During E3, Microsoft made several announcements regarding upcoming social features for its Xbox Live service. Updates include improvements to Netflix streaming, games on-demand, and the Avatar Marketplace, to name a few. Though some of the improvements seem pretty basic, they show promise and put Microsoft one step closer to its social gaming goals.

When Microsoft first began revamping Xbox Live, they attempted to turn this New Xbox Experience into something gamers would want to use everyday. Normally, players would log on to play various games with others, but did little else.  Microsoft sought to build a social network for the console realm, but users were less than thrilled with the result, spending little time there.

Microsoft released a set of surveys to gain insights into where it could improve the experience. In examining the survey results, it responded with far more intricate and demographic-related avatar ideas. Now, along with the new Live dashboard, comes new clothing and props for your avatars. Unlike before, these items come from popular games such as Fable 2 and Halo 3. Thus far, the categories within the Avatar Marketplace include those two games, as well as The Secret of Monkey Island, Steampunk, and Recessionista.

Items can be purchased for anywhere from 80 to 320 Microsoft points. They include everything from rubber chickens to a remote control Warthog (a military jeep from Halo). Since there is still work to be done in the effort to coax players into using the new service, it’s hard to say how these virtual goods will resonate. Nevertheless, the Avatars are getting a huge boost by granting some virtual items as rewards in the games.

Perhaps the best idea to come out of Xbox Live was the achievement system. These achievements are simple: The game notes you completed something (such as finishing a level). While it seems like a minor tweak, it has affected gamers. Adding something visible and “tangible”  to your Live Avatars is a significant improvement to an already good system.

In addition to the updates to the Avatar Marketplace, Microsoft wants to improve the platform for small, indie developers. When talking to Gamasutra, Shane Kim, Microsoft’s corporate VP of strategy and business development for its interactive entertainment division, stated the possibility of freemium and free-to-play games developing for an Xbox market. According to Kim, this would add significantly to Live’s social experience.

In addition, the re-branded Xbox Live’s Community Games venture was just launched a few days ago. Now dubbed “Xbox Live Indie Games,” the new brand helps address a complaint with Microsoft’s pricing structure; previously, games were deemed too expensive. The company has stated that developers can now charge as little as 80 Microsoft points, which equates to $1. Furthermore, the change is also going to be in effect for developers from Germany, Sweeden, Singapore, and Japan.

With the cost of games dropping to a mere $1, the possibility of developers who have produced games for the web to also make them on Xbox Live has increased. Since Xbox is not an open system like the PC, game creators will still have to determine whether or not they think creating a Live game is worth the economic trade-off. But with the new Indie program’s changes, the chances have at least improved. Couple this with the improvements to the Avatar Marketplace and you might have the makings of a true social network.

A full list of coming updates can be found here.

Whether you’re a knight of the feudal era, gangster in a mob, or a zen-like gardener, Hive7 has brought to the Facebook platform quite the variety of games for you. Each of these social MMOs, as they describe them, has engaged millions of users and demonstrated the game developer’s agility within social game genres.

Nevertheless, and despite early successes, Palo Alto based Hive7 is just getting started. As the industry evolves, so are they. What is next for Hive7?  We sat down with CEO Max Skibinsky to learn more about the company’s vision and how it sees the social gaming market over the coming years.

[Inside Social Games] Thanks for your time Max. Before we get started, I wanted to talk a bit about the company perspectives as a whole. For starters, what is social gaming to you? What is your standpoint on this booming industry?

[Max Skibinsky] What’s happening is long-awaited creative rebirth the of gaming industry. Until recently the little secret of traditional game development was that it’s a boring place to work despite all external glamor. Typical teams would be around 100 people working for 2-3 years on a big project with a massive budget. Given the money involved it was all about avoiding risk. No new ideas, no risky design, no experimentation. Just redoing last year’s hit with new skins and better assets. While there was lots of frustration about big publisher domination and copycat sequels, there simply wasn’t any viable alternative.

