It seems that ever since there were online games, there have been tower defense titles. It’s understandable, really, as there is a gratification found in their simplicity and the carnage that is unleashed as lemming-like enemies march, single-file, through a gauntlet of defensive structures. And so, simple little Facebook app, with about 72,000 monthly active users, that put a slightly new spin on the genre recently came to our attention; an app dubbed Battle Defenders from Japanese developer Dango.

Players compete with one another in fairly standard tower defense rule set: Enemies move from Flag A to Flag B and the defender sets up defensives that automatically attack them as they pass by. As expected, different defenses have different damage, health, and range, so it becomes a strategic challenge to decide which defenses to build where in order to prevent too many enemies from reaching your flag and defeating you.

In the case of Battle Defenders, these defenses are actually human villagers, and the goal is to fend off attacking orcs; driving them back to wherever orcs come from. What is different about this app, however, is that “driving them back” consists of more than just standing around as they do their single-file attack pattern. Each battle consists of two parts: The already explained Defense, and Offense.

While on the offense, players first place X amount of units on their flag(s), then the units march along a set path to the enemy. Now, early on in the game, this isn’t exactly strategic — only one flag to set units on — but as players play more often, and in turn, earn more experience and gold, new maps open up with more and more flags to defend and attack.

As one could surmise, each map is gated by the both the amount of gold the player has and their level. While experience is earned regardless of skirmish outcomes, gold is spent and earned primarily through betting. You see, each battle is actually a challenge towards another Facebook user (who plays, anyway). Before each battle, you make a wager and the winner takes that amount out of the loser’s wallet.

Evidently, this is rather important, because while each battle can earn you some coin, they also cost a fair amount too. War is expensive, after all. Each unit costs X amount of money to place, with more powerful ones, obviously, costing more.

Does this mean the person with the most cash on hand will win? Actually, no. There is an interesting mechanic called “Rage” in Battle Defenders. Units lost during offense, killed during defense (yes, they will take damage to the random units trailing toward your flag), or health lost from your flag (when enemies reach it) will increase a player’s Rage. As this stat increases, then, and only then, will new and more powerful units unlock for purchase during the present battle.

Not only does this create a creative balancing mechanic against those with deep pockets, but also adds a bit of depth to strategy – as well as risk – goading players into deciding just what they can sacrifice to build a winning battle plan.

Socially, Battle Defenders has a decent idea, but this leads some major complaints. There feels to be complete disconnect between the people involved in the battle. It’s not actually the player that is challenged that fights back, but the computer’s orcs. Granted, synchronous play on Facebook has never been very huge, but at least in other asynchronous battle systems, some portion of that user’s army, or stats, or items, or something, played a part in determining the outcome. This does not seem to be the case for this application, and if it is, it isn’t exactly noticeable.

Beyond this shortcoming, the other major complaint is with the game’s visuals. In the long run, graphics mean nothing compared to game play (and it is decently fun), but while the user interface looks crisp and clean, the actual game is oversimplified and pixilated. It’s roughly the quality of late Super Nintendo or, maybe, early PlayStation. Frankly, it does take away from the overall experience.

Honestly, everything else after these two issues are merely picking nits, but for the sake of feedback, it would be nice to have more information regarding what units do and possible to have the option to play as the orcs.

Despite complaints, Battle Defenders is a pretty entertaining app for Facebook users. It’s familiar enough to win over traditional tower defense enthusiasts yet different enough to give the genre some new flavor. Could it benefit for some changes and updates? Absolutely. Then again, who couldn’t? Regardless, it’s a good time waster and one that many people will probably, at least, play through until they’ve completed all the available maps.

Offerpal Media, the virtual currency monetization company best known for its advertising offers in social games, is expanding to let people earn virtual currency through online labor. The service is beginning to launch now.

