1）据Techcrunch报道，社交游戏开发商Zynga近日向Facebook发布其首款授权游戏《Zynga Slingo》，它是Zynga与经典博彩游戏《Slingo》合作的结晶，后者是bingo和老虎机游戏的合体，最初发布于1996年，其不同版本在各平台下载量已超过30亿次。

Zynga Slingo(from insidesocialgames)

据Zynga所称，这款授权游戏融入了Zynga自己的美术设计风格和功能，但其特点与即将问世的《Zynga Bingo》并不相同，Zynga计划在未来推出更多授权游戏和产品（游戏邦注：该公司上周宣布与孩之宝针对《FarmVille》进行授权产品合作）。

2）Wedbush Securities分析师Michael Pachter最近指出，Zynga股价仍有上涨空间，该公司发展形势良好，因为Zynga聘请了许多前EA行业元老，这些资深人士有助于Zynga更好地执行战略。

他预计Zynga在2013年营收会比现在翻一倍，但并不是很看好Zynga进军在线博彩娱乐领域，因为这个市场已经拥有许多其他博彩巨头，他们已经掌握了相当规模的博彩用户和其他优势。Zynga有可能将其扑克游戏用户引向博彩项目，但成功机率不大。

3）Zynga首席运营官John Schappert在本周三的投资者会议上表示，Zynga并不担心社交游戏领域竞争加剧的现象，Zynga将竞争视为一种深入发展机遇。

他称社交游戏仍处于早期发展阶段，而手机游戏则处于更初级阶段（尽管已取得瞩目成就），只要是出色的游戏就能吸引用户。Zynga希望向新领域进军，挖掘新游戏题材以便获取新型玩家，其中包括传统硬核游戏玩家。

4）Digital Chocolate近日宣布向Google+独家发布新款射击游戏《Gamgs of Boomtown》，这是该公司向Google+推出的第三款游戏。

Gangs of Boomtown(from games)

乍看之下，该游戏风格类似于《Mafia Wars 2》和《FrontierVille》的合体，换句话说，它是一款西部题材，拥有城建元素和多人模式的黑帮游戏。

Google+目前已引进39款游戏，这是继Kabam的《The Godfather:Five Families》和Plarium的《Pirates:Tides of Fortune》之后，第三款在该平台独家发布的游戏。

5）Zynga在第四季度财报会议中指出，目前有80%的Zynga游戏运行于公司自己的云服务设施zCloud。

根据Zynga最近发布的博文信息显示，zCloud目前所发挥作用超过原先采用的Amazon Web Services，公司在2011年中期就直接通过zCloud发布新游戏，《CityVille Hometown》是首款采用zCloud服务的游戏，《CastleVille》也在数月后入驻zCloud。该公司基础设施首席技术官Allan Leinwand表示，zCloud已经能够支持网页和手机端的跨平台游戏（例如《Words With Friends》）。

zynga-technographic(from games)

从Zynga所发布的zCloud信息图表中可以看出，Zynga服务器基础设施将在未来2年扩大100倍，有40%的Zynga员工是工程师，每天同时在线的Zynga游戏玩家相当于巴黎人口的总和。

6）据报道，由中国社交游戏开发商游动网络代理的俄罗斯GameInsight游戏《空港达人》即将在腾讯平台上线运营。

空港达人

（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）Zynga launches first licensed game Zynga Slingo

by Mike Rose

Social games giant Zynga today launched Zynga Slingo via Facebook, its first licensed game and a partnership with classic gambling game Slingo.

Slingo, best described as a combination of bingo and slots, was first launched in 1996 and has been downloaded over 3 billion times to date across various versions and platforms.

Zynga has now licensed the game and re-released it as Zynga Slingo with its own visual style and its own features, reports TechCrunch.

However, the company was quick to note that Zynga Slingo is an entirely different release to its upcoming Zynga Bingo, calling the releases complimentary of each other.

“Slingo has been a leader in the casual game space for over 15 years, and our partnership with Zynga will bring the Slingo brand to a whole new audience in a fresh, new way,” said Rich

Roberts, CEO of Slingo.

Zynga also added that it is looking to license even more games and products in future. The company only just revealed a licensing deal with toy maker Hasbro last week.（source:gamasutra）

2）Pachter: ‘True game people’ will lead Zynga to further success

by Mike Rose

Analyst firm Wedbush Securities believes that there is still room for social games giant Zynga’s share price to further appreciate, although it doesn’t think the company’s online gambling plans are as solid.

Although Zynga’s stock price initially floundered, it improved following news that Facebook had filed for an initial public offering. In a new analysis report, Wedbush’s Michael Pachter has now said that Zynga is in a good position to further improve its stock thanks to recent releases.

In particular, he noted that Zynga has hired a number of former EA executives, including EA mobile lead Barry Cottle, putting the company in the position to develop “compelling content” in the near future.

“[We] think that having true game people in charge of its operations will position it to execute well on its business plan,” he added.

With this in mind, Pachter believes Zynga may well double its current revenues by 2013, with plenty of room for growth beyond that.

However, he does not think that Zynga’s venture into the online gambling space will be as successful, given that there are plenty of other companies that already have gambling userbases and loyalty programs that will provide advantages over Zynga.

“We do believe that Zynga could leverage its large base of free-to-play poker players to drive traffic to gambling sites, and believe that there is a meaningful revenue opportunity; however, we don’t think the opportunity is as large as many have estimated,” he noted. （source:gamasutra）

3）Zynga welcomes competition, eyes core audience

by Tom Curtis

Major social gaming company Zynga currently operates a number of the top games across Facebook and mobile devices, but the company isn’t worried that competition is quickly growing on both platforms. Rather, Zynga sees this competition as an opportunity for further growth.

During its first-ever investor conference call on Wednesday, Zynga’s John Schappert explained that as more quality games enter the market, more and more players will become interested in playing games in genral. As long as new games keep attracting players, Zynga’s audience can keep growing.

“Social gaming is still very early, and mobile gaming — despite its success and its growth — is still very early, and great games drive the audience. They bring new people in… so we like and welcome competition,” he said.

Schappert also said that alongside these growing audiences, Zynga hopes to expand its reach into new genres and game types, allowing the company to reach new types of players — including the traditional core audience.

“With respect to us and core gamers, our goal is to deliver the leading games in every major category of play,” Schappert said.

He specified that at the moment, the company has “nothing to announce,” but reiterated the company’s desire to produce games that cover all major categories. （source:gamasutra）

4）Digital Chocolate’s Gangs of Boomtown holds up Google+ Games

by Joe Osborne

You know, there just aren’t enough six shooters in Facebook games these days. What, you say, “Digital Chocolate has answered my prayers with Gangs of Boomtown?” Why, thank you, whatever just came over us to type these words, because now we know that the social game maker has released a western-themed gangster social game exclusively on Google+ for the next month.

Gangs of Boomtown is the third game to hit Google+ Games through EA founder Trip Hawkins’ Digital Chocolate, but it’s the first for the developer to offer exclusively. In the western shooter, players begin in Boomtown, a shanty town that was recently burned to the ground by the Assassin’s Gang that took your family with it. From there, it’s up to you to save the Sheriff, restore Boomtown and get your revenge.

Digital Chocolate’s Helsinki, Finland studio crafted this rootin’, tootin’ social game, which allows players to share achievements in their own gaming Circles. At first glance, Gangs of Boomtown looks as if Mafia Wars 2 and FrontierVille got together and had one pretty baby. In other words, Gangs of Boomtown is a western-themed gangster game with town-building elements and multiplayer duels.

This is the third game to release exclusively on Google+, following Kabam’s The Godfather: Five Families and Plarium’s Pirates: Tides of Fortune. Google needs these exclusives as leverage to compete with Facebook’s thousands of games. (Google+ is currently home to 39 games, including Gangs of Boomtown.) With some seriously impressive audio and interesting elements like skill points for characters, Gangs of Boomtown could help Google+ gain some notoriety in gaming.（source:games）

5）zCloud evolution heralds ZLive launch

AJ Glasser

Zynga’s aggressive development on its private cloud infrastructure, zCloud, shows us just how close the developer is to hosting an independent games platform.

Zynga started sharing more details on its cloud service as of yesterday during its Q4 earnings call, stating that about 80% of its games catalog now runs on zCloud instead of on public clouds. A blog post and infographic released today further illustrate how far the service has come in the last 12 months (click on the image to see a larger version of the infographic).

It’s significant because it means Zynga is almost ready to release its ZLive platform. For two years now, we’ve heard rumors and rough details around what ZLive — or Zynga Direct — is really supposed to be. Near as we’ve been able to tell, it falls somewhere between a fan network and a mobile social games portal built on deep Facebook integration. As early as October 2011, we knew that ZLive was capable of hosting some of its existing social games. Now that Zynga is sharing how far along zCloud has come in the last year, we know that Zynga is planning on hosting all of its games, plus some yet to be released or announced.

In its blog post, Zynga claims that zCloud is able to support more scale, efficiency and power than anything the developer experienced with public clouds through Amazon Web Services (AWS). In mid to late 2011, the developer began launching its games directly within the service instead of starting them off AWS. Mobile game CityVille Hometown was the first title onto zCloud; CastleVille followed some months later, testing the limits of infrastructure with high production values and rapid traffic growth. Zynga CTO of Infrastructure Allan Leinwand tells Inside Social Games that zCloud is already capable of supporting cross platform games for web and mobile — like Words With Friends.

The next step, then, is expanding beyond Zynga’s existing games catalog.

While Zynga certainly plans to launch more of its own IP on its own cloud and eventually on its own platform, we could potentially see Zynga publish other developers’ games on ZLive or some games portal extension thereof. Zynga hasn’t done very much with publishing as yet — beyond hiring Sony’s Rob Dyer to oversee the department and announcing a licensed Slingo game for Facebook as of this morning — but if the developer had an infrastructure capable of doing even more than what Facebook does for games, it’s not hard to imagine that Zynga would court other developers to come launch games on its service. It would go a long way toward decreasing Zynga’s dependence on Facebook.（source:insidesocialgames）