Jon Radoff os the CEO of the fledgling GamerDNA.com. The concept behind the new site is simple – give gamers a place where they can use their achievements and experiences in the gaming world to give themselves a more concrete identity and share these experiences with like-minded gamers. GamerDNA goes further than just sharing inside its own site though. The service is also a platform that allows gamers to transport their identities to other sites in the growing GamerDNA Alliance – a group of fan sites and guilds that have integrated the technology behind GamerDNA into their own sites.

Jon explains the philosophy behind GamerDNA:

“There are two places where people talk about games on the internet – journalistic sites like IGN.com where they have little identity or interactivity or fan and guild sites where there is plenty of opportunity to interact and share your identity but these sites are isolated entities. What we wanted to do is build a platform that allows gamers to construct their identity based on their gaming experiences and then transport it to the various sites that they use. Our idea was to help gamers become more than just text on a screen.”

The site itself has 300,000 registered users since its inception in June of this year and over all the Alliance sites they are seeing 3 million visits per month – which is superb success given they have only been around for just over three months.

The way in which GamerDNA is helping gamers form their online identity is very effective as well. At the heart of the GamerDNA site is an automated service that aggregates gamers’ data from their accounts on services like Xfire, Steam, Xbox Live, PSN and MMOs like World of Warcraft. This helps form an instant picture of a gamer’s identity.

The thing that sets gamers apart from other social groups on the internet is that they are extremely difficult group to please. Jon elaborates,

“We found that gamers are looking for something that is more immediately utilitarian than the average social networking site. They may make friends through a site but that is just a by-product. They need more to make them engage with a site. One of the major challenges was finding what engages gamers and building the site around that. We made some quizzes that allowed gamers to quickly build up a profile of their gaming habits and provided the sort of immediate rewards that gamers are looking for. Obviously the automated of gamer data over different networks is a big draw as well.”

Another challenge was finding a way to collect and integrate all the gamer data from the various different sources. Jon continues,

“We had to investigate ways that we could collect all the gamer data from different sources like Xfire, Steam and Xbox Live and finding a way to normalise it for using on the GamerDNA platform. Some sources had the data readily available in a digital format and it was just a case of building code that would collect and normalise it for the platform. Xbox Live was a different challenge because the data was not readily available so we had to approach Microsoft in order to reach a deal that would allow us to incorporate the Live data into the GamerDNA platform.”

What does the future hold for GamerDNA?

“Our mission is to make GamerDNA the place for expressing your gaming identity on the internet.” says Jon,”We are currently working to expand the network of sites that use the GamerDNA platform and also the number of gaming networks that we can access through our automated tracking service. Our gamer’s identities are defined by the games they play and the networks that they play their games on. We are trying to come up with new and exciting ways these two together. We’re also excited to see what cool ideas other people are developing on the platform.”

With the gaming industry growing so rapidly and becoming much more social through MMO’s and services like Steam and Xbox Live, it is increasingly important for gamers to be able to express their identities more powerfully. GamerDNA is one of the first platforms to offer gamers a way to define themselves more clearly and it is already seeing strong growth. With the passion that Jon and his team have for GamerDNA it will be interesting to see where things go over the next several months.

One of the largest pitfalls of most social games is that the game play does not normally contain a true multiplayer aspect. Sure, you can compete with others in asynchronous turns, collect badges, and unlock achievements as bragging rights, but the games in which you can play with others synchronously are limited to games like Chess or Poker.

Part of the reason multiplayer games are not seen very often in the social space is the overall difficulty involved in hosting and building multiplayer infrastructure. This is where Come2Play comes to the rescue.

Come2Play originally made it easier for anyone to create a white label gaming network. The company has now just released an open-source multiplayer API that will allow Flash developers to more easily create and integrate true multiplayer game play by removing the major development barriers such as infrastructure hosting, emulation provisions, delivering distribution, and reporting. In addition to this, developers will be able to create their games using ActionScript 2 or 3 as opposed to the previously used server side scripts.

Currently, the API only supports two-player games. However, capabilities will be slowly increased to support, theoretically, an unlimited number of players. Moreover, the API can also support any number of other social features as well: Game rooms (up to 60 players), chat, player rankings, player rewards/tokens, and of course, ad space sharing.

The big question that arises, however, is what does Come2Play get out of all of this? All games built using the API must be hosted on the Come2Play infrastructure. Also, said games will be published to the Come2Play game galleries and channels, and Come2Play reserves the right to display advertisements within the games (which is split 50/50 with the developers).