Any game or other app that uses Offerpal’s offer wall — presumably including Zynga’s monster, FarmVille — will be able to funnel users to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, an online marketplace for “human intelligence tasks.” To get into Offerpal, companies with simple work needs enter jobs into Mechanical Turk.

Here are some examples of job types that it offers:

• Rating search results
• Categorizing, proof-reading and moderating web content
• Answering questions
• Data cleansing
• Transcription
• Tagging photos

From a user’s perspective, you would first click on the option within the offer wall, and then go into Mechanical Turk, where you’ll be able to select from a list of more than 50,000 categorized jobs. When you complete the jobs, you’ll earn Amazon Payments credit, which you can then use to buy the virtual currency — however, this also means that the service only works on offer walls where the developer has opted to use Amazon Payments in the first place.

Another limitation, for now, is that users have to go to Amazon.com, rather than being able to complete the tasks within an iframe in the offer wall.

We caught up with Offerpal’s Matt McAllister today, and he shared a little more about Offerpal’s plans here. He explained that a typical game developer might monetize about 2-3% of users via offers, another 1-4% via direct payments (through a range of mobile and pre-paid card partners), and little more through surveys and shopping. The overall goal is to use Offerpal’s market position to expand the ways that people can pay for virtual goods — the company uses its widely-deployed offer wall as a way for to launch additional services — and Tasks is just the latest example. McAllister tells us the company is aiming to monetize 10-15% percent of users, eventually. Tasks is another step in that direction.

Offerpal’s partnership with Amazon is, in some sense, going up against Crowdflower, a startup that offers an online work marketplace of its own, and has been working with offer provider Gambit since last fall. Crowdflower has developed its own work-sourcing system but it also sources jobs and puts them in to Mechanical Turk (among other places) — so Offerpal is actually using Crowdflower jobs through Amazon.

Tapulous’ Tap Tap series has always been one of the most popular titles on the iPhone. There is something gratifying about “playing” music where years of training isn’t required, and some months ago the developer proclaimed its development of a new, non-tapping app, called Riddim Ribbon. Well, the game is out and with social features and virtual goods, it looked very worthwhile.

The game is not your typical rhythm title. Rather than hitting streaming notes, players steer a neon colored ball down a virtual racetrack that is representative of a record in a DJ booth. The objective is to keep the ball on a brightly colored ribbon while collecting orbs and jumping through hoops (done via flicking the iPhone). As the music track plays, the orbs, hoops, and even the turns all correspond beautifully with the music.

Frankly, this felt like quite the innovative feature (though somewhat reminiscent to the PlayStation 2 title, Amplitude). The game looks like a racing game, but it is actually pretty tough to control like one. The ribbon shifts rapidly on harder difficulties and as you progress, there are a myriad of obstacles to avoid. If you merely use your eyes, you’ll probably end up losing, but if you listen to the beat, it is not only more gratifying, it is actually easier.

Nevertheless, the controls do take a little getting used to. Seeing as Riddim is on the iPhone, control is done via tilting and it takes a while to get a feel for the degree of tilts needed to steer.

This is actually where penalties come into play. Unlike the Tap Tap Revenge games, mistakes are actually detrimental to the music being played. In past Tapulous titles, missing a note meant nothing other than a lower score, but here, if you stray from the ribbon the music track fades into a distorted backbeat. Furthermore, the area off the ribbon is littered with obstacles that drain energy when hit (not to mention stop the music for a moment), disallowing users the ability to clear Checkpoints along the track. That’s right, it’s a Tapulous game where you can actually lose!

Regardless, the game has some other wonderful mechanisms, such as splits in the track where players can choose which DJ mix to play with, and special tracks they can ramp onto to garner colorful and euphoric looking special effects.

Socially, Riddim Ribbon was a little disappointing. It does come with global leaderboards, but it also advertised a live feed and avatar/profile integration. In Tap Tap Revenge 3, for example, players could buy stuff for their avatars, but when one goes to their profile in Riddim, they can merely edit some of the information. Moreover, the profile page offered Facebook Connect, but after finishing levels the “Share” button only leads to a friend challenge that brings you to your email account. Likely, this is because the game just came out this week, but here’s hoping an update flushes these features out more.

