Walt Disney Company have reportedly bought Playdom for a deal worth as much as $763.2 million.
Sweet Jesus, that’s a lot of money for a start-up!!! 
Playdom, a tech start-up company operating for around two-and-half years, is the No. 3 game developer on Facebook with about 42 million monthly users. Sorority Life, Social City (oh i loved this game! for its exceptionally good graphics compared with other city-building game on Facebook), Tiki Resort, Tiki Farm, and Mobsters 2: Vendatta are some of the popular Facebook games created by Playdom.
The deal involves an initial payment of $563.2 million and an additional $200 million performance-based payment.
This will certainly bring a whole new level of entertainment to many Disney fans around the world. Can we expect a live streaming of Disney cartoons or re-runs of classic fairy tales on Facebook, or yet another chance to play Mickey or Donald on Facebook?
Wait and watch… you might even get a hit with ‘Sleeping Beauty Pillow’ from me very soon.. really!! Anything can happen when you are social networking in the magical kingdom of Disneyland .
It’s been reported that 90 percent of Facebook gamers visit the site at least once per day to play games. This shows that Facebook games, and games built around social networking platforms, can be extremely addictive. 28% of people surveyed said they play once a day, while 62% stated they play multiple times a day. Companies like Zynga are taking advantage of this by developing new free games for these active Facebook gamers.
The Top 10 Facebook games for April 2010 were as follows:
- Farmville
- Birthday Cards
- Cafe World
- Texas HoldEm Poker
- Mafia Wars
- Happy Aquarium
- Fishville
- MindJolt Games
- Petville
- Pet Society
Zynga, Facebook’s leading game developer, has just launched a brand new game called Poker Blitz.
Yes!! As the title suggests, it’s a Poker game. You might be surprise, why Zynga is coming up with another Poker game when it’s own Texas Hold’Em Up Poker is doing quite well. Right?
Poker Blitz is, as described by Zynga’s Casino General Manager Har ‘Sim’ Mimran, a “poker game for the masses.”
The game is easy to learn and play, but for most die-hard poker players, this game will be a disappointment as the game does not exactly follow all the rules of Poker. The game also has and in-game features that shows you your winning probability. This game is for the casual, fun loving gamers.
It has all the vibes of a social game – level ups, sending gifts, earning trophies, sharing bonuses through posting game achievements etc. The game also features ‘power-up’, which the player can use to trade their cards in for a luckier hand, or revealing one of the opponent’s cards.
One thing that makes the game really special and different from other Poker games on Facebook is that the game is played solely against the dealer. Players can form teams and their scores are accumulated.
The game uses the same avatars as in FarmVille. The game also has nice graphics. Some features are yet to be launched.
There are leaderboards, and teams that get over a million dollars are eligible to win a special prize (An iPod Touch..wow!!). As of now, players can only play 5 game per hour, and each game lasts for 60 second. Player can also extend each round by doing well in the round. Losing a straight two hands also finishes the game even if there is still some time remaining.
Arkadium, casual social game developer, hit a million jackpot with their first Facebook game while many other gaming industries are having a hard time to adapt to the popularity of social games.
The game, Mahjong Dimensions, which was launched on January 15 have generated more than 1 million monthly active users in just two months.
According to Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium, “We are extremely excited to have exceeded the one million user mark in such a short time frame. Now that we have proven we can successfully build an audience on Facebook, our primary focus will be to further monetize it.”
“Many of the 300 games in our library have the DNA to become great social games. We plan to follow the same recipe we did with Mahjongg Dimensions and replicate this success over and over again,” he adds.
With the success of their first game, Arkadium has a lot of chance to creat more hits through cross-platform promotion like Zynga, the leading Facebook game developer.
Mahjongg Dimensions was launched as a 3-D web game in 2009 and is available on many sites that host Arkadium’s games. The company plans to launch five more Facebook games in the second quarter.
So, watch out for their games.
[Source: Venture Beat]
Sony Online Entertainment LLC launched its popular turn-based strategy game PoxNora on Facebook.
PoxNora, a combination turn-based strategy game and collectible card game set in a fantasy world of creatures, relics and spells, was acquired by Sony Online Entertainment in January 2009. Ever since, the game has expanded in reach and popularity with over 2.5 million registered accounts to date.
