PokerBuddy Pro – With the popularity of Zynga Poker, a new application called PokerBuddy Pro, from EV-Plus has come about. Consisting of three advisers (aggressive, versatile, or tight aggressive play), the app will give advice when playing Zynga Poker based on your hand, pot size, and the rest of the table.

Booyah Introduces Product Check-In – Location-based iPhone title, MyTown, from Booyah is getting an update with its new product check-ins. Using the iPhone camera, players will be able to scan in bar codes of products in order to earn points and exclusive virtual goods.

Dark Roast Media Uses Sweepstakes API – Dark Roast Media, the developer behind Exorcists vs. Demons, launched a new campaign using the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes API, dubbed PCH Boost. With the offerings of instant win opportunities, the company reports a monthly active user growth of about 15,000 (it now has 20,000 MAUs) and claimed a 30% reduced user acquisition cost.

gWallet Guarantees Publisher Results – Virtual currency platform gWallet is guaranteeing publishers revenue growth this week with cash in the “gWallet Challenge.” According to the company, premium publishers that participate will get 30 day performance test of their current solution versus the gWallet platform ” if the desired results are not achieved, gWallet will pay the publisher $20,000.”

Major League Baseball Stands Up To Cancer – Major League Baseball (MLB) and Stand Up To Cancer have teamed up to offer MLB fans an interesting take on virtual items. Fans can now purchase virtual stadium seating from 30 different MLB stadiums. Of course, these are replications and will be turned into a memorial for those affected by cancer. Moreover, the site in which they are bought also offers other items beyond a seat such as a suite, base, or the pitcher’s mound. With prices ranging from $5 – $500, users will be able to purchase and moderately customize (photo, name, and message) these with all proceeds benifiting Stand Up To Cancer.

Itsmy Opens its Mobile Social Network – European developer and gaming network itsmy stated this week that it will be relaunching its itsmy mobile social network this August as a “pure and open mobile web gaming network.” Thus far, itsmy has developed over 50 differently free-to-play social games over the past year for the network.

Second Life Continues to Thrive – According to a report from Media Post, Second Life is doing quite well for itself with anywhere from 680,000 to 820,000 active users so far this year. However, these users are spending increasingly more time online with 126 million hours logged for the second quarter of this year (a number 33% larger than the same time last year). Additionally, active users are spending an average of 100 minutes online per session, with virtual goods sales on course to be around $700 million for 2010.

Poker Palace to be Re-Branded – Playdom‘s social game Poker Palace is getting a re-branding on Facebook as they and Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment are set to relaunch the title with the World Series of Poker brand. While the game goes live this week on Facebook, it will also be expanding to other social networks, such as MySpace, in the near future.

China Computerworld Brutalizes Tencent – China’s internet gaming goliath, Tencent fell victim to a brutal assassination of character in China Computerworld this past week. In the explicitly named report, critics hammer the company from a competitor’s perspective, accusing them of never taking risks and merely muscling out the competition in matured online spaces with “unscrupulous” imitations.

[image via Danwei.org]

Snooki Comes to Social Games – Social game developers are certainly stretching for ideas as Snooki, and the rest of the Jersey Shore cast have come to Facebook. Simply called Jersey Shore, the game is a simple Flash-based RPG filled with comical versus battles and everyday jobs and items centered around the show.

Project: MyWorld is Set to Change Social Games – From Grand Theft Auto designer, Dave Jones, Project: MyWorld is a combination of social networks, social games, and virtual worlds. Set in 3D replicas of real-world locals, players will be able to receive all their regular updates from networks such as Twitter and Facebook, while exploring a virtual world that they build up themselves.

Zynga has made its first major executive appointment in several months: Dave Wehner, formerly a managing director at the investment bank Allen and Company, has taken over the role of chief financial executive, while Mark Vranesh has moved on to become chief accountant.

That the new hire is significant on some level is clear. Wehner will bring a wealth of knowledge and connections, and he could not have come cheap. But what will he be doing? Maybe he was was brought in for an IPO, or maybe more acquisitions — at least according to speculation from TechCrunch and VentureBeat.

Wehner could also serve as an all-around dealmaker. Allen and Co’s investors are known for their deep connections, going far beyond tech to movie companies, high-level investors and major brands.

But there are likely already ties between Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and Allen and Co. At the bank’s annual power broker conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, the NY Post reported that Pincus was the star of the show this year. And Zynga has had no trouble attracting attention from big brands.

At the end of the day, it’s not unusual for a high-profile company like Zynga to put an experienced banker in charge of the CFO role, so any further speculation is simply that. Zynga is also very new to the world’s biggest investors, and the country is still coming out of a recession; and, most importantly, the company is well financed through its previous deals.

