1）据socialgamesobserver报道，Sid Meier的社交策略游戏《文明》在Facebook的运营情况并不理想，已跌出Facebook前1000名应用榜单，因此在近日宣布对游戏进行“重大调整”以期增加用户粘性并挽回颓势。

custom gameplay(from socialgamesobserver)

其中最大的调整是支持用户自定义游戏玩法和控制游戏速度、每日使用的虚拟货币上限、参与者的最大或最小名望等参数，在这个自定义版本的游戏中，玩家每天可邀请的好友数量多达20个。

该游戏由Sid Mieier与2K Games、Firaxi历时22个月共同开发而成，并于2011年6月登陆Facebook，尽管游戏获得极大媒体曝光率，其原版PC游戏已在全球售出1000万份以上，但这款Facebook游戏的表现却不尽如人意，最高峰时期的MAU仅为56万7790，最近MAU则是7万。

2）韩国网游公司Nexon最近发布一款以僵尸为主题的Facebook游戏《Zombie Misfits》，该游戏由Nexon与加拿大工作室Antic Entertainment共同开发，玩家在其中的任务是使用Biker、Trooper等不同的守卫者抵御成批的僵尸大军。

Zombie Misfits(from games)

3）英国开发商King.com（游戏邦注：总部位于伦敦，在罗马尼亚、旧金山也有工作室）最近宣布公司已跻身Facebook前十名应用开发商之列，在Facebook的MAU达1760万，DAU是420万。

bubble-witch-saga(from games)

该公司代表作是《Bubble Saga》，最近又向Facebook发布新游戏《Bubble Witch Saga》（目前MAU是170万），并计划推出手机版本。

4）手机社交游戏平台木瓜移动最近复出iOS平台，向iOS游戏开发商推出社交SDK，支持他们在游戏中添加积分排行榜、任务挑战和好友邀请等功能。

木瓜移动在北京、伦敦和硅谷均成立了工作室，之前曾在iOS平台运营了数个月，后来则因平台兼容性问题而转向更有弹性的Android领域，其竞争对手包括DeNA旗下的Mobage、OpenFeint、Heyzap等。

5）旧金山初创企业Swrve最近宣布公司同名云反馈测试工具正式上线，其首席执行官Hugh Reynolds表示，Swrve与Kontagent分析平台等此类服务有所不同，它支持开发商通过查看用户反馈数据调整游戏内容，其性质更像是一个游戏编辑器而非分析工具，即使是非分析专业人士也可以使用该工具指导游戏开发工作。

Swrve tool(from insidesocialgames)

Reynolds以及Swrve首席技术官Dr. Steven Collins都有传统视频游戏背景，曾参与开发跨平台物理引擎Havok（游戏邦注：《辐射3》、《L.A. Noire》和《Dead Rising》也以该引擎为开发工具），2007年Havok被英特尔收购后，Reynolds和Collins就在2010年成立了Swrve。

6）在本周DAU增长最快的Facebook游戏榜单上，《Mafia Wars 2》位列第一（最近DAU为270万），第二名是《Ravenskye City》（最近DAU为130万），第三名是乐元素《开心水族箱》（最近DAU为170万）。

Top Gainers This Week-Games(from AppData)

7）市场调研公司Newzoo最新调查数据预测，2011年西班牙玩家在电子游戏中的投入将达16亿欧元（约合22亿美元）。

约有51%的西班牙网民是游戏玩家，其总数将近2400万，其中有1500万属于“活跃”的付费玩家；西班牙女性玩家所占比例达46%。

有76%的西班牙玩家体验休闲及社交游戏，他们在网游、手机游戏上的投入时间占51%的比例；从总体上看，玩家每天体验这些游戏的时间达2100万小时。

在西班牙玩家今年向掌机游戏投入的5.4亿欧元（约合7.517亿美元）中，有22%流向了二手游戏，有12%流向DLC内容。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Spanish gamers(from gamasutra)

1）Sid Meier’s Struggling Social Game CivWorld Announces Major Changes

By Regina Leuwer

What happens when a game created by an acclaimed developer and loved by millions of players moves to the most successful gaming platform that ever existed? Not much – at least not in the case of Sid Meier’s social strategy game CivWorld which is struggling hard with a shrinking user base and has dropped way outside the top 1,000 applications on Facebook. This week, CivWorld announced ‘big improvements’ to stop the downward spiral.

One of the new features is a customizable user experience.

The biggest of the changes is giving users the opportunity to create a custom gameplay  and  control parameters e.g. game speed, daily limit of currency, or minimum and maximum fame for the participants. Players are encouraged to invite up to 20 friends to their customized version of CivWorld.

