The Argawalla brothers may be best known for Scrabulous and their follow-up game Wordscraper, but they do have other titles on offer. One of those is Chess Pro, the classic game available for you and a Facebook friend to play together.

As you can see from the image above, the game has been kept very simple. The chess pieces follow a simple, clear design and appear on a numbered chess board.

Players perform moves by clicking over a piece with the mouse and dragging it to the desired board square. When happy you click the “Play Move” button and the board gets updated. One problem I had with this was the other player didn’t automatically get their version of the board updated, so you sit there constantly hitting the refresh button when it is your opponents turn.

A small chat box forms part of the interface making communication simpler between players, but this is again hampered by the update issue. Messages don’t get displayed unless you hit the refresh button. Checking the options you can select the board auto-update, but this seems to be limited to every 2 minutes. Why not just have an update for both players every time an action is performed?

One of the game’s features is the ability to not only play simultaneous games, but also continue a game when the other player is offline. This means you can have a long-lasting game without the problem of you both needing to be online at the same time to play.

Chess Pro is not the only chess game available on Facebook. Just putting the term “Chess” into the Facebook search box gets you 5 pages of results. From playing a few from the list I believe Chess Pro needs to improve in a number of areas before it becomes the chess game of choice on the network.

To begin with there is no AI option so you have to play against a friend. Having an option to play against the computer is a good backup in case your chess playing buddies aren’t around, although the option to play against an offline friend is a plus point. Graphically it is also lacking and there are some better alternatives available.

Finally, it has no aids for the new Chess player. This would be useful as if you are new to the game it can be difficult to remember where some pieces can move. Alternative Chess Fan, for example, highlights the available destination squares your piece can move to when you click on it. It sounds simple, but very useful for a new player.

Right now, if you asked me to recommend a chess game on Facebook it would be difficult to whittle the choices down to just one. Chess Pro is a capable implementation with a nice simultaneous game and offline play feature, but it is limited and there are alternatives that offer more in terms of graphics and play options. The lack of automatic refresh-on-action updates also counts against it.

Surprisingly enough, a lot of people are playing KickMania on Facebook to put the boot to their friends. One can only hope that this desire applies strictly to the game, and not some deep seeded roots within reality. How on Earth do people kick so far? Some of these coveted kicks are well over 200, even 300 meters.

Well, there are a few secrets to share that those “ass-assins” use that might help you in your quest to own your very own collection of…we’ll stop. Anyway, you have to start with the basics, which means the more obvious tips: Start owning your friends. That’s right, in order to better kick asses, you need to own more people. Here’s the deal, the more you own, the more expensive (and more powerful) kicks become available. Assuming that you have done this already and have owned enough people to unlock the $1000 kick, then it comes down to a little bit of finesse.

The trick is timing, positioning, and explosives. First off, make sure you’ve owned 500 people so that you have access to the maximum of five explosive charges. These charges will allow you to detonate an explosion near the crash dummy as he or she reaches the ground and allows you to get some extra distance, but before that can come into play the initial kick has to be perfect.

KickMania utilizes a very well built physics engine to simulate the rag doll effect. That means that momentum, trajectory, power, and mass all come into play. With that in mind, some players say that the male dummy is the better choice because it has more mass, and more mass equals more momentum. While this isn’t written in stone, it is worth considering. Despite whether or not you choose to use a male or female dummy, you still have to be both very quick in reacting to the power meter and incredibly precise on your position. Before you do anything, try to position your foot near the dummy’s waist, just where the shirt and pants meet at a 45 degree angle. Once you’re ready, be prepared to react quickly to the power meter and attempt to kick at its highest apex for the greatest potential.

$1000 Kick: Check. Position: Check. Power: Check. Okay, so now comes the use of explosives. For $50 you can detonate a charge, but you will need a kick of at least 30 meters to even see the first one. These charges activate when you get close to them, and once near, you can press “spacebar” to set them off. This, however, is where timing is critical. Remember, that this game is a simulated physics engine, thus both angle and distance from the explosion are going to affect trajectory and momentum. If you detonate too far away, you will get little to no result. If you go too soon, you might send your target backwards. What you want to try and do is trigger the explosion at the last possible second so that it goes off before the dummy’s center of mass hits the ground and is at about a 45 degree angle to the right of the charge. Each well timed charge should get you an extra 30 – 50 meters on your total kick distance.

