Playfish has always been one of the top developers of original games for social networks. However, staying in the top tier requires a great deal of development effort, new content, and, of course, an eye for charming design. Their latest title, Restaurant City, is a surprising mix of social gaming and The Sims.

Played in an isometric perspective, players run their very own restaurant as they create custom avatars to run the place. However, you don’t run things alone, but rather by creating characters for your friends who work for you. Yes, work for you.

In order to run your business, you have to hire your Facebook buddies to work as servers, cooks, cleaners, and so on. Each friend working in your restaurant appears as the custom character they designed, and they can run the restaurant even when you are offline. In order to keep them working you have to feed and let them rest, which costs time and money, so it becomes a bit of a resource management mechanic (which increases drastically when the restaurant becomes more busy) with a personal touch.

However, the social elements do not stop there. As with another Playfish title, Pet Society, players can explore the streets of Restaurant City and visit each other’s establishments (in which you might be working) all while sharing gifts and ingredients.

This leads to another element of the game, which involves what your menu consists of. As you play, you take daily quizzes that earn you new ingredients to learn for you menu. The more you have, the more complete dishes you can learn, but to get more you have to trade with others. By doing so, and unlocking more recipes, the quality of your restaurant increases, thus earning more prestige and revenue.

Revenue is what leads to the some of the key Sim-like elements of the game. The more money you earn, the more you can customize – and can you ever customize a lot. In addition to designing the avatars, you can change your menu, you can change what your friends/workers do, and most important you can customize both the inside and outside of your restaurant.

Whether it is color, floor space, windows, or props, you can design your building to look like anything from something like a medieval castle to a trendy night club, and each addition to the building not only makes it more aesthetically pleasing, but attracts more business as well. This alone is one of the most addictive qualities of The Sims, and it has very similar effects here.

There is little to say about Restaurant City that isn’t praise. The game has so many different possibilities, replay value, and social functions that it is easily as good as Pet Society. Given time it will likely grow to be one of Playfish’s top apps, and if even given just a fraction the attention that Pet Society has received in the past, there is little doubt as to how popular Restaurant City will become.

The game already has 2.5 million monthly players on Facebook.

Restaurant City AppData.

Virtual currency monetization company Super Rewards today is releasing new tools for casual game and MMO developers to remove low quality offers from appearing in their games. The idea is to make it easier for developers to optimize for longer time horizons than many game developers inside social networks like Facebook MySpace have chosen to do to date. Because the cost of user acquisition are so different, the former are more interested in longer term objectives.

“We’re allowing publishers to decide where they want to be on the spectrum – maximizing short term revenues, or going with safer offers from big brands with simple, clear, and well-disclosed user experiences,” CEO Jason Bailey told Inside Social Games. When you turn the dial all the way to the right, the initial revenue drop is about 50%, so you’re making less money today. However, that number goes up over time, and the long term value is ultimately higher than if they come in today, do a bunch of offers, but have some bad experiences.”

There has been increasing dialogue lately around the opportunities and challenges facing companies like Super Rewards and Offerpal that monetize through incentivized CPA offers. Jay Weintraub, creator of LeadsCon, posted lengthy thoughts on how current trends in the space are somewhat similar to years past. Offerpal responded with some lengthy thoughts of their own last week articulating the steps the company is taking to manage lead quality.

Ultimately, the marketplace will reach increasingly accurate valuations for these leads over time as more feedback makes its way back into the channel. For now, expect to see more new tools for publishers to manage the types and quality of leads they’re taking into the system to optimize for their particular revenue strategies.

Okay, don’t deny it. You’ve thought about winning big in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or even on a casino ship. Maybe you don’t always act on those gambling urges, but it can’t be denied that winning is fun, and winning money is even better. Here’s the thing about gambling though: While luck is critical, there is strategy involved and that is what a number of gamers find most fun (well… and the whole winning cash thing).

One of the more popular casino games is roulette (you know the game where you spin a dial and drop a ball into it and see where it lands?). It’s pretty simple and fun to play, and that is exactly what the Facebook title, Roulette, from Games.com is about.

