With the vast online and hardware capabilities of the iPhone, it is not unexpected to see more and more simple, fun, and social games for it. Yesterday, SGN released its new title, iGolf.

The game is nothing complex, but rather is a simple, fun, and free application that simulates a golf driving range. Utilizing the iPhone’s built in accelerometer; the game plays similar to Nintendo Wii titles. The player selects their club of choice (iron, driver, or wood), touches the ‘hit’ button, and with a physical golf swing, sends the ball into the air.

Based on how hard you swing, the app determines how far your shot will travel and gives you your distance as you watch your ball soar. These scores are saved, and using the iPhone’s Mail app allows you to challenge your friends to beat your best distances.

The game is a little sensitive and sometimes the accelerometer initiates too soon and picks up your back swing as your actual swing, but by carefully holding the iPhone like a tennis racket, you can easily get around this issue. Also, while the game is nothing more than a simple driving range meant to kill some extra time, it is expected to see a future version that will allow players to play on courses as well.

Other than the swing mechanics, the only other tip that has become universal (perhaps learning from past Wii-mote fiascos), is to hold on to your iPhone tight. There are those that have power swings, and flying or broken iPhones are bound to happen. It is also recommended not to play this game in public, as those unaware of what you are doing might think you’ve got a few screws loose.

Social gaming platform Raptr launched to the public just two weeks ago. Inside Social Games recently sat down with Dennis Fong, the founder of Raptr, to learn more about the platform, its capabilities, and where it’s going from here.

Thanks for your time Dennis. We’ve been following Raptr’s release, but for those readers that may not have heard about all the awesome new features of Raptr, how would you describe it to them?

Thanks for the kind words! ☺ I honestly think your review was really comprehensive, but I’ll try to summarize what we do for those who missed it. At a high level, we’re trying to make gaming more social. Playing with friends, tracking how they’re doing in their games, and using the knowledge of the games you and your friends are playing to determine what games you might like to play are all part of that.

Some people have called Raptr a “Facebook for Gamers”. While we love Facebook and are flattered to be compared to such a great site, we are also proud of our other features created specifically for people who play games. For example, we have a companion client app for your PC or Mac that automatically keeps your profile updated with your gaming activity (similar to what Last.fm’s software does for music).

In a nutshell, Raptr enables you to:

(a) Know when your friends are playing – Between Raptr and the Raptr client, we’ve created a service that automatically knows if you’re playing a game across nearly every gaming platform. Our goal is to make the experience seamless, which means we use a combination of the detection capabilities of our desktop client and the data we’re pulling from existing services such as Steam, Xfire, Xbox Live, etc., to figure out when you’re actually playing in real-time.

We also built integration into services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed (with more to come) to automatically update your status on those sites. We did this so your friends don’t even need to be on Raptr to see that you’re playing a game.

(b) Share your achievements and activity automatically – We found that gaming is a lot more fun and social when you can see how your friends are doing in their games. So we built technologies that enable us to automatically pull events happening in games and publish them on your feed, such as a friend creating a new creature in Spore, unlocking an achievement on Xbox Live, playing a new Flash game for the first time, completing a difficult song on Expert in Guitar Hero, or leveling up their character in World of Warcraft. These events are automatically shared with friends and the end result is that we can expand even single player game experiences into multi player like social experiences.

(c) Discover new games you might like – We’ve tried to make people’s lives easier by making intelligent recommendations to them for what games to try next. Our recommendations are based on what you and your friends actually own and play, so the more you play, the better the recommendations will be.

A lot of thought has gone into the development of Raptr in order to make it a powerful game-centric social network: there are cross-platform friend lists, game updates, and even some news feed features. Of all these features, what do you expect to be the highlight of this network?

Wow, that’s a tough one. I think the cross-platform friend list will probably be the most compelling, not only for the people who play games on multiple platforms, but also for players who play games on platforms like the Mac, Flash, and browser-based games, where no friend tracking service currently exists.