Markus Weischselbaum of KickMania describes it in a technical sort of way on the KickMania forums: “The direction of the boost vector is an imaginary line from the explosive charge towards the center of mass of the body….the force applied to the body is inversely proportional to the square of its distance from the explosion.”

There you have it. Before you even start going for those distance records, you’re going to have to earn all five explosives and that $1000 kick. Once you’ve done that though, it all comes down to position, power, timing, and practice. Finding that sweet spot for all three major elements of the game is pretty tough, but now that you know what to look for, it should make your endeavors a little easier to pursue. Best of luck fellow ass kickers, and remember to wear padded jeans.

It’s the end of another year folks, and with the coming holidays it means parties, food, drink, gifts, resolutions, more food, and, of course, reflections on the time that has past. With that spirit in mind, and since the iPhone has been a rather interesting space for social games lately, it is only fair to see how social games are doing on the iPhone charts. Apple has been gracious enough to make this easy by releasing the Top 10 iTunes App Store Downloads of 2008.

There are a number of categories to look at, but what is of most interest here is the overall applications and the games (of course). If, however, you are interested in the other categories, MobileCrunch has a nice compilation of all of them.

Coming in at #2 in overall paid applications is the title, Texas Hold’em.  The accomplishment gives Texas Hold’em a great badge of honor and greatly displays the popularity of such card type games. Many of the other top 10 paid apps overall are games as well.

Top 10 Paid Apps (Overall):

1. Koi Pond
2. Texas Hold’em
3. Moto Chaser
4. Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3D
5. Super Monkey Ball
6. Cro-Mag Rally
7. Enigmo
8. Pocket Guitar
9. Recorder
10. iBeer

Top 10 Free Apps (Overall):

1. Pandora Radio
2. Facebook
3. Tap Tap Revenge
4. Shazam
5. Labyrinth Lite Edition
6. Remote
7. Google Earth
8. Lightsaber Unleashed
9. AIM
10. Urbanspoon

That brings us to the Top 10 lists for the games category itself. So how did social games do?

Well, no surprise, after seeing the overall charts,  Texas Hold’em hits #1 in the paid category. As for free games, we find a familiar company: SGN. Popping in at the #4 position is the ever so talked about iBowl application that turns the iPhone into a Wii-like remote. This motion based game lets players go through the motions of actual bowling and most certainly went over well with the public (so long as they didn’t look too strange playing it, and didn’t drop their phone in the process!).

Top 10 Paid Games:

1. Texas Hold’em
2. Moto Chaser
3. Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3D
4. Super Monkey Ball
5. Cro-Mag Rally
6. Enigmo
7. Air Hockey
8. Bejeweled 2
9. Flick Bowling
10. Line Rider iRide

Top 10 Free Games:

1. Tap Tap Revenge
2. Labyrinth Lite Edition
3. Sol Free Solitaire
4. iBowl
5. Pac-Man Lite
6. Touch Hockey: FS5
7. Cannon Challenge
8. Audi A4 Driving Challenge
9. Sudoku
10. reMovem

Although 2 social games broke into the top 10 lists on the iPhone this year, it’s encouraging to see just how many games are succeeding on the iPhone platform – particularly paid apps. We’re looking forward to 2009, as the social infrastructure of the web and mobile web gets increasingly mature.

It was not too long ago that Hasbro filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Scrabulous creators RJ Softwares, claiming that the firm infringed upon the intellectual property rights of their classic board game, Scrabble.

Hasbro had originally contacted Facebook regarding the application in question, requesting its removal from the social network, but decided to follow through with lawsuit shortly after launching its own version of Scrabble, naming Scrabulous creators Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla the defendants. The duo took Scrabulous down in July.

As of Monday, however, Hasbro Inc has agreed to withdraw its lawsuit against RJ Software, after the company made changes to its other games, Lexulous and Wordscraper. According to Hasbro claims, these games still had similarities to Scrabble.

