucky Train》开发商A Bit Lucky日前宣布其第二款Facebook游戏《Lucky Space》进入公开测试阶段。这是一款带有《星际争霸》风格的资源管理和探索题材游戏，要求玩家和好友建立一个生机勃勃的太空殖民地。

除了探索星球上的地形、开采重要资源，玩家还需要建设防御工事以免自己的子民遭遇太空灾难。A Bit Lucky希望通过这款游戏吸引更多“硬核”社交游戏玩家，并透露从游戏的内测情况来看，《Lucky Space》的用户留存率颇为可观，在测试阶段的2000名玩家中，每人首次游戏的平均投入时间为25分钟。总体投入时间的平均值也达到了15分钟左右，平均每天访问游戏5次。

5）据serkantoto报道，热酷最近再向PC端的Mixi平台发布新款社交游戏《Sunshine Winery》（游戏邦注：该公司旗下的农场游戏《阳光牧场》是Mixi平台的第一大社交游戏，还向Mixi等多个平台推出了《Sunshine Kingdom》等游戏）。

《Sunshine Winery》是一款酿酒题材的模拟游戏，支持玩家种植葡萄并出售红酒（或者作为礼物赠送给其他Mixi用户），还可以通过访问他人的农场控制天气因素对葡萄的影响。

6）据gamezebo报道，Znga日前推出了《Mafia Wars》的免费数字漫画书，玩家只需通过Facebook“赞”一下该游戏，就可以将漫画导入自己的Facebook帐户。

该漫画由多伦多工作室Udon制作（该公司制作了Capcom产品的系列漫画和美术书），一共有8页，展示了即将出现在游戏世界中的角色以及他们融入拉斯维加斯黑道的经历。

7）Facebook游戏公司King.com（目前MAU超过1700万）最近宣布聘请微软前高管Alex Dale任首席营销官（他曾负责监管微软Bing、IE和Windows Phone等产品的营销业务）。

近年加入社交游戏领域的科技公司高管不乏其数，例如Facebook游戏部门主管Sean Ryan之前曾是社交网站LiveJournal首席执行官，Zynga手机游戏主管David Ko来自雅虎，而Flickr创始人Stewart Butterfield最近也开始投入制作自己的社交游戏《Glitch》。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Emerging markets social publisher Peak Games raises $11.5 million, looks to increase releases, move into mobile

by Jon Jordan

Fast-growing social and mobile publisher Peak Games has announced its second funding round has raised $11.5 million.

Companies involved included Earlybird Venture Capital and Hummingbird Ventures and another strategic investor.

Peak raised $5 million in its Series A round in May 2011 from Earlybird, and $2.5 million in its seed round from Hummingbird and a group of angels in 2010.

The money will be used for market expansion, studio acquisition, staff hiring, and user acquisition.

Peak currently has over 4 million daily and 16 million monthly active users on Facebook, up 60 percent since May. According to AppData, it’s ranked the sixth largest company on the platform.

Know your audience

Based in Turkey, Peak focuses on supplying emerging markets with localised, and culturally-relevant content.

Its biggest markets include Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and the Middle East and North African region (MENA); a total audience of over 200 million Facebook users, and one that’s growing at a double digit rate.

Much of its initial growth came from games based on traditional Turkish and Arabic card and board games such as Okey, but since it’s expanded with games for women and girls such as TrendKiz and a

localised version of Happy Farm.

It recently acquired two Turkish hardcore strategy game studios Umaykut and Erlikhan, as well as signing partnership deals with RockYou (Zoo World 2), The Broth (Barn Buddy), and MagnetJoy (Pet Party) to create and publish localised versions of those games.

Cross-platform goal

“Understanding emerging markets like Turkey, MENA and Latin America is in our DNA,” said CEO and co-founder Sidar Sahin.

“Our development studios are focusing on creating the best games on the market and we’re making sure that they’re culturally relevant. Now with the acquisition of Umaykut, we’re very excited for our next-generation core games.”

As part of the investment, the company is also looking to bring its social games to mobile platforms, both natively and via HTML5. CEO Sahin previously set up and sold Turkish mobile game publisher Funpac to Mynet in 2005.

Peak Games has offices and studios in Istanbul, Ankara, Amman, Barcelona, Berlin and San Francisco. （source:pocketgamer）

2）Users Spend More Time on Facebook than Google

By Douglas Crets

It’s official. People are spending more time on Facebook than on Google – a total of 41.4 billion minutes – making it the first time the social network has surpassed the search engine in this category.

A report released by Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney does not take into account last week’s sharing changes, or the Thursday Timeline announcement.

The chart is still impressive. It suggests that social is more important to people on the Internet, something that Google was trying to harness with the launch of Google+ and Circles only a few months ago.

it shows that in the third quarter of this year, Facebook crossed the line occupied by Google to become the site visited for the longest period of time. We have asked Facebook for relevant data from after the Subscriber and Smart List launches, and from the weekend. We will let you know if they get back to us. （source:readwriteweb）

3）REPORT: Longest Facebook Sessions Are In Singapore

by David Cohen

Facebook users in Singapore spend the most time on the social network each time they begin a session, while those in Brazil tend to hang around for much shorter times, according to the latest international study on the use of social networks from Experian.

