Although it has millions of users around the world, social gaming leader Zynga has so far only had independent contractors abroad, and they’ve been doing customer service. But now the first international Zynga office is opening, and in Bangalore, India.

The company says one reason is to try to establish more of a presence with Indian internet users. There are only 6.3 million monthly active users on Facebook in the country, according to our latest Global Monitor report; although tens of millions more of India’s 81 million internet users are on Google’s Orkut, Zynga does not have games on it, that we know of. Still, enough Indians are playing Zynga games on Facebook that, anecdotally, some quite vocally convinced Zynga to offer the Indian national flag as a virtual good in Facebook hit game FarmVille.

The other reason for the office is obviously to recruit talented software engineers. “Zynga India is looking to recruit computer scientists and engineers who are experienced in building scalable infrastructure,” the announcement press release says.

Zynga has been trying to aggressively hire in the US for many months, snatching people out of other Silicon Valley companies. Some of the $180 million it raised last fall is going towards paying employees Beyond its sprawling San Francisco headquarters, it has offices in Los Angeles, Baltimore and further down in the valley, in Los Gatos and Sunnyvale.

On the one hand, this could be a sign that Zynga is looking to hire out of India’s skilled but less expensive labor pool. However, the US labor market for high-end software engineers is extremely tight, despite the economy, as most any technology company will tell you. Many of the best engineers are in countries like China and India, not the US; they either don’t want to move here or they can’t, because the US’s overly restrictive skilled labor immigration rules prevent them.

Other social gaming companies have offices around the world and we expect Zynga to continue expanding abroad, as well.

Winter Olympic fans who may not be able to hit the streets of Vancouver to observe the games can at least play the official video game on Facebook.

Sega’s Vancouver 2010 Official Minigame on Facebook allows the user to “compete” in sports played during the winter games by using the arrow buttons on their keyboard. The four sports — snowboard cross, giant slalom, ski jumping and short track speed skating — allow you to compete with your friends, others in your country and players all over the world. Winners in the game may be awarded gold, silver or bronze medals.

The app is constantly asking users to invite their friends to play, as well. Once you’ve completed a game the app asks you to publish the results to your Wall so all the friends in your network can see you played the game. The ever-present faces of your friends follow you through your game trials, too.

The game on Facebook has grown steadily recently and currently has just over 14,500 monthly active users. The game is the Facebook version of games made for Xbox 360, PCs and PlayStation 3 and when played at olympicvideogames.com allows the winners of gold medals to enter into a contest for prizes.

When a user begins playing the game you’re asked to select a country and invite your friends to play; the game also shows your individual world ranking, country ranking and any medals you have won in the game.

To the sound of alternative-style video game music you’re asked to select a difficulty level — normal, hard or expert — and may elect to see a tutorial before playing. Once you finish navigating the course of your sport and arrive at the finish line, the crowd cheers you (no matter how badly you play).

Chinese developer Five Minutes brought its popular farming application, Happy Farm to Facebook, one of many developers from the country that has pushed on to Facebook. The game has now grown to a respectable 3.1 million monthly active users.

How can you follow the game up with a sequel? Why you make it bigger, of course! Take Happy Farm as a base, spice it up with some elements of Pet Society, add a dash of YoVille, and throw it all into a miniature virtual world and you have the makings of a 681,000 MAU Happy Farm 2. Well… a Chinese language version of it anyway. Although Facebook is banned in mainland China, millions of Chinese speakers play games on the service throughout Asia and the rest of the world. 5 Minutes is making these Facebook users their target, at least for now.

[Update: An English-language version exists, although it's not viewable in Facebook's search and we didn't have it in AppData. Its MAU count is also looking decent so far, with 281,000.]

Thankfully, most of the icons are, well, iconic enough to allow a English-speaking individual to figure things out, and despite the language barrier, Happy Farm 2 proved to be quite entertaining.

Getting down to basics, the game is your basic farm title. Players create plots of land, plant seeds, water them, do a little pest control, and eventually harvest them for some coin. Players then use the money to decorate their farm as they see fit with the added feature of creating ponds to place fish in. Unfortunately, for us, most everything is only in Chinese, so we honestly have no idea what the fish are telling us. No, we’re not crazy: the fish and plants talk, but other than the phrase “Happy Day,” lord only knows what they have to say. Nevertheless, it does display an interesting difference in culture: How often do your crops talk to you in FarmVille? Different, and pretty cool.

