The History of Social Games – Though many see social gaming as a new field, entrepreneur Jon Radoff reminds everyone that, literally speaking, social games have been around for thousands of years. Check out his chart, below.

Six Flags Diving into Social Games Again – The theme park giant Six Flags has announced its upcoming new Six Flags Mascot Park — a social game. It will allow players to create various mascots that can virtually perform, with actions ranging from dancing to getting blown up, as they strive to become “the star of a virtual Six Flags theme park.” This is not the first social dance for Six Flags, however, as it had launched a simple collection of mini-games on Facebook back in November of 2008.

MySpace Redesign is Coming – Being second in social networks next to Facebook, MySpace evidently has a major redesign coming. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, MySpace Co-President Jason Hirschhorn noted that new products would be coming this summer, with a massive overhaul of the overall site design following sometime during the fall.

Blur Features Facebook Integration – Mainstream racing game, Blur, from the developer Bizarre Creations and publisher Activision is doing more than racing sexy cars. Players of the game can actually connect Facebook, in both single and multiplayer modes, and send game challenges to friends as well as post in-game photos, racing stats, unlockable items, and more to their Facebook feeds.

Mobile Flash Gaming Site Coming to Android – Earlier this week, Mochi Media, the Flash gaming portal that sold to Shanda Games earlier this year, announced the launch of a brand new Flash games site that will make use of Flash 10.1. Moreover, the site will actually be a mobile-oriented site, allowing users to play via the Android platform.

NoiseToys Helps Socialize Music – A new startup dubbed NoiseToys has launched a new iPhone app called HitMaker that takes a page out of the Fantasy Football playbook to socialize music. In a nutshell, players find music and “own” it, then attempt to boost how well it does by sharing it with your friends. If they like it, you get points.

Offerpal’s GamePoints.com Sees Early Successes – It’s been roughly three weeks since Offerpal Media launched GamePoints.com, the website that allows users to earn virtual currency for any number of games. In that time, the company has reported that the endeavor has garnered 500,000 users, whose favorite means of earning currency consists of watching videos, completing surveys, or earning shopping rewards.

MasterCard Opens Payment Platform to Developers – Long time online payments service PayPal is seeing some new competition this week as The New York Times reports MasterCard’s announcement of its plan to open its credit card payments platform to developers of both online and mobile applications.

Apple Gets Antitrust Inquiries, But Sees New Growth - According to The New York Times, Apple is getting antitrust inquiries regarding its supposed strategy for marketing its digital music. Supposedly, the company has used its dominance over the digital music market to dissuade music labels and internet music companies from giving online retailers, such as Amazon.com, any sort of exclusive access to music pending release.

Luckily, not all news for Apple is bad, as the continued success of the company’s iDevices (particularly the iPad) has pushed Apple’s market cap high enough to make it the most valuable technology company in the world, over Microsoft.

Zynga Invades 7-Eleven: Photo Evidence - Monday was the day that Zynga and 7-Eleven made their cross-promotion partnership, but Eric von Coelln took it upon himself to take a few photographs at just how much this entailed. From Slurpee machines, to sandwiches and fruits, the advertisements are everywhere.

Social gaming is shaping up to contribute $835 million to the $1.6 billion US virtual goods market this year. At the same time, social games have redefined social platforms like Facebook itself, boosting the site’s advertising revenues and helping it to blossom into a true, vibrant ecosystem.

This year, Inside Network held our first ever summit on these apps and games that are transforming how social platforms function and monetize. Inside Social Apps 2010 featured speakers from many of the leading thinkers in the social gaming industry, from developers and publishers, to monetization companies and investors.

Sebastien de Halleux, co-founder of Playfish and, now SVP of Business Development at EA Interactive, presented on what the social game developers of today can learn from gaming platforms of the past, and where he thinks the social gaming industry is headed.

A clip of the highlights from this presentation:

The presentation is available to the public here.

De Halleux also spoke with us in an exclusive interview backstage about where he thinks the future of social games is headed. Even if your core business is not currently involved in social games, pay attention. This rapidly growing industry segment is already presenting many brands with valuable opportunities for in-game marketing and advertising.

Sebastien de Halleux’s full interview covers:

• The role of creativity versus virality as levers affecting a game’s widespread adoption and success
• The consolidation of developers and publishers, and what the powerhouse organizations of the future will look like
• Where the next round of talent and growth will originate
• Can games themselves be drivers for overall traffic growth and user engagement on Facebook

To see the full interview, join Inside Facebook Gold at gold.insidenetwork.com/facebook

While television franchises have seemingly done little within the social space over the past year (besides the Family Feud hit) – at least in regards to full on games – the extraordinarily popular American Idol contest is moving into Facebook with its just released application, the American Idol Star Experience. Launching in tandem with the Season 9 finale of the popular television talent show, Canadian developers Ludia and FreemantleMedia Enterprises (FME) are looking to springboard off the show’s fan base by allowing them a means to become idols themselves.

No, don’t worry, Star Experience is more than just a mere avatar creation title. It’s actually two-fold with one half PC download and the other half Facebook showcase. Truthfully, the former is the real bread and butter as users download and enter what is dubbed the “Performance Creator.” From here, users are able to create their very own personalized, American Idol performance.

This is actually a pretty in-depth, game rendition of Windows Movie Maker. After players have chosen what their avatar is going to look like through a fairly decent selection of clothing and body types, they can begin to produce their show for the world. This consists of a few parts: Song, Staging, Poses, and Camera.

The song part is the most self-explanatory, as users select from a list of one minute clips from older, and more popular songs (i.e. works from Alicia Keys’ Fallin’ or Boyz II Men’s I’ll Make Love To You). Unfortunately, the list feels a bit short at the moment, and since American Idol revolves around pop genre music, it will not appeal to everyone. Nevertheless, it would be unlikely that more did not get added in the future. Once the song is chosen, it’s time to put on a show.

This is where the Move Maker similarity comes into play. Players are given a list of stages to choose from, and once selected (along with color), they are given a timeline. On the timeline, players are capable of placing pre-animated effects, poses, and camera angles at specific points in the song; which is generally every five or so seconds. Furthermore, each of the three categories has their own timeline, so you make up to three things occur at once.

