Vancouver-based Super Rewards, historically known for being pretty tight-lipped, yesterday announced that its virtual currency platform is now available for games and applications across the social web. To date, Super Rewards has been working closely with several top Facebook and MySpace game developers, helping app developers monetize through virtual currency. Now, the company says it is noticing increased interest in virtual currency monetization from a broader array of online gaming, virtual worlds, and social web companies.

“There are basically three ways to make money from a game,” says Jason Bailey, CEO and co-founder of Super Rewards. “You can sell it, which works for only a small percentage of games. You can slap ads on it and give it away for free, which works but delivers extremely low revenue per user. Or you can cut-and-paste our virtual currency monetization platform into your game and obtain performance metrics ranging from 10 to 100 times higher than simple ads.”

Super Rewards and other virtual currency monetization platforms like Offerpal Media, SocialGold, Peanut Labs Media, Gambit, and SocialCash are growing quickly to meet the increasing demand for their services both from developers hoping to monetize their apps and agames better and advertisers hoping to get more cost effective leads. Social games, virtual worlds, and casual MMO’s are proving effective at creating demand for virtual currency transactions, which are an increasing source of revenue for many publishers.

As social game developers become more sophisticated, 3D games are beginning to surface inside Facebook and MySpace.

Paradise Paintball is one such 3D game. This game puts the player into a paintball match on a gorgeously created tropical island against other players. Essentially, the game play is that of an older First Person Shooter’s multiplayer mode. Long story short, you join a game of up to eight players, pick a team and attempt to “splat” (basically kill) as many enemy players as you can in the time allotted.

Each player is granted two weapons: a machine gun/sniper rifle and what looks to be a grenade launcher. However, the weapons hardly seem balanced as most people just roll around with the grenade launcher since all you need to do is pull the trigger, and you will probably hit something. The machine gun is all right, but doesn’t quite hold up to a good grenade, and the sniper rifle feels more or less useless since you cannot even crouch down in order to hide. Even in the flat map (Lost Paradise), where it is used more, it just turns into a “spawn camping” fiasco as all you have to do is point at the name that popped up (you can see enemy names from quite a distance) and you will probably hit someone (assuming you didn’t get shot before getting your bearings in the first place).

The FPS title that comes to mind first with Paradise Paintball is Delta Force by Novalogic. However, unlike the old mainstream game, Paintball so far only has two smaller levels. For a Facebook game, this app is fun to play with your friends (or with just random people if you want) occasionally, but while it looks good, it still needs some design work.

In most shooters, the players get to choose their own weapons in one way or another, and if it is well balanced, each gun will have its own strengths and weaknesses. This is one of many key elements that make multiplayer FPS titles fun. While incomplete, some of the balancing is there all ready for Paradise Paintball: The machine gun is only really good at short range, the sniper is slow and long range only, and the grenade launcher can hurt anyone in range, including the shooter. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough of the second element to exploit these strengths and weaknesses.

Level design is another critical feature in an FPS map. Each level needs to be carefully crafted in order to prevent dominant strategies (strategies that everyone uses). Sniper players should have areas with high ground where they can safely hide and not be noticed until the shot is fired, while the others should have ample places to take cover. Grenadier style players should have less available ammunition, long reload times, and a shorter range mixed with open areas where they would be weaker, and enclosed areas where they are stronger (assuming they don’t blow themselves up). And machine gun players should fall, more or less, in between these two types (at least in regards to this game). The more weapons and levels you add, the more you need to consider these delicate balances and designs.

None of this is to say that Paradise Paintball is bad, it just feels “unfinished.” In fact, the game is on the right track and could very well be an extremely fun game (especially if they allow more than eight players per game at some point). Yes, it could use more levels, and yes, more weapons might be interesting, but more than anything, the game needs better balancing and level design. No one weapon should be dominant on any map, and every map should have some elements that cater to each weapon. This alone will provide players a means to create their own strategies and their own unique ways of play.

Appdata for Paradise Paintball 3D

Virtual Greats, a long time developer of licensed branded virtual goods, has recently expanded into sports with a multi-year licensing agreement with the NBA. Under the license, the company will be granted the rights to produce any number of NBA branded items (many launched already) across various social networks and virtual worlds.

At the top of the list are two virtual worlds for kids, WeeWorld and Planet Cazmo, where users will be able to give any number of items such as jerseys, pompoms, giant foam fingers, and even furniture. However, also getting a piece of the pie will be social network app developer RockYou, who will be distributing the virtual goods across major social platforms such as Facebook and MySpace. In fact, RockYou’s Facebook app SuperPets (now RockYou Pets) already has virtual goods available.

The timing works out perfectly for Virtual Greats as well, as the company expects tremendous success to coincide with the coming NBA Playoffs, describing their fans as “passionate and numerous.” The company intends to promote the items throughout the playoffs season.

“NBA-branded virtual merchandise affords our fans yet another platform to express loyalty to their favorite teams and players,” said Victoria Picca, Senior Vice President of Licensing & Business Affairs at NBA Entertainment. “Virtual Greats will extend our reach to the rapidly growing number of NBA fans in the digital world.”

In the past, many athletes has been covered by a company named Beelya. However, Beeyla has always dealt with individual players, while Virtual Greats received its license directly from the NBA itself.

[via Virtual Goods News]

There are some new faces on the MySpace gaming charts this month as Playdom has finally revealed itself and all the games it’s building. As you can see, the company is doing tremendously well on MySpace, with 8 of the top 25 MySpace games, including #1 Mobsters, #3 Bumper Stickers, $4 Own Your Friends, and #10 Kiss Me, as well as Poker Palace, Heroes, Sorority Life, and Rockstars coming in at 12, 13, 15, and 22 respectively. More highlights from the top 25 include:

• Zynga‘s YoVille moved up this month as well, overtaking Poker Palace to land at #11 with almost 3 million users.
• Friend Factor fell by 4 spots to #19 as it was overtaken by Overdrive, and Rockstars dropped from its previous rank of #17 to land at #22.
• Previously not in the Top 25 at all, virtual drinking game Cheers! made an astonishing debut with almost 3 million users this month, reaching #17.
• And last but not least, another app to watch out for Truth Box by BitRhymes finds itself at #24. Though its classification as a game is debatable, it is certainly a popular app worth keeping an eye on.

So there you have it. MySpace remains a fairly solid platform and were it not for the addition of the Playdom titles, things would have been strikingly similar to last month.

With the exception of the Top 3 Facebook games, this past month has not been as “positive” as those recently. Nearly half of the apps in the top 25 lost monthly active users in March. However, the number of losses did allow for a few titles to make impressive jumps in popularity. The highlights:

• Former #2 app Pass a Drink fell to #5 after losing over 2.5 million active users in March, giving up its spot to Playfish giant Pet Society which gained around 1.3 million active users.
• Zynga’s Mafia Wars is holding strong at #3, pulling in a total of 9,135,999 active users, with Bumper Sticker rolling in at around 7 million.
• YoVille from also continued to overtake the bulk of the Playfish titles, appearing at #7.
• Poker Palace from Playdom seems to have lost some steam as its drastic rise through the rankings each month has halted, falling from the #15 spot to #18 loosing over 400,000 players.
• Two games made a huge leap in the rankings: #16 Street Racing (previously #22) and #19 Vampire Wars (previously #23) rose significantly with over 900,000 and 800,000 more users ,respectively.

As was the case last month, Zynga continues to grow within Facebook and is waging a battle with Playfish as the top Facebook game developer. Although they have very different games, these two have come a long way. Who will make the next game? And will it be evolutionary or revolutionary? Either way, you’ll see it here.