Unlike Happy Farm, where the game was static and unmoving, players can move about their fields with a cartoonish (though a bit uninspired-looking) avatar. This is where things get interesting though, as players can actually enter their home.

From here, the game takes a more YoVille-like approach, allowing players to decorate their isometric abode (of a respectable size) with a rather impressive variety of furniture. Obviously, this creates a great deal more longevity for the app, as now players are not only building up their farm, but their house as well.

This is where the Pet Society elements comes in. To buy said furniture, players leave their farm and enter a miniature city that feels only slightly smaller than the one in the Playfish title. Conveniently enough, your farm is located, more or less, in the heart of town and players walk about the city streets visiting a collection of stores, including places to buy gifts, fish, seeds, outfits (yes, you can decorate your avatar too), farm decorations, functional farm items (fertilizer, for example), as well as visit the bank (for virtual currency, presumably) and a breeder for farm animals.

Social elements, that we could understand, seem fairly standard for farming games too. You have your gifting, leaderboards, and the ability to visit and take care of each others’ farms. Actually, it is worth noting that this last feature has a nice bit of polish too. If a farm is left unattended for too long it gets a dusty, abandoned town feel to it.

Honestly, despite the language handicap, it really turned out to be a great game for us. The only issue that comes to mind is that compared to all the character designs for the shop keepers, the player’s avatar is a bit ghastly. Nonetheless, if that’s not an issue for you, and you can read Chinese (or even if you can‘t, for that matter), then by all means, Happy Farm 2 is a game certainly worth a play.

And, considering the tendency of Western developers to build their own versions of features that get big in China, perhaps we’ll see the many competing Facebook farm titles out there add more Happy Farm 2 features to their games.

RockYou!‘s Hero World is a Facebook role-playing game that has built a solid user base of 6.5 million monthly active users accumulated since it launched last year. It has all the fixings of a traditional Facebook RPG, but with some twists that make it a bit more interesting.

In Hero World, the experience starts out familiar enough. Players create an avatar, and proceed to do missions, earning experience, losing energy, and collecting some hard earned cash. This is all fairly standard, but under the missions tab there are more than just simple quests, there are also bosses, adventures, and epic battles.

While there were, sadly, no epic battles for us to participate in, we were able to check out the bosses and adventures sections. Bosses, will be a bit familiar to console RPG players, as the game allows you to battle non-player characters in a basic, blow-trading fashion. Players select an ability to use, and based on random number generation, it either misses the boss or does X amount of damage. Periodically, the boss also attacks, and it’s rinse and repeat until someone loses.

What is most interesting, however, is that when players defeat a boss, they are able to use a consumable statistic called “Power Points” to absorb that enemy’s special attacks. This becomes an interesting choice for the player, as the abilities (at least early on) cost around 40 Power Points, and said points are also used to level up other stats such as energy, attack, and defense.

The points are primarily earned by leveling up, but luckily, there are a few more interesting means of earning them – not to mention cash and experience – in the form of Adventures.

In this mode, players are given the task of finding a particular boss and defeating them. Here’s the trick: Players appear as an icon of themselves on a top-down map and move through multiple paths to try and find them. Furthermore, in order to face the enemy, one must find all three of their treasures as well (thankfully, these are marked). There is one other major gimmick, though, and that is that players cannot replenish their health or energy during the adventure (through normal means anyway), and as they move about the map there are random battles, events, and surprises that will either help or hinder your progress.

This is where RockYou does something interesting. Yes, you can buy items for your character using in-game currency or the virtual currency Hero Points. Yes, it gives you an advantage over other players, but the social developer takes it one step further and adds areas on the map where “Medics” are located. These medics can actually heal your hero, for the cost of the virtual currency, and since the rewards for adventures are quite valuable (Hero Points and “exclusive” items), it is highly tempting to purchase a few.

Beyond this unique element, other features include customizing your avatar, eventually decorating a virtual base (which also earns periodic income), and your standard RPG inclusion of player versus player in the Arena. They are a bit less involved and interesting than the adventure mode, but all still lend themselves nicely to the overall application.