Unfortunately, little has been said by Hasbro since the announcement. The only available comment was in an email stating that the withdrawal agreement “provides people in the U.S. and Canada with a choice of different games and also avoids potentially lengthy and costly litigation.”

Hasbro has declined to comment beyond this statement.

[via Reuters]

It is far from uncommon for game developers to outsource to other companies and even freelancers in times of need, but in times past those needs tended to primarily be the creation of art and code assets. However, today, more and more aspects of game development are being handled by third party services, ranging from the monitoring of virtual goods transactions (PlaySpan) to the actual integration of social capabilities (J2Play).

While it isn’t limited specifically to social games, a company by the name of Nonoba has created very cool API for multiplayer games, including a new payments API. So who are they? Well, first and foremost Nonoba is a gaming community that allows you to play and compete online through various games, but more than that, Nonoba also allows Flash developers to upload, rate, and share their games with the world.

This is a company that provides a service that allows developers to focus strictly on game play and removes the trouble of building a robust multiplayer backends. “The Nonoba Multiplayer API” is combined with their “Nonoba Game Server” handles the heavy server connections, communication systems, and connecting the various players together. Nonoba hosts all of the server side code, which means that speed and latency are less an issue than they normally would be, thus making real-time as well as turn based games possible with this platform.

In addition, Nonoba also tracks all of the connections, databases, sockets, registrations, and so on so developers don’t have to worry about it. They even include lobbies, chat, ranking systems, as well as a plethora of other features. But what is most impressive is that it can scale to any reasonable size game you have (or whatever size it ends up growing too).

Also available is the payment API, and this is where Nonoba differentiates slightly from other similar services. As you know, there are a number of games that require payment of some sort, most of which are either subscription or virtual goods based. Regardless of the type, setting up a system like this is a whole new can of worms that a number of Flash developers have never had to deal with – and is a tremendous undertaking. Not only do you have to set up an entire payment system, but a means of tracking and reconciling all payments and purchases. Compound this with a large number of users and you can begin to see the headache that will soon entail.

As you have certainly guessed by now, this is where Nonoba sets all of this up for you, and it works regardless of whether your game is single or multiplayer. Revenues are split 70/30 with the developer taking the 70%, but considering the cost of developing something like this from scratch, it is probably well worth it (at least for a while).

The API also allows you to charge for anything in your game, including items, levels, or even the entire game itself. Your shops are set up for you, and you are free to embed your game on any other site besides Nonoba and it will work perfectly fine. The only downside, is that the only current provider is PayPal. It is claimed that more are coming soon, but at the moment, this is the only choice available.

Nonoba is most certainly a powerful set of APIs despite the type of game it is used for. The fact that game developers can come to Nonoba for not one, but two very powerful and often critical online gaming features is an impressive addition in and of itself. Long story short, companies like this means more quality games for the players and less headaches for the makers.

It wasn’t too long ago that Yahoo decided to rethink its strategy. In an attempt to save the platform, they planned to allow third-party applications to plug into and link Yahoo services and user data. As of today, that vision is now starting to become reality.

Now, the Yahoo platform is becoming more open and social. Yahoo has certainly taken a shift in the social network direction, especially with Mail – which allows you to see updates, emails from various social connections, and built in services such as Flickr and WordPress – and My Yahoo.

Largely due to these new social features, many of the major social game developers made their debut on the Yahoo application platform today. These include companies such as Playfish, Zynga, and RockYou.

This application gallery is still small, but it is definitely going to grow quickly. As it stands, Zynga seems to be the biggest contributor with some of it’s major titles such as Mafia Wars and Bumper Stickers. However, Playfish has also connected its classically popular Bowling Buddies, and RockYou has launched My Emote.

It’s doubtful that any developer will ignore the new Yahoo. Not only is there a large existing user base, but the platform also has extensive developer support. Yahoo offers multiple sources of documentation and various APIs to assist in both editing your applications as well as making them social. Some of the features that Yahoo has made available are the Yahoo Social Directory API, the Updates API, OpenSocial, and access to a support and community forum.

Will Yahoo evolve into a new social network? We’ll see, but as more parts of the Yahoo platform roll out over the coming months, it definitely has the potential to become a big social gaming platform.