The first of the three, effects (called “staging” in the game) is where your flair comes from and consists of confetti, rain, fireworks, and other forms of pyrotechnics. As for the posing, this is the animation of your avatar. After all, it would be a bit boring if he or she just stood there, no? With 52 different animations that can be classified and sorted by movements that are considered dreamy, fierce, seductive, tragic, or up beat, would-be Idols have an impressive amount of personality to grant their digital selves.

As for the camera work, this is everything from close-ups to long, wide shots, and everything in between. Frankly, this is the part where most Idol players are going to shine, because there is such a variety in angle and distance for each shot, that careless planning makes the performance a bit painful to watch.

Of course, there is one more aspect that could make performances a bit more painful…. Star Experience allows its players to… record their own singing, if they want, in a karaoke fashion. Let’s just say that some are good, and others, not so much, just like the show.

Once everything is completed it can then be uploaded to Facebook and displayed for the world to see. Within the app itself, anyone can jump on, view performances and rate them based singing, staging, and styling (the avatar itself). Moreover, users can favorite the best, and share what they like with their Facebook friends. Obviously, this sharing also extends to what they themselves create as well.

Frankly, Star Experience is a brilliant multi-fold idea. Already, it is basing its audience off of something that is popular and that, obviously, millions of Americans watch and love. In some cases, the level of customization feels a bit lacking (namely the songs), but overall there is plenty for most users to make something phenomenal. Moreover, what better incentive for would be singers to play than putting themselves in front of, potentially, 400+ million users?

American Idol Star Experience is a fantastic addition to Facebook and certainly a worthy download for Idol fans everywhere. If there was any one concern to be had, it is that the Facebook half of the game relies on user generated content. There is always potential for extremely bad or offensive content, especially when you consider that people can record themselves. Nevertheless, so long as the developers do a good job policing such actions then this is a game that ought to do well.

For those that follow mainstream gaming to any degree, it goes without saying that EA Sports reigns supreme when it comes to most sports titles. Having licenses with leagues like the NFL and FIFA, that’s hardly unexpected, but now the gaming giant is bringing one of those licenses to Facebook. The brand new app is EA Sports FIFA Superstars, and while it’s not the first sports title we’ve seen on the social network, it is one of the better ones.

Essentially, Superstars is a team management sort of game similar in respect to Hive7’s Kick Off. Players start out learning the ropes from a non-player character coach, with the goal being to reach the top rankings in the league. In order to reach that pinnacle, however, users must manage their roster, training, stadium and formations.

As this is an Electronic Arts title, the roster itself is worth mentioning as all of the players are actual players from around the world. Each one has a certain level of talent and a number of skills associated with a number, just like in the console versions of EA’s titles. This includes pace, stamina, control, and depending on whether or not they are a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, or striker.

As one might expect, the higher the number, they better they are at that role, and as users earn more money through playing matches or selling players, they can purchase packs of five players for in-game currency or the virtual currency Playfish Cash (eventually, you will be able to trade players). These packs, called Transfers, come in three varieties – bronze, silver, and gold – and contain better possible players the more expensive it is.

Once users have a nice selection of players to choose from, they can arrange their starting line-up as they see fit. By ensuring that players are placed in their proper positions, and as better ones replace the weaker, the overall team rating increases, and in turn, so does your chances at winning games.

The other aspect to improving your rating and winning matches is training. This is what is going to be most familiar to long-time social game players, as you can train your team in a quest/mission like fashion. This ranges from stretching to full practices, and will earn X amount of training points over Y amount of time. Obviously, the more training points to be earned, the more time (up to 24 hours) a training exercise will take.

However, this can be augmented through managing your stadium. Beyond hiring non-player characters such as a coach (which only lasts for a few days before you have to purchase him again), users can upgrade their stadium with training tools such as cones and dummies, or luxury items such as seating that will improve rewards from playing matches. Additionally, all of this, including your NPC team doing whatever training exercise you assigned them, is visible in a moderate virtual space, granting users a visual satisfaction and reward for what they are doing. The only downside, is there really isn’t a whole lot to buy. At the moment, there’s only six stadium items.

Once players have satisfied themselves with the management aspect of their team, they can move on to actual matches. These consist of four types of games including Friendly Matches, League Matches, Premier League, and 2010 FIFA World Cup. The first is typical friend challenges, while the last is not quite ready yet (which makes sense, because the real World Cup, happening in South Africa this year, doesn’t start for a couple more weeks).

Of the other two match types, most users will likely play the League Matches. This is actually the most social of the set-ups at the moment as players will play a limited number of matches a day against other Superstars users. The more they play and win, the higher ranked they become, moving from the junior leagues all the way up to championship and superstar leagues. Within each league, all users within that range are displayed and selecting them will show their relative player strength, training, team talent (how good each team member is on average), and formations.

From here, players will be presented with a rather epic Flash rendition of the soccer match, complete with play by play commentary. Users don’t control anything, but it does look pretty good and is interesting to watch the first time through. Of course, since most of the animations repeat over and over, most players will simply hit the skip button thereafter.

Upon winning, players will receive monetary rewards and move up in rankings. Should they lose or get a draw, less reward and experience will be earned.

As far as leveling itself goes, the game’s primary gating is for what type of matches you can play, unlocking the 24 hour training exercise, and allowing new player formations. Off the bat, users can only use a 4-4-2 formation, meaning four defenders, four midfielders, and two strikers. However, once they level up and move up in rankings, new formations and more interesting match-ups tend to occur, forcing players to try and edit their team prior to games depending on if the opponent’s formation is offensive or defensive.

This is especially important when users unlock the Premiere League. Overall, it’s about the same as the League Matches, but rather than other Superstars users, they are Barclays Premiere League teams. The goal is to beat all 20 of them, and, oh, they’re a lot better than you are.

Overall, FIFA Superstars is a fantastic soccer game for Facebook, and easily one of the better and more fluid feeling ones we’ve played. The only real complaint to be had is there is a relative lack of things that the user can buy, other than players or extra matches for virtual currency. Currently, there are only six training exercises, one staff member to hire, and six stadium items. For now, they work fine, but here’s hoping more gets added soon. Either way, stretch those hamstrings, run those suicides, and practice that control. We’ll see you on the field.