CivWorld also introduced new functionalities around the game’s currency, CivBucks, which can be used to change the weather in battle, upgrade palaces and make workers more efficient. There are new ways to earn CivBucks in-game through participation in fame contests. Another novelty is a tower-defense-style combat minigame that can be played as many times as players want when combat is underway, in order to get a higher score.

The combat minigame offers a higher score for returning to the app more often.

All these features are designed to increase user engagement by leveraging common techniques in social gaming, such as incentivizing users to return more often to the app, or customizing their experience and enhancing virality. It remains to be seen whether these extensive changes can turn things around for CivWorld.

The game was developed by Sid Meier in association with 2K Games and Firaxi and published on Facebook in July 2011, after 22 months in development.  The launch received wide media coverage and CivWorld was expected to change the social games sphere by adding depth and appealing to classic gaming audiences. The app is a social adaptation of Sid Meier’s Civilization series that sold over ten million units worldwide. CivWorld’s all-time high was 567,790 monthly active users (MAU), currently it has 70,000 MAU.（source:socialgamesobserver）

2）Nexon’s next social game, Zombie Misfits, looks for brains on Facebook

by Joe Osborne

Alright, we thought it too: “Another zombie game?” But hold on just a second there, naysayers. Nexon’s new Facebook game, Zombie Misfits, takes the whole zombie craze in a decidedly different direction. Co-developed by Canadian studio Antic Entertainment, this social take on what’s quickly becoming a tired trend turns is a side-scrolling tower defense game.

Wait, according to a release, it’s a “cartoon-style apocalyptic tower defense game with an RPG flare.” Does that sound different enough for you? And if you ask us, the game’s art style looks like something you’d easily find on Cartoon Network.

Ever since Nexon struck gold with MapleStory Adventures, the company has been bullish on Facebook games, but has taken its sweet time. (The publisher likely could have thrown its name on a number of Facebook games this year, but didn’t.)

But back to the brain bustin’. Zombie Misfits has players defend survivors of the zombie apocalypse in two-dimensional zones against wave after wave of walking cadavers. To do so, you must place Defenders in key, predefined points in each level to kill off the walkers (thanks, The Walking Dead) before they reach the hovel of “breathers”, as tutorial character Slim calls them.

The game features a number of different defenders like the Biker, a club-wielding badass type, and the pistol-toting Trooper–all of which can be modified and upgraded. Of course, you’ll need to strategize which Defenders to place as you unlock them to fight the numerous types of zombies. And players can enlist the help of their friends, as per usual. But really, nothing beats the feeling of taking a giant chain saw to a morose mob of undead mouth-breathers.（source:games）

3）King.com hits top 10 Facebook developers, 1B games played a month

by Joe Osborne

But wait, there’s more: the company has also opened offices in San Francisco and Romania. King.com, London, England-based creator of hit Facebook games like Bubble Saga, announced it is now a top 10 Facebook app developer, according to AppData. The social game maker and games portal chalks the accomplishment up to reaching 1 billion games played monthly.

While that measure is across all King.com game platforms, the developer welcomes 17.6 million monthly and 4.2 million daily players on Facebook. Of course, the top performing King.com game is Bubble Saga. The company’s Romania office will handle its mobile efforts, while North American business development will be led by former Gamelab president Jong Woo, King.com’s new senior business development director in San Francisco.

“We are ecstatic to have not only reached a billion monthly gameplays, but to also become a top 10 Facebook developer. It’s rewarding to see our games gain so much interest and excitement among our players–across all platforms,” King.com CEO Riccardo Zacconi said in a release. “We are taking this recent momentum and expanding our reach through North America by adding an office in San Francisco and new employees to that region so we can more closely connect with our partners and gamers there.”

Most recently, King.com released Bubble Witch Saga to Facebook, which boasts more daily players than the company’s top game at 1.7 million. Perhaps most importantly, this news confirms King.com’s plans to strengthen its mobile presence, as social game makers are so wont to do these days. And something tells us those bubble-loving witches might get the treatment next.（source:games）

4）PapayaMobile Returns to iOS With Gaming Engine, Social SDK

Kim-Mai Cutle

While many of the mobile-social gaming platform players seem like they’re in a rush to get to Android, PapayaMobile is making a curiously retro step.

It’s coming back to iOS after a lengthy hiatus. The company is bringing its social SDKs back to Apple’s platform where game developers can add features like leaderboards, challenges and game invitations to their apps.

While PapayaMobile, a company that stretches across three continents with officies in Beijing, London and Silicon Valley, has run a farming-style game on iOS for a few months, it’s been awhile since it operated on iOS. The company was originally booted off for issues around lacing a single virtual currency through several games.