As with previous Tapulous titles, the game also comes with virtual goods. Now, these, obviously, aren’t things like furniture, but actually just extra music tracks to play. They can all be purchased from inside the game itself for $0.99 and consist of two tracks from Tiesto (Escape Me and Louder Than Boom) as well as one from Benny Benassi (Satisfaction). As you might imagine, this means the selection of music is very limited at the moment; the game only comes with three Black Eyed Peas tracks, including Boom Boom Pow, Meet Me Halfway, and I Gotta Feeling (it also has a Tiesto sample of Escape Me).

In the end, Riddim Ribbon is a fun and entertaining change to most rhythm games. The music and visuals synch up gratifyingly well, and once you are familiar with the control scheme will be scratching those digital records in no time. Nonetheless, the overall experience is brought down by the simple fact that there are not very many tracks to play yet (even more so if you don’t like the Black Eyed Peas). Of course, Tapulous will release more; that much is certain, but for now, the game may not be worth the $2.99 price tag for many people – not yet anyway.

Virtual goods have become a more popular form of monetizing online games, especially social games, so developers are looking at new ways to let users pay for them. The latest move is from a new payments company called Zeus Research. Today, it is coming out of stealth and announcing a partnership with STi Prepaid LLC, the largest pre-paid calling card provider in the US.

The idea is to let people buy virtual currency for goods within games and other sites using these widely-distributed cards. While pre-paid game cards have been available in convenience stores for years, calling cards have so far not been an option.

The product is simple. STi’s cards can be found in more than 200,000 retail locations around the US and 200 million of them are sold every year. Popular with people making calls to other countries, the cards can be identified by the yellow STi logo.

A user first buys a card, scratches off the part of the back of the card to get a unique set of 2 PIN numbers, and then enters the numbers in the game. To obtain currency in a game, they just need to click on the STi logo in partners’ offer walls or other payments interfaces, then enter the numbers. Then, they get whatever sort of virtual currency exists in a game, at a value roughly equal to whatever they paid for.

What does Zeus provide? The online payments technology — basically an application programming interface (API) that accepts third-party information like STi PIN numbers — as well as the business development deals.

The big idea is these cards will allow people to buy currency in games without needing to pay by credit card, or via their mobile account, or by having to buy a specialized pre-paid game card.

Like with other forms of virtual goods payments, one downside here is that the pre-paid calling cards come with higher transaction costs than, say, Paypal. The result, according to the Zeus web site, is that “[S]ome online publishers may elect to provide less virtual currency for the amount, as they often do with Premium SMS.”

For New York-based STi, the deal (an exclusive multi-year contract with Zeus), is a new way to monetize its retail distribution at minimal cost. The pre-paid calling card industry brings in roughly a few billion dollars a year, but it is facing lots of new competitors, like Skype and other VoIP services, wireless calling plans, etc…. By repositioning its product beyond calls, the company could bring in a sustainable flow of new revenue.

San Francisco-based Zeus is also looking at other payment services that it can introduce to online gaming. Founder Sean Ryan, who previously founded virtual goods platform company TwoFish (now part of Live Gamer) and virtual world Meez, tells us to watch out for more news from the company this spring.

Overall, we expect the US virtual goods market to grow to $1.6 billion this year, with growth continuing in future years as more developers and payment providers figure out how to reach users. More on that in our Inside Virtual Goods reports.

Players in the U.S. social gaming industry are growing increasingly curious about China — for good reason, given the size of the market, and the wave of developers building for platforms like Facebook from within the country.

Today, we extend last week’s look at social gaming ecosystem on RenRen.com with additional information from our conversations with Chinese game developers and industry insiders to deliver an overview of the social game developer landscape in this challenging, yet fascinating, market.