Social gaming just blown the doors wide open on that stagnant status quo. Instead of spending years doing same thing on legacy team before ever seeing your first player, now a small team can put games right in front of millions players after just a few months. Social gaming models decreased the costs so much its not prohibitive anymore to experiment and try new ideas. Which is what all game developers wanted to do for years, but were unable to due to the economics of the legacy model.

Social gaming changed, all at once, many traditional rules of game development. It spawned an entirely new industry with its own rules overnight. A much healthier and pleasant one too, in my opinion.

[ISG] So how does this influence the design and production process over at Hive7? What is a typical development cycle for you guys?

[MS] We are closer to a web 2.0 startup then to legacy gaming company. We are trying to keep our cycles fast; 3-4 months is typical for a new game. The first rule is to avoid overdesigning the game, trying to keep it as simple as we can and put it in front of players sooner. The day you launch the game for live players is the day game development really begins. Everything prior is just a warm up. Start simple, listen to players and evolve games further based on that feedback.

[ISG] Currently, you have a handful of titles for social platforms, especially Facebook. Of all of them, Knighthood is easily the most popular. Why do you think that is?

[MS] Let me start with a brief description of Knighthood for these who still haven’t played it.

Knighthood is social war game. Every player is a medieval lord who maintains a feudal pyramid beneath him. The lord uses his vassals to build up his kingdom, protect it, and invade other kingdoms. The top prize for every lord is capturing other lords’ vassals, which make him more powerful. However, these vassals are players just like yourself. They can rebel from your rule, and you can try to bribe them with gold, advice, or even bikini photos in some extreme cases! Social skills are very important, and diplomacy plays an equal role to war gaming.

The key in any game is to find that magic combination “easy to learn, hard to master.” I think we managed that in Knighthood very well. The core mechanic of the game is nothing more complex then moving vassal tokens between various areas. The combination of diverse tasks, such as building, defending, attacking, doing diplomatic deals and all related forum activity created a very fun and non-repetitious experience for the players. Our “world,” in the MMO sense, is not populated by NPCs, its populated by million of other players who obviously will react on any of your actions. This inherited unpredictably is what makes everyday gameplay so much fun.

[ISG] Knighthood has certainly been a success for Hive7. So how do you monetize it? What sort of business model is behind your games? Knighthood, or otherwise.

[MS] We using virtual economy in all our games. In Knighthood, that is the sale of in-game gold, various services, and NPCs with special powers. It works extremely well.

[ISG] What trends are you seeing in terms of monetization of social games in general?

[MS] I hope when Facebook and/or MySpace launches their monetization platform, it will be another watershed event for the industry. Right now, all monetization is done via custom in house solutions or 3rd party providers. When a payment system gets integrated with platform itself, it may double or triple the number of users we monetize in each game and therefore revenues of whole industry.

[ISG] Let’s talk about future titles for a moment. In a recent interview you mentioned an upcoming game about zombies. I’m sure you realize you can’t go throwing concepts like zombies around and not shed a little more light on the matter.

[MS] Indeed, with each zombie comes high responsibilities! First, lets calm down the population: There will be no flood of zombie bites this time. In our zombie game it will be all about the fun of creating defensive bases and sending waves of attackers against opponents on the social network.

As it typically happens, humanity suffered catastrophic civilization shattering event – cue in “Maybe” music. You and handful of other survivors managed to scrape a living since you were lucky enough to be in underground base at the moment of the catastrophe. The fact you happen to be Mad Scientist, Evil Cultist, Zombie Lord, or Military General explains why you had that base in first place.

Alas, the wasteland is cruel place. What you have, other survivors want, and they will send wave of zombies at your base to steal it. You job will be to build and fortify your base, put your own zombie defenders, while trying to send your own “resource redistribution” zombie squad to your friendly neighbors. Except lots of decapitation and dismemberment via various scientific, military (or even outright cultist!) implements on this trade. And of course, when two zombie armies meet in underground base things don’t go well.

Humanity Apocalypse is currently scheduled for early August.