Our latest weekly list of emerging games on Facebook — those still under a million monthly active users — actually shows two weeks of growth today, due to a bug that left Facebook’s MAU reporting frozen for that period of time. And since this category, which encompasses all the newest apps, also tends to turn over fairly often, most of the names you can see below will be new.

The list is lead off, though, by a trio of games that have been around for a few weeks, and are headed for the million MAU mark: Jungle Life, Bike Mania 4 Micro Office and Monster World. Here’s the full AppData list of 20:

Top Gainers This Week – Games Name MAU Gain Gain, % 1. Jungle Life 890,481 +430,078 +93.41 2. Bike Mania 4 Micro Office 707,972 +417,373 +143.63 3. Monster World 869,527 +413,469 +90.66 4. Jewell Stars 655,624 +369,125 +128.84 5. Pool Master 995,181 +278,836 +38.92 6. My Empire 276,339 +270,498 +4,631.02 7. Age of Champions 341,575 +251,596 +279.62 8. Baking Life 358,483 +249,896 +230.13 9. phrases 4 fun 298,125 +240,810 +420.15 10. ??? ? 239,466 +233,057 +3,636.40 11. My Casino 873,373 +214,801 +32.62 12. Castle & Co 391,007 +213,939 +120.82 13. Bubble Paradise 358,338 +202,903 +130.54 14. Jumping Dog 727,579 +202,514 +38.57 15. My Fish 409,658 +197,472 +93.07 16. Belote 223,728 +194,743 +671.88 17. Kungfu Online — Best Martial Arts MMORPG Ever! 440,176 +184,770 +72.34 18. My Tribe 986,324 +177,286 +21.91 19. The Agency: Covert Ops 202,854 +174,381 +612.44 20. Keyboard Smash 439,520 +164,394 +59.75

We’ve reviewed both Jungle Life and Monster World, here and here. We have yet to take an in-depth look at Bike Mania, from casual developer Flashgames247.com, but it’s basically a combination of obstacle course and hand-eye coordination test; the aim is to get a tiny racer as far as possible without tipping him over.

That leaves us with the newer games. Jewell Stars, at number four, is a take on Bejeweled by Spanish developer Social Point; it’s followed by Pool Master, a billiards game. Coming in at a lowly number six — in light of the heft provided by its publisher, the mighty Electronic Arts — is My Empire, a city-building game based on the Greco-Roman polis that we found to be pretty creative. We should note, though, that My Empire appears to have really hit its stride only a couple days ago. Most likely, EA/Playfish was tweaking the game and making updates when it first launched, before pushing ads and cross-promotions to help it grow.

KlickNation is best known for Superhero City, but its new title Age of Champions threatens to become the bigger hit — not a bad problem to have. It’s one of the few heavily animated strategy titles we’ve seen to date, Sony’s Pox Nora being another. And as you can see from the screenshot below, it actually looks pretty good.

Take a look over the rest of the list — chances are we’ll see some, like The Agency: Covert Ops at number 19, rising toward the top of the list next week.

Just change your passwords.

Symantec found a server which appears to be a key part of a botnet which has harvested 44 million user names and passwords for online games:

World of Warcraft - 210.000
Aion - 60,000
PlayNC - 2 million (NCSoft's site-wide account)
Wayi Entertainment - 16 million

Symantec focused on an interesting feature of the botnet - it was used as an illicit cloud computing service to validate the quality of the stolen account information using a trojan program called Trojan.Loginck.

Ah, the Internet and its glorious features.

It was unclear how all of these identities were collected, probably via phishing or purchase.

Needless to say, this did represent a substantial dollar value in stolen accounts... millions and millions of dollars.

"44 Million Stolen Game Accounts Uncovered?", http://www.markeedragon.com/content.php/720-44-Million-Stolen-Game-Accounts-

E. Ward (2010), "44 Million Stolen Gaming Credentials Uncovered", http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/44-million-stolen-gaming-credentials-uncovered

In another sign that the tech world is starting to take Android seriously, Facebook released its first official software development kit for the mobile platform today. Developers can use the SDK immediately with a couple of features, and more will likely be added in the coming months.

For companies looking to build mobile social games, the best option so far has been the iPhone operating system. But the growth of Android — and this new access — means the mobile OS is starting to look more promising.

One of those features is simply the ability to publish stories back to a user’s Facebook page — one of the bedrock functions of apps on the social network. The second is the Graph API, which offers a few more possibilities, including a more advanced interface with the feed and information from the user’s profile, like their friends, photos and fan pages.

Just two days ago, MySpace’s own SDKs for both Android and the iPhone went live. So in the space of a week, Android developers have gained easy access to both social networks.

Facebook’s own turnaround to creating an Android SDK is interesting. It hasn’t done much with Android, even though it has built its own iPhone app, and worked with manufacturers and developers around the world to integrate its mobile services. Toward the end of 2008, Facebook was reportedly snubbing the fledgling mobile OS. But today, a post on Facebook’s developer blog said the network is “really excited” to do its beta launch for Android.

In Facebook’s latest move to promote Credits, its virtual currency, the company has created a Page for the product. That isn’t especially interesting, as the company has individual Pages for many of its other products.

What’s more interesting is how the company is using the Page. One way is that it’s showing off third-party apps that use the virtual currency. Facebook has also promoted games that use Credits elsewhere, like in its Apps and Games Dashboard, but this in-house promotion is another way for apps (especially small ones) to get noticed.

And Facebook has also included a very broad definition of what Credits is, on the Page: “The fastest and easiest way to pay for digital goods and services.” That sounds less like a virtual currency for buying virtual goods in social games on Facebook, and more like iTunes.

[Editor's Note: The following post was recently published on Inside Facebook. All stats in this post are excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Click here to learn more about our complete data and analysis service.]

Earlier this week, we looked at Facebook’s top 10 languages globally, ranked by the total number of people using the site in each language. While English came in at number 1, as might be expected, the next 14 in the list, ranging from Spanish to Arabic to Dutch, are collectively used by 45.8% of Facebook users.

Our data also tracked demographics by language. Some languages fell neatly in line with Facebook’s overall userbase demographics, which skews slightly female and younger. Others — notably Turkish, Arabic, and Italian — did not. (The full list of 15 countries, including demographic splits, is available through Inside Facebook Gold.)