The game is very well made and emulates the real deal astoundingly well (save the mob of people bunched around the table). The game generously starts you off with $10,000, which you’re probably going to need depending on your luck. The rules are the same as real roulette: place your bets on the numbers you want, on black, red, odds, even, etc, and let the wheel spin.

As you progress and win money, you get a nice little suite all to yourself as well, which is upgraded (or downgraded) depending on how much money you have. As this is a Facebook game, you share and show off your “winnings” (your suite) to your friends. Since you cannot win any real money (yet, anyway), this is the primary reward for playing as well as the differentiating social feature beyond challenges and player rankings.

Roulette also looks very clean and polished. It really does feel like a real roulette table, and is definitely up there as far as nice looking apps go. Unfortunately, there are some bugs still in it, primarily with sound. Apparently every time you rank up or down (from gaining or loosing money), the game starts repeating an obnoxious clicking sound that just won’t go away, and will multiply if you rank up again.

Regardless, the game is still an excellent game, and the best part – it is just about being a good game.

Before the close of last month, VentureBeat compiled a rather comprehensive list of game and virtual world funding for 2008. Currently, the list is up to 112 companies with a grand total of $936.8 million from venture capital and angel funding. However, the total is greater than this as the bottom of the list consists of a number of undisclosed numbers.

With data from Virtual World Management and Jussi Laakkonen’s blog, the dollar value is a significant jump from 2007 with over a $300 million gain. According to Laakkonen, funding totaled $613 million in 2007.

According to the National Venture Capital Association, total VC tech investments in the US was $4.1 billion last year. However, $2 billion went into media and entertainment as a whole. Thus, nearly half of that amount was invested into new games and virtual worlds.

Below is the list of the companies covered by VentureBeat:

1. 9You – $100 million for virtual entertainment community

2. BigFish Games — $83 million for casual downloadable games

3. Trion World Network — $70 million for online multiplayer server games. (The company is working with the Sci-Fi channel on an episodic online game that ties into a TV show and has other titles in the works too.)