[ISG] Another new game from you guys is a sports based title. What can you tell us about one of your latest releases?

[MS] Kickoff is an MMO built around soccer. The player becomes star player (Forward, Middlefield, Defense or Goalkeeper) as well as manager of his own team of players. Teams can play friendly matches against each other or participate in high stakes tournaments. When two teams meet, we run a full virtual simulation of the match with ball actually going from player to player for the whole match! There is sophisticated skill system, which determines how successful each field player action is during the match. Pretty often that means fighting another player for the ball, and if a player’s aggressiveness overtakes his real skills he will get a red card!

Besides managing his own team, a player can help friends who invited him as field player. As he gets experience as player, he gets skill points to distribute, which let him specialize in offense or defensive areas. Finally, as player specialties become valuable, just like in real soccer, there will be a market for top level players, charging fees for their participation in your team. They in turn can use they personal fees to spend on acquiring better players for own teams.

[ISG] Just to play devil’s advocate for a minute, you define both of the previous games as MMOs, or massively multiplayer online games. How does Hive7 define the concepts of MMO and social, and do you think that you can have one without the other?

[MS] Let simply take MMO at it literal abbreviation. “Massive:” The game should somehow involve a lot, certainly thousands, of players. “Multiplayer” implies interactivity: All these players should have an option, as part of core gameplay, to interact with each other. Thousands of players playing and interacting as part of play will be an MMO. Singe player flash game downloaded by 1M players at same time is not.

Social can add certain power to the “massive” part of the MMO engine, yet they are largely independent. The key is interactivity, and that is big factor in design. You can have massively popular single player games on social network, just like you can use same community to fuel a full MMO.

[ISG] How do you balance the solo, group-based, and social elements of game play in your MMOs? In fact, are there any concepts, in general, that you try to emulate or translate from the “hardcore” MMO titles?

[MS] There is certainly no direct 1:1 translation. The similarity is only at very high level, in overall concepts of player behavior and rewards. Details become platform specific and tricky very fast with implementation on specific project.

By the way, some of hardcore MMOs decisions are just “dumb legacy,” which made sense back then for very narrow reasons. We certainly are not going to encumber ourselves with this kind of baggage. As an example: Forcing players to painfully schedule and organize for 4 hours just to have 30 min of actual fun is certainly not something I would put in our MMOs.

[ISG] Obviously, all of this reflects a larger shift in the industry. In the past few years there’s been a deluge of new online games: Countless MMOs, web games, social RPGs, and dozens of genres more. How do you see this shift playing out in the end? And what does this mean for Hive7?

[MS] Social games attract much bigger audiences then traditional gaming. We see lot of people coming to our games. People who never considered themselves gamers before. The web delivery is so ubiquitous that every person on the planet knows how to interact with a website. All these people start to play web games as natural extension of their regular online activities.

Now lets take a look at traditional gaming. You need to have expensive special device and buy games in a store. The cycle of going to the store, picking box, unpack, dealing with all installation issues, then finally (maybe) playing the game creates huge entry barrier. And that’s putting aside all the 3D graphics cards and “find drivers” fun on PC gaming side. Despite all these barriers, that industry is producing close to a thousand games every year.

If we look at social gaming landscape, in contrast to that number – how many good games we seen so far? That would be around 50-100 games top across all of them. I think we have a marketplace five, if not ten, times bigger then legacy gaming and currently with a, ten times, smaller supply. We are seeing visible part of that shortage (explosion of new innovative web games) without realizing how much appetite exist in first place for this type of entertainment.

That explosion of “countless MMOs” demonstrates its an explosion in largely vacuum. Its still a virgin market.

[ISG] Let’s change topics. Last month, we took a look at a recent game, Zen Garden, in which you partnered with both Socialsoft and Susan G. Komen for the Cure in order to fight breast cancer. What is the nature of your relationship with Socialsoft and Komen? Also, why did you decide to use a virtual space creation game like Zen Garden for this endeavor?