Socially, the game has all the goodies players are used to in Facebook RPGs. Other than the Arena, players can compete via leaderboards, post achievements to feeds, and interestingly enough, recruit up to 15 friends to give your hero stat boosts in-game. This includes stats such as damage, armor, and even luck on adventures. What is most notable about this, is that the inclusion of friends only helps a user, whereas other, older, RPGs often require absurd numbers of them in order to progress.

Honestly, as far as Facebook games go, there isn’t a whole lot to complain about. The level of initial customization is a bit lacking as you can only change skin color, hair, and sex. Moreover, the hero themselves looks a bit stiff and unnatural in their quasi-heroic pose. Of course, this is all picking nits, and it will really come down to whether or not you like these types of games, and superheroes in general.

Last week I had the opportunity to speak on “The Future of Social Gaming: 2010 and Beyond” at Europe Casual Connect in Hamburg, Germany. It was excellent meeting so many social gaming entrepreneurs from all over Europe. It’s really going to be an interesting year!

For those interested in checking out the slides, they are embedded below.

Topics covered: Social games, Virtual goods, Facebook, Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, PayPal, MySpace, Twitter, Social networks, Gaming portals, Payments, Monetization, Mobile, Offers

[Editor's note: This article was written by Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist at Benchmark Capital. He published it on his personal blog, abovethecrowd.com, last week. Accounting for virtual goods is becoming a bigger industry issue, so we're running the article here with his permission.]

American journalists and corporate executives have been slow to appreciate the beauty, brilliance, and consumer allure of the virtual goods business model.It’s not that they did not have data points – China is chock full of multi-US$billion market capitalization companies that are based on this business model. That said, many luddites predicted it was an “Eastern” fascination that would never spread to the West. They never fully understood it.

As a result of this headstrong denial, I have often wondered what data point would finally convince me that the West had fully accepted the reality of the virtual goods business model. Last week I received my answer. Jeff Grabow from Ernst and Young asked my partner Mitch Lasky and I to sit down with Mick Bobroff, an audit partner developing an expertise in virtual item based revenue recognition. Now I wasn’t exactly waiting for a sign from God or anything – rather just a small signal that confirmed this new model was legit. Having an audit partner at a top three accounting firm become an expert certainly qualifies as a step in the right direction.

Mick had prepared a remarkably succinct and information rich presentation (they are working on a white paper I can post later). I was fairly excited to go through it – at least as excited as anyone should get when discussing accounting principles. Here is a summary of what Mick had to say in his presentation titled “Revenue Recognition Considerations for the Sale of Virtual Goods”. [If you want to reach Mick, his contact info: 415-894-8205, michael.bobroff@ey.com]

1. [Legal Point First] Michael made it clear that this document represented general observations and should not be used specifically as accounting advice. I understand and concur with regards to this post also. For your own books verify with your own accountant.
2. There are already a ton of companies that trade on American stock exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ) that use virtual goods models and adhere to GAAP. To the point above, they are all in China.  Examples: ChangYou (CYOU), Giant (GA), NetEase (NTES), Perfect World (PWRD), The 9 (NCTY), Shanda Games (GAME).  [For the record, TenCent is Hong Kong listed.] The current GAAP revenue recognition policies were honed with these companies.
3. When a company sells virtual currency, this is not a revenue event (even though it may clearly be a cash event). When purchased but not yet used,  virtual currency sits on the balance sheet as a customer deposit or deferred revenue (i.e. a liability).
4. Revenue recognition commences when virtual goods are bought with virtual currency by the consumer. Exactly how it “commences” depends on the following.
5. There are two categories of virtual goods – (1) consumable items that are used once and gone, and (2) durable items that “work” over an extended period of time.
6. For “consumable items” you can recognize revenue when it is consumed.
7. For durable items (which many are), things are much trickier. You need to amortize the revenue (linearly) over the useful life of the good, or the average life of the actual user (i.e. – what is the average customer life of your customer?). This is a messy problem, especially when you understand how difficult it is to measure “customer life” when some customers never pay and others come and go in fairly random patterns. Also, your “average customer life” may change over time creating very complex accruals.
8. The bottom line: getting this right requires quite a few database entries for tracking the sale and usage of every single virtual good sold in your digital world, in addition to the supply and usage of each virtual currency account, and the activity levels of each user (to estimate average life).