Nonetheless, by using the API, game developers are able to focus more on the game itself and improving the game play rather than worrying as much about infrastructure. Come2Play makes an excellent distribution tool for new games for all developers, especially new ones just starting out, and all distributed games can also be ported to Facebook too.

The wait for multiplayer social games may finally be coming to an end with Come2Play’s new service. Will this begin a big movement to build more multiplayer social games? Probably not, but it is certainly a huge leap in the right direction.

Developers have been creating games and applications for the iPhone since version 2.0 of the software was released this summer along with the iPhone 3G. Considering the impressive hardware, the accelerometer, GPS capabilities, and a slew of other features, that is hardly surprising. The iPhone, for all intents and  purposes, has become a mobile computer + gaming console in which the controller is the phone itself.

The big question is whether the iPhone will be the next big social platform. More and more evidence seems to be pointing towards an emphatic “yes.”

1) Social Gaming Network has all ready produced two titles for the iPhone: iGolf and iBowl – both of which quickly became top downloaded applications.

2) Zynga, another major developer of social games for social networks, shows openings for iPhone developers on their jobs page.

3) There is also the anticipated launch of Facebook Connect for the iPhone, that will allow for mobile to PC social networking and true Facebook integration regardless of location. The integration of Facebook Connect will make implementing social features significantly easier for all would be developers.

So we say: yes, it’s looking that way!

You look at some games and you know exactly what you’re getting. Bumper Stars is no such title with its brightly coloured visuals and genre-spanning game play style.

Pitched as a simple mini-game, your goal is to collect all the fruit around a stage by flinging your character around like a pinball three times. It will then bounce off walls and ball bumpers rolling around going where you told it and if you collect all the fruit within your three turns you proceed to the next stage, if not, game over. It’s a really easy to understand idea and will also record how far you’ve got and highest scores of you and your friends.

The game play elements are a mixed pot of Bust-a-Move style ball flinging with Pinball style physics and Pac-Man fruit collection. It truly is an original flash game that’s hard to give a close analogy for.

Everything plays well – the character moves the way you would expect so the psychics have been tightly put in place. The only problem I have is the random levels the game throws at you. While it’s easier for the developer to randomize levels, it completely throws strategy out the window for the player and replaces it with luck – and that’s a bad move in a game where the main draw is to beat your previous score.

An example of this is on the first level you could, at one point, get the fruit which is easy to collect nicely put together, but the next time you may get them in a position you just can’t get to easily and your game ends. It lacks a certain amount of balance, though it’s probably not too severe for most players.

The game features achievements which contain awards for things like getting to level 10, scoring 10,000 points with one ball and completing a level in one ball – but once again where luck is involved, it makes these achievements seem less of an actual achievement, as anyone could eventually unlock them through playing enough. Achievements should be exactly that, something that takes skill to achieve, not luck.

Another nice feature put in by Large Animal Games is the shop. Players accumulate credits through playing the game and can spend them on new skins for their character in game, including version of a pirate, Wonder Woman, Master Chief (Halo’s main character), Obama and McCain. The character will take some time to purchase, unless your happy spending real money for some credits.

All in all, Bumper Stars is a good game that is currently in Beta with a few issues to work out. I enjoyed playing it but it lacks the draw to keep you coming back unless you can convince some other people to join in with you.

socialDeck recently yeleased its first game for both Facebook and the iPhone: Social Line Connect. With the release of this app, socialDeck has earned the recognition of being the first company to release a social game on the iPhone with Facebook integration (you can find the iPhone version here).

The game is a simple puzzle game (Connect Four) that most people are already familiar with. Like its analog predecessor, Social Line Connect pits you against another player and the first person to connect four chips either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally wins.

The game also includes various social features that can be seen in most social games: leaderboards, game feeds, chat, who is playing, and so on. Of course, the most social aspect is the fact that two people play in turn. Players can invite and challenge their friends, spend some time in public lobbies to meet new people, or they can jump right into a random match.

The main downside to the asynchronous approach is the game can only progress as fast your opponent makes their move. They are sent a message when it is their turn, but until they receive it, you are stuck waiting. Nonetheless, the real innovation is hardly the game, but rather the dynamics that comes with it.