I’d like to hear more about the cross-platform capabilities and limitations. While Microsoft has provided you with access to the back end of Xbox Live, other major console developers, such as Sony, have yet to implement an accessible API. This obviously limits the number of games you can track on the PS3. What are some of the ways you are planning to circumvent this issue? Can we expect to see a larger number of Nintendo and Sony supported games in the near future?

Sony has shown itself to be quite progressive already with the announcements they’ve made about their online plans, so we’re quite hopeful that they will make some of that data available. At the same time, we are talking directly to game developers to have our APIs integrated with their games, which allows us to track presence regardless of whether the platform itself is open or not.

We will also be opening up our APIs to the public shortly, which will enable any developer who wants to tap into the Raptr platform to broadcast their game’s “presence” (when a user is playing a game) and surface their achievements onto our activity feed. We’ve built our technologies in a way that enables us to work with practically any data that a platform/publisher/developer makes available on the web.

Whether it’s Sony, Nintendo or even independent game developers, we’re exploring solutions for all of these in order to be as inclusive as possible.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but while Raptr networks gamers across multiple platforms, the primary network is still only PC or Mac. A lot of the time we see players switch games with friends directly via Xbox Live, and not so much using their PC, thus taking Raptr out of the loop in that regard. Is there a possibility of seeing Raptr adapted as a 3rd party program for the various consoles online services (i.e. Wii Online or Xbox Live)? Or even working directly with the developers directly to integrate it into their systems?

That’s correct, but at the same time there can be the case where two of your friends start playing in Xbox Live and then you see that in your activity feeds and decide to join them. Our goal is to notify you that your friend is playing a game, regardless of the platform they’re on. We’re not trying to replace Xbox Live, Xfire, Steam, or any of the other platforms out there – we see ourselves as complementary to them. We’d love to have Raptr adopted as a 3rd party program for the various console platforms, but we also recognize that we’re still pretty early in our lifecycle and have a lot of work to do before something like that is realistic.

You have described Raptr as a “social platform for people who like to play and discover games.” These people include both “casual” and “hardcore” players. As we know, satisfying both demographics is one of the biggest challenges of any developer.  What have you done in order to cater to each of them, or are you primarily targeted to hard core players?

We believe that the nature of Raptr actually helps shield some of the friction sometimes caused by trying to meld “casual” and “hardcore” players together. As a social network, you’re typically surrounded by your friend, which means you’re more likely to share similar gaming tastes. We’re also seeing people that consider themselves as “hardcore” players sometimes dabble in “casual” Flash games, too. We actually avoid either term because we feel people fall into a spectrum rather than cleanly into either bucket. Games like Guitar Hero and platforms like the Nintendo Wii have shown that there are games which span this spectrum.

Another interesting feature is the recommending of similar games. Considering the automatic updates feature, let’s say I playBioshock on my PC and get a recommendation for Call of Duty 4 (for the sake of argument, let’s assume both are compatible with Raptr). Since updates are available through Raptr, will you pish demos too?

Yes, we already host thousands of demos on Raptr that are free to download. We will actually automatically push a recommended demo down to your PC if our recommendation engine thinks that it is a game that you’ll want to try, e.g. you own Call of Duty 1, 2, and 3 and 10 friends downloaded the CoD4 demo.

Obviously, many players can’t very well download updates or demos for non-PC or Mac games. Can they still receive recommendations for them? Do you foresee other means of delivering recommendations?

We absolutely do recommend games to you even if they cannot be downloaded. Our recommendations can also be cross-platform. For example, if we notice you play a lot of Puzzle games on the Mac, we may recommend a puzzle game on the 360 (assuming you own a 360).

- What are the next steps for Raptr?

We’re just getting started so there’s a lot of work ahead of us. We’re working feverishly to add more and better support for other platforms and games. We don’t support many games on the PS3 and Wii right now, and we’d like to change that. We also think there’s a huge opportunity to work with more Flash game developers and Flash Game sites. We will be releasing a developer API to enable others to integrate directly with our platform. We’re pretty excited about that and welcome anyone who wants to be an early partner of ours or to be notified of its release to email us at bizdev@raptr.com.

