Inside Social Games

Zynga’s Sehgal, on creating Café World — My former colleague Dean Takahashi over at VentureBeat has taken a closer look at how Café World has grown to more than 17.7 million users since launching a few weeks ago. Roy Sehgal, the general manager of Clubhouse Studios game design group in Zynga that built the app, explains how they focused on graphics, game mechanics and virality — and he argued against the notion that it is a clone of Playfish’s virtual dining game. “A clone of Restaurant City? Not at all,” he tells Takahashi. “I would compare it to Diner Dash or Cooking Mama. It’s about cooking and running a restaurant, while Restaurant City is built around a trading mechanic. These games are only related on the surface as food-related games.”

EA’s breast cancer awareness fundraiser football jersey — The gaming company is selling black and pink football jerseys in its PlayStation Home EA Sports Complex for $2 apiece. The uniforms feature the name and number #9 number for New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who has established Brees Dream Foundation for breast cancer awareness. More on Kotaku.

China online gaming revenues keep going up — They reached 6.18 billion RMB ($906 million) in the second quarter of this year, according to research firm Analysys International. That’s up 39.5% from the previous year. A Reuters article on the matter also quote an industry regulator” who thinks yearly growth will come to between 30% and 50% over last year, for 24 billion-27 billion RMB ($3.5 billion-$4 billion)

Ice-T comes to IMVU — The rapper and his wife, Coco, will be running a line of goods in the virtual world that includes “street weapons” and virtual lingerie (for those over 18). IMVU already offers millions of virtual goods, most of which are user-created. Virtual Goods News has more.