Social Line Connect allows for players on a mobile iPhone to connect to people on the web via Facebook and vice versa. Players, regardless of platform, can play, chat, and interact with each other despite whether or not they own an iPhone.

The technology is able to leverage a player’s existing social graph from Facebook and thus allows for more compelling social content to migrate to the iPhone and mobile space in general. Furthermore, this release shows that socialDeck has indeed addressed a number of the difficulties in bringing social gaming experiences to the iPhone.

With the technology bridge built, we can expect to see socialDeck begin to launch more games in the coming months as they prepare for what they call, “the next generation in social gaming.”

Yes, SGN has done it again with the release of one of the most downloaded free application on Apple’s iPhone. The game is iBowl, and in tandem with its predecessor, iGolf, has become the cause of the new aerial addition to the iPhone: At least for those that don’t know their own strength.

As with the Wii-like iGolf game, SGN has made use of the iPhone’s built in accelerometer, but this time with a bowling game (similar to that on Nintendo’s Wii-Sports). However, unlike iGolf, iBowl incorporates new nuances to the accelerometer control. Like its predecessor, iBowl waits for the player to press “Bowl” on the touch screen and then, essentially, bowls their iPhone (holding on is optional). The difference is iBowl picks up the twisting of the wrist and correspondingly adds spin to your ball.

The game is certainly fun to play for a few rounds if you don’t mind looking a little bit silly to on lookers and passers by. In fact, the only real problem with the game is the twisting sensitivity is a little low, but there is little doubt that this will be an issue quickly resolved in SGN’s next release.

Another feature of the game is the ability to invite a friend to play. Unfortunately, this amounts to little more than sending them an email to check out the game. However, when the launch of Facebook Connect finally occurs, it is doubtful that SGN will not capitalize on opportunity. In fact, the integration of social features for all future iPhone games should become significantly easier.

Even with the lack of social features, you have to ask yourself: Does it really need them? SGN and its games are quickly becoming the “Wii” of the iPhone. Statistics on the number of Wii sales indicate a staggering dominance over the mainstream game space. Why? Because of the intuitive and fun nature behind the use of the controls, and the fact that the iPhone is in and of itself a physical controller, it takes the strongest feature of the Wii into the mobile market.

With over 1,000,000 downloads already for iBowl alone, there is no doubt that SGN may soon find itself with a new gaming niche.

Google AdSense has become one of the most widely used ad networks on the web, because it makes it really quick and easy for both advertisers and developers to begin building an ad-based business model for their web sites. Now, after months of testing and development, Google is  launching the public beta version of its AdSense for Games software.

The ad market for games is predicted by the Yankee Group to be worth $971.3 million by 2011, so it is no surprise that Google is interested in the market.

In response to the announcement, Jameson Hsu, chief executive of in-game Flash ad company Mochi Media, said, “It’s a huge stamp of approval for a major company to come in and say they believe in the online game market.” It really is a huge deal, as now it is highly likely for other major media companies to begin making a move into this market.

The new Google AdSense for Games software will be targeting Flash based games and will incorporate the ability to include ads both during and after game play. The casual Flash games space alone averages around 200 million games played per month, which creates ample opportunity for ad integration.

Google is also tauting the usability of its ad software. According to Christian Oestlien, senior product manager at Google, Google’s advertisers will be able to insert ads into games where there is an “ad request.” This request comes from the developers of a game who will be able to utilize a Flash software development kit that allows them to simply designate any point in their game where they want to place advertisements. Then once the game is live, the ads uploaded by advertisers appear where a “request” is found.

In addition to everything else, Google has partnered with a number of developers as well. One of these is Playfish, a major Flash developer within Facebook. At the end of a game session for one of their games, players will actually see one of the game characters presenting the ad as a sponsor.

However, Playfish is not alone in supporting Google’s endeavors. Other major players include Zynga, another major social game developer, and Konami, one of the largest mainstream game companies in Japan. Over a dozen other companies will include Google AdSense for Games at release, and with the millions of users that play casual games online, the number of ad impressions available quickly compounds to several hundred million.

At this time, we do not know whether Google will incorporate their ad network beyond Flash games. However, with competitors such as Microsoft’s Massive working its way deeper into this market as well, it is likely to see some significant competition in the future.

SGN has recently released a sneak preview of one of its latest games, SkyLinks Golf for Facebook. The game is not complete, but SGN was kind enough to give the world a glimpse of what to expect.