The Powerful SNS

We’ve previously noted that many of the major social networking services (SNS) in China do not have platforms that are open to any third party developers. These closed platform SNSs include big players like QZone, Kaixin001, and 51.com who collectively make up around 40% of the Chinese social networking market. While apps and games are an integrated part of the social networking experience on these sites, all apps are either developed in-house or, to a very limited extent, acquired from outside developers via a one-time license sale. The ‘closed’ nature of these limits the number and variety of apps that the platform hosts, and prevents any kind of developer ecosystem from blossoming around the platform.

With so many social networks keeping their platforms closed to third party app development, the ones that are open, like RenRen.com, exert extraordinary sway.

Developers no longer listed, now “From a third-party developer”

In contrast to QZone, Kaixin001, and 51.com, RenRen.com / Kaixin.com (two sites owned and operated by the same parent company, Oak Pacific Interactive) have open platforms that host hundreds of third party apps. Over the past few days, we noticed that RenRen removed developer names from its user-facing application directory. RenRen previously displayed the name of the developer or publisher responsible for each app in its user-facing leaderboard, as you can see in this screenshot we took two weeks ago.

Now, all third-party apps are simply labeled with “From a third-party developer.”

While RenRen has not released specific information as to why they made this change, one of our sources in China suggests that it may be a nod to regulators from China’s General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) and the Ministry of Culture, who last October underscored an existing requirement that all developers of online games (traditional or social) must obtain licenses to operate. While it’s unclear exactly why RenRen would suddenly choose to obscure individual developer brands in their app directory, it could indicate that the social network is acting as the licensed publisher for these games, subsuming the identity of individual developers, and thus working around any licensing issues. Update: One source in touch with RenRen’s platform team has told us that the change was due to a technical problem, which has now been fixed so that the app directory once again displays individual developers’ names next to game titles.

Barriers to entry: Approval and regulation by the GAPP and the Chinese Ministry of Culture

In October of 2009, China’s GAPP reiterated an existing regulation governing China’s online games industry; among other stipulations, developers of games are required to obtain licenses to operate in order to build and publish games online. While this regulation was written for all “online games,” and most likely with more traditional online games and hardcore MMOs in mind, social games (which are of course still online games) have been bundled in as well. In the eyes of the regulating institution, social games are online games, and so should be treated exactly the same as other online games in China.

This makes sense logically to the GAPP (online games are online games), but not financially for social game developers. China’s Ministry of Culture reported in January that revenues from MMORPGs climbed to around 20.38 billion RMB, or 79% of total online game revenues. Casual games – including social games – grossed 3.55 billion RMB in revenues, or just 13.8% of the industry’s total sum. Although social games aren’t making the kinds of revenues as traditional online games, they are now subject to the same rules.

The GAPP requires that game operators have a minimum of 10,000,000 RMB (1,464,560 USD) in registered capital, a prohibitive sum for many social game developers themselves. Games are also subject to general approval by the GAPP before they can be considered to be in good standing.

When it comes to social games, tough requirements like these have been heretofore handled by the social networks that operate the games, not by the developers themselves. But, while developers previously relied on partnerships with bigger publishers who held these licenses, it’s now not entirely clear who will be responsible going forward. Added to the GAPP’s new attention to these rules is an ongoing regulatory battle between that body and the Chinese Ministry of Culture over who should control online games. For specific details on this, see our previous coverage of this regulation and of the ongoing turf wars between the GAPP and the Ministry of Culture. These shifts in the regulatory landscape have combined to create significant uncertainty for developers. For now, what’s clear is that all of the big social platforms already have licenses and approvals in place, and can use them to protect – or obscure – the identity of individual third-party developer brands as needed.

There is one more factor that shifts the balance of power in favor of social networks. In China, app-related revenue is collected first and foremost by the social networks themselves, who then distribute appropriate shares of revenue to third-party developers.