These policies were not particularly surprising. That said, when I was listening to the complications of the “durable item” revenue accounting, it reminded me of something I learned for the early leaders in the virtual items space — innovative Korean companies such as Nexon.

The “Rental” Model

About four to five years ago, the team at LindenLab (SecondLife) held a pizza night at their offices with the goal of learning more about the virtual item games that were wildly popular in Korea. We invited two bilingual gamers to install and play Audition, Kartrider, and FreeStyle. My big takeaway from that night was that not one of these titles actual allowed for the “sale” of virtual goods. Rather, each virtual item could only be “rented.” In each case, the user was given the option of one, seven, or thirty-day rental. I assumed this was Darwinian, and immediately began to wonder why “renting” might be better than outright ownership when it comes to virtual goods.

1. In world inventory gluts. As virtual worlds mature, they often suffer from game-wide inventory glut. Items that were once useful to newbies become throw-aways for the more advanced user, and can literally pollute the world and compromise the in-world economy. Allowing rental is like having free garbage collection.  Everything eventually goes away.
2. User inventory clutter. More advanced users typically have a huge problem managing large inventories of items. Also, many items are trend-oriented and trends change. With the rental model, no user sits around thinking “wow, why did I really buy that two months ago and what do I do with it now?,” and “why am I buying all this stuff?” The rental model simplifies inventory management for the user.
3. More marketing opportunities. When an item expires, it offers a unique time to re-market to the user for either an extension of the current good, to a trade to a newer, fresher, and perhaps more interesting item.
4. Price segmentation. By offering 1, 7, and 30 day rentals, the merchant has basically price-segmented the market. This theoretically allows more users to experience the good than may have with a single, and arguably higher, price point.
5. Good business. Why sell something that lasts forever if you can sell something that has to be naturally repurchased?
6. Simpler accounting. I didn’t think of this sixth point until my meeting last week. The rental model does away with the notion of a “durable” virtual good, as they all expire. What’s more the time frame over which you recognize the revenue is now fixed at 1, 7, or 30 days. This dramatically reduces the accounting complexity.

Thanks again to Michael and Jeff at E&Y for reaching out and setting up the meeting. It’s great to recognize that virtual goods businesses are finally mainstream here in North America, and that they even have their own appropriate accounting policies. I also appreciate having one more reason to favor “rentals” vs “sales” when it comes to virtual items.

[I have received several comments that concern this post and how it relates to SecondLife. For those of you that don't know, SecondLife doesn't actually sell virtual items, its residents do. As such, this post does not relate to SecondLife at all.  It pertains to the 98% of virtual worlds where the hosting companies ALSO is in the digital goods business. Nothing would stop SL from offering rental as a choice to its developers, but the main message is that this post does not pertain to SL (which has a different business model altogether.)]

Last week, we took a look at a social sports web site called NFL Canada Social Games, powered by Playaction. Making use of Facebook Connect, its collection of social, prediction-style games created a friendly competition, of sorts, complete with the opportunity to win prizes. Playaction now has a Canadian sports sequel of sorts, a gaming app for 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics!

With the Opening Ceremonies beginning just this weekend, our NFL Canada friends have released, in tandem with the Vancouver Olympics, an official, social, and bilingual prediction game called Race for the Gold or Visez L’or.

Empowered through Facebook Connect, players are able to seamlessly sign in to the site and make predictions on upcoming events. Each list is based on the games scheduled for that day (though you can view previous days), and users can see a basic gauge next to their votes representing how others are voting. And, of course, all of this can be published to your Facebook feed.

Unfortunately, unlike NFL Canada, there are no prizes to be won here. However, based on your Facebook profile when you connect, the site assigns you to your home country, and your profile picture is accompanied with the corresponding flag. As one might expect, the game has leaderboards (which can be sorted by overall, Facebook friends, or just by country), and the inclusion of flag icons creates a small sense of national pride. Considering it a virtual Olympics for those of us that can’t ski… or just hate the cold.

In line with this digital competition, the site also awards the top three pickers each day with interactive medals – obviously gold, silver, and bronze – that is displayed in a separate, leaderboard-like section aptly named “Medals.”