Given these numbers, is it worth it to localize, if over half of Facebook’s users are already using the site in English? The answer depends on the markets your app is aiming for. Today, we’re going to take a look at language breakdowns for Facebook’s top 20 country markets.

The United States, still Facebook’s biggest market with just over 125 million users, is also one of its most linguistically homogeneous ones. 96.8% of US Facebook users access the site in English. The next runner up should be no surprise — 1.5 million, or 1.3%, of US Facebook users view the site in Spanish.

Facebook’s second biggest market is the United Kingdom, with 25.9 million users. Of these users, 97.6% access the site in English. The UK’s next most popular language is Polish, in a distant second at just 0.5% of the total UK userbase.

Some of Facebook’s other top countries are less homogeneous. In Indonesia, the site’s number 3 market worldwide, the most used language is Indonesian. But that market’s second most popular language, English, is used by a generous 21.7% of Facebook users in that country.

Likewise, in Canada, though English is the dominant language, French is used by 13.5% of Facebook users there.

How marketers and developers can use per-country language data

What do these language breakdowns mean for developers or brands looking to capture new geographic and linguistic markets? While it’s unlikely that you would localize your app down to a given country’s third language just to make sure you’re really speaking to every last user in that market, it can still be interesting to see what market segments remain untapped.

For example, you may decide that English is a good-enough localization play for Canada, especially now that you know it helps you reach over 84% of the total Facebook userbase in that country. But, should you decide that you really want to push past the 84% limit and potentially add on another 2 million users, then you’ll know that localizing to French will better enable you to do so.

Finally, while some of the percentages of a market’s total that the second or third languages represent may be small, they could represent wholly different market segments, that monolingual campaigns aren’t addressing. It’s likely that the speakers of a market’s second or third most popular languages also speak that market’s dominant language (and could really use your app or engage with your ad if they really needed to), but in the world of new user acquisition, localization isn’t just about access — it’s also about appeal.

The full breakdown of languages by country, including the top 5 languages for Facebook’s 20 biggest markets, is available through our data membership service, Inside Facebook Gold. To get access to the all the data we’re tracking, including Facebook’s growth stats and projections for over 96 countries around the world, please see Inside Facebook Gold at gold.insidenetwork.com/facebook.

It has only been four months since we reported that Boku, a mobile payment service used on Facebook apps and elsewhere, had taken a $25 million venture round. Yet it’s already back with another investment, an undisclosed amount from prominent new venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Boku’s total capital raise before this round was $40 million, leaving it comfortably capitalized. The real reason for taking on more money, according to co-founder Ron Hirson, was to get access to Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the two respected Silicon Valley personalities who head the venture firm. “They’re the smartest guys in the Valley,” says Hirson.

That reasoning is reminiscent of comments we’ve heard from Zynga, another of the firm’s portfolio company. Andreessen also serves on Facebook’s board, and both venture capitalists are well connected throughout the area.

Along with the investment, Boku also brought on two new executives. David Yoo (pictured to), who was Hirson’s direct superior at AT&T Interactive, will be Boku’s new senior vice president of strategy, while Kevin Grant, who previously worked at SBC Global and MobiTV, will head up carrier strategies, working to bring Boku more international deals and negotiate with carriers at home.

The latter duty is key to Boku’s future — today the company can take mobile phone payments in 61 countries, but part of its competitive race with companies like Zong is adding more as quickly as possible. Another part of the puzzle is convincing carriers in the United States to charge less for small transactions. For now, the mobile carriers still charge large flat-rate fees, which were born out of the ringtone market.

Hirson says that his company is likely to convince the carriers to start bringing down the fees within the year. “We have the biggest Facebook games, the biggest gaming companies, dating sites, and e-card sites. What’s that given us is a data set and use case that we can take to carriers,” he says. “Eventually, the strategy is to enable anyone to buy anything around the world.”

Another thing Hirson expects to begin this year is a drastic slimming down of the mobile payments market. “By the end of the year we’ll see the long tail companies start to fail or be picked up, and clear leaders will have emerged,” he says. “I’m talking one or two in each category.”

Having now surpassed 25 million registered users, the mobile social gaming company Aurora Feint today announced significant changes to it OpenFeint mobile social platform. Releasing as OpenFeint 2.5 into private beta, the alterations are more than mere updates — they include a hefty restructuring to the SDK’s API architecture.

One of the most significant of these new elements stems from the brand-new ability to integrate turn-based, asynchronous multiplayer features with push notification support. Already, a few apps are making use of the multiplayer including Optime’s Tic Tac Toe, Oyaji’s Mecho Wars, and Centurion Games’ Checker Kingdoms.

Up until this point, the OpenFeint platform has mostly consisted of more basic social game features, like leaderboards and achievements.

Additionally, developers are capable of bringing in scores and user profiles directly into game play, as well as utilize a new mechanic dubbed the “action replay.”

All of this is well and good, but the most significant concern of late regarding OpenFeint and its competitors, Plus+ and Scoreloop, is how they will handle the new, upcoming Apple Game Center. Here’s the big news: OpenFeint 2.5 will be completely compatible with the Game Center. It’s not clear what this means, though, because the Game Center has not yet launched.

OpenFeint says it is used by about 1900 game developers, and makes up, roughly, 29% of the iDevice market (this equates to the 25 million users, according to Aurora Feint). Moreover, game makers will be able to mix and match both Game Center and OpenFeint features. How easy this will be is, obviously, yet to be determined, but Aurora Feint assures us that the simplicity will be most apparent — with integration of this new version only taking 20 minutes, it claims.

ArenaNet has made another move against botters and other cheaters by banning 3700 accounts. Banning is pretty unambiguous for Guild Wars as revenues come only from the game's initial sale as their is no subscription... so no further revenue to lose.

Gold farmers are a target, of course, but Player vs. Player bots are a real issue as competition is a major part of the Guild Wars online experience.

Fighting bots is an interesting problem. Most games rely on signature-based schemes (looking for certain processes and programs, just as anti-virus applications work). I've been fiddling around with some alternate approaches that battle bots more generically... a topic for another day.

ArenaNet has joined the tradition of "fun" deaths for bots:



The text of the notice to players:

This is an important day for Guild Wars.