- Thanks very much for taking the time to speak with us. Can everyone sign up now?

It’s free and completely open at this time, so just come to http://raptr.com and sign up!

From the makers of Challenge Sudoku, Zynga, comes Pathwords, the latest in the word scramble puzzle genre. But don’t write this game off just yet – the developers have created some interesting new twists on the paradigm to make a different experience.

Instead of giving you a list of letters that you must rearrange to make words, you are presented with a grid of letters that you can circle (like those old word hunts you did as a kid) to create words. Each word you find, however, clears those letters from the grid and new letters drop down. This makes the game more challenging and means you can’t reuse those same letter icons for later words. So there’s an added strategy/Tetris feel to it as well. Do I go for the quick three letter word now or do I wait to clear some others and hope that you get the letter you need to get the really high-score word?

You can start a game with your friends and have them try to beat your score, try to beat your friends’ scores in Ladder Mode, host a game, or see your game profile. Yes, Pathwords has everything that most social games need to compete at this level, the only exception being “live” battles between you and your friend ala two player Dr. Mario or two-player Tetris. Still, it’s a solid attempt that will likely attract the vocab-loving crowd. While lacking some of the flashy polish that other apps enjoy, Pathwords is an understated word game that is not as straightforward as it seems.

Game play: 7

Development: 7

Of the previous word scramble games, how does it stack up: 6

It’s surprising how often developers can overlook the perspective of a user. In so many games, regardless of genre, the creators take a lot about the game for granted and assume it will be just as easy for a new user that knows nothing about it. Even if you have a game with truly fantastic potential, if the learning curve is too high it will inevitably fall short. While it holds some potential, Friend’s Finance falls into this trap.

Friend’s Finance is a social business simulation that lets you start your own company. Once you’ve done so, you can do any number of things from hiring friends as employees, making industry investments, buy gifts, and so on. The only clear goal is to “earn as much money as possible,” and that isn’t really a problem for me. There are plenty of games out there that have no specific objective (i.e. The Sims) and have done unbelievably well.

As you play Friend’s Finance, the game periodically updates itself with changes in the virtual economy, sending out of pay checks to employees, and cash collection for your business (available every two hours). The game is constantly changing, and players need to be aware of changes in the market just like in the real world in order to catch opportunities.

Unfortunately, also like the real world, the game is extraordinarily complicated. Sure, I can pick nits about the game’s other shortcomings, but they all pale in comparison to the lack of almost any consideration given to new users. As soon as you start the game, all you get is a long FAQ about what to do in the game. Text is bad! People hate reading instructions, and while better than nothing, most people will do exactly what I did and skip it.

Of course, you cannot very quickly figure things out on your own either. Right after leaving the FAQ, you’re greeted with pie charts, big numbers, and a whole lot of very advanced looking information. Many users will be overwhelmed – it looks more like a screenshot from Microsoft Access or Excel rather than any sort of game.

I played with the game for a while for purposes of this review, but normally I wouldn’t have touched it simply because I didn’t feel like figuring it out. Nevertheless, by playing for a while, I was able to see some rather strong points.

Unlike most Facebook games, Friend’s Finance actually has a pretty good social aspect. The game is constantly updating itself, but the market consists of other players as well, and what they do can also change what happens for your company. Other players can steal your employees, forge company alliances, corner the market, as well as hire each other for their virtual business. The potential of the social interaction is significant and impressive, and I respect the developers’ effort to create an interesting game dynamic.

Complexity can be a compelling thing, but as a general rule, it’s not always the best idea. The more complex you make a game, the more time you need to spend teaching the user how to use said complexities. That alone is the biggest pitfall for Friend’s Finance: It is simply too hard to learn.

However, the game could actually be rather successful were it not for this. People enjoy virtual worlds and means to create and grow themselves in ways they would not normally be able to do in reality. I could see a player periodically checking back on their virtual business throughout a day, making choices, and playing as things change every few hours. Also, the fact that all the businesses and players can directly affect each other is a refreshing change from most “social” games that simply compare high scores.

Just a few days ago, social gaming company Mytopia debuted their cross-platform development framework known as RUGS, or “Real-time Universal Gaming System.” The concept is to write applications once run them across across multiple platforms.

Mytopia already has games running on a number of social networks such as Facebook and Bebo, but with the introduction of RUGS their capabilities are increasing. At  TechCrunch50, Mytopia demonstrated support through their RUGS system for the major mobile operating systems: Windows Mobile, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Palm OS.

In another demonstration Mytopia showed off one of their multiplayer Facebook Poker games. Nothing to be impressed about at first, but when they showed the game run in perfect sync with five other platforms, the possibilities quickly became clear. The company is doing interesting things in cross-platform communication as well as cross-platform compatibility.

Mytopia is now launching mobile versions of their games on the iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Palm OS operating systems. Their hope is to bring some of the dynamics of social networks to the mobile environment, and with the evolution of mobile platforms from just phones into internet devices, players can interact from any wi-fi location.

Of course, the cost of doing business on mobile is always quite different than the web. While Mytopia is free to play online, the firm intends to charge for its mobile games with either subscription or one-time fees.

Despite the cost, the cross-platform capabilities of RUGS certainly opens up a number of doors for social gaming. With an ever growing popularity on the web alone, the capability to expand social games and networks to the mobile market is not something developers will let slip by. It is only a matter of time before more begin to follow suit.

We see a lot of video games that mimic things that we can physically play. I refer, of course, to the genre of sports games. To be honest, I never really understood the appeal of sports games. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m trying to play a simulated version of something I can go out and do for real, or perhaps it’s the repetitiveness of the same games being released every year with only a few noticeable changes (I’m looking at you Madden). Nevertheless, there are people that find them fun: Soccer, football, baseball, and any number of table top games exist. The game I’m looking at today is the latter, called “Air Hockey.”

Air Hockey is a Shockwave powered Facebook game that simulates your standard air hockey table. You can play as one of eight nations and on one of two tables in what they call the “world cup” (sadly neither the nation you choose nor the table changes game play at all). However, because the game is in Shockwave, it alienates many Intel-based Mac users because it just doesn’t work by default on Safari.

The game is not necessarily a bad game, per se: In fact, it has an okay single player mode, and it is presented very well. The game has an excellent look and feel that creates a very “world cup” atmosphere with banners lighting up, crowds cheering, and video scoreboards. Furthermore, as you win, you can earn AceBucks in order to buy cool little gadgets and rewards. This is certainly a neat little feature, but it doesn’t help with the game’s underlying fallacy. Even for a small Facebook app, the game is just far too shallow.

You play your opponent to seven goals, and move on to the next game in the tournament. However, the tournament is only three games, and for all intents and purposes, three opponents. As you progress, the AI does get harder, but there really is no discernable difference between countries. Moreover, there are a large number of complaints that it gets too hard, and when combined with the shaky controls and hockey puck, and you have a prime recipe for frustration.

I realize the developers were trying to make the puck move realistically. However, games are not meant to be realistic, they are meant to be fun. Remember, even though the puck may move at relatively the same speed in reality, the same reactions and movements are going to be substantially different using just your wrist and a mouse versus your entire arm on a real air hockey table. I think this is a point that was sorely missed, and a large number of the goals your opponent “scores” are where you score on yourself.

Speaking of opponents…. you only have one: the computer. That’s right, there is zero social gaming here. You can’t play your friends in any way. Beneath the app, there is a chat box where you can carry on in, but that’s about the same as drinking red wine with a ham sandwich. Both are good, but you can hardly call it a gourmet dinner.