Owned and operated by the Finnish Sulake Corporation, Habbo Hotel, a virtual world game, has been host to a social network of teenagers for years. Since its inception back in 2000, the virtual goods based business has expanded to include communities across 31 countries in five continents.

The game allows players to create their own Hotel rooms and create a social space for themselves and their friends using furniture they buy with real currency. They can then travel around this virtual world to socialize with others within various “chat rooms.” Each room is either dubbed public or guest, the latter of which consists of a highly customized space created by a player who then has complete control over whom they admit. Public rooms, on the other hand, are created by Sulake themselves and are not customizable, but rather depict scenes such as restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. In addition, the free guest rooms also play host a number of mini-games such as Falling Furni, Quiz, and Wobble Squabble. Each game is hosted by the administrator and can reward winners various prizes such as new furniture.

The company became profitable this year, 2008, with revenues of $50 million. Habbo has 100 million registered users and there are 10 million active players each month.

Sulake has also released a mobile version of the service called Mini Friday that is nearing the 1 million registered user mark. Here’s what makes that number even better: Not only is the game restricted to users 18 and up, but it only works on the Nokia S60 series of mobile phones.

Inside Mini Friday, players can create their own avatar, customizing aspects such as gender, height, and clothing then move about and between rooms. As most of the rooms look to be bars, the chat is more mature, and players can talk between one another individually or “shout” and be heard by all.

Currently, the game is still in beta, and has been since 2006. Since that time, it has steadily grown in popularity, especially in areas such as Indonesia, and is expected to leave the testing phase soon.

Perhaps what is most interesting, however, is a comment noted in a VentureBeat article from Habbo Hotel co-founder Aapo Kyrola. While there is little to go on at this time, Kyrola did state that the company is working on an iPhone version of this application. He goes on to say that compared to the Nokia platform, the iPhone has been a significantly better experience.

[via VentureBeat]

With hundreds of applications on Facebook it can be hard to tell which ones are worth even opening. Okay, granted, you can almost always be certain of the quality of games from the big names, but what about the rest? Or what if you are new to Facebook?

Well, we decided to have a little fun and take a look around to bring you the Top 10 games we love to hate. These are some of the most ridiculous concepts out there and you can’t help but grin and smirk at some of them. You can usually tell right away by the name, but sometimes you just have to check it out for yourself. In fact, some apps are so funny we had to go beyond just games. Also, please note that just because its on this list doesn’t mean it is bad, it just means it is so ridiculous that we love it, or we love hating it. That said, some are really funny and some are so bad that they are even funnier.

10. HairMixer
Okay, this was both funny and “interesting” at the same time. This application basically does exactly what the title says. It lets you take two images and swap the hair. That’s pretty much it. Look for hairstyles you want to try out and put them on your own photograph. The problem with these types of programs is that often times things just look ridiculous: Colors don’t match, hues are off, etc. Regardless, you can have some fun making some friends look very funny with hair that just doesn’t suit them.

HairMixer certainly isn’t “bad” it’s just a little a very “different” concept.

9. Pirates vs. Ninjas
Pointless game because we all know Ninjas would win. When you play this game you choose your side (ninja of course), and battle others. It’s not anything extravagant but if you are one of the many that enjoy this epic battle, then you will get a kick out of this app. People will especially enjoy the ranking system, considering that the top ninja rank is “Chuck Norris-Level Ninja.”

8. Send a Stripper
With a respectable number of users, this isn’t a bad app at all. Heck, most probably wouldn’t even “hate” it, but it is still funny as hell to use. It doesn’t even matter if you are a guy or a girl. There’s a stripper for you. Sadly, the selection is rather limited, but as far as gift giving programs go, this has got to be one of the funniest gifts out there; especially if you know someone who is very conservative or introverted. The look on their face will be absolutely priceless.

Don’t worry though about the rating. All the pictures are sexy, but they’re still clothed… sort of. Most of the pictures look like those sexy Halloween costumes for the women, and Chippendales type outfits for the men.

7. Human Pets
Typical virtual pet kind of game, except that the pets are you. There’s not a whole lot to be said about the game, but the idea is… interesting and kind of funny. Of course, once you check it out it becomes a little weird once you realize that other people can feed, pet, and comb you…. Yeah… just a little creepy….