The U.K. research firm examined social network usage in eight countries. The average time per Facebook session ended up as follows:

Singapore: 38 minutes, 46 seconds;

New Zealand: 30:31;

Australia: 26:27;

United Kingdom: 25:33;

France: 21:53;

United States: 20:46;

India: 20:21; and

Brazil: 18:19.

However, Brazil performed strongly when the same eight countries were analyzed in terms of percentage of Internet visits going to social networking sites, while the opposite was true for the United

Kingdom:

Brazil: 18.9 percent;

Singapore: 16.4 percent;

United States: 15.4 percent;

France: 15.1 percent;

India: 14 percent;

New Zealand: 13.9 percent;

Australia: 13.1 percent; and

United Kingdom: 12.2 percent.

Other Facebook-related findings from the Experian study:

Facebook is cutting into Orkut’s lead in Brazil. The latter still tops that country in terms of social network market share, at 43 percent, but Facebook picked up 16 percent from August 2010

through August 2011.

India was the country with the most explosive Facebook growth from August 2010 through August 2011, with the social network posting an 88 percent market-share increase.
Facebook’s market-share increase in the United States for the same period was five percent. （source:allfacebook）

4）A Bit Lucky Debuts Second Game, Lucky Space

By AJ Glasser

Lucky Train developer A Bit Lucky debuts its second game, Lucky Space, today. The resource management and exploration title mixes conventional social game mechanics with ABL’s “secret sauce” of retention-driving niche gameplay. A sense of humor and slick graphics also set the game apart from anything it could be compared to on Facebook.

Lucky Space puts players in the role of an intergalactic explorer gifted with a planet from their late space surveyor uncle. The planet allegedly has resources hidden underground and the player must establish and grow a mining town on the terrain to tap the various space minerals. As you might expect, the core gameplay loop resembles many city or town-building role-playing games and simulations. Players build structures that produce the resources, which they then have to harvest at various time points to collect even more resources and unlock new content.

Based on results from the closed beta period, A Bit Lucky thinks it’s found the sweet spot for retention in Lucky Space. The developer tells us that of the 2,000 players in the beta, the average time of the first play session is 25 minutes. Average session time overall is north of 15 minutes, and the average number of sessions per day is around five. Part of this probably comes from the in-depth gameplay that requires a lot of user attention. A larger part, though, likely has to do with Lucky’s Space’s charm. Aside from a highly detailed art style that falls somewhere between Saturday morning cartoons and a Sharper Image catalog, the game also contains a lot of humor and inside jokes around science fiction films, TV, and books, like a food storage structure called Wormhole Foods.（source:insidesocialgames）

5）Rekoo Japan Launches Sunshine Winery On Mixi [Social Games]

by Dr. Serkan Toto

One of the very, very few foreign companies doing well in Japan’s social gaming market is Rekoo Japan. Rekoo, which has offices in Beijing and Tokyo, has made a name for itself with its “Sunshine” series of social games in the past years.

The company’s flagship game, Sunshine Ranch (a farming simulation) was Mixi‘s first big social game. Rekoo then followed up with other social games, i.e. Sunshine Kingdom or Sunshine Treasure (not only on Mixi but on other platforms, too).

And today, Rekoo Japan launched the newest title to their brand, namely Sunshine Winery, on Mixi for the PC. As the name suggests, Sunshine Winery is a social winery simulation: players are supposed to grow and sell wine (or give it away to other Mixi users as presents).

Players can support each other, for example by visiting another user’s farm to control what effect the weather has on the grapes each day.（source:serkantoto）

6）Zynga launches Mafia Wars 2 digital comic

By Andrew Webster

Mafia Wars 2 is expected to have a much more engrossing story than its predecessor, and to prove it Zynga has released a free digital comic set in the game’s crime-filled universe.

In order to access the comic, which can be found here, you’ll need to first “Like” the game on Facebook and then link the comic to your Facebook account, much like you would do with a game.

The comic was created by Toronto-based studio Udon, best known for creating comics and art books based on Capcom properties. Over eight pages it reveals some of the characters from the world, who will presumably show up in the game, and how they fit into the Las Vegas criminal underworld.（source:gamezebo）

7）Bubble Saga maker King.com hires Microsoft exec as marketing head

by Joe Osborne

Can none resist the dollar signs allure of Facebook games? King.com, maker of Facebook game ports like Bubble Saga, announced that it has hired ex-Microsoft exec Alex Dale as its chief marketing officer. Dale joins King.com after overseeing Microsoft’s marketing efforts on products including Bing, Internet Explorer and Windows Phone.

“We have made several strategic hires recently in an effort continue this growth and even take it one step further, becoming a clear leader in the space,” King.com co-fonder and CEO Riccardo Zacconi said in a release. “We are confident that Alex will be instrumental in helping us further grow our global user- and partnership-base and are thrilled to have him on board.”

Dale joins a list of executives that have found themselves in the social games space. Sean Ryan, director of Facebook games partnerships, was at one time the CEO of now-defunct social network LiveJournal. Zynga head of mobile games David Ko comes from Yahoo, and most recently Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield moved on to make his own social game, Glitch.

King.com, which most recently launched Bubble Witch Saga on Facebook, now joins the ranks of companies like Zynga in its willingness to source talent from other industries. And King.com says in the announcement that Dale will be at helm of the companies global expansion. It seems that the company is looking abroad to reach the top five game makers on AppData–it sits pretty at number seven with just over 17 million monthly players.（source:games）