[MS] One of the exciting things about social gaming is that we are constantly surprised by new ideas and designs showing up in the space. For example Causes and Little Green Patch introduced that amazing concept that players may not only have fun while playing the game, but they can benefit society as well while doing so. That was our inspiration in Zen Garden. Besides having a bit of tranquility and calm while designing your own virtual garden, players will help fund research to fight breast cancer. We are very proud to have Komen foundation support on this project.

[ISG] Are there any other charities that you might be considering for future games?

[MS] That is wide open for consideration in future games. For the record, one team member did suggest looking up organ donor charity for zombie army game…

[ISG] When we first reviewed Zen Garden, it was already doing pretty good after a very short period of time. However, Knighthood is your backbone, so how do other Hive7 games compare? Also, what sort of monthly traffic are you seeing come from them? Monthly uniques, new users, number of plays, etc.

[MS] Knighthood is our breadwinner at the moment, with bulk of our traffic and revenue coming from that title. Our other games are smaller then the Knighthood juggernaut, yet obviously Knighthood benefits from almost 2 years of uninterrupted growth with over 6M installs. That trend is changing with all the new titles we recently launched and climbing both in numbers and revenue generation. Just going to have to wait and see which one will be the first to beat Knighthood.

[ISG] Thanks for your time Max. But before we go, are there any final thoughts you would like to share?

[MS] As everything else, the gaming industry goes through its own boom and bust cycles. Starting from first Atari cartridges, we went into computer games, 3D gaming and most recently MMOs. Social gaming is certainly is its own distinct epoch on that timescale. It’s very exciting to watch industry unfolding in front of our eyes from the front seat. And when it inevitably goes bust sometime in the distant future, that’s ok too. After all, it’s just a game.

Where do you go once you’ve been to space? Last time we heard from Playfish we were blasting evil robots and aliens in a Worms style shooting type game, and before that, we were recruiting friends to help us serve in restaurants. Both were excellent games, and really showed a new level of quality, so when their latest games sounded of the farming genre, a cringe couldn’t be helped. Nevertheless, Country Story turned out to be surprisingly refreshing.

Farming games have been immensely popular in China for years, and are now catching up in a big way in North America. Just in the last few months, we’ve seen the release of myFarm, Farm Town, and FarmVille.

Country Story has the player taking the reigns of an anime-style, teenage-looking farming character that can be customized to the users’ liking. The customization seems to be a bit limited at the moment, but hopefully that will change. Regardless, once a character is made, it is time to pick out a house and get to work.

Like the other farming games, this app has you digging up plots of land, planting seeds, watering them, and harvesting for money. Doesn’t sound too different does it? Here’s the thing though: Wher as the other farm titles dump you into the world with a brief tutorial, Country Story creates a context to learning through a quest system reminiscent to World of Warcraft and other more modern MMOs.

Each thing that you do in the game is part of a quest (at least at some point). Sometimes it is “water six plants” – other times you are gathering building materials. Every time a quest is completed, the player earns some money, rewards, and experience towards leveling up (which actually determines how much land you can plow for crops).

Unlike most MMOs, however, there is a limit to how much a player can do at any given time. Each action requires an amount of stamina and the only way to replenish it is through food that can only be garnered through spending you hard earned game cash and quest rewards. Additionally, quests don’t have you just standing around your farm in one spot. Players actually run around their, and friends’, plots of land in order to complete them. All actions require some form of movement through the world; whether it is just running around and picking up rocks or visiting the well to fill up your watering can.

The game also takes some key elements from other successful Playfish titles. The two most prominent ones seem to be Restaurant City and Pet Society. Like in Restaurant City, the more gold you earn, the more you can decorate your land, and as expected, with a few different styles (which will most certainly increase). Players can also, like in Pet Society significantly enhance game play by adding friends to your village and caring for their land. You can water their plants, clean up their place, and even care for their animals.

