Learning from one’s “elders,” as it were, the virtual goods market in China is one to watch and learn from for many developers around the world. To that end, we took a look at the released numbers from one of China’s popular gaming portals, Changyou. The company’s performance was unflinching against the stock drops it saw shortly after China’s new virtual currency laws, as the company has posted record financial highs over the course of the second quarter this year.

Long story short, Changyou saw $66.6 million in revenues this past quarter, with a net income of $34.5 million, representing an 8% increase over the portal’s Q1 revenues and a 39% increase over last year. The growth was at least partially due to the 5% increase in paying accounts for their two freemium MMOs, Tian Long Ba Bu and Blade Online, reaching a total of 2.39 million. In fact, the number of total accounts for both games increased to 69.1 million or 9%.

On the whole, Changyou saw a 4% increase in ARPU as well, averaging out to about $27.22 per person, yet, surprisingly, declined 2% in its average number of peak concurrent users, tallying in at 950,000. Nevertheless, the overall report is positive, and the Chinese company intends to keep it that way, predicting Q3 revenues between $67 and $69 million and net income of about $40 million.

Users can expect to see the launch of a new game, Blade Hero 2, the sequel to Blade Online, as well as another Tian Long Ba Bu expansion come Q3 and Q4 respectively. In addition, Changyou is also looking to expand further with Tian Long Ba Bu by releasing it within Korea around the same time (Q4), and is, in fact, currently working on an English rendition for a future release in North America. Beyond 2009, the developers have also announced the release of brand new games in 2010 called Immortal Faith in Q1, Legend of the Ancient World in Q2, and Duke of Mount Deer in Q3.

[via Virtual Goods News]

Anyone following major games should know that just this week the latest rendition of Activision/Neversoft’s Guitar Hero franchise was released. Facebook just got its own: A new game from Slide called Rock Riot, and while it does play similar to its console counterpart, the experience is more social and less visceral.

Rock Riot, at its core is very simple. Once players create their own “rocker,” they can jump right into the action. In the familiar Guitar Hero/Rock Band manner, players are presented with a guitar neck littered with multi-colored frets streaming down the screen. Using the 1 – 5 keys, players press the corresponding color when the fret reaches the bottom and, voila, music plays.

As a matter of fact, the music is perhaps the most surprising and fantastic part of this game. Rock Riot actually has a very impressive track list of fun and well-known songs, and they aren’t short clips either (though clips can be played upon player digression). These are the full songs and in crystal clear quality as well. including more that can be unlocked at higher levels. Essentially, it is like listening to an interactive CD, and even more surprising, actually does an excellent job of immersing the player into the rock and roll world.

Okay, granted, the controls are a bit awkward at first, and the experience is not the same has holding a guitar peripheral, but it still feels good to play. No, it is no console game, but what it lacks in this regard, it does make up with some classic social elements.

In addition to the posting of scores and progress on one’s Facebook profile, the game actually has you forming your own club and band. At the moment, the “Club” doesn’t seem to be much more than a background and the “Band” – made up of your friends – looks to only earn you extra fans (experience) and money. Of course, this is a good thing, because as you play and level up new items can be purchased to further customize your personal avatar, and as expensive as the rock lifestyle is, extra income is always welcome.

Frankly though, the avatar is a little disappointing. They are very stiff and rigid and while they “play” their guitar along with a song; it feels awkward and out of place. The animations are unnatural and out of rhythm, and the level of customization feels very limited until you have enough money to buy the most expensive items. Furthermore, it would be nice to see more done with the club itself rather than it just become a static background painting. In fact, this was the most disappointing, because the button “create your club” led to the expectations of designing and decorating a personal space.

Nevertheless, Rock Riot is still a very refreshing and entertaining experience for any Facebook user. Sure, it’s no Xbox 360 game, and the lack of a guitar peripheral makes it awkward at first, but once you get used to it, it is actually quite a bit of fun. The songs are great and fun to play, and the potential for social, personal spaces for each user is there just begging to be used. While not (yet?) on the level of Guitar Hero, Rock Riot is a solid addition to Slide’s Facebook repertoire.

Top social game developer Zynga, quiz-maker Pangea Media and casual game site GameVance were three of the top advertisers by impressions on social networks this past June, mostly MySpace and Facebook, according to a comScore report on social network advertising published yesterday.

While still dwarfed by some major brands, gaming companies are getting more impressions than some and doing an effective job of drawing people to their games.

Zynga had 484 million impressions, for 96.8 percent of its total impressions on the web, with 40 million unique visitors to its applications as a result. Zynga notably spent a couple million dollars to advertise its hit new game, FarmVille, starting in June. Its spending on Facebook’s own advertising service has been successful enough that we hear many other developers are beginning to use it as well. A metrics-driven company, Zynga has apparently honed its ability to target users through ads. It has found these ads cost-effective because they can make more money from these games — possibly above $200 million by the end of this year, I’ve heard from various source. In general, as competition among games continues to heat up, social network advertising has become an important channel for developers to gain new users.

Pangea had 572 million impressions, 89.6 percent of the company’s total online ad impressions, and 33.1 million unique visitors. GameVance had 450 million impressions, only 33.9 percent of its total impressions on the web, with 34.5 million unique visitors coming to its site as a result.

In terms of larger brands, carrier AT&T had 2.07 billion impressions for 29.5 percent of its total, but only 87.1 million unique visitors. Verizon had only 435 million impressions — fewer than the three gaming companies — for a small 10.5 percent of its online totals, but it received 54.1 million visitors as a result.

Note, however, that it’s not clear how fully comScore is able to measure impressions on Facebook; comScore numbers should be taken more as one view of social network spending rather than the a complete picture.