The social implications for Race for the Gold are simple, but as with the NFL Canada website, it does create a sort of environment reminiscent of friends making predictions in a living room. Only this time, it’s international.

To that end, that international prowess is what is most important. Again, Race for the Gold was created directly with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Not only does this mean that the overall site has information about the events themselves, but it represents the most recent social, international, and official use of Facebook to connect people.

Could FarmVille at last be rousing from its gentle rest as Facebook’s reigning game? Since Christmas, we’ve been watching FarmVille as it periodically comes and goes from our AppData top 20 lists — especially this one, the Monday list of top gaining games by monthly active users (MAU).

Generally we point out that FarmVille, with its tens of millions of players, appears in the top lists sometimes simply from small fluctuations in its userbase. But that also means that it should disappear at times, something that hasn’t happened in a month. Find the game at number three below:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Birthday Cards	49,135,859	+3,304,530	+6.73
2.	FarmVille	79,331,014	+2,653,765	+3.35
3.	Zoo World	19,499,210	+1,490,899	+7.65
4.	Facts about friends	913,983	+913,821	+99.98
5.	My City Life	1,633,798	+835,234	+51.12
6.	MindJolt Games	17,149,554	+695,479	+4.06
7.	PetVille	18,682,529	+548,893	+2.94
8.	Texas HoldEm Poker	25,833,621	+527,263	+2.04
9.	My Town	2,451,701	+489,908	+19.98
10.	Mafia Wars	25,082,042	+431,287	+1.72
11.	Hero World	6,526,636	+420,853	+6.45
12.	Gangster City	1,645,892	+412,563	+25.07
13.	UNO™	3,143,819	+405,026	+12.88
14.	Happy Island	11,518,626	+372,115	+3.23
15.	Ninja Saga	2,630,690	+369,346	+14.04
16.	SPP Ranch!	600,620	+334,766	+55.74
17.	Band of Heroes	1,485,862	+327,016	+22.01
18.	Bejeweled Blitz	9,707,422	+319,440	+3.29
19.	Happy Aquarium	26,664,020	+317,046	+1.19
20.	(Lil) Farm Life	5,459,483	+293,093	+5.37

More food for thought: in our month-ago MAU list, FarmVille had gained 495,488 players. Each successive week’s rise has been larger, until this week’s gain of 2,653,765 users. Entire gaming companies subsist off smaller numbers.

If it continues its growth, Farmville will be breaking through 100 million MAU within a couple months — a quarter of Facebook’s users.

But FarmVille may have broken out beyond Facebook. See the Compete chart below for an idea of how quickly the game’s new website,
FarmVille.com, is growing (note that you’re seeing monthly visits, not the 16 million unique visitors the site had in December), and the paired Google Trends graph for an idea of its spread as a cultural meme. Without Facebook, it’s unlikely FarmVille would have ever gotten its huge following, but at this point, it could be FarmVille that is bringing new users to Facebook. Especially, in this case, when you consider that FarmVille.com requires people to use Facebook Connect.

Birthday Cards and Zoo World are RockYou apps that have also been fixtures in the top five. However, it’s not clear how many users of one app are also be being counted as users of the other.

Number six, MindJolt Games, is a host app to several games created by MindJolt; like FarmVille (though on a smaller scale), it is a big game app that has begun growing fairly well again.

My City Life, at number five, is a city building game that has enjoyed blazing growth in its two short weeks of existence, while My Town is a similarly styled game that has been around a bit longer.

World of Warcraft Used to Protest Chinese Game Censorship – While it is not unusual for popular games to have fan made movies made using their in-game resources (dubbed machinima), a recent video called “War of Internet Addition” has come about that is both entertaining and a bit political. Using visuals and avatars from World of Warcraft, the 64 minute video almost directly represents the ever increasing Chinese restrictions of the web in a very satirical fashion.

The Chinese version can be found at Youku’s Buzz blog. English subtitles can be found in seven parts on YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

MyTown Hits 1 Million Users – Though it was one of the most recent of the location-based titles to appear on the iPhone, the social title, Booyah‘s MyTown has passed 1 million registered users before competing location games Foursquare and Gowalla. Playing the game means checking in at real world locals, but while Foursquare and Gowalla encourage check-ins with achievements and badges, MyTown focuses on a more Monopoly-like approach, allowing people to actually “buy” locations” and earn money based on who checks in there.