4. Real Time Worlds — $50 million for online games such as All Points Bulletin

5. Turbine, maker of the Lord of the Rings Online — $40 million for massively multiplayer online games

6. G10 online game company — $38 million from China’s The9

7. Zynga — $29 million for social games

8. GoFish — $22.9 million youth-oriented ad network with focus on virtual worlds

9. PrimeSense – $20.4 million for gesture-control 3D cameras

10. Oberon — $20 million for casual/mobile games

11. Playfish — $17 million for social games

12. GameDuell — $17 million for skill-based games

13. Playspan — $16.8 million for virtual goods platform

14. NGI Group — $15.7 million for Japanese virtual world

15. Nurien Software — $15 million for fashion-oriented social online game

16. Social Gaming Network — $15 million for Facebook and other social games

17. IGG — $14.5 million in two rounds for casual massively multiplayer online games

18. Ukash – $14.4 million for virtual world payment systems

19. Expresso Fitness — $14 million for its virtual cycling exercise bikes

20. Play Hard Sports — $13 million for casual online sports games

21. SouthPeak Interactive — $12.9 million for indie games

22. Raptr – $12 million for gamer social network

23. Gaia Online — $11 million for casual massively multiplayer online game

24. ICG – $10 million for casual massively multiplayer online game

25. Unisfair – $10 million for virtual events

26. Challenge Games — $10 million for web-based online role-playing and sports games

27. FooMojo — $9.9 million for virtual pets

28. World Golf Tour — double-digit millions for golf simulation

29. Bigfoot Networks — $8.75 million for game networking hardware

30. Crispy Gamer — $8.25 million for irreverent game news and reviews site

31. Grockit — $8 million for online learning game

32. ON24 — $8 million for virtual events

33. Heatwave Interactive — $7.5 million to improve online game production

34. Riot Games — $7 million for quick-hit online games

35. Playlogic — $7 million for indie games

36. Monte Cristo Games – $7 million for mirror world online game

37. Six Degrees Games gets $7 million for kids sports games

38. EveryScape — $7 million for mirror world

39. Kadoink — $7 million middleware for virtual worlds

40. Metaplace — $6.7 million for web-based virtual world

41. Gizmoz – $6.5 million for avatar-based social network

42. iOpener — $6 million for mixed reality racing

43. Hangout Industries — $6 million for virtual rooms

44. Conduit Labs — $5.5 million; reveals LoudCrowd

45. Novint — $5.2 million for user-interface peripherals

46. Robotgalaxy — $5 million for virtual world

47. Ngmoco — $5 million for iPhone games; makes a splash with its game launches

48. Hollywood Interactive — $5 million for site with celebrity-oriented games for women

49. RocketOn — $5 million for parallel web games and social network

50. IGA Worldwide – $5 million for in-game advertising

51. Popjax — $4.7 million for web quiz show games

52. Young Internet — $4.7 million for kids virtual world

53. Booyah — $4.5 million for iPhone games

54. Sparkplay Media — $4.5 million for 3-D browser-based games

55. LOLapps — $4.5 million for tools for social apps

56. Twofish — $4.5 million for virtual goods business

57. IGG – $4.5 million for massively multiplayer online game

58. Playdo — $4.3 million for kids virtual world

59. Sparkplay Media — $4.25 million massively multiplayer online game with social network

60. Webcarzz — $4 million for online car racing game world for boys

61. Bunchball — $4 million for platform for making game-like web sites

62. Serious Business — $4 million for social games

63. Machinima — $3.85 million for game fan videos

64. FlowPlay — $3.7 million for teen games

65. Wix — $3.5 million for Flash-based virtual world

66. Three Rings — $3.5 million for online virtual-goods based games

67. Fluid Entertainment — $3.2 million for kids’ online games

68. C3L3B — $3 million for casual games

69. Kongregate — $3 million for user-generated games site.

70. GamerDNA — $3 million for social networking game site

71. Lumos Labs — $3 million for brain games

72. WeGame – $3 million for game fan videos site

73. Playfish — $3 million for social gaming

74. Seasky – $3 million for virtual world development

75. Caspian Learning — $2.8 million for browser-based learning games

76. Taatu – $2.6 million for teen and young adult virtual world

77. Mpowerplayer — $2.5 million for mobile gaming

78. Alamofire — $2 million for casual games

79. Fixate — $2 million for virtual characters

80. Akoha — $1.9 million for social games

81. Simmersion – $1.9 million for Mycosm virtual world

82. Sun – $1.8 million for virtual world development (filed for bankruptcy)

83. Nonoba — $1.7 million for casual games platform

84. Ball-it — $1.5 million for game-interface technology

85. Iminlikewithyou – $1.5 million for social games (now named OMGPOP)

86. Gamook — $1.5 million for online games

87. Shidonni — $1.5 million; launches drawing site for kids

88. Atomic Moguls — $1 million for fantasy sports games

89. Jambool — $1 million for virtual goods platform for social games

90. Virtual Tweens — $1 million for green virtual world for kids

91. Casual Collective — $1 million and launches Flash games

92. Dizzywood — $1 million for kids’ online games

93. 8D — $1 milion for online fantasy world

94. Rebel Monkey — $1 million for casual games

95. Numedeon – $1 million for Whyville and SportsBlox games

96. Handipoints — $800,000 for kid-based virtual world

97. Ray Flame Entertainment — $800,000 for fantasy online games

98. Chapatiz — $530,000 for virtual world development

99. Second Interest – $500,000 for virtual world development

100. Worlds.com – $481,000 for virtual world development

101. Metaverse Mod Squad — $200,000 for virtual world technology

102. Kirkland North — $200,000 for online strategy game

103. Sabi spins out of Microsoft to do educational games that bring drawings to life

104. MindFuse raises money for online massively multiplayer online games

105. Club Cooee — undisclosed amount for 3-D chat games

106. Digini raises undisclosed amount for game-creation tools

107. Eximion — undisclosed amount for web games platform

108. OGPlanet of Korea raises undisclosed amount for online game importing

109. Metaversum — undisclosed amount for virtual worlds depicting real cities

110. Meteor Games is started by Neopets founders to create new online gaming world

111. Northworks — undisclosed amount for browser-based games

112. Yoowalk — undisclosed amount for 3D web venture”

As the iPhone platform grows and matures, there will inevitably be complaints. Just recently, Apple caught flack from developers after it announced a refund policy that allows users to return any app at any time. While the concept seems harmless, it forces the developers to pay back the full amount of the sale as well as Apple’s 30% commission. Now, some developers are complaining of another “bump” in the road – this time, that payments from Apple are coming in late.