While well presented, Air Hockey falls short of a good review. The game is not terrible, but it’s not very good either. The game, plain in simple, is far too shallow. There are eight countries and two tables (all the same with different skins), and the three difficulty levels never change. The Shockwave app alienates Intel-based Mac users, the controls are finicky at best, and there is no social gaming to it at all. Sorry Air Hockey, but I’m afraid you’re just average.

As the Facebook Platform continues to mature, larger app developers are swallowing up smaller ones in a race to create economies of scale and barriers to entry. Tonight, Social Gaming Network announced that it is continuing that trend by acquiring (fluff)Friends, one of the most popular Facebook applications, for an undisclosed sum.

Since its launch in May 2007, (fluff)Friends has become one of the richest and most well developed apps on the Facebook Platform. (fluff)Friends lets users adopt virtual pets, interact with their friends’ pets, and earn virtual currency to spend on things like food and customizable habitats. Founder and developer Mike Sego has regularly appeared at industry panels on issues related to social game design discussing the game’s unique combination of virtual world, MMO, and social game characteristics.

SGN was likely attracted to the robust economy within (fluff)Friends, which is driven by a rich combination of incentivized user interactions, offers powered by Peanut Labs, and direct virtual currency purchase via Paypal. SGN says (fluff)Friends has seen a 192% increase in revenue per spender and a 143% increase in spend per transaction since January of this year.

How exactly does the (fluff)Friends economy work? It’s pretty sophisticated. Here’s a quick summary:

How can players earn “munny”?

• By petting other (fluff)Friends – 5 munny per petting
• By inviting other Facebook friends to adopt a (fluff)Friend – 5 munny for each invite you send, and 25 munny for each friend who accepts
• By betting on (fluff)Races – payout based on odds – jackpots can be huge!
• By Challenging other (fluff)Friends to a (fluff)Race Bonus Challenge – 10 munny per win
• By participating in anonymous surveys – 200 munny signing up, either 100 or 500 per survey
• By selling Limited Edition items at the Limited Edition Shop – name your own price
• By exchanging Gold for munny at the Gold Exchange – 10 Gold for 500 munny

How can players spend “munny”?

• Purchasing (fluff)Foods to feed any Fluff from their (fluff)Book profile
• Purchasing new Habitats for your Fluff from the Habitats Shop
• Adopting Minis – miniature (fluff)Friends – at the Minis Shop
• Purchasing Decorations for your Fluff from the Decorations Shop
• Betting on (fluff)Races, and potentially winning prizes, trophies, and huge jackpots!
• Purchasing Limited Edition items at the Limited Edition Shop

How can players get “gold”?

If you enjoy (fluff)Friends and want access to extra special items and features, there is a premium currency, Gold!

Gold is available for purchase directly from (fluff)Friends. Transactions are made via PayPal in US Dollars at a price of $1.00 for each 10 Gold…

For each 50 Gold ($5.00) you either purchase or earn, you will receive a Golden Ticket, which you can trade in for one of the special MegaMinis below!

With the acquisition, (fluff)Friends brings over 1 million monthly active users to the SGN portfolio.

“We’re looking forward to joining forces with SGN to make (fluff)Friends a much greater gaming experience for our users,” said (fluff)Friends founder Mike Sego. “The SGN team is very creative and focused on building great games and great user experience, which is why we know (fluff)Friends together with SGN will be a powerful combination.”

Last month, SGN announced an investment by Bezos Expeditions. In May the company raised a $15 million Series A round lead by Greylock Partners and Founders Fund.

Despite being virtual, MMOs’ economies suffer the same problems as real economies. In games like World of Warcraft (WOW), Runescape and Second Life, deflation and hyper-inflation are real problems for the developers to solve. These general problems apply to the newest generation of social MMOs springing up inside social networks.

Sam Lewis, former Systems Lead on Star Wars: Galaxies, has spoken about tackling in-game inflation and has also published a white paper on the subject (originally found by Siqi Chen via Jeremy Liew). He states that most MMOs tend towards hyper-inflation because they are designed to keep enough currency in the market for the business elements of the game to run smoothly. Eventually though, items will become ridiculously expensive.

