What is a Webling? Weblings are magical, fairy-like nymph… things in a new game from WebWars. However, this little title isn’t really the traditional type of game you see either, as it actually turns the everyday act of web browsing into a sort of exploratory hunting game.

When players first sign up for the free-to-play Weblings game, they have to install a WebWars tool bar for their browser. Once they have done so, they can begin exploring the Internet, and whenever they feel the itch for battle, a simple click of the “Battle” button and you’ll pick a fight with a random bug with a pun for a name (okay, not really a good pun, but it’s an insect named “Crash Bug” or “Mem Leak Bug” or any other PC related error).

As the plotline goes:

Weblings are little beings that live on the Internet and make it work. Recently they’ve been imprisoned in mirror gates by the evil Bugs. The Bugs shattered the mirrors and scattered the shards all over the Internet. The Weblings need our help to recover the shards and release them from their prisons.

Each battle takes place on the web page the user is currently visiting, in what is called “layered reality” (something similar to what was seen with Minsh’s undersea virtual world for Twitter). Once a battle is finished, you receive a reward, which is, generally, a piece of glass; gather enough pieces and a new Webling is unlocked and its abilities are added to your repertoire of Internet nymphs.

As the game is web-browser based, it is created in Flash, but as far as 2D goes, it looks pretty good. The only real complaint to be had is with the battle itself, because all the animations are canned and look, more or less, the same, despite which webling is in use. Furthermore, other than choosing what webling to fight with, the player doesn’t do a whole lot. Everything is automated in battle. Nonetheless, the game is focused more towards a tween (girls mainly, judging by the visual style) audience.

Each player gets their own village. This means that each player gets their own virtual space to decorate. Of course, since the game is free-to-play, most of the best items come from virtual goods transactions. However, if players do not feel like spending the extra money, they can always win various, tradable, items from battle. Likely, there are a large number of items to collect as well, as that is really what this game is all about: Virtual goods collection.

Unfortunately, we do not know just how many items are out there, but as it stands, there are currently 20 different weblings that can be unlocked with 10 different kinds of bugs. However, according to Chief Executive, Cindy Armstrong, they are looking to have around 57 total weblings by Christmas.

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German app developer MegaZebra gets funding to build social games for Europe — The company raised funding in the “six digits,” it says, to continue building games in different European languages. It has already launched eight titles, mostly Facebook versions of well-known types of games; Zebra Mahjong, for example, already has nearly 150,000 monthly active users. Funding comes from Germany-based Kizoo Technology Ventures.

Playfish opens studio in San Francisco — It already has two studios in Europe and one in China, so the new one is intended in part to attract local gaming and tech talent. The company will be expanding its small, existing office in downtown to accommodate the new hires. “The group will be working closely with the global Playfish team of artists, coders, designers and product managers in other parts of the world,” according to the company blog post.

Aaaand, Playdom expands up to San Francisco – Not to be confused with the last item, Mountain View-based Playdom is opening up a new office an hour north on the peninsula, in San Francisco’s tech-heavy SOMA district. The company has expanded from 60 to 110 employees in the last two months. The new, 10,000-foot space is intended to help it recruit new SF-based employees, as well as let current employees based up north have a shorter commute.

Offerpal launches new testing tools – For games with virtual goods, developers may not always price their currencies right, meaning they either cause demand by oversupply or they lose out on potential revenue due to undersupply. While other tools already exist on the market to optimize currencies, Offerpal is getting into the mix. It’s launching its own, called the “Multivariate Testing” platform. It lets you do A/B or A/B/C testing for variables like revenue per user based on changes that developers make to the currency. More on the company blog post.

For developers who buy Facebook ads: A new ad manager tool – We heard about this in August, and now it’s starting to get rolled out to a few advertisers. The new ad manager tool includes: multi-ad management, a manager-wide campaign selection area, and new navigation, as AllFacebook discovered. We also previously heard that Facebook is also working on a new tool for advertisers, where it will allow the bulk uploads of many ads at once. Right now, advertisers have to manually creating them in the standard campaign manager or through third party scripts. That doesn’t appear to live yet.

[San Francisco skyline via Franco Folini.]

Popular white-label application developer, LOLApps had earlier this year told Inside Facebook that it was looking to create a white label platform for games. It has previously created ways for Facebook users to create their own quiz and gift apps. So, it recently seemed to us that Yakuza Lords might be a precursor to a new game creation platform. But as it turns out, LOLApps has since explained to us that they had actually experimented with a white label game creator last year — and are now moving into making their own games.