As a result of both the increased barriers and the way that revenue payouts are currently handled, we may be seeing more leverage shift into the hands of the social networks themselves, and away from individual, and especially smaller, game developers.

We’ll follow up on this article later in the week with a look at revenue in Chinese social games, and what the future holds.

Over the last year or so, we’ve seen many mainstream game developers begin experimenting with social gaming. The most recent of these was a Facebook app for Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, but while it made use of the social graph, and by extension, the networks 400 million users, it was only a small sliver of the gargantuan MMO — mostly a way to post about your activities on the main WoW site. That move looks like it will soon be followed by Electronic Arts’ #1 console game, Madden NFL.

For those returning to Earth, Madden NFL is a long-running game, licensed by the NFL and developed by EA Tiburon in Orlando, Florida. Each year, the game is improved with a new rendition and, according to statistics reported by NPD Group Inc., has sold 63 million copies total in the United States alone. In an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday, EA Sports President, Peter Moore said that “we have to make ‘Madden’ more accessible. You’ll see us on Facebook going forward.”

Considering the acquisition of social developer Playfish for up to $400 million last year, this is likely to be the EA brand Playfish President and General Manager Kristian Segerstrale talked about recently with the Wall Street Journal (and what company executives have been hinting publicly for months prior). He said that the social gaming space ought to mature in the next 12 to 24 months, making established brands a more important way to get users attention.

As for a Facebook rendition of Madden NFL itself, no official announcement has been made, but according to Moore, the adaptation will be a “simpler experience.”

This is not EA’s first dance with Facebook versions of its console titles. Already the console developer has released social versions of other titles, including Need for Speed Nitro, and new console game Dante’s Inferno — not to mention the apps built by Pogo, the company’s casual gaming group. Madden looks to be the biggest social effort yet, and we will be sure to let you know more when we do.

One part educational, one part social, and two parts pet-caring game, virtual world Moshi Monsters, from Mind Candy, has been seeing solid growth since launching in 2008. It now has more than 12 million total registered users, with especially strong numbers in the last 9 months, chief executive Michael Smith tells us.

Here’s a closer look.

The basic play of Moshi Monsters is familiar enough. Players create an avatar based on half a dozen templates, customize their coloring, and are tasked with caring for their new monstrous companion. Like in Playfish’s Pet Society, the user must feed and keep their monster healthy and happy. Of course, since these are “monsters” and not “pets,” they are treated a bit differently, and as it seems, lack of bathing is one such difference.

Hygiene aside, players improve said stats by feeding it various monster-themed foods and, well, buying it stuff. In tandem with this, the critter’s mood will change as well, resulting in different demeanors and random commentary that is spoken in a Sims-like gibberish.

This leads to the core point of Moshi Monsters, which is the decoration of your own virtual house. The space is a simple 2D flat that is more or less the same as that in Pet Society style games, and like said games, it can be viewed and visited by other players.

When other players visit you, they are capable of leaving friendly messages on a little post board for viewing whenever a user next logs in. Players can also send each other gifts as well, which, as you’d expect, can consist of decorative furniture, food, etc. Unfortunately, in order to send anything, one has to sign up for membership.

Luckily, there was still enough to see and do to get a good idea of what was going on in this virtual monster town. Among the various streets are a myriad of shops to see and visit. Most sell foods or furniture for your house, but what is most noticeable is the level of detail that went into everything.

Tthis level of polish is worth noting. Most everything you see in Moshi Monsters adds to the believability of this digital world. Whether it is your avatar commenting on something you pass by, startling an construction worker by clicking on them, or watching a little creature fly up and eat your mouse pointer during the loading screen, there is something that most everyone will remember seeing after a few minutes of play.