Yes, there are animals. However, unlike past farm titles, these animals seem to have a point. Players can actually use the animals for their respective products, meaning that cows can be kept for milk, chickens for eggs, and sheep for wool. This adds a significant amount of value to these creatures other than pretty eye candy. Unfortunately, they are a bit pricey early on, so don’t expect to use them too soon.

Unlike the other farming games, Country Story only allows you to interact with your Facebook friends playing the game. Perhaps one of the nicest features in Farm Town was that you could actually visit a marketplace that held a big compilation of players currently on the server, allowing you to interact with them and their farms.

All in all, it seems like Playfish has done a pretty good job. Rather than simply plopping the player into a world with a brief tutorial, the player had goals and context for their actions through the new quest system right from the start. Furthermore, the combination of popular Restaurant City and Pet Society features add a great deal of appeal to the game.

Does it have all of the positive elements of its farming predecessors? No, but it does avoid many of their faults and make up for them with new mechanics. Is it as good as previous Playfish games? Difficult to say. It is indeed a good game, but Restaurant City and Pet Society still seem to be the best. Granted it’s not a competition, but it never hurts to try and top your said best.

Last year, online e-commerce service provider Live Gamer partnered with Acclaim, GoPets, and IAC’s InstantAction.com in order to create player-to-player virtual goods marketplaces. However, the company has now expanding in new ways with the recent acquisition of one of Korea’s N-Cash. With the addition, Live Gamer will add N-Cash’s global “publisher-to-player” platform to its repertoire.

The company said the combination of publisher-to-player and player-to-player transactions will enable a “full e-commerce platform featuring virtual item SKU management; e-wallet and billing; global payment gateway integration; anti-fraud; and analytics and reporting.”

Nearly ten years old, N-Cash has been around since the very first item-based game, Joyon’s GerSang. In fact, they’re the ones that supported it. Now, the company offers its solution to over 60 game operators around the globe with over 100 integrated titles, and the aggregation of 200 payment service providers.

“Asian game operators have proven for nearly a decade that publishers can create thriving micro-transaction-based experiences while generating greater revenue opportunities,” says Live Gamer Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder Mitchell Davis. “Today, that market is over $4 billion strong and growing at nearly 30 percent per year. With N-Cash, we’ve acquired a secure, scalable and proven commerce platform which has completed 150 million micro-transactions and is currently handling 56 million registered users.”

Currently, the Asian virtual goods economy is about 25x larger than the American market. Considering that Asian trends have been moving over to the United States, it is clear that such virtual goods and microtransactions are the “wave of the future,” to quote David Cole, lead analyst at the research firm DFC Intelligence.

According to the announcement, N-Cash President David Seo will remain in charge of N-Cash, but will work with former member of Microsoft Korea, Joon Seog Park to expand the company within the country and general region. Unfortunately, no financial details beyond this are known.

Global mobile payments provider Zong has been steadily growing its business helping online games players purchase the virtual goods and services by billing the purchase to their monthly phone bill. Today, the company announced a new milestone: it has processed payments for over 10 million unique users so far during 2009. To put that in perspective, the company has handled payments for a total of 25 million uniques since 2000.

In addition to this new milestone, Zong also announced its expansion with several new carriers in more countries in Eastern Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, and South America. Zong’s mobile payment platform is now available in 30 countries through over 100 carriers, and is reported to be one of the strongest performing mobile payment solutions for many social application developers we talk with. The company also recently announced partnerships with online game publisher Outspark and teenage virtual world Gaia Online.

During E3, Microsoft announced a number of changes that would be coming to Xbox 360, specifically Xbox Live. The thrust was to make the platform more social to make it more than just a service that hosts console games online. The future Live will enable “social entertainment,” complete with streaming movies from Netflix, games on-demand, virtual goods, Facebook, and Twitter.

The latter two, Facebook and Twitter, may be coming along sooner than expected. Rather than come as part of a dashboard update, each social network will be released as separate applications sometime. Microsoft marketing executive James Halton says a lot of the background work for these applications is already done and that the release “will be before Christmas.”