Today we terminated more than 3,700 accounts for botting and match manipulation. In cases where guilds were found to be involved in these activities, the guilds were also disbanded. More than a dozen such guilds were disbanded and many others are under continued investigation. Today?s actions are significant not simply because of their immediate impact but also because they represent a new era in enforcement for us.

As many of you know, Guild Wars has seen a significant increase in the number and sophistication of bots in recent months. Particularly visible were new types of bots used in PvP. As with any hacks or exploits, our primary concern is the potential negative impact on the experience of other players. To a varying degree, cheaters hurt other players by inflating the economy, devaluing hard-earned accomplishments, or annoying everyone with RMT chat spam to sell gold gained through botting, but cheating in PvP is especially odious because it so directly affects the play experience of others.
??rest assured that bots of all different types can be identified. With our new commitment to bot detection, no hack is safe.?
As anyone who?s followed online gaming knows, bots and hacks are difficult to fully address. Every game of decent size works to keep the problem in check, but no single, absolute solution exists. Although our support team has worked for years to combat bots and actually bans accounts for botting every day, we realize the fruits of their efforts are not visible to players. Further, this new upswing in bot activity showed that our existing processes were not adequate to address the problem. Having made that determination, we?ve been working to improve things on several fronts: staffing, identification, detection, visibility, and enforcement.

On the staffing side of things, we?ve increased the number of people dealing with bots and brought in people with a wider range of skills and backgrounds in order to be able to tackle these problems in a more proactive and thorough way. For obvious reasons, we will not go into details about all of the changes, but this batch of account terminations was made possible by our staffing improvements.

We?re now working more aggressively to identify hacks and potential exploits much more quickly. In addition to our efforts in house, we?re asking all of you to help us identify issues. Many of you have done so before on forums, but we will now provide a clearer way for you to get this information to us directly:

* Please report game abuse to support@guildwars.com using one of these exact subject lines: Botting, Match Manipulation, or Game Exploit. That will ensure the message is quickly routed to the right personnel and will expedite a review of the issue. You will be sent a confirmation that we?ve received your report, but in general we will not give out more detailed responses directly to individual players. In a situation like this, information is power. We maximize our ability to catch offenders if we operate in a confidential manner.

In order to deal with bots efficiently, we need strong methods of detection. Again for obvious reasons, we will not go into detail about anything we?ve done so far or anything we are planning for the future, but rest assured that bots of all different types can be identified. With our new commitment to bot detection, no hack is safe.

We know that the visibility of our actions is important to the Guild Wars community. While we were preparing for today, our Community and Support teams were not very vocal about these new bots. This was both because we did not want to tip our hand and also because we did not want to make promises that might ring hollow due to our lack of highly visible bot bans in the past. Moving forward, as with any security-related issue, we will not be able to talk about these matters with complete transparency, but we will look for opportunities to make clear to you our commitment to protecting the game from cheaters.

All of which bring us back to the beginning and to our strong enforcement of our policies against game abuse of any kind. Let me make this clear: We have no tolerance for using bots or hacks. It?s cheating, it harms other players, and there?s no excuse for it.

?If you have any doubts about whether or not something is allowed by the User Agreement, don?t do it.?
We know that the approaches we used to determine this particular list of terminated accounts did not catch every single bot or hack out there, but we now have many tools and options at our disposal internally, and we have the Guild Wars community itself as a resource to help identify potential exploits. As with this current round of enforcement, we may ban users of a particular hack in batches in order to better disguise our methods, but there is no expiration date for breaches of the User Agreement or RoC. If you cheat today, your account may be terminated at any time in the future.

If you have any doubts about whether or not something is allowed by the User Agreement, don?t do it. Don?t take that risk. Account termination means losing not only everything you?ve built up in Guild Wars, but losing the ability to have those accomplishments recognized in Guild Wars 2. Let me give you a real example from today. Here?s an actual account we just terminated: 2,469 hours, 38 titles, 913 plat, 268 ecto, Eternal Legendary Vanquisher monument, Mini Gwen, Chaos Gloves, Mallyx?s Strife, The Holy Avenger, etc., etc. It?s all gone now. Forever. You will not want that to happen to your account.

For those of you who raised concerns about this issue, we?re sorry it took as long as it did to put these changes in place. We should have been faster and more prepared. With your help, we will be more responsive in the future. We are listening, and we are ready to take action.

"Design Director James Phinney on the Recent Account Bans", http://www.arena.net/blog/design-director-james-phinney-on-the-recent-account-bans#more-2185

"[Updated] If you cheat in Guild Wars, Dhuum will kill you", http://www.massively.com/2010/05/26/if-you-cheat-in-guild-wars-dhuum-will-kill-you/

A fairly new iPad title called Pocket Creatures from Tactile Entertainment takes the concept of pet-caring far beyond what you’ll see on most social networks and devices.

This virtual pet sim allows players to care for a bizarre looking critter that sort of looks like a cross between a portly lemur and a bear. You get a refreshing range of things you can do with your pet, including some surprising interactions between it and the environment.

Obviously, we named ours Dr. Wigglebottom. Shortly after hatching, players are given directions on how to play in the form of quaint, chiseled tablets, and almost immediately, the basics are explained. Dr. Wigglebottom must be well fed, rested, and healthy.

As far as the latter goes, our portly little fellow hasn’t gotten ill just yet, but regarding the rest, its actually pretty logical. Essentially, the more you play, the more your creature tires. Recharging it appears to be passive once the game is off. It effectively creates the same Energy mechanic seen in just about every Facebook role-playing app to date, but does so in a more invisible manner.

In order to satisfy the critter’s appetite, however, you simply drag food to the creature’s mouth. That in mind, upon doing so, a wonderful bit of style becomes apparent. Unlike many pet sims of its ilk, Pocket Creatures actually has the animal react to whatever you pick up, watching its every movement with a curious sounding “ah?” It seems small, but it truly does add to the immersiveness of the world. After all, it is technically a floating object from Wigglebottom’s point of view.

Actually, this immersiveness is well beyond just one or two stylistic elements. Virtually everything in this realm is interactive in some way, shape, or form. For starters, many objects can be picked up, moved, shaken, and/or stored for latter use. Curiously, that use is not always known right away, but thus far, everything we’ve messed with has had a point sooner or later. Moreover, each object can often interact with other parts of the world as well as your creature.