Of course, should players play longer than a few minutes, they will begin to level up via a handful of means. Experience towards each level is gained primarily by buying stuff for your home, but players get the largest boost from a range of mini-games from what is called the “Puzzle Palace.” Each of these games can be played as much as you like, and consist of simple educational games that vary from math to spelling. However, the one that earns the most reward – in both experience and the in-game currency, Rox – is the Daily Challenge that sticks together a random assortment of all the puzzle games.

The game has also recently introduced a couple new features to take advantage of its community. One is printable trading cards, showing users stats — this is an offline way to make the game more relevant to kid’s lives. Another new feature is a “Games Starcade” shop, where users can by virtual arcade games to put in their rooms. Friends who visit the room can then play the arcade game.

For a kids game, Moshi Monsters is a wonderful creation. Frankly, the only complaint is that it really does push the membership in the fact that about half the content is limited to a $6.00 a month membership. Obviously, it’s not really the cost that raises a question but the fact that players don’t really have the full picture regarding what they are purchasing (in the locked areas).

Frankly, if you’re looking for a good kids game that’s both fun, and might even teach them something, than Moshi Monsters is certainly one worth a look.

Happy days continue for Birthday Cards and Zoo World, the two biggest Facebook apps from RockYou, on this week’s list of fastest-growing games by monthly average users (MAU), from AppData. The pair seems almost unstoppable, with Zoo World, the more game-like of the two, potentially ready to break 20 million users next week.

Here’s the full list:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Birthday Cards	45,831,329	+4,588,556	+10.01
2.	Zoo World	18,008,311	+1,802,177	+10.01
3.	FarmVille	76,677,249	+1,200,774	+1.57
4.	Truth about friends	590,265	+590,117	+99.97
5.	Happy Island	11,146,511	+534,124	+4.79
6.	Gangster City	1,233,329	+527,156	+42.74
7.	My City Life	798,564	+520,032	+65.12
8.	Little Warrior	1,497,204	+440,125	+29.40
9.	My Town	1,961,793	+410,417	+20.92
10.	Wild Ones	2,603,987	+406,294	+15.60
11.	MindJolt Games	16,454,075	+344,935	+2.10
12.	Go to Hell	347,382	+281,970	+81.17
13.	Mafia Wars	24,650,755	+252,460	+1.02
14.	Texas HoldEm Poker	25,306,358	+239,485	+0.95
15.	開心寶貝	1,355,142	+196,668	+14.51
16.	PetVille	18,133,636	+181,872	+1.00
17.	Band of Heroes	1,158,846	+170,070	+14.68
18.	Friends For Sale!	5,351,271	+164,341	+3.07
19.	SPP Ranch!	265,854	+139,277	+52.39
20.	Country Life	8,156,867	+138,984	+1.70

As we’ve noted before, RockYou has encouraged the growth of Zoo World in part by actually putting a copy of the game within Birthday Cards; players who get hooked will probably tend to go ahead and install the regular version of Zoo World for daily play.

However, the app company doesn’t seem to be hanging onto its players very well. Between a fifth a quarter of the average successful game’s users will visit daily; Zoo World, by comparison, is at 13 percent.

To think of it another way, Zynga, the most successful gaming company on Facebook, has about 70 million daily users. RockYou has roughly a third of Zynga’s MAU, but it would have to multiply its DAU by more than 10 to reach those numbers:

Skipping down to Gangster City, this new Mafia Wars-style game from Playfish is continuing to do fairly well, although it isn’t exploding. Little Warrior, from an unknown developer, popped up in the rankings a couple weeks back with GC, but is growing even more unevenly.

Two more to point out: My City Life and My Town. As the names indicate, both of these are city builder / Sims-style games. Broken Bulb Studio’s My Town has been appearing consistently on our lists of top growers, but it’s worth noting that My City Life, though it appeared more recently and is from another unknown developer, is currently growing more quickly.

Gowalla and Loopt Use Check-Ins to Help Haiti – Last week, the roundup mentioned Loopt and its desire to promote check-ins for its location-based, mobile social network in the form of deals at real world locations. Now, every check in at Chipotle, Panera Bread, or Whole Foods will lead to a donation of $1 to the American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders to help in the Haiti earthquake relief.