With the inclusion of these apps, Xbox Live could grow significantly as a social platform. As was learned at E3, Facebook connections will allow players to link to GamerTags, post screenshots, and display achievements within their user feed. Similar features will likely come with the Twitter integration as well. The combined addition of these popular sites will add significant depth and usage for Live and its social endeavors.

But will the traditional elements of Facebook or Twitter translate into the console market? By “traditional,” we’re referring to status updates and tweeting. Generally speaking, users detest typing on consoles. Without the dozens of keys that come on a standard computer keyboard, it’s hard for the average person to type anything quickly.

The upcoming addition of Project Natal could possibly mitigate the issue with its motion-based interface. Using a sensor-based camera, Natal can track full body gestures, depth, and even voice. To that end, interaction with Live could become an incredibly immersive, sci-fi experience.

The future of Xbox Live could be something completely different than anything we’ve seen to date. However, we will only be seeing the changes leading up to the full concept bit-by-bit (until Project Natal is ready for the public). Nonetheless, the additions of Twitter and Facebook will certainly do wonders for the platform.

It was back in May that we first took a look into the buzz around Booyah. Back then, all that was known was that the company was working on “cause-oriented” applications and that they had raised $4.5 million from Kleiner Perkins’ $100 million iFund last year. Curiosities and speculations now aside, the Palo Alto company has finally revealed its first iPhone game, Booyah Society.

In Booyah Society, the object of the game is to “level up in life.” Players create a Booyah account, customize a rather odd looking avatar and proceed to unlock game achievements by doing real life activities.

Here’s how it works: Booyah Society is actually connected with both Twitter and Facebook, but doesn’t use them in the traditional fashion that other games do. Other titles often use connections to these major social platforms as an extension of their game. Make an accomplishment in 140 Mafia, the app automatically tweets what was done in game (if that option is selected). But in Booyah Society, the tweets and the status updates are the game.

Currently, Booyah has 108 different achievements across nine categories that range from fitness to travel (using the iPhone‘s GPS). Now, let’s say that you update your Facebook status regarding the latest movie you saw, or tweeted that you just ran five miles. If it’s significant enough, you press the “Booyah!” button and you get something along the lines of, “I just ran five miles. BOOYAH!!!” Suddenly the name makes sense, doesn’t it? Depending on what is written, various achievements, badges, and a currently unused virtual currency are earned.

The app is currently free, but CEO Keith Lee says the company intends to fully monetize the game through virtual goods.

In the past we have seen similar games for the iPhone platform that provided rewards for visiting places real life (Foursqure, Gowalla). However, while you can “check-in” from a location, without heavier integration into Facebook and Twitter, nobody can really see what achievements or badges you are earning. Furthermore, if you aren’t in a major city, there is almost no one to interact with, nor anywhere to visit that was actually connected to game play.

Neither of those problems exist with Booyah Society. Essentially, these former Blizzard Entertainment execs have taken the best part of two exceedingly popular social networks and added a game element to their core features, creating an experience everyone can enjoy.

Peanut Labs Media has announced partnerships with MMORPG developer Frogster and online game publisher Outspark to bring their survey-based virtual currency monetization system to more free to play online games.

Frogster, a division of Berlin-based Frogster Interactive Pictures, is best known for its MMO Runes of Magic. Through the team up, players of Runes will now be able to participate in Peanut Labs’ 5-10 minute market research surveys in exchange for virtual diamonds. This, in turn, is expected to increase monetization by allowing users that do not wish to spend any money to go further in the game.

Two weeks ago, Peanut Labs also announced a partnership with Outspark, which currently runs five online free-to-play titles that serve about 5 million gamers monthly, including  Fiesta, Project Powder, and Wind Slayer. As with Frogster, players can now earn Outspark SparkCash through surveys..

Partnerships like these shouldn’t come as a surprise, as virtual currency monetization is working well and growing rapidly throughout the industry. It gives more players the opportunity to engage more deeply in the game, and provides developers with sustainable sources of revenue from a variety of advertisers. We’ll of course continue to follow the evolution of the space closely.