According to the developer terms, payments are supposed to be made within 45 days of the end of the month. However, there are a number of claims and complaints (more here) regarding long delays in payments. In fact, via a forwarded email to TechCrunch, one developer reports not being paid since November of 2008. To top it off, the developer’s extensive email complaints were classified as “bordering on harassment” and was told that the Apple finance team couldn’t get to it “right away” due to the vast volume of daily emails. After 4-5 months, this is hardly a proper answer.

The neglect and poor customer service has taken its toll on those developers, and many of them are sick putting up with the alienating company and now threaten to sue Apple for breach of contract. Whether or not these claims are true, the number number of complaints certainly suggests that something is amiss.

The contract terms can be found here.

This is one for all the strategic minds out there. While it is no Starcraft, a relatively new title called UniWar, by Xpressed, has come to represent the strategy genre rather well on the iPhone platform. The game is a turn-based strategy type with three playable races, who, like Starcraft, all have their own set of strengths and weaknesses.

Players can play through a 21 mission single player mode by moving units across a hexagonal grid as the game teaches you how to play step by step. The game is exceedingly easy to pick up and learn as it makes great use of the iPhone’s touch screen to move units around. Of course, like with any strategy game not on a PC, the lack of a mouse can be a bit annoying to a veteran strategy player.

Despite nits regarding hardware, the single player is further broken up with the option of “skirmishes” against enemy AI (meaning there is no other objectives other than beat the enemy like there would be in most strategy game campaign modes). The only problem with this, however, is that (a) the AI difficulty is not adjustable like it is in most PC titles, and (b) only starts with one map.

If there is any one complaint to be had with UniWars is that it forces you to unlock the 50+ maps before you can play them in single-player mode. To make matters worse, the game has an awesome feature of playing two-player on the same iPhone with the same result. Not being able to play multiplayer locally to its fullest potential alienates those players to no end. It’s like throwing a party for all your friends and saying they can’t have a drink until they do some chores.

Luckily, UniWars does make up for this fiasco with an absolutely fantastic online multiplayer mode. First and foremost, the skirmishes do not suffer from the lack of maps that the local multiplayer and single player modes do. In addition to this, the online community tends to by quite active and lets you play against up to eight different players either anonymously or as a registered user.

There is no difference for game play either if you choose to remain incognito, but registered users are added to and granted access to online statistics and leaderboards, friend lists, and email notifications. Of all these features, however, the emails are of particular interest.

Whether or not email notifications are “good” is relative as one might consider it spam, but if you so choose, players can receive email notifications whenever it is their turn to move in a game. Seems pointless right? Wrong. The online multiplayer allows you to play up to 20 games all at the same time, so notification is certainly nice if you’re really into strategy games. Unfortunately, and despite how convenient it may look, the more games you are playing, the more obnoxious the notification system becomes due to poor user friendliness.

Regardless to whether or not you are connected to a game, emails will come from that game, there is no link within the mail to launch the app, and if you have games with faster paced players, they pop into your mailbox every couple of minutes or less as a new message rather than getting queued up and sent as one email. Moreover, there have been reported bugs for the toggling of such messages on and off, which only compounds the irritance.

UniWar is far from perfect. There are any number of little nuisances that could be improved and two major issues that are downright absurd (locked maps for local multiplayer and email notification with poor usability). However, the title itself is fun, and that is the sole point of game. At least from the player’s perspective. The problems that the game has are all surface problems, and are easily fixed without affecting the great game play at all Even with the glaring issues, the fact that UniWar is currently “on sale” for only $2.99 is ridiculous. This game is certainly worth more than a few dollars, and if Xpressed does fix the usability issues, they will have one hell of an iPhone title.

In the past, gaming community Nonoba has played host to a multitude of Flash games and has claimed to have created “Flash gaming’s first Multiplayer and Payment APIs.” Just last week the company announced several new developer partnerships and websites that will be using their GameRise platform.