In line with Loopt’s charitably, another location-based app, Gowalla has also launched a check-in charity campaign dubbed “Hearts for Haiti.” The event will take place on Monday, February 8th in the San Francisco Bay Area, and whenever someone checks-in at one of three specific locations (noted below), at specific times, Gowalla will donate $50 to the American Red Cross in that person’s name. The goal is to raise $20,000.

• 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Emeryville at 5959 Shellmound Street, Suite 85
• 2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Mill Valley at 88 Throckmorton Avenue
• 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Barenaked Ladies concert at Infusion Lounge

AppFund To Seed iPad Apps – CNET and E! Online co-founder, Kevin Wendle has partnered with MusicNation to form the AppFund, with the sole goal to help fund entrepreneurs and startups that wish to launch applications on the new Apple iPad (or any other tablet, for that matter). The investment amount will range anywhere from $5000 to $500,000 depending on the complexity of the app. However, proposals for funding are encouraged to be made immediately in order to be part of the first wave of iPad applications this summer.

[via TechCrunch]

Celebrate Valentine’s with Wizard101 – The free-to-play MMO, Wizard101 will be bringing some special Valentine’s virtual goods to the wizarding world this month. The goods will be purchased via the game’s virtual currency from a non-player character, Valentina Heartsong, but as a special promotion, the developers will be hosting a special contest that will give away some of said items for free.

All players have to do is follow @Wizard101 on Twitter, and each weekday, until the 12th, a random follower will be contacted through the social network to claim their free virtual gift.

Civilization on Facebook – Though it was announced in October, Sid Meier’s Civilization isn’t quite ready for Facebook yet. Publisher, Take Two, told Variety that it’s going to still be a little while until the popular franchise makes its way onto the social network. But fear not, as they also said that the game’s open beta ought to be “sometime in June.”

Star Trek Online Virtual Goods – The highly anticipated MMO, Star Trek Online launched with an interesting surprise: Apparently, developer Cryptic Studios and publisher Atari are bringing some very hefty virtual goods to the table. Currently, players can purchase two special races from the game’s in-game “C-Store” using the virtual currency, Cryptic Points. For 240 Cryptic Points – $3.00 – players can purchase the Federation Klingons race, and for 80 Cryptic Points – $1.00 – the Federation Ferengi race. Currently, however, the virtual currency can only be purchased in increments of 500, or $6.25.

TrialPay Gets in on Valentine’s Day – Offers company TrialPay is running a little something special for Valentine’s Day as well. Currently, the company is offering new and existing partners a $250 Amazon.com gift card. In order to qualify, new partners must complete 30 transactions via TrialPayduring the month of February, while existing partners must launch a new Valentine’s Day Campaign and complete 50 transactions.

Assassin’s Creed II Multiplayer Coming to the iPhone – While an iPhone rendition of Assassin’s Creed II has been noted to come out in early February, word is that Ubisoft is to release another, online version, Assassin’s Creed II: Multiplayer. Soon, players will be able to use Wi-Fi to compete with up to three other players in a deadly game of hide-and-go-seek as each assassin tries to kill the others before being killed themselves. What is most interesting, however, is that the game will feature not only a built-in friend’s list but Facebook integration as well that will allow the posting of up to 24 achievements to their social networking feed.

[via Kotaku]

Inside Social Games extends a big thank you to our sponsors for supporting the continued growth of Inside Social Games. Check them out below!

Offerpal Media is a managed offer network for social applications and online merchants.

6waves is an international publisher and developer of gaming applications on the Facebook platform.

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Super Rewards is a monetization solution for applications and games running on social networks like Facebook.

Surfpin is a provider of mobile and landline payments for game and application developers.

Social Gold powers payments, subscriptions, and virtual economies for online games.

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