The lessons learned from the experiment were quite clear, the company tells us. Apparently, the ability to create quality games through a user generated application did not come very easily. The target audience for a game creator needs to be those that are not only passionate for games, but also have a strong understanding of game mechanics, art, story telling, and in the case of a social game, time to maintain it. Suffice to say, most Facebook users don’t satisfy all of these requirements. Most users are not game designers, which is why most user generated game content is mediocre, at best. LOLApps saw this and decided to focus on launching their own high quality, in-house games.

Since Yakuza Lords, the latest game to be released from the social developer is Diva Life. From the looks of things, LOLApps is indeed starting out with the Zynga routine: Creating different flavors of the same genre. Suffice to say, that means that Diva Life plays similar to, though not completely the same as, Yakuza Lords. However, rather than being a Japanese gangster, you are a movie star.

Players start off as a young starling completing gigs, building an entourage (a “mob” essentially), and upgrading your star-studded-stats. Also, unlike mafia-style games you don’t buy land, but rather, you buy publicity. Radio jingles, commercials, and even blogs earn you some extra cash flow by the hour. Even purchasing items is a little different. Instead of just weapons, armor, and cars, players have to worry about random items like business cards, designer clothing (of course), cars (okay, that‘s the same), and a new one, services, that consists of waxes, facials, and manicures.

The game also seems to have a progressive narrative that is broken up into chapters. This seems to be a gating system that prevents people from doing “high level” gigs, while telling a story at the same time, and makes for an interesting way to break up each leg of game progression. Beyond this, the art style, like Yakuza Lords, is phenomenal. Though it is only text and still images, the artwork just fits and screams Hollywood from a diva’s perspective.

All in all, Diva Life is a solid RPG. Granted, it does have elements we have seen before, but with well thought out artwork and narrative, this familiarity ought to do well in attracting new users. Despite quality, however, it is perhaps unfortunate for some that that a better white label game creator is not on its way at the moment. Nonetheless, considering the quality of user generated content compared to the quality of games like Yakuza Lords and Diva Life, it is probably for the best.

As American social web services have become more popular around the world, international developers have begun giving them more attention. So here’s a look at a couple of games made by Japanese companies.

Using Facebook Connect, Artscape and Istpika developed an iPhone and Facebook game by the name of Broadway Café. Part Restaurant City, part Dinner Dash, this little number has you scurrying around like a scullery maid serving meals, taking orders, cooking food, working the register, and so on as you try to make your café a success.

All of your friends from Facebook can now be hired to work at your café. If the concept sounds similar, that’s because it’s one of the core social elements within Playfish’s Restaurant City, and like the North American counterpart, Broadway Café even comes with its own customization features, allowing players to customize the interior of their restaurant to their own personal tastes.

Also developed by Istpika is an iPhone app by the name of gottaDo2. This one is simpler, but equally entertaining. In the fashion of popular virtual pets games (which have long been popular in Asia), this application is nothing more than an interactive task manager. Here’s the trick though, each item on your “to do list” is like a food item, and you have to care a visceral, blue, blobby… thing. For each task you complete, it feeds the creature, allowing it to grow, and for each you don’t, well, it gets upset at you for being lazy. The best part, too, is that this game as well, can synch up with a Facebook counterpart allowing you to share your lists as well as seeing others’.

Last on the import list comes from a Japanese company by the name of Cerego. This social developer is the creator behind the social learning platform iKnow! (intended to teach Japanese people English) and while they may not be making an iPhone app, they have launched a new Facebook quiz game by the name of Smart.fm Brainspeed. In a nutshell, this curious title has players taking quizzes based around the personal information of all your Facebook friends. Certainly an interesting concept reminiscent of games like FriendFreak, with the only draw back being if you have too many friends or they haven’t filled out their personal section enough.

Despite the potential of the game, Cerego has claimed that it is merely a proof of concept meant to display how their technology can leverage structured information and use it to educate people. Having recently received $3.4 million from a round of funding from NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile phone carrier, it will be interesting to see just what the big plan for Cerego is going to be.

Suffice to say, North American platforms are indeed popular, and growing in popularity still, around the globe. The fact that the iPhone itself proves popular in Japan is an astounding wonder considering that the country releases somewhere over 100 different types of mobile phones every year. – Actually, estimates from Japan’s iPhone provider, SoftBank Mobile, state that sales are well over one million (sadly, the provider doesn’t release official data). With Facebook and the iPhone catching the attention of the most technology savvy country in the world, this marks a tremendous milestone for the Western spaces. Look for more Japanese developers to move in.

Of all the virtual goods based games in the world, one of the most successful has been those developed by Nexon. In the past, we have seen the Korean company excel with both Asian and North American audiences, but just how well are they doing in the world’s other major market: Europe? Though the privately held casual gaming site is not required to release numbers, it released some to show how well it’s doing.