GameRise will enable any user to easily, quickly, and inexpensively develop and manage gaming sites, and according to the announcement, has led to the sign-up of 100 customers in less than 30 days. This list is not limited locally either. Stemming from the company’s location in Denmark, the partnerships have spread globally to include a Dutch game portal, one from China, and yet another in Belgium. There is even a Portuguese and Slovenian portal now.

Specifically, GameRise takes out a lot of the work entailed in creating a game portal and allows for developers or even hobbyists to access Nonoba’s full suite of cataloged games and grants them full control of their portal’s appearance, advertising, and language. In addition to the surface features, the platform also allows for basic social interaction in the forms of chat rooms, forums, and mail templates for user feeds (all of which can be combined with the company’s Multiplayer API).

“We’re very pleased with the number of responses we’ve received related to our GameRise platform, and how fast our solution has become a preferred platform for developers to create their own casual gaming sites,” said Jonas Kjellberg, chairman of Nonoba. “As we continue our focus on simplifying the games creation process and working with developers to bring new revenue and monetization streams to their offerings, we will constantly explore new products to integrate into the solution that allow even more flexible options for developers on both current and emerging platforms.”

Interested parties are able to sign up for GameRise here.

Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts and once heavily involved in both Apple Computer and 3DO, has been around the industry from nearly the beginning. Suffice to say, his opinions certainly carry a great deal of weight when he speaks up.

Hawkins left not long ago to pursue the mobile gaming space with his business Digital Chocolate. It is within this space that he has stated the company’s move away from a “pure-play” mobile design to focus on more casual games platforms including the iPhone. But a recent interview with Slide to Play revealed many more interesting insights and opinions regarding the iPhone.

Over the course of the past six months it has been a virtual impossibility not hear about the success of the iPhone or app store. Part of the reason for this, as Hawkins sees it, was the change in consumer behavior. “Consumers didn’t realize they wanted an innovative, powerful handset and great content until Apple showed them they did,” he said. It was something so new and unique that people “actually cared which mobile carrier they subscribed too (because of Apple’s exclusive relationship with AT&T).”

The platform had any number of features from simple WiFi connections, fantastic usability, and an absolute deluge of downloadable applications. Hawkins states that Apple’s platform made the experience more like the internet rather than a phone, and by combining it with the iTunes Store, the number of downloads became greater than any other mobile device. It may be easy to see it now (since hindsight is 20/20), but it was a truly creative take on mobile platforms, and with that precedent, according to Hawkins, the iPhone has paved the way for other mobile companies’ and developers’ “permission to innovate.”

With the innovation of the iPhone and its App Store, Hawkins believes the platform to be a powerful tool (which he intends to use for Digital Chocolate with titles such as AvaPeeps: FlirtNation) in the targeting of a market he calls the “Omni Media Gamer.” As defined by him, these are the people that do not consider themselves gamers in the least, but still play “supercasual” or social games.

To this end, it wouldn’t seem that games that cost anything will work very well with that market as many “premium games” have started at a cost of $9.99 and quickly dwindled to nothing. That in mind, it is Hawkins’ opinion that it will be microtransactions, virtual goods, and other similar monetization revenues that will pave the way for this audience. “If you look at conversion rates for casual web games on big portals, they’re terrible–somewhere between 1-2%,” he states. “Web gamers aren’t in the habit of paying for games like they do in retail. It’s a completely different business.”

This new way of thinking about games is, what Hawkins believes to be, a significant challenge for larger companies who are use to the traditional game development model and will struggle to keep their games up to their level of quality and under budget. Moreover, if they do have a success, “they won’t necessarily understand why.” This is something more for the smaller companies and startups. Unfortunately, at the same time, there is so much buzz around the App Store that “discovery is a real problem.” Obviously, smaller companies do not have the marketing budgets of the big names and they will be forced to “drive traffic to their App from elsewhere.” All in all, the problems and challenges associated with developing on the iPhone are significant regardless of point of view.