“The Facebook platform offers gamers a new and powerful way to interact with a tap into their social communities” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment.
“With the launch of PoxNora for Facebook, we are leveraging the expertise SOE has gained bringing entertainment to the online game community for over 10 years,” he adds.
SOE has customized and optimized the Facebook version of PoxNora to appeal to a wider social networking audience in a fun and engaging way. PoxNora for Facebook will harness the platform’s social channels by allowing users to invite friends and post updates of accomplishments.
Online social gaming has seen a tremendous growth in parallel to Facebook’s growing popularity and with the launch of this game, the time cannot be more appropriate for SOE. We hope to see more games on Facebook from Sony.
We will bring to you more details on the game shortly.
[source: PR Newswire]
[Image source: Facebook PoxNora]
Last week Facebook games statistics, February 27 to March 5, showed MindJolt Games as the fastest growing Facebook game.
Mindjolt have always been in and around the top five fastest growing games. It is unusual, but the application hasn’t been doing much in order to get itself noticed apart from letting its users spread the word.
Another uniqueness of Mindjolt is that it doesn’t develop the games available through its service. Instead, it gives budding game creators the chance to present their ideas and creations to the masses. They provide more than 300 games to choose from; action, puzzles, strategy, shooter, sports, card games and more.
MindJolt as we know, provides enormous amount of simple, yet addictive and interesting games to play along with friends. It has around 20 million regular users at present.
The firm was bought out by Platform G, with former MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe at the top, last week. DeWolfe brought together some of his former colleagues from MySpace and is trying to give a shot to capitalize on social gaming, with a fair chunk of financial backing to start out with – rumored to be around $20 million – from private equity firm Austin Ventures.
List of Fastest growing Facebook games on Friday March 5 at 18:00 GMT
01. MindJolt Games (19,782,786 = +900,131 / +4.6%)
02. Bubble Island (1,101,968 = +594,265 / +54.0%)
03. FarmVille (83,105,118 = +591,152 / +0.7%)
04. Tiki Resort (1,218,159 = +575,310 / +47.2%)
05. My City Life (3,908,234 = +537,319 / +13.8%)
06. PetVille (19,567,573 = +472,022 / +2.4%)
07. Texas HoldEm Poker (27,211,570 = +465,874 / +1.7%)
08. Ninja Saga (3,874,566 = +453,790 / +11.7%)
09. SPP Ranch! (2,542,250 = +411,466 / +16.2%)
10. Happy Island (12,275,447 = +301,470 / +2.5%)
Numbers in brackets relate to total monthly users, increase in monthly users, and the weekly growth percentage.
[Source: appdata.com]
Blue Fang, the developers of the popular game “‘Zoo Tycoon”, has rolled out their first Facebook game. The game is titled “Zoo Kingdom.”
In Zoo Kingdom, players begin the game by managing a small petting zoo and sets off on a journey to build their personal zoo kingdom. Players earns currency and experience by taking caring of their animals and maintaining their zoo. As with any other social game, players can send and receive gifts from friends, visit each others zoo and take care of them and get some amount of in-game currency.
One can also buy gifts (with in-game coins and game certificate or Certs, which is the name of the game credit for Zoo Kingdom) and send them to their friends. Players are given 2,000 game coins in the beginning to help them make a head start on their journey.
The game has four types of item categories namely Exhibits for Animals, Buildings, Scenery, and Flora. Player have to first purchase and build an animal exhibit, then buy the desired animal by clicking on the exhibit… spent some time there, searching for animals .
Players can adopt all sorts of cute, fun, and unique animals through the exhibit. Different exhibit habitat will give access to different types of animals. Also, different types of exhibits supports different number of animals in a particular exhibit. The game offers different types of buildings; right from a bathroom, coffee corner to veterinary clinic. All decors starting from a trash can to statues and fountains can be found under the scenery category. The game also offers various floras starting from potted flowers, flower beds, bushes, plants, trees and topiary to choose from.