Social gaming is growing and mainstream game developers are taking notice. With 250 million active users on Facebook, Ubisoft is the latest international publisher to join the fray.  Traditionally a developer of console titles such as Splinter Cell, the French launched its first game on Facebook just a couple of weeks ago called TickTock.

In order to learn more about the approach Ubisoft is taking to Facebook and social gaming in general, we spoke with the game’s producer, Omar Abdelwahed.

[Inside Social Games] Thanks for joining us Omar. So before we dive right in, you were the producer for TickTock – what are some of the other titles you and your team have worked on in the past for Ubisoft?

[Omar Abdelwahed] The team on this project is only a year old and this is the first title that we’ve worked on together in our San Francisco office. Most of our core titles are developed through third party studios. We felt we needed an internal team to specifically work on social games. Most of us on the team come from an online background. Previously, I was at the retailer, Best Buy, where I led the development of several online web properties.

[ISG] So what was it specifically that drew you towards the social side of things?

[OA] Personally, I just love using Facebook. I’ve never blogged much or written long form updates about my life, but Facebook makes it very easy to share bits of my everyday life with those closest to me. From a platform perspective, 250 million people are hard to ignore. When you realize that as much as half of those people log-in each day and around 30 million people update their statuses daily, there’s an obvious community that’s very active. Moreover, the community itself started creating games before any company produced one. Facebook is clearly a platform for fun, engaging games.

[ISG] Now, obviously, TickTock is a very different creature than what we’re used to seeing out of Ubisoft. Was this a one-off, or is Ubisoft planning on building more social games for Facebook in the future?

[OA] TickTock is just the beginning of many games we have in development. We created UbiFriends to be the destination for TickTock and all the social games we develop. You can expect more titles and more content soon including the brands that gamers have come to love from Ubisoft.

[ISG] What plans are there to monetize TickTock (if any)? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t see anything that players could buy, upgrade, etc. How is Ubisoft thinking about the business model behind TickTock, and social games in general?

[OA] Our first and most important goal is to create fun, high quality games. We want to create a large community around our games by delivering engaging content. After we achieve this, then we will look at monetization.

[ISG] Since Ubisoft is an international company, are any other divisions planning on doing anything similar as well?

[OA] Yes. As a company, we are strategically looking at Facebook and other social networks as platforms in the same way we look at Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, DS/DSi and others. We have a large portfolio of brands and we release branded games across all platforms. As an international company, we also localize content to various regions for specific platforms. Depending on the country, we’ll produce games for varying social platforms.

[ISG] Will these titles, TickTock included, be exclusive to Facebook or will they branch out to other social platforms, such as MySpace or hi5, too?

[OA] UbiFriends and featured games like TickTock will definitely branch out to other social platforms. We’ve just started and for now Facebook is our primary target for social games. We’ll bring UbiFriends to other social platforms in the future.

[ISG] Moving to the development side of things, how did development process need to change from making a mainstream console game to an online social game?

[OA] Developing social games is typically a shorter development cycle than for console games. We’re following the pattern of other social game developers and plan for approximately 8-week cycles and overlapping releases. The combination of developing internally and rapid development cycles allows us to release new games quickly.

[ISG] How much has your production lifecycle changed to accommodate this new type of game, and do you have plans to continually update TickTock?

[OA] Production has historically been one of “build and ship” then move to the next product. In general, online games have to be continually updated with new content to keep the experience fresh for current players and to attract new players. We plan to continually update TickTock with content releases. You can expect new types of bombs to challenge your friends and other content to customize your gaming experience in future games.

[ISG] Could you, perhaps, elaborate more on these upcoming changes?

[OA] Bombs, bombs and more bombs! Is it your friend’s birthday? Send a birthday bomb. Halloween? Got a bomb for that too. Your “warehouse” will also see some interesting changes and have greater meaning for the player. We’ve also noted the need for more rewards relative to defusing bombs. We’ve received a lot of feedback from players and we are making enhancements accordingly. In the end, we’ll continue to enhance TickTock if players are asking for more.