Sam describes an example that helps keep hyper-inflation in check.

A simple simulation of a two-person (Adventurer and Crafter) economy illustrates this point. The simulation makes the following assumptions and was done in Excel.
We have an Adventurer who goes out into the world to finish a cash creation mission that is worth $100. He operates under the following restrictions -

• He must fire 100 bullets from his gun to get the newly created $100.
• He will not go out to kill the beast if he loses money in the process.
• As a new character he starts with $300.

The second actor is a Crafter who can make bullets and sells them to the Adventurer. He operates under the following restrictions -

• The Crafter sets his prices as he will and at the start will sell 100 bullets for $75.
• The crafter will adjust the price based on the general money supply in circulation and whether or not he made a sale last period.
• The Crafter also has to pay a sales commission tax on each (variable drain) transaction and a fixed license fee for doing business (fixed drain). Conceptually this can be a Vendor who makes a salary and gets a sales commission, but can also be charges for posting on an auction site.
• The Crafter sells everything through his Vendor or this auction site.
• The crafter does not pay any NPC for components needed to make the bullets, and for this simulation makes the bullets on demand.

In this case the simulation indicates that the money supply naturally stabilizes…

From this example he derives a set of useful bullet points as a guide to controlling inflation.

• Consumables are important in creating new Cash – If large amounts of new cash can be created without consumables, then there is no economic brake on cash creation.
• Players set the prices of Consumable – This is the other side of the coin, since only player set prices can legitimately respond to changes in the money supply. Attempting to do this programmatically in such a diverse economy as a typical MMO is to invite failure. National governments have not been able to do this.
• Fixed drains need to be in place – This provides a mechanism to remove a Crafter who is economically irrational from the business game, as well as to provide equilibrium in prices and money supply. Thus a regular fixed cash fee for doing business is required, and set by the game.
• Variable Drains via percentage commission of the sale need to be in place – This provides a damper that mitigates wild swings in the money supply. Fictionally Sales commissions provide this damper. The percentage is set by the game, on Facility Type basis.

In truth, this is how most MMO’s manage their economies, but developers have tools to help ensure that the problems associated with inflation do not get too out of hand. The most simple of these is using price caps – most MMOs will have price caps in place on all their commodities and items so that if inflation does set in the items will never reach an unaffordable price tag.

(As a brief aside, the standard for MMOs is often to have the much of the economic activity, such as trading and quest assignment, carried out through non-player characters (NPCs), i.e. characters that are controlled by the game. That way the developers can control the money flow more simply.)

One MMO that has taken a different approach is EVE Online. CCP, the developers, have been uncompromising in their desire to create a single sustainable environment for the game to exist in. They have also left the players to their own devices and have let them lead the development of the game. The result has been that the game, now with a population of over 245,000 players playing on a single server (up to 50,000 playing at any one time), has developed its own economic dynamics.

EVE has quite complex trading structures between the various corporations and factions that the players have created in the game. Since EVE Online went live, the economy has gone from strength to strength and much of the systems that CCP set up to be NPC controlled such as the corporations and ship sellers are now run by the players. Consequently, with so little NPC interaction CCP have needed to take a radically different approach. In the end, they did nothing and just watched how the players dealt with their economy. They even removed the price caps as an experiment to see how the markets would react.

Dr Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, CCP’s Chief Economist, tracked the results and found some fascinating information. “I’ve been looking at the mineral markets in EVE, and it’s quite obvious that the markets operate just like Adam Smith predicted 200 years ago: The market succeeds without interference.” The figures showing the performance of EVE’s economy can be found in the game’s Quarterly Economic Newsletter.

The remarkable results seen with EVE Online show that an MMO’s economy can succeed without controls. However the nature of EVE means that a large portion of the game’s draw is the opportunity to engage in commerce and the players all contribute to ensure the economy stays healthy. With more traditional MMOs like WOW where trading is more of a means to an end rather than a major element to the game play, it is necessary to employ methods like Sam Lewis has suggested.