Players gain experience and game coins by taking care of animals and floras. Apart form the players level, the game also has different stages of zoo. At certain intervals of level advancement, players are given specific goal to achieve. If the specific goal requirements are not achieved within the specified levels, then one’s doesn’t level up until the goal is achieved. Achieving the goal will advance the zoo stage, giving the zoo a whole new look and provide different benefits. This factor makes the game more interesting.
As the game is just launched, some features like achievements are not available. The game has more than enough game items that can be bought with either game coins and game credits to start with.
This game is definitely worth giving a try. Start building up your own zoo kingdom, but don’t you dare try keeping a lion and a gazelle in one exhibit 
Play Zoo Kingdom now.
ISG has rolled out the Top 25 Facebook games list for the month of February. As expected, Zynga’s FarmVille with 83 million users sits comfortably on the no.1 spot, and Cafe World on 3rd.
Second place goes to RockYou’s Birthday cards application.
A little highlights for the top 25 Facebook Games for February, 2010:
- Zynga’s FarmVille crosses 80 million users over the past month gaining over 7.5 million new monthly active users to reach a whooping total of 83,004,461 monthly players.
- Though RockYou’s Birthday Cards is placed at a distant second with 47 million monthly users, it has also gained over 7 million new users.
- Lots of fishes are dying out there in Facebook with both the popular fish-keeping Titles, FishVille and Happy Aquarium, losing around 1.5 million and 0.8 million monthly users. Fish World, from Tall Tree Games has completely fallen off the charts.
- RockYou’s zoo simulation game, Zoo World is also climbing the chart with an impressive gain of 4.1 million monthly users.
- PetVillie went past Playfish’s Pet Society to become the no.1 pet simulation game on Facebook.
- Popular games with ‘Island’ in their title like Happy Island and Island Paradise showed gains over the past month.
- Hero World, developed by RockYou, made its debut this month. It is a superhero-themed game, and game play is like Mafia Wars, but also have some interesting social elements, like teaming up with friends to take on super villians or bosses.
- Vacations are over and so Facebookers seems to be tired of Pillow Fights and the worst affected is Shikaha’s Pillow Fight losing over 8 million users over the past month.
Zynga, the leading social games provider on Facebook, announced that it has signed an agreement and is all set to buy up fellow Facebook game developer Serious Business.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Serious Business employees will join Zynga at the company’s San Francisco headquarters as part of the business deal.
Zygna, founded in 2007, is the maker of popular social games like FarmVille, YoVille and Mafia Wars. Serious Business, on the other hand, was founded in 2008 and is best known for games like Friends For Sale and Rock Legends.
“We’re very excited to gain an experienced team that is committed to building social games,” say Zynga chief operationg officer Vish Makhijani. “We are impressed with Serious Business’ entrepreneurial attitude, speed, and innovation in developing social games and welcome them to our team.” adds Mahijani.
According to Zynga, it has over 235 million monthly active users playing its games which includes FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars etc. Serious Business’s Friends For Sale is played by more than 6 million people every month, according to the company’s website.
Zynga surely is in for some serious business
The BBC or British Broadcasting Corporation, is the longest established and biggest broadcasting corporation in the world. They have diverse TV and radio shows that inform, educate, and entertain. They also have their own website (www.bbc.co.uk), and other products that include books, DVDs, a micro computer line in the 80s, etc. Among its most popular TV shows are BBC News, Doctor Who, Top Gear, In the Night Garden, and Teletubbies.
BBC is currently working on bringing some of those television brands to game platforms like Facebook. To help it has hired the former Electronic Arts (EA) executive, Robert Nashak, according to his LinkedIn profile. As of this month, Nashak is the Execuitve Vice President of Digital Entertainment at BBC Worldwide.
At EA, Nashak worked as the VP of Worldwide Casual Studios. In addition, he also worked with other game publishers like Acclaim, Glu Mobile, Vivendi Universal Games, Disney Online, and Yahoo! Games
Official word from Neil Ross Russell, Managing Director of the BBC’s Children’s Division, is that they are talking to anyone in games about the different kinds of business models to see how they can make it work. They also still do not have a full list of games to disclose. BBC tried to get into the gaming industry in the past. They had been developing a PS2 title for its spy show “Spooks” but stopped when sales didn’t pick up.