There are two Nexon games in question when referring to the Nexon Europe game portal: MapleStory and Combat Arms. While the company was founded back in 2005, Nexon’s European branch has actually only been around since 2007. As of May and June of this year, it has saw a 168% increase in year-on-year revenue for Europe alone. In comparison with other released numbers, overall revenue for Nexon was up 35% year-on-year.

Nexon also reported that its European rendition of MapleStory comes to around 1.2 million active users. Its other title, Combat Arms, which launched in Europe in February, falls short of this total with 800,000 registered users and a concurrent user count of 12,000. To add some perspective to these numbers, in the United States, Combat Arms was reported, back in February, to have had a total of 2 million users, according to Virtual Goods News, with its launch having been in October of 2008. Granted, the Amercian version has been around longer, but it still had around a million users in its first month; so relatively speaking, the European release is growing significantly slower.

Despite the slower start for Combat Arms, the European market has still been effective for Nexon. In general, the average monthly revenue growth, year-on-year ,for the first six months of 2009 has been 105%. Curiously enough, Q1 only had a 63% growth in revenue while Q2 was reported to have an impressive 146% increase. Moreover, Nexon has stated that Q1 and Q2 alone have exceeded the total revenue for all of 2008.

[via GameIndustry.biz]

Media from all walks of life appear to be expanding further into social spaces, and television is no exception. Latest example: The popular USA Network, a division of NBC Universal, has announced partnerships with several game startups in order to boost the social capabilities of its online games portal, Character Arcade. Partnerships include NeoEdge Networks, Bigpoint, and Bunchball.

Each strategic partnership is intended to bring something new to the table for the 36 year old network. Having all ready developed casual games for Apple’s iPhone, this marks the second major move towards a social evolution. In fact, USA is looking to double its games roster by the end of 2009, but more than that, will begin connecting to major social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as offer virtual goods.

As part of the deals announced today, USA will gain access to NeoEdge’s collection of casual games. They’ll be downloadable for the PC as well as be playable through the USA Character Arcade, and in turn, USA games will see distribution through all of NeoEdge’s distribution channels. Furthemore, NeoEdge games will come complete with built in, dynamically targeted advertisements.

Bigpoint will similarly add games to the repertoire of titles available on Character Arcade by providing massively multiplayer online games. These games from the German company will be free-to-play and monetized through virtual goods transactions, complimenting the NeoEdge addition and further adding greater breadth to the USA games collective.

Lastly, there is Bunchball. Unlike the other two partners, however, this pair up isn’t intended to add more games, but rather, enrich USA space by turning Character Arcade into a “real social media environment.” This technology company will be helping further drive user engagement using its SocialLink technology in tandem with Facebook Connect. Through the combination of these two elements, players will be able to challenge one another, view leaderboards, chat, and access rewards and virtual goods, from a new Bunchball rewards and points platform, regardless of where they are playing USA games. However, the social integration is not only for Facebook, but is available for Twitter and other social media sites as well.

“The intersection of social media and games is the hottest part of the industry now,” says Jesse Redniss, Vice President of Digital at USA Network in an interview with VentureBeat. “The projection is that casual games will be a $10 billion to $11 billion business by 2011 and that is something we want to be a part of.”

This marks yet another big name on the list of major media developers to turn their online portals social. However, while we have seen casual portals such as Candystand.com and mainstream developers such as Konami go this route, the social integration for USA marks one of the first major non-game media providers to really catch ISG’s attention.

Conduit Labs, maker of social music site Loudcrowd has just raised $3 million in a second round of funding, as discovered by PaidContent in an SEC filing. This marks the second set of financing for the young company, as it raised $5.5 million from Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks back in 2007.

The funding will likely go toward further developments within Loudcrowd, which seems to have been doing decently well in recent months. It reported more than 2 million game plays as of May.

The site allows players utilize the “Party” space, letting people simply hang out and “chill” with other avatars or “dance” with them through a simple click and playing the Dance mini game. Interestingly enough, dances can be funny, flashy, or flirty, and are addictive enough to coax roughly 20% of Loudcrowd users into dancing and hanging out around eight hours a week.

Of course, if this isn’t your style, users can play games of the original version of Loudcrowd which was launched this past March. However, the club-themed site has since added two interesting features: Impress and Spark, both of which are available through the aforementioned social Party feature.

Impress is actually more of a vocabulary type of game. As dull as that might sound, it is executed in the fashion of a sort of rap battle. Players are presented with an open-ended sentence and have to click floating word bubbles containing words or phrases that might fit as they move about the room, while avoiding words or phrases that wouldn’t fit. It seems easy enough, with a simple point and click mechanic, but with such a limited amount of time (like “spitting rhymes”) it is actually quite difficult.