The game is a steam-punk, cartoonish style game that lets you golf on a floating island in the sky. Upon first impression, golfing may not seem like something too exciting, but SGN has incorporated its unique style with a non-traditional golfing mechanic in order to get the most out of their game.

After a brief introduction, you can customize the look of your avatar (hair color, skin, and gender) and then jump into what looks like a happy, cartoon version of the Big Daddies from Bioshock. You are able to start shooting golf balls from a platform in the sky, trying to hit targets on the sides of blimps and other flying objects and attempting to score as many points as possible before you either run out of time or golf balls.

The game doesn’t play like a simple golf game. While it is still a little buggy, players target where to shoot, then drag what looks like a chain from the target in order to curve the ball to some degree. Since all the targets are moving this becomes a useful addition, once you get used to it, and makes the game far more entertaining than one would normally think.

The game also apparently has three game modes that consist of a bronze bucket, a silver bucket, and a gold bucket. Unfortunately, only the bronze is available at this time. As you play, you earn gifts and currency (presumably for buying powerups or awards of some sort). You are also able to gamble some of your game earnings on the gifts before you open them, which may make way for some unique game depth in the future.

As for the social capabilities, there currently is a means to invite your Facebook friends to play the game, but beyond that, little is available at the moment. It is likely that SGN will incorporate similar social aspects that can be found in their previous titles.

Nevertheless, SkyLink looks like it will be quite a fun game once all the kinks are worked out and the game is fully implemented. Beyond the obvious bugs, the only real downside to the game that can be seen is that the avatar is so bulky, that it often gets in the way of targets that slowly move behind it.

However, we do have a few design nitpicks. Why is time spent customizing the look of your character when they all just get stuck in the same giant, metal suit? The game is also a little tough to pick up, but this most likely attributes to the fact that it is merely a sneak preview, and not the full game.

Ultimately, considering SGN’s track record for building social games, once finished, SkyLink Golf should be an excellent addition to the Facebook platform.

One of the hardest parts of any social gaming project is distribution and marketing. How do you get your game out there? How do you get new people to find and play it? One potential new answer is J2Play.

J2Play is a service that provides a do-it-yourself viral distribution framework that allows you to easily publish and expose your games to all social site users and generate traffic. We had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Robert Balahura, founder of J2Play, to get his perspective on the space.

Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us. So, I have to ask, how does J2Play actually work?

Game developers can go to our website to learn more and sign up. For technical details developers should visit our developer site. After sign up somebody from our organization will contact you for a chat and helps the developer to get started.

We continuously think about new viral features we can add for discovery of games and new ways for social interaction. One concept that is important that we continue to develop are the concept of native viral features and internal viral features. The concept of native viral features provides the native feeds, invites, and notifications automatically to whatever social network the user is playing on as well as a generalized api that is a write once – get all native viral features for all networks type of concept.

The internal viral features are the features that circulate the community of traffic throughout all the games that use our technology to socialize their games. We have not yet integrated some of the existing features we have such as tournaments and other type of leader board based competitions to our social network games solution. We’ve some new social network specific features cooking but it’s too early to talk about those – stay tuned for news later this year from us!

It’s no doubt the viral distribution will increase traffic, but what are the numbers that developers usually see as far as traffic increase? Does J2Play offer anything regarding traffic increase outside the social networks, such as standard search engine optimization?

It’s still a bit early for us say as we’re just starting with our game developer partners but naturally optimizing the viral distribution will be key to be successful as a small developer using our solution and not having a big advertising budget. The key thing for us is to provide the viral distribution out of the box for developers so they don’t have to spend their time building those but can focus on developing content.

Search engine optimization and better design, discoverability of games is next on our development road map.

Let’s shift gears for a second and talk about the social content J2Play adds to existing games. You mention many “out-of-the-box” features, but you also talk about advanced features that utilize an extensive set of APIs. Some of the possibilities you have listed are features such as leaderboards, badges, and real-time multiplayer. What are some of the other features that are possible through these APIs? I’m especially curious about the more advanced ones.

We’ve full loyalty platform and are providing APIs for our tournament module soon. The J2Play solution is a full multi-player games platform so game developers can build different types of multi-player games with the platform and by developing their own game servers. That is fairly advanced stuff compared to most of the games out there now. Developers can also integrate item based microtransactions, an item-model through power ups etc. to their games. We have that from our experience working with Asian developers and content in the past years.