Here’s an example: If you pick up a worm, you can coax a platypus out of his aquatic hiding place. Then, you can use the platypus’ beak to dig a hole in which to plant a seed (you do start with some; others are found randomly in the space from time to time). Now, to water it, you use an ant to attract an anteater, which can be picked up and suck water out of a pool, then used as a watering can. Couple that with animal fertilizer (use your imagination on how you get it) and you can now grow plants and crops to feed your pet with. Combine all this with all the other interactive objects and you have a wonderfully immersive element of player experimentation. They’ll just end up trying to combine things in wonderance of how and if it might work.

The best part of all this, is this is still only the environmental interaction. All of this is made further in depth by the creature itself. You see, as players care for the critter, they can affect its mood. The most basic of means is stroking it with a finger to make it happy, slapping it to make it sad (dragging your finger quickly across it), or poking it to make it angry. When one does this, an icon above the creature’s head changes, from which the player can touch and drag some form of magical effect to change the world temporarily. For example, if you have rotten fruit, make your pet happy and use the rainbow to revive it. If it’s angry, drag the thunderhead to strike down bugs and pests (animals that come wreck your stuff). Or if it’s sad, use the tears to water plants… even if that sounds horrible when you think about it.

It needs to be said, however, that these are only the three most basic of moods, and there are a ton more that can be garnered by special plants that range from spreading love to the onslaught of a new ice age. Additionally, you can even use these moods to make your pet like or dislike animals and food. For the former, if you use a woodpecker to peck its head, it probably won’t like them. If you slap it while it’s eating something, it’ll stop liking that particular dish. The reverse is true if you pet it while eating.

Socially, Pocket Creatures is empowered by OpenFeint, so it makes use most of the network’s social features. The one that stands out the most, however, is the more curious use of its achievements platform. Typically, one earns achievements, shares them, and that’s all there is to it. However, in honor of trying to personalize one’s virtual pet, unlocking achievements will actually earn wearable in-game items such as devil horns, angel wings, viking helmets, and so on.

Unfortunately, it appears that your friends on OpenFeint cannot interact with your virtual pet at this time. That said, with the overall level of depth that comes with interacting with your own pet (of which the tip of the iceberg has barely been touched/discovered so far), it’s something that really doesn’t feel too negative. However, that isn’t to say negatives do not exist.

Perhaps the biggest qualm with Pocket Creatures is that while it is a universal application – meaning it is on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch – there appears to be no way to sync your pet between the different devices. So, say you download the app on iPad because the increased screen real estate makes the game less cramped and better looking. Now say you want to mess with your creature on your phone while in the waiting room of some office: Well, if you use your iPhone, you’d have to make a whole new pet. The iPad version won’t transfer over.

Beyond this, the game does advocate the prospect of shaping your pet’s personality. Sadly, this is only half true. Any personality traits are short lived, meaning that if you make Dr. Wigglebottom angry, a few loving pets and he’s happy again. Moreover, other than an egg form that lasts about 10 seconds, the creature doesn’t actually grow, so there is no real feeling of evolution or actual raising of a pet.

Nevertheless, Pocket Creatures is still a very strong game. It’s not perfect, but it brings a level of depth and immersiveness that most virtual pet sims can’t even touch. Moreover, the use of achievements is interesting enough, that when combined with the rest of the game’s mechanics, its weaker social outlets are easily forgiven. Currently, the game is running $2.99 across all platforms, and if you like this sort of app, it’s certainly a title that will last you a good long a while.

Facebook is giving its users a new way to limit applications as part of the privacy settings changes it announced today. The changes probably won’t lead to massive drops in Platform traffic, but should make it easier for users to fully remove apps they don’t like.

Here’s a detailed look.

Located as a link within the new “Choose Your Privacy Settings” page in the main user account interface, you now have a single page to edit the access that you have previously provided to any application or web site.

The “What you’re using” section of this page shows you the total number of applications and web sites that you’re sharing data with, along with thumbnails of a random selection of them. It also includes two buttons, one that lets you “Remove unwanted or spammy applications” and another, as promised, that allows you to “Turn off all platform applications.”

> Continue reading on Inside Facebook.

Sporcle Inc. has turned its user-created quiz web site into a successful iPhone app of the same name, Sporcle. And it’s pretty fun, and even sort of educational, too. Here’s a closer look.

Launched back in 2007, the Sporcle website created a means for users to play and create any number of quizzes over any number of categories. However, since then the site has expanded into the mobile department for the iPhone. In fact, according to the developer, it is proclaimed to be the top trivia app in the App Store, and for $0.99 is within the top 125 paid apps overall (and considering there are thousands of them, that’s not too bad at all).

After playing through the iPhone rendition, it’s no wonder why it has done so well. As soon as players log on, they are greeted with at least two-dozen recently added trivia quizzes. Of course, that’s just the past week or so. When they dive into the specific categories section, there’s probably close to around 300 different quizzes to choose from. The best part though, is that these run the gamut of subjects ranging from vice presidents to video game slogans; and just about everything else in between.

The play is easy enough. For each quiz, there are any number of clues and a time limit that is set by the creator. All players need do is use their iPhone’s keypad and type what they think the answer is to these clues. As an example, for one quiz about video game’s, the player needs to identify the game by its subtitle. One such clue was “Modern Warfare,” thus the answer was “Call of Duty.” Once you type the word, and it is spelled correctly, it will appear in the answer box. You can’t actually input wrong answers, so anything that is considered “wrong” is merely a blank box. It’s either spell it right or leave it blank.

It is worth noting, however, that you don’t have to select anything to input your answers. You just type. That means that if you just randomly throw out names or answers you think could be somewhere in the quiz, the game will automatically place it in the correct box.

Upon completion, you will earn a score, and your answers are actually compared to everyone else who took the quiz. What is fantastic, however, is this is more than just a mere “how many did everyone else get” sort of comparison. Sporcle actually shows you the percentage of players that got each answer (adding greater satisfaction when you get one most got wrong), your total score comparison and the percent of players that got within that range, as well as your personal stats such as your top five missed answers.

In addition to all of this, players can also post their results to Facebook, and should they create and login through a Sporcle account, can also comment on and rate other players’ quizzes. Moreover, if they have GPS is enabled, users can also view what quizzes may have been played in their general area.

