Social Gaming News Digest for the week ending Aug. 13, 2010

Things happen so fast in the social gaming space these days, it can be hard to keep up. For those who need a little help, here's a quick recap of some of the biggest social gaming news that happened this week:

    Google supposedly spent $75 million on virtual currency platform Social Gold, further feeding rumors of the company's social gaming plans. Analyst Colin Sebastian has some interesting ideas about what such plans would mean for the rest of Google.
    Disney Boss (and new Playdom owner) Bob Iger got positively giddy at social gaming's prospects on a conference call.
    Farmville disappeared from MSN Games, likely due to poor traction from users there.
    We didn't get Madden on Facebook, but we did get an announcement for Gasworks' Title Town Football, targeted for next month.
    eMarketer reported that social games advertising will be a $220 million market this year. Still only 20% of social gaming revenues, though.
    The biggest social network in the world's biggest country announced it had gotten bigger, thanks in part to games.
    Golden Nugget became the first real-world casino with a Facebook game.
    Square Enix continued its Japanese social gaming push with a freemium RPG.
    OMGPOP signed on to integrate their games into myYearbook's social network.
    Playdom explains why they're trying to get a foothold in the European market while the getting is good.
    Rixty offered bonus Facebook Credits for your loose change.
    Zynga offered Petville and Treasure Island cash at 7-Eleven.
    HeyZap offered HTML5 support in addition to Flash.

ESPNU College Town releases Soccer, new All Stars, fresh tunes and more

Thanks to Playdom's most recent update to ESPNU College Town, we can play the other football. That's right, Soccer has arrived as the fourth venue sport in the game, which means a slew of new events and All Star Athletes too. The venue requires players to have at least one thousand students (assuming this is their fourth venue) and features events like a Dance Marathon, Student Camp Out and the long awaited Graduation Ceremony--hopefully that doesn't reduce your student population.

In addition to Soccer, Softball Practice has been added to the list of events in the Baseball Field venue. Not to mention that brand new tunes have been added to the game that give it a "Pomp and Circumstance" vibe. The Newspaper has also been changed to include a new Featured Items section that includes Campus Affiliation items (wait, don't we already have a spot for those?). Playdom also updated the Scoreboard so that more statistics are displayed while Player Challenges were changed so that players who challenge schools four or more levels below them will not gain experience. Take that, bullies.

The update also fixed a list of issues to improve the game experience such as loading issues, displaying friends correctly in the Gifting section and--most importantly--a change to how the game calculates School Spirit, which a Playdom community manager explained as, "[players] weren't able to add students despite it displaying that you had enough Spirit. This issue has been fixed with this update." Check out the forum post for the whole list of changes and see for yourself in-game.

Social City: Save the Windows Phone promo link for 2 free City Bucks daily

If you remember the Windows Phone 7 promotion in Social City, you'll recall that players are suppose to get a free City Buck for every time they viewed a Windows Phone commercial, and are allowed up to "2 video views per day." This ensured 2 free daily City Bucks, but the video was only advertised on Page C (the Financial News section) of the Social City in-game newsletter. And then, shortly after, the advertisement disappeared, and with it, we assumed the freebie deal was gone too.

But that freebie offer is back today! And following the return of the offer is a hot tip from a game-savvy and generous player, Nunofrc, who left a comment saying that all you need to get the free daily City Bucks offer, is to save and run the link to the videos -- here's that link.

Click on the link when you're already playing Social City. Doing so will launch a Windows Phone commercial in the form of a YouTube video. After the video has played all the way through, you'll get a message from the game that your free City Buck has arrived. Repeat this, and you've got 2 free City Bucks!

Apple cuts the cord on incentive-based app downloads; free currency in social games is out

While most iPhone game players are used to the technique of downloading other apps in order to receive free premium currency in your current game (the examples are too numerous to count, but include games like the mobile version of Social City, which gives you free City Bucks for downloading both free and paid apps), Apple hasn't taken too kindly to the "feature," and has now started the cutoff process for apps that employ such features.