“When Papaya first entered iOS, we realized that there were features within our social platform that did not mesh well with iOS requirements, features that were needed to allow us to grow at an accelerated pace,” the company’s head of developer relations Paul Chen. “The Android platform provided this initial flexibility, hence our decision to refocus our business on Android at that point in time.” The company says it has about 30 million users in its network.

Papaya is going against the grain in returning to iOS. Competitors like DeNA’s Mobage have decided to focus mostly on Android, where it will have more leverage to tap into payments or virtual currency revenue. OpenFeint is also focusing more attention on Android because it’s difficult to monetize a gaming network on iOS, given competition from Apple’s Game Center and the platform’s restriction around payment providers. Heyzap is also fairly focused on a direct-to-consumer social networking and gaming app on Android.

Papaya is likely making this offering so that the developers it courts on Android can use the same product and SDK when they operate on iOS, even if it doesn’t mean additional revenue for the platform.（source:insidemobileapps）

5）Cloud-Based Game Feedback Service Swrve Exits Beta, Launches Version 2

AJ Glasser

San Francisco-based startup Swrve is ready to exit beta today with its cloud-based feedback and testing tool of the same name. The graduation comes a little over a month after the company netted $2.7 million in seed funding to put toward developing its service and hiring new staff.

Swrve is a tool that creates multiple split tests within a game where developer can try, fine-tune and deploy changes live. Company CEO Hugh Reynolds explains that the service isn’t an analytics platform like Kontagent or its competitors, but rather a component that allows developers to see and act on feedback collected from split tests conducted in-game. As an example, he says a card game developer can deploy five versions of the same piece of art for one card type in-game, interpret which performs best among its demographic breakdown, and push the one art piece that performs the best live. Or, Reynolds says, a developer could even consider deploying more than one art piece for the card in-game that varies depending on the user’s demographic.

“People look at it and say it’s more like a game editor than analytics tool,” he says. “It’s something that ‘regular people’ that don’t have a PhD in analytics can use day-to-day to guide development.”

Swrve is now launching version 2 of its server architecture, allowing the service to scale to a larger pool of developers. One of its earliest clients is Facebook social game developer 5th Planet Games; Reynolds tells us that about 18 more customers across mobile, social and open web game developers are also evaluating the product. Swrve uses a business model similar to a phone bill where customers have a low point of entry and then pay for usage with no lock-in agreement. It’s possible to use the service on a month-to-month basis, but there are incentives for quarterly or annual subscriptions.

As an interesting aside, Reynolds and Swrve CTO Dr. Steven Collins are known in the video game industry as the creators of the cross-platform Havok physics engine, which powers games like Fallout 3, L.A. Noire, and Dead Rising. Havok sold to Intel in 2007 and Reynolds and Collins went on to found Swrve in 2010.（source:insidesocialgames）

6）Mafia Wars 2, Ravenskye City Lead This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Games by DAU

AJ Glasser• Oct

Mafia Wars 2 tops our list of fastest-growing games by daily active users this week with Ravenskye City and the Chinese language version of My Fishbowl rounding out the top three.

You’ll notice that, following Facebook’s updates to how it counts active users, almost all monthly and daily active totals appear rounded. Gain totals also seem to appear uniformly rounded, though we can see that they are not for Mafia Wars 2, Ravenskye City and Words With Friends. We’re still trying to puzzle out this discrepancy.（source:insidesocialgames）

7）Report: Spanish Gamers Will Spend $2.2B In 2011

by Mike Rose

New data from a survey by market research firm Newzoo has found that gamers in Spain will spend a total of €1.6 billion ($2.2 billion) on video games during 2011.

The Spanish National Gamers Survey noted that around 51 percent of the Spanish population who use online facilities also play video games — approximately 24 million people overall.

However, the survey found that 15 million of these gamers are ‘active’ — that is, they spend money on video games. It also noted that 46 percent of Spanish gamers are female.

In terms of online gaming, 76 percent of all Spanish gamers play casual and social games, while online and mobile games take up 51 percent of time spent gaming by Spanish players. Overall, these games are played for 21 million hours every day in Spain.

Other interesting statistics from the study include the fact that 22 percent of the €540 million ($751.7 million) spent on console games in Spain during 2011 went towards second-hand games, with 12 percent spent on DLC.

Peter Warman, CEO and co-founder of Newzoo, explained, “What I found interesting about Spain is the fact that the share of people actually spending money on or in mobile and online games, is comparable to other large Western countries.”

“I expect the current recession to seriously affect spending on new boxed products but growth in online population and spending within free-to-play games to push the overall market to growth, in terms of time as well as money spent.”（source:gamasutra）