Gavin Newsom Claims Social Gaming Companies Will Help Economy – San Fransisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom says, in a report from ABC, that the city is on its way to recovery, with the creation of more jobs and better economic conditions coming from a more diversified collection of industries — especially social gaming. In fact, Newsom specifically mentions social gaming companies with offices in San Francisco, including Zynga, Playdom, and Playfish.

City of Eternals Sees Strong Starting Metrics – Ohai‘s Facebook empowered MMO, City of Eternals looked impressive from the start, but initial metrics are showing just how many are agreeing with that assessment. Within the first 30 days, players that spend money on virtual goods have spent an average of $16.50, and that, of all players, an average of 65 minutes is spent, a day, playing the blood-sucking title with the 10,000 most active playing for 87 minutes.

Although the company hasn’t released overall user traffic numbers, it says 1% of active users play for seven hours a day (note that the game logs you off after 20 minutes of inactivity) and 42% play for multiple sessions a day. 60% of active users returning to play within seven days. Furthermore, of all these users, 60% are male and 40% female with 70% of the games most active members being women.

[via VentureBeat]

Bejeweled Turns 10 – PopCap‘s ever popular casual game, Bejeweled has sold over 50 million units, making it one of the top selling video games of all time. In fact, the company states that a copy is sold ever 4.3 seconds. In order to celebrate, PopCap will be hosting its first-ever community-wide competition for it’s one minute, Facebook version, Bejeweled Bitz. The contest is called “Show Your Bejeweled Love” and will feature a myriad of promotional activities and, more importantly, rewards for the best Bejeweled Blitz players. The contest and details will launch next month at Bejeweled.com.

Apple Getting Nicer? - Anyone following or dealing with the Apple submission process for apps, knows how unhappy a great many developers became with the company last year. However, that was 2009 and in the new decade, it looks like Apple is trying to make amends with new and improved services for its application developers. Not only did submissions become faster earlier this year, but the company is now issuing surveys asking a myriad of questions in the hopes of improving their services before the next big boom for the Apple’s mobile platforms comes again (iPad anyone?).

[via TechCrunch]

Mochi Media Partners with USA Network- Earlier in the week, Mochi Media announced its new partnership with USA Networks. Along with the announcement came a week of Valentine’s Day promotions as a celebratory event. Obviously, this team up also means USA’s Character Arcade will integrate all of Mochi’s titles, and to that end, players that play the featured game, Mochi’s “Twin Shots 2: Good and Evil” will be registered to win a Wii Starter Bundle or $25 Best Buy gift cards. The winners will be announced Sunday at 11:59 pm.

Apple Patents a 3D Virtual Apple Store – In other Apple news, the company recently made a big win as it was approved the patent for a 3D virtual store. The concept is to create the more personalized and living feel of shopping at a brick and mortar location, but still have all the benefits that come from everyday online shopping (searches, always open, etc.). The store would be a virtual world with icons representing time of day and color schemes/decor representing the seasons indoors. Curiously, the patent also covers details such as outdoor lighting and settings to reflect time and seasons as well.

[image via Patently Apple]

Electronic Arts Says Digital Business Will Reach $750 Million in Revenue – Earlier this week, Electronic Arts proclaimed that the gaming giant’s digital business was “growing” and is “profitable.” It projected its digital business to reach around $750 million in revenue by next year; a substantial growth over the $575 million this year. Executives say that this is currently the most profitable portion of the company, and they do not expect much growth in regards to their traditional games (i.e. console box sales). Beyond its own online games, it is one of the top mobile developers, holding seven of the top iPhone apps), and big on Facebook via the acquisition of Playfish last fall (granting two top 10 Facebook games). Expect more to come online games to come from the company soon, like Madden Football for Facebook.

Mixpanel Raises Funding – Analytics company Mixpanel is active on and off Facebook, with clients including Kiva, HotorNot, Slide and UserVoice. It has now raised $500,000 in angel funding from PayPal cofounder and Slide founder Max Levchin and Bebo cofounder Michael Birch. For more on the company, check out the recent Inside Facebook guest post on social gaming metrics from cofounder Suhail Doshi.