To be specific, if you wanted to earn free City Bucks in Social City, all you'd have to do is download other iPhone applications, such as Zynga Poker (ironically enough), Pretty Pet Salon, Living Social, and so on, as seen at the picture at right. You'd receive any number of City Bucks from each app downloaded, with more free currency being given out if you actually purchased one of these "sponsored" apps. While this is great for the game player, as they are allowed to further their own experience and purchase new items otherwise unavailable to them, it does create a very weird imbalance on Apple's top app charts, as apps that may suffer from bugs, or simply aren't that enjoyable suddenly rise to the top of the free or paid app charts. This "padding" makes other games (those that don't use this incentive-based download feature) look worse by comparison, which Apple claims simply isn't fair.

For now, all apps that contain such incentive-based downloads will still have the currency up for grabs, but only until their developers can release an update that removes it. If they don't, these apps face removal from the app store, and the developers themselves could even be permanently banned from the iOS developer program. We know that this is serious business, as Tech Crunch has reported that some new apps have been rejected from inclusion on the app store because they violated this reinterpreted ruling in the developers terms of service:

    3.10: Developers who attempt to manipulate or cheat the user reviews or chart ranking in the App Store with fake or paid reviews, or any other inappropriate methods will be removed from the iOS Developer Program

What does this mean in the long run? Essentially, if you play any mobile version of a Facebook game, like Social City, you'll have to start paying up for your City Cash just like everyone else, until Playdom (in this case) or other developers across the platform decide what to do in terms of advertising and cross-promotional activities. If your apps haven't been updated yet, stock up on all of the free premium currency you can, while you can, as there's no telling when each app will be updated (or removed for good).

Do you have many apps that ask you to download other apps for free currency? What will you do now that those options for free "money" are now being taken away?

Disney-branded Facebook games coming in 2012, Playdom head says

Can we all just say, "finally?" During a panel named "The Rise of Social Games" at the f8 Facebook Developers Conference in San Francisco, Disney Interactive and Playdom head John Pleasants revealed that two to four Facebook games surrounding Disney brands will hit Facebook in 2012. The general topic of the panel was the fact that branded social games are taking off.

Pleasants was joined on the panel by Kabam CEO Kevin Chou, EA Interactive head Barry Cottle and Zynga CBO Owen Van Natta. Facebook director of games partnerships Sean Ryan moderated the panel with the preface that branded games will take over the Facebook platform. And he might be right: EA just released The Sims Social, Zynga will soon re-brand its new Adventure World with Indiana Jones and Kabam recently announced The Godfather: Five Families.

Playdom, which Disney acquired in July 2010 for a whopping $740 million, is ahead of the pack with two branded games on Facebook: ESPNU College Town and ESPN Sports Bar & Grill. Both games performed well, thanks to advertising through the ESPN TV network. While Disney owns the ESPN brand, notice how neither of those actually involve the insanely popular Disney characters we've come to love.

Honestly, we're surprised this didn't happen sooner. Consider this: Disney has its own cable TV channel through which it could, in theory, advertise whatever it wants. Pleasants didn't get into why it's taken this long for Disney to throw its cast of characters into Facebook games, but did reveal the power of the Disney name.

Gnome Town, which Playdom launched in the summer--and we enjoyed quite a bit--peaked at 530,000 daily players. But just plopping the Disney logo on top of the existing one made users more likely to spend in the game just through trust of the company's name, according to Pleasants. "We think it's an advantage, if you put game play first," Pleasants said.

It's comforting to hear this emphasized by these developers. (Kabam's Chou shared the same sentiment.) Branded games on Facebook are OK in my book, but the last thing anyone wants to see is the genre become a branding machine.

[Source and Image Credit: VentureBeat]

Are you on board with the growing trend of branded games on Facebook? Do you think developers will maintain integrity as the focus on branded content in their games intensifies? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment