1）据All Facebook报道，Facebook在2月6日这天诞生已满8周年，其首席营销官Sheryl Sandberg近日在其个人涂鸦墙上发布了相关消息，并收到了超过4000个“赞”。

facebook birthday(from games)

观察者称，目前Facebook全球用户已超过8.45亿，其中有一半为游戏玩家，而这些游戏玩家中又有一半是Zynga用户，由此可见Zynga以及游戏对Facebook影响巨大。

2）据games.com报道，一名自称为Zynga前员工的匿名者近日向Reddit论坛曝料，声称Zynga存在监视玩家，并将外包人员视为“二等公民”，制定苛刻的办公室政策等不良行径。

watching(from games)

他还表示，Zynga为赚取利润而牺牲游戏趣味性，游戏克隆行为对Zynga来说已经是“例行公事”，他认为Zynga唯一的“原装”游戏可能就是《Mafia Wars 2》和《Zynga Poker》，其他游戏基本上都来自其收购的小型工作室。

3）据industrygamers报道，传统游戏发行商EA位于温哥华的EA Canada以及Black Box工作室在解聘“一小部分”成员后将分别重组团队，主攻社交游戏及免费游戏市场。

该公司发言人表示，为配合EA向高速发展的数字领域转型，工作室成员目前正学习开发数字游戏及服务的新技术。在此之前，EA曾宣布公司正开发5款基于原有品牌的社交游戏，但为避免遭遇克隆现象，拒绝透露新项目详情。

4）Digital Chocolate最近发布新款Facebook游戏《New In Town》，支持玩家在这款模拟游戏中装饰虚拟角色，选择自己的职业生涯，在一个虚拟城市中建立自己的地位。

New In Town(from insidesocialgames)

观察者称，这款瞄准休闲女性用户的游戏，或将帮助Digital Chocolate收复过去6个月中流失的MAU和DAU。据AppData数据显示，Digital Chocolate在去年8月份时拥有1890万MAU，250万DAU，但之后开始逐渐下滑至700万MAU和120万DAU。

MAU & DAU comparison(from AppData)

虽然其太空策略游戏《Galaxy Life》在Facebook仍有150万MAU和32万DAU，用户留存率也在20%以上，但其他游戏却基本上在走下坡路，例如《Zombie Lane》MAU已从原来的570万下滑至190万，《Army Attack》MAU则从450万下滑至99万，《Millionaire Boss》最高峰时的MAU仅69万左右，现在的MAU仅剩9000，DAU为400左右。

5）日本游戏发行商Konami最近公布2011财年前9个月（截止2011年12月31日）财报数据，指出公司手机及在线净收益达265亿日元（3.43亿美元），同比增长173%，该业务在公司Digital Entertainment部门总营收中占比27%。

gree-konami-dragon-collection(from serkantoto)

《Dragon Collection》是表现最出众的Konami数字游戏之一，目前在GREE平台拥有500万用户，并且是该平台2011年的游戏冠军（游戏邦注：另一款游戏《Professional Baseball Dream Nine》在GREE排名第二）。

目前该公司社交游戏注册用户总数超过1500万，超过了2011年9月份时的1100万。

Konami的Digital Entertainment部门在该时期销售额为995亿日元（约13亿美元），同比增长1%。营业收入达243亿日元（约3.15亿美元），增幅达87%。（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）

1）Say ‘Happy 8th Birthday’ to the center of the Internet, Facebook

by Joe Osborne

It’s time we recognize the blue-and-white blocks to which our faces are glued to 90 percent of the day. It’s time we recognize the place in which we spend hours on end playing silly little games. Facebook is 8 years old today, according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. The social network executive posted about the birthday on her Wall to over 4,000 “Likes”.

The majority of the 62 comments on the post reflect on the past eight years of Facebook and congratulate Sandberg and crew on the recent filing of Facebook’s initial public offering. The social network has been through quite a lot, and we imagine much more than Jesse Eisenberg portrayed in The Social Network. To put this into perspective, this writer remembers having to use his college email address to even be granted access to Facebook.

In other words, we were on Facebook before it was cool. Now, one of the world’s largest social networks boasts over 845 million users worldwide. About half of those are gamers, and about half of that half plays Zynga’s games, a company that has proven vital to Facebook’s future success. Games have fundamentally changed Facebook, and likely will continue to over the next eight years.（source:games）

2）Former Zynga staffer: They. Are. Watching. You. [Report]

by Joe Osborne

Despite a skyrocketing stock price and some (finally) well-performing 2012 releases, Zynga just can’t catch a break. Now, a supposed “former full time Zynga engineer” started a tell-all discussion on popular forum Reddit. After six months away from the job, the alleged ex-Zynga staffer spilled the beans with claims that the company spies on players, treats contract workers like “second citizen employees,” employs harsh office politics and more.

The Reddit user, named mercenary-games, claims that his proof of actually being a former Zynga employee is an image of his termination certification letter. (That said, take these claims with a heaping pile of salt.) At any rate, for those who’ve been following news surrounding Zynga for some time, few of these claims are terribly surprising.

“Another issue was skewing gameplay for the sake of profit, example; I actually resorted to BAD MATH, to make the case for making a feature more fun,” the user writes. “At the end of one sprint, a QA dude was complaining about the drop rate of a specific item being absurdly insane, and therefore UnFun. I looked at the code, and tweaked some values, gave it back to QA guy, and fun was restored. Product Manager overrides this, goes for unfun, yet more profitable version.”

Metrics are used frequently in Zynga’s games design–that’s a given for almost any social games company–but this supposed former Zynga worker claims that metrics were used to fuel office politics as well, such as the company’s relationship with contract employees. Of course, the Reddit user chimed in on the Dream Heights and Zynga Bingo scandals of January, too.

“Tiny Tower + D Heights is all standard operating procedure here. If you can’t buy em, clone em. Even the core technology for FarmVille (MyMiniLife), was bought,” the Reddit user claims.

“The only “homegrown” codebases at Zynga is MafiaWars2 and maybe Poker, the rest of their tech was just bought from small studios. Lookup Dextrose Engine. To me, that’s utterly creepy.

They try to choke out the competition by gating all these engine tech.”

The entire, exhaustively long Reddit thread goes into much more, and is worth a read even if much of this may not be “news”. In the meantime, we’ve contacted Zynga for comment.（source:games）

3）FIFA, Need for Speed studios suffer layoffs, to give social games a shot

by Joe Osborne

Hey man, when things don’t work out, there’s always social games. Veteran games publisher EA will take that approach with its Canadian studios after letting go of “a smaller number” of its staff. Vancouver’s EA Canada and Black Box, known for staples like the FIFA and Need for Speed series, respectively, will reorganize to focus more on social games and the free-to-play craze.

“EA in Vancouver is transforming its studio to align with EA’s transformation to high-growth digital formats, including online, social gaming and free-to-play. Employees in our BC studio are learning new skills and working on digital games and services, and there are many examples,” an EA spokesperson told IndustryGamers. “Developed at the EA SPORTS studio in Burnaby, the FIFA Soccer franchise represents the cutting edge of AAA gaming integrated with multiplatform extensions and online features. The Need for Speed World team in Burnaby is leading the digital transformation with 11 million registered players. As the BC studio makes this transformation, a small number of employees are being impacted while most others are being retrained, redeployed and rolling-on to new projects.”

This news follows an earnings call in which EA revealed that it’s working on five different social games based around core game franchises. However, citing the climate of cloning in the social games world, EA won’t let out as many details prior to each release as before in fear of competitors creating their own responses. With The Sims Social in steady decline, perhaps EA looks to other studios to help create its next Facebook mega hit.（source:games）

4）Digital Chocolate launches New In Town on Facebook, looking for female audience

Kathleen De Vere

Digital Chocolate has unveiled its newest Facebook game, New In Town. The game is a life simulation game that allows players to customize an avatar and take another shot at life after high school, choosing a career and establishing themselves in a fictional city.

Unlike Digital Chocolate’s most recent title, the space strategy game Galaxy Life, New In Town is likely to appeal to a more casual, female demographic, which could help the developer regain many of the monthly and daily active users it has lost over the past six months.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Digital Chocolate had 18.9 million MAU and 2.5 million DAU back in August. Since then, however, the company has steadily lost users on Facebook, dropping to 7 million MAU and 1.2 million DAU.

While Galaxy Life has hit its stride with 1.5 million MAU, 320,000 DAU and a retention rate above 20 percent, many of Digital Chocolate’s other titles on Facebook have gone into decline. Its hit Zombie Lane shrank from 5.7 million MAU to 1.9 million; Army Attack dropped from 4.5 million MAU to 990,000; and Millionaire Boss — which struggled to find an audience after its July 2011 launch — peaked at just over 690,000 MAU before sinking to 9,000 MAU and 400 DAU.

Rough patch on Facebook aside, Digital Chocolate has been diversifying its product offerings, launching its own games portal and taking Zombie Lane and Millionaire City to Google+. The company also launched Zombie Lane on iOS and announced it would be bringing Zombie Lane and Army Attack to Android and other browser-based channels. If New In Town finds its footing on Facebook, we may see it spread to other platforms.（source:insidesocialgames）

5）Konami powers ahead on GREE and Mobage, with nine months FY12 sales up 173% to $343 million

by Jon Jordan

Japanese game publisher Konami (TSE:9766) announced its financial figures for the first nine months of its FY11, ending 31 December 2011.

Net revenues in its SNS segment (mobile and online games), was ¥26.5 billion (around $343 million), up 173 percent year-on-year.

This accounts for 27 percent of Konami’s overall Digital Entertainment business.

Playing trumps

A key performer was its Dragon Collection card game, which has five million players on the GREE platform and was the #1 game for much of 2011.

Konami has over 15 million registered players across its social games, with titles also including Sengoku Collection on Mobage, and Professional Baseball Dream Nine, which was #2 on GREE.

This is up from over 11 million players in September 2011.

Platform plays

The company is now releasing many of its games for GREE and Mobage, as well as making them available via iOS and Android app stores.

However, two February releases Star Wars Collection and a game based on its Dance Dance Revolution brand will be exclusive to GREE.

Waging the dog

Konami’s Digital Entertainment division saw sales during the nine months of ¥99.5 billion (around $1.3 billion), up 1 percent year-on-year.

Operating income was ¥24.3 billion ($315 million), up 87 percent.

Overall, the company – which also includes packinko slot machines, arcade games, and a health and fitness division – posted sales of ¥194.5 billion ($2.5 billion), up 3 percent.

Operating income was ¥30.9 billion ($400 million), up 87 percent.（source:pocketgamer）