Can developers create their own features or customize your 10 basic ones, so long as they use a supported code language like Flash ActionScript, or C++?

Developers who decide to go with our Pro solution can customize the look and feel of the games site for social networks and do some basic customization inside Flash and C++ if they wish to do so. We think that the functionality is pretty much the same so there is limited need for customization but how people want to present functionality for consumer will vary a lot and we want to enable that.

We also see the possibility of cross-platform gaming through advanced APIs. Does this mean that I could, in theory, play a friend who is on the web from, say, my mobile?

You can do it in practice, not only in theory! We’ve had technology for this for years and it’s all working fine and available for developers to use. It would be cool to see more, especially bigger, developers to think more about the cross-media consumption of content and related content innovation. I hope that we’ll see interesting developments in this area in the upcoming years.

We all know about the ad-based business model for web games, and we can read about some of the percentages on the J2Play website, but one of the newer business models coming about is the use of microtransactions. Now, I read that you have a feature for this coming soon. Could you shed some light on what we can expect from your microtransaction system and when we can expect it?

We’ve a basic version out already now and like I mentioned earlier, have worked with Asian content with this model so the back-end is ready for this model as well as have had the cash model for say our poker game for years. We are currently customizing our solution to fit better the social networking type of use and rolling out a more advanced version with select developer partners later this year.

Certainly, you’re one of the few leading the way in furthering the social games world. In fact, you’ve just recently received a $250,000 grant from fbFund. With the favor of Facebook, what are the next steps for J2Play?

The Facebook grant and partnership enables us to move forward a little bit faster as well as focus our product development on more technically demanding, harder problems to solve areas of social games.

Well thank you for your time. Before I let you go, I do have one last question: We talked a lot about what’s coming up for J2Play, and a lot of it is actually in beta at the moment. For those that may be curious, how can they go about signing up for your beta?

They can sign up on our website and if they’ve questions before signing up developers can contact Kasra who is happy to answer their questions.

One more thing to mention, our solution is perfectly suited to flash or pc downlodable game developers who already have games built – we have an out of the box solution to ‘socialize’ their game and publish it to currently 9 social networks automatically so they can also benefit for this new channel, the social web.

We all need to eat, and dining out is perhaps the most common social activity we do as humans. We go out, we meet with our friends for an hour or two over dinner, and we go home. Most of the time we tend to go to the places we are most familiar with, but with so many restaurants in the world, why do we always settle for the familiar?

A recent app for Facebook that came to my attention is The Lunch Game. The title is a bit deceiving, as it isn’t really a game at all. Its purpose is to save all the food preferences of you and your Facebook friends and allow you to search for dining establishments within a selected area code. The overall point of the application is to assist in deciding where to go out for food sorted by preference, and organize and help plan the event by sending out invitations and taking in preferences from all invited parties such as location and time.

Unfortunately, the game is still under development, so it is little more than a glorified, slightly beefed-up search engine for restaurants. Honestly, it is far too early to say how well this application will do with its limited capabilities at the moment, but I could foresee some significant usage in the future.

Some of the features we expect to see, and in my opinion critical ones, are restaurant reviews, ratings, user comments, and more detailed driving directions. The inclusion of ratings will go a long way in improving the usefulness of The Lunch Game, because it will allow users to search for restaurants that are out of their normal routine and will help them make better choices when it comes to trying new things. However, even with this addition, I do not feel that the potential for this application will still truly be reached.

Yes, it can help organize events and make recommendations, but this only meets its potential when planning larger than normal events or visiting new cities (both of which do not happen all that often). I have lived in my town for a long time, and I all ready know the majority of the places in my area and based on what myself and my friends are hungry for, we make a decision within a few minutes. This is a common practice for most of us.

As I’ve said, there is a lot of latent potential in this app, but for the more common purposes, I can just as easily use Google or a phone book. The Lunch Game needs more social hooks for the most common practices around dining out, like a way to ask friends “Hey, you hungry? What do you want?” Some great ways to improve the usage would be to include things like health facts, menus, or special deals.

Overall, The Lunch Game, once completed, could be an excellent planning tool for Facebook users looking to organize get togethers and/or try new places to eat. Nonetheless, it is far less useful for more common usages that consist spur of the moment outings. If the developers were to create a central hub that contained reviews, menus, specials, recommendations, and more for all restaurants then The Lunch Game might have some big potential!