And one last thought: The three gaming companies, and likely many others, are mostly advertising on social networks now, because social networks are the easiest place to find social network users. Zynga and other companies will likely use some of their revenues to try to find more users in other channels as well, through using behavioral targeting, click-trails and other data to figure out where on the web they can reach social network users.

MySpace social game rankings don’t usually change much, but they did this past month. BitRhymes and RockYou managed to climb up the charts.

Meanwhile, Zynga and Playdom continue to hold many of the top spots within the space. Their role-playing games continue to slide up and down the charts, as users find themselves preferring new game features being constantly introduced by the companies.

Here are the highlights from this past month:

• Playdom’s Mobsters continues its reign at #1 with nearly 14 million installs as of this past month, but it’s followed closely by Zynga’s Mafia Wars, with approximately 12.5 million.
• With nearly 400,000 more installs this time around, YoVille holds on at #8 with an impressive 5,026,949 installs.
• BitRyhmes beats out the Playdom powerhouse for the #14 spot with Tag Me (BitRhymes’ other title, Cheers!! comes in at #12 with over 3 million installs), thereby knocking the game, Sorority Life, down to #15. Of course, the Playdom title still garners over 3 million installs, growing by nearly 200,000 since last month.
• Speed Racing, from RockYou, shows an impressive leap, jumping from #20 to #17 with just over 2 million game installations.
• Also, Zynga’s Dragon Wars takes over the #19 spot with 1,966,774 installs (15,588 more than last month) as Playdom’s Heroes loses a little over 12,000 on its monthly install rate, tallying in at 1,952,049.
• Fashion also turns out to be more popular than going green as Fashion Wars and Green Spot appear at numbers 21 and 22 respectively with about a 200,000 install difference.

On another note, it’s surprising to see farming games not take hold on the site, even though they’re popular across the world. On Facebook, Zynga’s FarmVille has boomed to 33.4 million monthly active users in just three months. The difference may be related to the fact that no farming games are currently offered on by top farm game-makers on Facebook, neither Zynga, nor Slashkey, nor Playfish. Smaller apps might have an opportunity here, or perhaps larger companies will move in — or maybe MySpace’s many music and celebrity-loving users want glitzier games than virtual agriculture.

As always, if ever you feel there are some games or apps that should be included on this list, by all means, let us know, and we will be sure to take a look.

Well, it’s been quite the month for Facebook as we continued to see the astounding growth of games centered around the simple concept of farming! While it was last month that Zynga reached the #1 spot with its brand new title, FarmVille, this month proves to be no different. However, while the standings are the same, the numbers behind those standings are quite astonishing.

Zynga continues with an impressive five titles within the Top 25 and two within the Top 5. Playfish also continues to hold strong with six titles in the top 25, showing the value of highly polished and creative designs. Nonetheless, this past month also played host to a number of new faces as well.

Here are the highlights from the past month:

• Easily the top story of the month is FarmVille. Having only been around since July, this Zynga title has become one of the single, fastest growing games on Facebook, effectively doubling its monthly active users over the course of August to reach 33 million people.
• Mafia Wars regained its #2 spot with about 19 million monthly uniques as Slashkey‘s Farm Town moved back up in the rankings to #3 with over 18 million.
• Playfish’s classic title, Pet Society gains over 1.5 million users to overtake, long time favorite, Texas HoldEm, coming in at #5.
• A popular MySpace game from Playdom made its first appearance in the Top 25 with almost 5.5 million monthly actives at #11 - Sorority Life – and Playfish’s own rendition of simple living, Country Story also makes its debut at #14
• The German social developer wooga also gets its new game up in the charts at #16 with the quiz game, Brain Buddies, which, surprisingly, beat out the classic Playfish app, Who Has The Biggest Brain?, which fell behind at #17.
• Lastly, another developer, Offbeat Creation, gets its first appearance at #23 with a drinking challenge game, Chug It!

Certainly, August has been an eventful month, and the momentum isn’t slowing down any time soon. With new games and apps appearing constantly, it is impossible to predict who will climb in popularity next. To that end, if ever you feel something ought to be included on this list that we missed, let us know.

Mobile payments are an increasingly popular way for people to pay for things like virtual goods, because it lets them bill items to their mobile phone accounts instead of paying through credit cards or other services. Today, mobile payment provider BOKU is announcing a range of large and small new partners in social and web games, as well as some new statistics on its growth.

Social gaming companies using BOKU include larger developers like Playfish and Slide, as well as small ones, like HitGrab (MouseHunt), Hive7 (Knighthood), Icebreaker, PageFad (Premier Football) and TheBroth (BarnBuddy). It is is also getting reach across web-based gaming portals and virtual worlds, including Aeria Games, Games-Master (Cabal Online), IGG, K2Networks/GamersFirst, Meez, Three Rings and WeeWorld.

While Facebook is currently testing out payments with rival Zong, BOKU counts Hi5 and Badoo as social networking partners. Finally, BOKU announced it has partnered with payment aggregators fatfoogoo, Gambit, Jambool, Offerpal, Sometrics, Super Rewards, and TrialPay.

In the world of mobile payments, there is often trouble with the phone service providers charging steep overhead fees for transactions, but from the consumer’s standpoint, the costs seem to be worthwhile. Why? The service is actually quite simple: Users go to make a purchase, select the “Pay By Mobile” option, put in their phone number, respond to the immediate text message with “Y,” and voila, the transaction has been made.

So far, BOKU says it has 1,000 merchants using the service and is doing one million transactions a month, with a ten percent monthly growth rate. It now serves users in 56 different countries, with Finland, Indonesia, Slovenia, and Taiwan new to the list, the company is also announcing today.

A demonstration of the BOKU service can be viewed here.