In order to decide how to control inflation in the economy the best approach is to think about how much of the gameplay will be taken up by trading. The example EVE has set shows that if trading is the name of the game the players will control inflation so the code doesn’t have to.

Never think that a good game needs to be a complex one. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. If you look at history, some of the greatest games have a set of rules less than a page in length. Games like chess, othello, and Tetris are all exceedingly simple to learn and can provide hours and even years of entertainment. While Pop Answers is not going to be the next “chess,” despite its simplistic nature, it’s rather fun to play.

Pop Answers consists of a simple survey/Family Feud style game mechanic. Every day or couple of days, a new topic is available, such as “Name something you would take with you for an afternoon in the park.” When you click Play Now you have 60 seconds to name the most popular answers based on a survey of 100 people. The objective is to score as close to 100 as you can by guessing what is not necessarily a right answer, but rather a popular one.

The game itself is nothing extravagant. It doesn’t have any shiny new graphics, or amazing sound: In fact, it’s rather drab, but curiously enough it has some quaint charm to the game play that kept me playing through different topics. Maybe it is the challenge to see how smart I am, or maybe I want to rank higher than my competitors, or maybe I’m just curious to see what other people are thinking. For some reason, social or otherwise, I kept playing.

Speaking of social traits, the application is a little different in that regard as well. Yes, it does follow similar trends that other games have. You score, and you have a ranking of you versus your friends. It also adds in a feature that gives you hints towards the popular answers by spending tickets that you receive by inviting friends. At first glance, none of this seems very special right? That’s what I thought at first, but then I was clued in on the intentions of the developer, Mapdev.

If Pop Answers is ever able to reach critical mass, it could use the data to generate results (and potentially new questions) and it would generate a significant amount of data about how people think on Facebook. This would certainly add a powerful aspect to the app and would utilize the social capabilities of Facebook in a truly interesting way.

Pop Answers may not be an extravaganza of graphics and sound, but its simple concept makes it entertaining, if even for a moment. Although I would highly recommend a face lift for Pop Answers, as it would certainly do the game some much needed justice, even with the dull look, you can see some underlying potential. While it lacks in any major social capabilities beyond scoreboards, the possibility of user generated content creates a very powerful opportunity for a more interesting and more social game.

Not too long ago we talked about the Raptr platform and its capabilities as a central community hub across many gaming platforms. This week, Raptr just integrated support for one of the newest and most talked about games of the year, Spore.

For those that may have been in a cave for the past few months, Spore is the latest master piece from renowned designer Will Wright and EA Games. Will Wright is also the same guy that was lead designer for other huge EA titles such as The Sims and SimCity. Spore is a massively scoped game in which you determine the evolution of a race of creatures from single celled organisms to a space faring people. However, one of the key draws to this game comes from the tag attached to it that describes Spore as a “massively single-player online game.”

Spore allows players to download content from each other through EA. You can download other player created races to inhabit the planets in your galaxy as well as can upload your own creations and track how they do in what has been described as “parallel universes” (other player’s game worlds). In addition to this, EA has created a “Spore YouTube Channel” that allows people to seamlessly showcase their galaxy to other users, and even share the evolution of their creatures using a game feature dubbed “Sporecast.”

This is where everything gets enhanced by Raptr. While Spore does not support simultaneous multiplayer, Raptr does allow tracking of your friends in real-time as they play the game. Moreover, with the massive number of people in the Spore galaxy, there is a near infinite number of possible creatures that people could create. As such, Raptr allows players to broadcast and share all of their creations, activity, and achievements through major social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. There’s even a “Spore Module” added to your Raptr profile page that contains everything you’ve created. You can even share screenshots of your creatures and allow users to watch them evolve and grow over time.

Considering the vast number of players that will be playing Spore, this is a important game addition for Raptr. Originally, the social content of Spore was planned to revolve around just the official site. Now, with Raptr, that network is expanding, and will continue to expand, to social networks all over the web.