Despite these would-be issues, the mobile device has proven to be an excellent gaming platform. But regardless of such facts, Hawkins claims that he doesn’t think that either the iPhone or iPod Touch will be part of a larger gaming strategy. He says, “I love Apple, and if I thought they were really moving into video games in a big way, I’d welcome them. But the fact is that they’ve had plenty of opportunities for the last 30 years, and they simply don’t seem that interested. I’m not even sure how committed they are over the next 5 years.”

[via Slide to Play]

Though it is still technically a social network, it would seem that Hi5 no longer refers to itself as such. Rather, it claims to be more “social entertainment” as it continues to make changes that differentiate itself from other competitors. After going through significant organizational changes in recent months, he company is attempting to become more a blend of Facebook and a games portal with its global reach of 62 million users across 60+ countries.

Unlike its competitors, the company is looking to its new games, gifts and Hi5 Coins to make its revenue on the international level. “We’re in a rare situation where we have a large number of users who love a certain type of content, and we have a large number of developers worldwide who want people to play their games. If you look at the worldwide distribution network for games, you have a value chain that makes that process costly,” says Hi5 Executive Producer Andrew Sheppard. “The whole purpose of the universal [virtual] currency [Hi5 Coins] and why we’re working with our content partners is predicated on the notion that if we create the best experiences for our users we create a very compelling ecosystem for all of our partners involved.”

“Experience” is the key word here. With MySpace or Facebook games, made by any number of third parties, the user’s experience is more loosely related to the overall experience while using the platforms. However, hi5 is looking to make the use of the Coins more tightly knit with all to the gaming elements that make up the Hi5  experience. In addition, it offers another means of monetization for game developers as an incentive over other social networks.

However, taking payments globally to power these currency systems is no easy task, which is part of the reason why Hi5 partnered with PlaySpan. hi5 also recently partnered with global mobile payments network, Paymo, allowing users from 24 of Hi5’s 60 countries to make purchases without a credit card through their mobile phone.

The objective is to become able to monetize more like an online gaming company. It wants to avoid primarily depending on advertising like Facebook.

“In the space that we’re in with the types of users we have, you can monetize in a very different way. It’s a place they can have fun and express themselves and meet people, things that are all frankly hard to do on Facebook,” says Hi5 Vice President of Marketing, Michael Trigg. “They lend themselves particularly well to virtual goods use. If you want to meet a new person you can give them a gift or subscribe to a certain VIP status on the site. They let people express status and a cool factor. We think it opens up really well to monetizing future entertainment.”

The comment is almost an understatement considering all the partnerships we have seen over the past few months in order to “open up” the system. And based on comments from Sheppard, Hi5’s announcements are far from done. In fact, he is currently in charge of ten different projects (ranging from new virtual gifts to branded virtual goods) pertaining to the improvement of the new “social entertainment” focus.

Since its inception back in 2008, OutSpark has been focusing on porting Asian multiplayer games to English, more recently working on a few original titles as well. The MMO portal has played host to a number of popular games such as Fiesta, Secret of the Solstice, and Bread ‘n Butter. However, despite the success of these games, CEO Susan Choe says that the San Fransisco and Seoul (South Korea) based company’s real strength will lie within its open APIs that allow game developers and gamers to create and publish their own games through OutSpark.

In fact, Outspark recently announced the creation of its own comprehensive MMO platform. In short, this tool will allow users a means to both build and distribute MMO titles through OutSpark’s game portal. This means that connected games will be integrated into the company’s virtual currency system (SparkCash), be able to sell virtual goods, track financial performance, view game stats, and, most importantly, gain cross-marketing opportunities through other OutSpark powered games. Platform powered games will support all payment methods that OutSpark supports including the Ultimate Game Card and anything through recent partner Offerpal.

In an article from Virtual Goods News, Choe and company state that the platform is not intended for any specific size of game. There are 4 million registered OutSpark users and the potential viral distribution could be significant. According to Choe, the company had spoken with three major publishers regarding possible partnerships well before the development of this MMO platform due to their existing userbase.

If the reported ARPPU of $50 last month at SXSW are any indication, the company feels like a prime opportunity for any MMO developer (large or small). However, few other details are concrete at this point, so we’ll let you know as more information becomes available.