It’s that time again. No, no, not Valentine’s Day… well, sort of. It’s another holiday, so time to see what social gaming companies are doing for occasion. In the past, we have covered some themed virtual goods offered by developers such as Playfish and Zynga — here’s what they’re doing, plus many others.

Having recently made use of the Super Bowl to sell some digital items, Zynga has gone all out for Valentine’s with significant amounts of items found in almost all of their titles.

To name just a few, the top apps of FarmVille, FishVille, PetVille, Café World, and even Mafia Wars (you can hire a hit squad of cupids – don’t ask) offer a myriad of loving items for its players. For the #1 Facebook app, FarmVille, Valentine’s goods are limited and consist of a decent mix of items costing virtual currency (versus in-game currency), with significant functionality included. The best example would be an “Unwither Ring” which would protect your crops from ever dying. Ever. Evidently, diamonds aren’t the only things that are forever.

The other Zynga apps were all fairly standard, as each of the mentioned titles offered goods that merely went with the holiday them. However, two elements worth noting came from Café World and PetVille respectively. The simpler one is a Valentine’s mystery box for the cost of 10 Café Cash (Café World’s virtual currency) that contains random, discounted Valentine’s items. More interesting, however, came with a social emphasis in PetVille.

If anyone remembers getting valentines in grade school all those years ago, this might seem familiar. PetVille actually has a sort of contest called “How Loveable Are You?” In a nutshell, the contest emphasizes gifting as players increase a “Love-O-Meter” from “Cold Fish” to “Ultimate Valentine” by receiving Valentine gifts such as smooches, candy hearts, and live roses in game. Come February 14th, players will win a “Deluxe Mystery Prize” based on their meter.

Playfish is also incorporating virtual goods into some of its applications as well, including Restaurant City, Country Story, and Pet Society. For the most part, these are merely virtual goods meant for decorative purposes, and most items only cost in-game currency. In fact, the only notable items that cost the buyable virtual currency are the stoves and refrigerators from Restaurant City that increase cooking and drink serving speed by 8%.

Another interesting use comes from Country Story where players can find and send each other hearts in a promotion called “Spread the Love.” For each heart they gift, they get one in return, and it is actually used as a temporary currency to buy valentine’s items instead of using in-game coins or the virtual currency, Playfish Cash. As an example, a porcupine cupid costs 500 coins or seven hearts. Furthermore, players are also able to acquire a limited edition Valentine’s tree that requires limited edition heart spirits (that can randomly drop from trees until the 24th) and other random tree spirits, that are not limited, to buy (all spirits are purchasable through virtual currency).

So who else is feeling the love this month? Well, we can’t cover everyone, but a few others that we came across also comes from CrowdStar, RockYou!, Tall Tree Games, and even a whole other network, hi5.

In the case of the games, it is mostly just themed items, but both Happy Aquarium and Fish World offer very amusing holiday fish most players will get a kick out of (i.e. kissing fish). However, most of the CrowdStar fish cost virtual currency, while Tall Tree’s fish mostly only cost in-game coins. Nonetheless, Happy Aquarium does have an amusing extra, as its Valentine’s fish can randomly appear, asking the player to find it a valentine via publishing it to your feed.

Notable from RockYou is the first couple seconds after loading up Zoo World. Almost immediately, players are prompted with an interesting special that allows them to purchase, for $1.00, a “Pair of Lovebirds.” For those that play the game, these are dubbed “Ultra Rare” animals and for each purchase, the buyer earns two Wildlife Points – the game’s virtual currency.

In regards the social entertainment site, hi5, the network is offering “Valentines-themed Super Gifs” for its users. According to hi5 they come in 10 different designs and include a “special skinning of the recipient’s home page in Valentines colors,” and cost between 320 and 400 hi5 Coins (the site’s virtual currency). Furthermore, the site is allowing its members to send customizable (and personalized, via photos) e-cards called BlastCards to their digital valentines and will cost anywhere from 37 to 75 hi5 Coins.

Anecdotally, it seems like Valentine’s Day has prompted even more themed virtual goods than Christmas did a couple months ago. Developers appear to be capitalizing on holidays more and more, because they can provide unique items to further engage users — and get them buying virtual goods.