6. BBQ Fight
Okay, so should be rather self-explanatory, but this Facebook RPG has you fighting other BBQs….. Yeah, you heard it right – battling grill equipment. It’s certainly amusing to see it the first time, but it loses that charm very fast. The game is just like any other RPG, except this time you’re a grill and your upgrades are grilling equipment.

5. Sheep Launcher
Quite possibly one of the dumbest things out there. In this app you select images of your Facebook friends or celebrities and “launch” sheep at them. It seemed like a funny concept at first, but the result was enormously underwhelming. Sure, they make a fun baa and splat noise, but you get to throw one sheep, and it consists of clicking on the picture and disconnecting the same sheep icon from your mouse. Oh… so exciting.

4. How Sexy is YOUR Name?
What’s in a name? While not a game, this is certainly an interesting app to look at out of pure curiosity. The question that comes to mind though: Who honestly cares? Granted there are some exotic, foreign names that could be deemed sexy, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a point. Normally applications like this are meant to judge sexual appeal, attractiveness, kissability and other traits meant to feed one’s ego. However, how much can a name really add to that?

3. Pimp Fight
Charming. Build your own pimp and fight against your friends. First off, pimps are comically funny; at least the purple suit, big hat ones are. Sounds interesting, but the real fun comes in when you get to fight way through the dozens of built-in advertisements so you can play. Oh, and a lot of them ask for financial information – cute.

2. Which Spice Girl Are You?
Really…? Obviously it’s not a game, but it is most certainly a rather ridiculous app to have lying around nonetheless. Does anyone even care what Spice Girl they would be? Also, this quiz should have the option of “none” as most probably wouldn’t want to be any of them.

For that matter, what is the point of most of these “which celebrity” are you games and quizzes? Perhaps it stems from the absurd worshiping of them that people gravitate too, but it really shouldn’t be the case. Believe it or not, they are real people too. *End of Rant*

1. Chuck Norris
This is not a bad application. It is in fact the greatest application ever conceived and everyone reading this should feel honored at the presence of Chuck Norris. Fear his mighty countenance and relish in the power of his roundhouse kick.

Okay, to be honest for just a second, this app is hilarious, especially if you are in to the whole Chuck Norris joke movement. It’s not a game by any means, but it is funny nonetheless. The idea though behind the jokes is so absurdly stupid that it makes it amazing. However, that is not why this app is #1. It is #1 because Chuck Norris willed it to be so.

Since September, Social Gaming Network has been releasing a suite of games that make use of the iPhone and iPod Touch’s accelerometer capabilities that turn the mobile device into a Wii-like remote. To date, the company has released five applications: iBowl, iGolf, iBaseball, iBasketball, and iFun. While it was known that these free to download apps were doing well, it was only just recently that SGN released some of the numbers.

As of today, the five games that began coming out three months ago have had well over 4.5 million downloads. In fact, iBowl, released back in October was dubbed by Apple the #4 most downloaded free iPhone game of 2008. For those that are curious, the numbers 1 – 3 spots went to Tap Tap Revenge, Labyrinth Lite Edition, and Sol Free Solitaire respectively (and let’s face it, everyone loves solitaire). Furthermore, outside of the top games of the year, SGN’s iBasketball is also currently sitting pretty at, ironically, the #4 spot for the currently most popular free iPhone games.

Evidence would suggest that the majority of the company’s resources has been focusing on the iPhone platform as its number of active Facebook users nets around 4.7 million with a growth that has been rather stagnant as of late. Also, considering that 50+% of downloaded applications for the mobile devices are, in fact, games, a shift in focus isn’t necessarily a bad idea, especially considering the rate in which SGN has been making these new games. While this is no claim as to what the company will be doing in the future, it does feel like a very strong avenue for the social developers.

Inside Social Games extends a big thank you to our fantastic sponsors for supporting the continued growth of Inside Social Games. Check them out below!

Cafe.com is a leading developer and distributor of social casual games.

Offerpal Media is a leading managed offer network for social applications and online merchants.

Social Gaming Network (SGN) is a leading global development platform for social game distribution.

Zynga is a leading developer and distributor of social games for platforms like Facebook and MySpace.