Of course, one of the premiere aspects of this iPhone application’s social outlet is the user generated content. We’ve noted, in the past, with game such as Quiztastic, that this is a very dangerous realm as many players will just as soon make vulgar, poor, or offensive content as they others would compelling content. Nonetheless, after a few plays, we actually have not yet discovered anything of the sort. Considering when you create a Sporcle account and they say that untasteful names will not be tolerated, it can only be assumed that such quizzes will not be either. That said, it would be naïve to say they aren’t out there, as the company has noted that Sporcle.com has had over 90,000 quizzes created to date, but thus far, the policing appears to be going well.

Truthfully, the only real complaints to be had with Sporcle itself, is it is a little disappointing to not be able to create quizzes on-the-go through the iPhone version. One has to go to the website itself. All the same, after looking at the quiz creator, it is a little bit cumbersome, and may not be all that suited for a small screen anyway. Nevertheless, if it could be adapted, it would be a nice addition. Beyond this, any other qualms fall under the aspect of “it’s user-generated content.” Some quizzes are very hard, some obscure, and some extremely easy. Regardless, with hundreds to choose from and umpteen different categories, this issue is minor at best.

Overall, Sporcle is a fantastic quiz game to have for your iPhone, and truly lives up to its tag line of being a mentally stimulating diversion. The quizzes are simple and far from frustrating (so long as you can spell), and even though it is all user-generated content, we have yet to come across anything that would be deemed overtly offensive. Frankly, for a dollar, this is an app worth investing in, and if you’d prefer to buy a Snickers instead, there’s a free version as well.

Aging web giant Yahoo and leading social game developer Zynga have announced a new partnership this morning, that “weaves the web’s most Popular social games throughout yahoo!” — or will in the coming months as Zynga games roll out. It’s not clear which games will be available through Yahoo, or how they’ll be available to users.

Those who have been following Zynga’s contentious relationship with Facebook lately will likely assume that this is another move by the developer to find more distribution, users and revenue beyond Facebook. And that’s true. Zynga tells us that Credits, Facebook’s virtual currency for its platform, that includes a 30% fee and will somehow be mandatory, will not be appearing in the Yahoo implementations. Meanwhile, Zynga has also been subtly directing users of its hit Facebook app, FarmVille, to go use the web site version — a possible way for Zynga to maintain more control over players regardless of what happens with Facebook.

But there are other reasons to not read too much into today’s announcement, besides the fact that Zynga and Facebook recently announced a five-year partnership. Zynga has already been busy making partnerships with other developers, most notably with Microsoft’s MSN Games portal in February.

It makes sense for Zynga to want to diversify, regardless of its relationship with Facebook. Yahoo, like Microsoft, likely has some users who would like to play Zynga’s games but are not on Facebook. Interestingly, it appears the Yahoo deal has been in the works for some time, and was only recently finalized. From AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher:

BoomTown actually called Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and asked him specifically about this deal last week and he denied it completely, noting the pair had been in discussions “forever” and that “it’s impossible to get anything done with that company.”

Here’s some more detail about the deal, from the press release.

• Ability for people to play Zynga games and access their personal Zynga game updates across Yahoo!’s properties including the Homepage, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and others.
• Sharing of updates across multiple social experiences simultaneously while playing their favorite Zynga games on Yahoo!
• Product integration of Zynga games with the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP), Yahoo!’s OpenSocial container through which third-party developers can develop applications on Yahoo!

Yahoo also shares a little more about how Zynga will integrate with its properties. From its developer blog: As part of this initiative, Yahoo! will be developing a new suite of notification channels throughout Yahoo! and continuing to promote developers’ distribution of social activities via Yahoo! Updates. Both the Social APIs and YAP will also allow them to easily tap into Yahoo! user identities (including the aggregated identities we’re enabling across our network), share to Yahoo! Updates, and automatically leverage these new notification channels. (We’ll be providing more details on these new notification channels soon — and they, like so many of our products, will be open for all.)
With these integrations, users who enjoy Zynga games will now have the ability to use their Yahoo! ID and access Zynga’s top titles across Yahoo!’s many products — including Yahoo! Homepage, Yahoo! Toolbar, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Profiles, and Yahoo! Messenger. YDN is proud to provide the infrastructure enabling these experiences to seamlessly plug into these products.

This week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users is our first list in a week, due to Facebook’s monthly active user stats having been down for some 13 days. However, DAU is still being reported.

MindJolt Games leads off the list with a whopping 15 percent increase in DAU over a single week, pushing its DAU count ahead of games like Social City and Country Life. In the past, MindJolt has had a relatively low DAU as a percentage of MAU, at least compared to other game apps, but that seems to be gradually changing.

Here’s the full AppData list of 20 games:

Top Gainers This Week – Games Name DAU Gain Gain, % 1. MindJolt Games 2,482,408 +323,180 +14.97 2. Ninja Saga 1,079,620 +259,194 +31.59 3. Nightclub City 588,109 +73,683 +14.32 4. Kingdoms of Camelot 636,047 +62,230 +10.84 5. My Empire 99,675 +58,927 +144.61 6. Baking Life 136,086 +56,532 +71.06 7. Family Feud 1,378,028 +53,031 +4.00 8. The Agency: Covert Ops 48,851 +43,534 +818.77 9. Jumping Dog 74,614 +40,465 +118.50 10. Ameba Pico 121,113 +35,779 +41.93 11. Pool Master 145,637 +32,501 +28.73 12. Wild Ones 449,141 +25,489 +6.02 13. ??? ? 46,753 +23,667 +102.52 14. Monster World 112,393 +23,043 +25.79 15. Belote 60,797 +16,165 +36.22 16. Bola 522,538 +15,888 +3.14 17. Ocean Party 61,264 +15,372 +33.50 18. Classic Word Games 17,516 +15,247 +671.97 19. Hero World 95,503 +13,773 +16.85 20. Bike Mania 4 Micro Office 66,745 +13,224 +24.71

Like MindJolt, Ninja Saga is a somewhat older game that’s making significant gains. Unfortunately, in absence of the MAU stats, we can’t tell whether this particular game is gaining only DAU, or if it’s suddenly bringing in a rush of new players. The answer is more likely to be new users, though.

