Inside Social Games

Top social game developer Playfish announced today that it has raised a $17 million round of financing from Accel Partners and Index Ventures. Along with Zynga and SGN, Playfish becomes the third social game developer to have raised over $20 million for the creation of a new wave of social games.

Playfish will use the money to build out its game studios around the world.  It already has offices in San Francisco, Beijing, and Norway.

As we noted last week, Playfish sports 4 of the top 10 applications on Facebook. Collectively, the company has over 10 million monthly active users on Facebook alone, though it will be moving onto other platforms soon. Playfish released its first games on MySpace in recent weeks.

“Social gaming is a significant evolution in gaming and is in some ways a return to the roots of games,” says Playfish CEO Kristian Segerstrale. “Our games are designed around social emotions – people play our games with the same people that they would play cards, play board games or go bowling with in the real world. Sharing the game experience with friends makes it more compelling and fun and results in more play time, viral distribution and better monetization potential over time.”

With the investment, Kevin Comolli from Accel Partners and Ben Holmes from Index Ventures will both join Playfish’s board of directors. Congratulations to the Playfish team for bringing more top tier investors on board.