The second addition we saw on Loudcrowd was more of a puzzler: Spark. This one should be extremely interesting for the casual audience since traditionally, most casual players are looking for a challenge of the mind. Well, this particular challenge is based both on visuals and sound. Players are given a track and a set of light bulbs (consider them circuits) on a grid. The objective is to direct electricity from one conduit to another, by rotating the light bulb/circuits, while avoiding red barriers and having it move in rhythm with the music. While it sounds simple enough, there are a limited number of moves, so each successive puzzle becomes significantly more difficult.

As with the original Spin and Dance games, these new titles are able to unlock new music tracks to listen too (as they play in the background constantly), and frankly, none of it is too bad at all. Suffice to say that this makes for an excellent outlet for new artists to get noticed, and thus far, Loudcrowd hosts over 250 tracks from 50 artists including the Canadian duo, MSTRKRFT, Santigold, Justice, and remixes from Juan MacLean.

All in all, the games are fun, and have a unique flavor for a variety of palettes. Of course, the site is still growing, but it seems to be doing well thus far, and the music alone makes for a great site to just have playing in the background. The idea is great, and with a new chunk of funding coming down the pipe, it will be interesting to see what the next Loudcrowd evolution will be.

While MySpace is still in the process of reorganizing itself, a well-respected executive at the social network, Jason Oberfest, is leaving to join gaming company ngmoco.

Oberfest’s new title is Vice President of Social Applications: He’ll be in charge of expanding the company from its historical focuse on iPhone and iPod Touch games to social sites and the web. It’s not clear exactly how this will work. He may help develop new titles designed more for social networks, or port existing titles to the new site. Ngmoco’s games have been installed more than 10 million times, and include hits like Rolando, Topple, Dr. Awesome and more.

His canned statement from the press release:

I have long had a passion for games and could not be more thrilled to join such a talented and accomplished team as ngmoco. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the marriage of social applications and games. I am very excited to help build ngmoco`s vision as a next generation games company.

At MySpace, Oberfest was the Senior Vice President of Business Development as well as the general manager of its developer platform — where he established a good reputation among game companies and other social platform developers, from what we’ve heard.

GDC Austin is underway this week, and this morning’s MMOs and Virtual Worlds Panel had some great data points on monetization. Thanks to Ada Chen for recording and sharing these notes with us.

Nanea Reeves of EA moderated the panel, which also included Jim Crowley, CEO at Turbine; Cary Rosenzweig, CEO of IMVU; Johny Mang from EA Dice; Tom Hale, the Chief Product Officer at Linden Labs/Second Life; and John Bates from Entropia.

The monetization stats:

Linden

• Second Life makes close to $100 million and not less than $80 million. They make money in three ways: 1) sale of currency, 2) premium subscription and 3) a hosting model where users pay them to allow their 3D objects to persist
• Linden tracks engagement (user hours), transaction value, % paying, repeat usage, $50 MM user value is exchanged each month.
• More focused on retention instead of acquisition, looking at users over 2 year lifetimes.
• Fraud is definitely an issue especially when $$ can come out of the system. Just a cost of doing business.
• Top merchant at Second Life is making $1 million/year selling sweaters/skirts

IMVU

• 80% of revenues are from consumers (micro-transactions and user-generated content) and 20% from advertising
• The essence of monetization is building a service that customers will pay for. You have to be massive to be viable with an advertising model.
• In Asia (in general, not IMVU) 5-10% range of free to paid conversion
• Free users add value to the paid users, larger and engaging community
• IMVU is like Ebay, with 2.5 million items and 20,000 developers creating them. Entrepreneurs creating and selling for others and IMVU is the neutral party since they aren’t creating the goods directly
• Top 10 creators on IMVU each made over $100k annual revenue
• Paid items are long tail, top 10 items are only = 0.2% of sales. Users want to be different.

Turbine

• Turbine recently transferred from subscription to a hybrid subscription & micro-transactions model. Hybrid model offers greater flexibility and choice.
• Subscription only models leave out the audience that are willing to pay less and don’t capture those that are willing to pay more, so they’ve moved to optional subscription.
• Since announcing their service they’ve actually seen subscriptions go up and concurrency rates rise too.

K2

• 100% of K2 revenues are from item sales
• MMOs: “ARPU is high, relationships is long and persistence is everything”
• K2’s focus is being very involved with community management
• Item sales mean that countries such as Turkey, Brazil, the Eastern bloc are full of opportunities for free to play.
• Free to play is nothing but a pricing option
• K2 uses traditional resellers of prepaid card codes to reach emerging markets like Turkey, China, Eastern Europe

EA

• Battlefield: Heroes sells mostly decorative items but launched Boost packs and this item immediately went to the top of the list
• They also have a RTS with boost items and found conversion rates are much higher
• Items that have usefulness in the game tend to convert better
• EA is targeting a 7-8% conversion rate for free to play games, but expects that to lower to 5% with social network traffic