Following Saga, we can see several newer games. Nightclub City has been steadily advancing since its release about a month ago, while My Empire is the latest Playfish game, and appears to be doing modestly well. Baking Life, which we just reviewed on Monday, focuses in on the bread-making business; it’s from a small developer called Zip Zap Play.

Moving down past Family Feud, which has been growing for weeks, The Agency: Covert Ops is a new spy game from Sony Online, which has been increasingly active on Facebook this year. Much further down, Monster World, by Wooga, is also worth pointing out. The monster-themed farming game has been helping to prove that fads never die on Facebook; they just need a little sprucing up from time to time.

Sony's PSP has been a poster child for the problems of piracy. The handheld game platform continues to sell reasonably well (excluding the "Go" version), but publishers have avoided it. Sony has attempted to fight the worst piracy methods with operating system updates, but these seem to be circumvented almost as soon as they are released.

The operating system hacks allow a player to bypass any form of security that is added to a game much more easily.

Sony is now discussing some sort of "protective code" that can be embedded in a game that will help fight pirates. One strategy that might work is that the game could attempt to check to see if the console's operating system has been hacked (this would be limit Sony's ability to further update the operating system, though there could be some clever ways around this).

Other options would be to implement some sort of online registration, but this is not necessarily a given for most PSP games.

As always with the PSP, it should be interesting to watch.

A. Yoon (2010), "Sony offering PSP developers code to 'slow down' piracy", http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/21/sony-offering-psp-developers-code-to-slow-down-piracy/

C. Nutt (2010), "The Sony Situation: SCEA's Rob Dyer Speaks", http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4709/the_sony_situation_sceas_rob_.php?page=4

Along with a number of other developer initiatives, MySpace recently released software development kits for both the Android mobile operating system and the iPhone. Apps on those platforms will now be able to connect their users directly to MySpace.

Like features of Facebook’s platform, the MySpace SDK accomplishes a couple of basic tasks: logging users into and out of MySpace, and finding their friends. It can also upload photos or videos, and update the user’s status.

However, MySpace also notes that it will be adding new features over the coming weeks. There’s no word of exactly what those features will be, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see the social network using mobile to help along its transformation into a gaming-heavy site.

Last week, we mentioned MySpace’s new Games Lab initiative, in which it will bring outside developers to work in its offices for a month or more. And earlier in the year, it announced that it would award a million ad impressions to the best games using Scoreloop, a mobile social gaming platform that has integrated MySpace.

For now, the opportunity to become the “social” component of mobile gaming is still wide open. Publishers like Ngmoco with its Plus+ network, white-label platforms like Scoreloop, and Apple with its forthcoming Game Center have all put in their bids to become the social connector. But it’s unlikely we’ll see the real winners surface for another few months, so MySpace has time to make its bid.

It goes without saying that Facebook has become an international platform, and to that end we welcome another recently added application from across the sea. This time the title is Pubbles, a puzzle game from Ateam Inc. of Nagoya, Japan.

The title is your typical match-three type of game with a great deal of inspiration obviously stemming from PopCap’s Bejeweled franchise. This game, however, doesn’t have players swapping gems, but rather popping bubbles whose neighbors are of the same color. This is done with a mere click, and is similar in respect to casual games such as Collapse! Essentially, Pubbles is a marriage of these two titles.

The basic game is simple enough. Players are presented with a single mode dubbed “Relax” and attempt to score as many points as possible (until no moves are left), proceeding to new stages as a required number of points are reached. Should players pop six or more bubbles, a blast of lightening takes out every thing in a vertical and horizontal line around the click, and should 10 or more be popped, a hexagonal bolt is released.

Each lighting-destroyed orb (or orbs that are removed when you complete a stage) produces a number of gold and silver coins to appear and fall, and the user can mouse over them in an attempt to collect them for even more points. Well, at least that’s what the game’s rules state. Frankly, they fall so fast and so many numbers are cluttering the screen with the explosion of points, that its hard to tell if you managed to pick any up or not. Moreover, for a mode called Relax, the sudden implementation of a highly twitch-based mechanic is a bit jarring.

Beyond these score boosting elements, Pubbles also comes with your standard combo multipliers as new bubbles fall into place, and even becomes moderately more challenge with the introduction of rocks that can only be destroyed with lightening bursts.

Of course, when it is all said and done, this colorful application is a game we’ve all seen before, and contains elements that can probably be found in over a dozen similar, match-three titles. Nevertheless, the developer does have an admirable promotion running for the launch of the application.

Having started May 19th, the game actually rewards players with a sort of raffle ticket for logging in each day and two bonus tickets for scoring over 1 million points. Each Wednesday, the developers hold a drawing dubbed the “Weekly $222 Charity Donation Campaign” where the winner will be able to decide what charity they would like Pubbles to donate $222 to.

It is also worth noting, that Pubbles is not intended to stand alone as a Facebook game. Like Bejeweled Blitz, it is an app that supports a fully fledged PC title that costs about $10. In this version, players are said to get some rather impressive looking wallpapers, two more game modes (Expert and Speed Pop), as well as significantly improved resolution and visuals.

Actually, this does lead to a very important point. Stylistically, Pubbles is not bad at all (though its sound effects of a “cute” child’s voice playing when you do well actually comes off as a little creepy sometimes), but the Facebook version looks terrible by comparison. The backgrounds are okay, but the puzzle board itself looks low res and almost as if they bubbles were poorly cut out in Photoshop. In contrast, images for the PC version look very crisp and clean. Frankly, the difference is a bit of a turn off and can lead many users to expecting the $10 version to look the same, not necessarily better.

Socially, the game is pretty basic. Typical of most puzzle apps, the only social outlet is competition. The means that all you can really do is invite your Facebook friends to play and compare each others’ high score based on a simple leaderboard system.

In the end, Pubbles, is amusing and good for killing a few minutes, but it’s a game that’s been done before, and doesn’t bring a whole lot of new elements to the table. That said, it does have some admirable promotions with the charity rewards, and as a means to promote its paid PC version, it’s on the right track. Of course, the execution of the ladder doesn’t feel all that effective with the downgraded graphics and simple social features, but it is an advertising method that more and more game makers (and other media makers, for that matter) are utilizing. It will be interesting to see who does so next.