[ISG] Gifting bombs…. There’s something I thought I’d never do, but it is fun. As fun as I find it though, we’re curious to know what the rest of the world thinks. How is TickTock doing so far. I realize it is still very new, but how have your initial numbers been?

[OA] We’ve been very satisfied at the initial feedback we’ve received from players. To date, we’ve done no advertising outside Ubisoft channels and we still have thousands of active players in only a few days. Of course, we want to see the number of players rise dramatically, but we feel this will happen as we release new content and new games within UbiFriends.

[ISG] Let’s talk about some recent gaming news. At E3, Nintendo and Microsoft made some major announcements regarding greater social features for their consoles. How does this affect Ubisoft’s console plans?

[OA] If anything, these announcements confirm the importance of producing social games at Ubisoft. We began production prior to any knowledge that Nintendo or Microsoft would enable certain Facebook features inside their consoles. Now we’re positioned to be the first publisher to bring social games to consoles. That is exciting!

[ISG] Considering everything you’ve learned so far, is there anything you would do different a second time around?

[OA] That’s a great question. Arguably, we could have launched earlier in the year. But we took our time specifically to research and play-test different games before releasing on Facebook. We also realized it was important to be prepared to release a number of games quickly in order to gauge the community and in order to sustain and grow the number of players. I feel we made the right decision by not rushing to release a single title.

[ISG] One last  question before we finish up. If you had to pick any one Ubisoft title, which would be your favorite and why?

[OA] One? Just one?? Okay, I’m a father with 3 young kids. I love our Petz and Imagine games for the smiles they put on my kids’ faces. But for me, I’m really excited for Ubisoft’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up game that will be coming out this year. I grew up reading Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s TMNT comic books and getting a new Turtles game is great nostalgia for me!

[ISG] Thanks again. Are there any final thoughts you would care to share?

[OA] We really listen to the Facebook community and develop our games with their feedback in mind. If you have comments about our games, you can easily reach us on our forums. Please let us know what you think!

About a year ago, we saw the birth of MySpace’s #1 social game, the criminally addictive RPG Mobsters. Since then, Playdom released the game on Facebook as well, where it serves millions of players. Most recently, the company expanded to the iPhone with Mobsters Big Apple, which linked directly to the MySpace version. However, today the franchise is growing a bit larger as the series expands with its first sequel, Mobsters 2: Vendetta.

Though the title has been live on Facebook for a couple of weeks, Playdom is officially launching the game day. It’s similar in many respects to the original, but the graphic novel-style game comes with a handful of very nice additions to the core game play mechanic.

The first is an actual story-line. In a nutshell, your brother’s been murdered and its off to find revenge on a global scale. Global is the key word here, as unlike most other mafia RPGs, Vendetta has players traveling beyond New York City (i.e. Miami or Las Vegas) to complete themed missions. This alone adds significant depth greater than the original. So far, the company says average session length is around 45 minutes.

Along with the larger scale, the game also comes with what Playdom dubs a “dynamic territory system.” Though text-based RPG players are familiar with buying land, Vendetta allows palyers to manage an entire mob city with upgrades garnered through a rather deep technology tree.

The new scale also opens the boundaries to new class systems too. In other titles, players choose a class that earns them more money, health, or stamina (generally), but this time around they have up to 20 to unlock and choose from. Furthermore, Playdom has tried to abolish a dominant class by granting special advantages based on whichever item the player is using.

How will people compare Mobsters 2: Vendetta to the original? To be perfectly honest, the latest addition to the mob family feels a lot more fun than the others. It’s deeper, more strategic, and at a much larger scale. However, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of cross-over between the first and second games as far as player characters are concerned. Will this new game lead to players abandoning the original? Will they invest the time into two games when they are already so advanced in the first? We’ll likely see a migration over the coming months, but either way, Vendetta looks very cool.