Rapper Dr. Dre has teamed up with leading social game developer Zynga to promote his latest album Detox, in the latter’s crime-based Facebook game, Mafia Wars.
The game boasting around 19 million players every months is featuring various Dr. Dre inspired game experiences including limited edition virtual goods within a “Hustlin’ wit Dre” section of the game.
The video from Dre’s latest single, Kush, began streaming within the game on Friday.
This is not the first time Zynga has partnered with high-profile hip hop artist to promote Mafia wars. Earlier this year, Snoop Dogg and Zynga got together in a Mafia Wars promotional video, where Snoop Dogg blows up a 4-ton armored truck in the middle of the desert in Nevada, with very successful result.
It is also not the first time either for artist and game developers to work together. Earlier Bon Jovi partnered with CrowdStar to distribute digital Music through games CrowdStar’s popular gamed like Happy Aquarium and It Girl.
Bon Jovi-themed items in CrowdStar's Happy Aquarium
After living on a prayer, Bon Jovi will be living on Facebook credits now. The band has partnered with popular game publisher on Facebook, CrowdStar, to bundle their digital album and virtual goods on three of CrowdStar’s popular social games: It Girl;Happy Aquarium; and Happy Island.
Players will be offered to purchase the Bon Jovi Greatest Hits Bundle as they go about doing their usual work on CrowdStars above mentioned games. The bundle includes a digital download of Bon Jovi’s Greatest Hits, Bon Jovi-theme items, and Facebook Credits, as well as a coupon code that can be used at the Bon Jovi online store.
If this unique distribution strategy for Bon Jovi takes off, then there is no doubt we will be seeing a lot of artists and artist-theme items on social games. We can also expect to buy other digital contents like movies, video games, and softwares through our favorite games in the near future. In the meantime, I bet Bon Jovi will be singing “Thank You For Loving Me.”
Crowdstar’s Pop Boom is an arcade-style game released last week.
Although the game looks like Bejeweled and is a match-three or more game, you will find that it is different game the moment you click on the first bubble. In Pop Boom, you will be playing around with sticky bubbles 
Like any other game in its genre, the aim of the game is to line three or more bubbles of the same color to pop them. But it isn’t really a casual game since you got only one minute to to get pop as much bubbles as possible, which will translate into score and then in-game coin.
In Pop Boom, you can pick any bubble and place them anywhere to make a popping line sequence. So the game is faster comparing to games where gems, bubbles or jewels are swapped. Also if you can strategically arrange before popping it. Some time bubble bombs will appear and including them in the match will make the bubbles go boom.
There are two powerups available to buy in the game; Bombs and extra time powerups. Powerups can be bought with coins which can be earned or bough with Facebook credits. The bomb powerup offers you a bubble bomb at launch, and the extra time powerup adds an additional 5 seconds to the game.
The game has very few, but competitive social element. You can publish an open challenge to all your friends or challenge a particuler friend. The right section list the top three scorers in your friends network.
Even if gifts cannot be send, you can publish a request for bomb gifts from friends, and they will sent you through the published request.
The dialog for publishing feed does not have the usual “Skip” option. Click on the “Publish” button to publish or hit the “X” on the right-hand corner to close the dialog.
If you want a few minutes of competition with your friends on some new arcade game, give Pop Boom a try.
(Go to the application)
Facebook game developer CrowdStar brings two new game titles expanding the offerings which includes popular games like Happy Pets, Happy Island, and Happy Aquarium.
Their latest games are titled “It Girl” and “Pop Boom”.
The It Girl game is more oriented towards the female audience, which centers around city life and outfits/fashion. The game follow the traditional social game play that we see on other games.
The other game, Pop Boom, is an arcade-style game. The game is in the same genre as PopCap’s Bejeweled Blitz. The game features a few touch here and there, but the primary idea of the game is to pop as many bubbles as possible.
We will bring to you our review about the games later. In the mean time, you can head to the game and check them out.
(Go to application: It Girl, Pop Boom)
Microsoft, probably the biggest and the leading multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports computer software, is reported to be indulging on talks with CrowdStar. The social game company, CrowdStar, is behind the hit Facebook games, Happy Aquarium and Know-it-all Trivia. Microsoft is said to be planning its big entry into the world of social games.
A week after Microsoft announced that it will bring Zynga games to its online properties, such as MSN and Windows Messenger, Bloomberg Business Week has reported that Microsoft has already expressed its intent to purchase CrowdStar for $200 million. Microsoft is already engaging in talks with the social game company. It is said that a deal may be made in a few weeks. $200 million is a staggering number but is roughly half the amount that the publishing giant, Electronic Arts, paid for Playfish.
CrowdStar may not be as popular as Zynga or Playfish. (Zynga is responsible for making Facebook fanatics go gaga over games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars while Playfish created a craze with their games such as Pet Society and Country Story.) It can still be considered as a great investment since it ranks fourth among the biggest developers on the social networking site. Its hit game Happy Aquarium is actually ranked as the sixth most popular game. In addition, CrowdStar has only been in this business for two years but this fall, it was able to gain $1 million per month profit.
Representatives from both companies remain mum about the reported talks. Meanwhile, Microsoft has expressed that they would not comment on rumors or speculations.
When everyone’s down and low from social traffic last month, due to the holidays, there is one developer shining from the rest. Showing its glimmer, CrowdStar has obvious growth in terms of daily active users last month.
This year, it is the second-largest Facebook game developer with DAU of 10.8 million, following Zynga with 62.4 million daily active users. Noticeably, Facebook’s enforcement of anti-viral policies last December did not seem to have a huge effect on CrowdStar than the rest of the developers.
The success of the developer may be credited to the fact that recently it has produced several popular games like Happy Aquarium, Happy Pets and most recently last December 19, it has developed an online tourism game called Happy Island. Suffice to say that CrowdStar has learned from its past mistakes developing a wide range of game application which did not prove to be a hit among gamers. Peter Relan, chairman of CrowdStar, stated that they will produce quality games, and create new and exciting ones every month.
What makes the players happy in playing their “Happy” games is the fact that CrowdStar only gives minimal penalties to users for not returning to the game. As with Happy Aquarium and Happy Pets, the fish and the pets don’t die or run off like other game apps, the tourists on Happy Island keep coming back making the player earn money even without upgrading the island. Also, the game only uses Facebook’s virtual currency and credits.
“There are games in genres out there that are goofing around and not really exploring the mechanics. We are going to come in there and kick some ass!” Relan stated.