[Editor's Note: This article was originally published on Inside Facebook and uses data from Inside Facebook Gold, our data membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Visit Inside Facebook Gold to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]

English is still by far the most-used language on Facebook, with some 231 million users. However, Facebook just crossed the 500 million user milestone — which means that over half of all users are accessing the site in another language. With an increasingly international audience, where should marketers and application developers focus their attention?

Earlier this week, we detailed the growth of Facebook’s top 10 languages. In a sense, our findings provided an easy answer to the above question. Spanish, with 68 million users, is Facebook’s second-largest language; that’s roughly the population of France. In turn, French is third-largest, with 26 million users. These user groups are easily large enough to warrant attention.

However, large groups of foreign-language users can also be a double-edged sword. On the positive side, people in a particular language group are now together on one platform in a way that they never before have been.

The negative, at least for some purposes, is that the geographic distribution of these users is extremely wide. Very few Spanish-language users are in the United States; meanwhile, even the top five countries for the language only represent about 50 million of the total group:

It’s easy to imagine scenarios in which it would be desirable to reach all of the users of a particular language; educational products, for instance, know no borders. However, a company that can only effectively distribute its product in a certain region — continental Europe, for example — may find it more worthwhile to focus on a concentrated language group like Turkish, in which all but handful of the 23 million users are in Turkey itself.

For application developers and others who want to maintain an online-only contact with their audience, Facebook’s language stats still present some challenges. For instance, Indonesian is now the fifth-largest language on Facebook with 21 million users. Appealingly, the country’s population is known for a willingness to spend online, albeit in smaller amounts than people in richer countries.

However, in an interview on Inside Social Games, Wooga CEO Jens Begemann told us his gaming company has stopped targeting Indonesians, among other Asian groups, in part because the Indonesians who are online are likely to have basic fluency in English anyway, obviating the need for his company to do extra translation work.

Wooga’s plan is to add other language groups in the future, including Portuguese, which grew 11.8 percent over the past month due to new Brazilian users, but for the moment still has only 7.2 million users — not quite enough for the company to invest in the market.

In the end, the decision of which market to invest in should mainly balance the number of potential users, their likelihood to monetize well, and the unique situation of the company planning to localize its product or application. But there are many more potential considerations, including the average age and sex of users in each language group; those metrics are available as part of an Inside Facebook Gold subscription.

There’s something to be said about classic arcade games. They’re simple, nostalgic, and it’s always fun to try and beat the next guy’s high score. Of course, in the modern era, such games are less analog and tend to find themselves revamped for platforms such as the iPhone. At least that’s what developer Godzilab is doing with its Plus+ enabled, basketball-shooting space adventure, StarDunk.

Okay, so it’s not actually a “space adventure” but it does take place in orbit around Earth. It’s a simple game reminiscent of those basketball shooting arcade games, but rather than using an actual ball, players use a mere finger and some basic physics. What makes it better though, is that all of this takes place in live, synchronous matches. All the same, like any game that relies heavily on multiple players, it does run a risk of falling short of its potential.

The idea behind the game is simple enough. Players are given two minutes to score as many baskets as possible. Using their finger to drag and direct a half-arc for aiming, users try to guestimate how much force and arc is needed to make it to the spacey hoop. It does take some getting use to, but the physics are pretty accurate and it’s fairly easy to catch on (the game also gives players a full arc when they start doing poorly).

For each basket scored, points are obviously gained, with extra earned for not using the basket’s four-sectioned backboard. Curiously, this does not mean the backboard should go ignored. In addition to making shooting a bit easier, as each of the four sections are hit, they light up. Once all four are illuminated, a random power-up will be enabled such as a flaming fireball for more points or multiple balls shooting at once. As one would expect, this means there is a small tactical choice to be made when playing a round, for hitting each backboard light may require some intentional misses, but could pay off in the long run.

The most attractive, and addictive, part of StarDunk, however, is its synchronous online play. Dubbed “Contests,” a match will start every two minutes, apparently with any players currently logged in. You don’t actually see any of them shooting, but there is a nice feature that displays their names, score, and location upon the rotating globe in the background. Once the round is over, a leaderboard pops up of all participants in the Contest (there are also overall global and regional leaderboards) that not only displays their score, but where they hail from as well (we keep losing to some guy in Germany).

Unfortunately, this is where the biggest downside comes into play. As with any online game of this nature, the fun factor of the game directly correlates to the number of people playing. In truth, it’s less devastating here, as it is just as much fun to play with a few people, as it is a dozen, but with more competition, it does tend to be more enjoyable. Unlike SGN’s newer EXO-Planet Elite, iDevice, title, the synchronous multiplayer is more of an enhancement than a necessity.

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed at jumping into a contest right away, its also possible to play offline for some additional practice. However, the long list of achievements, stemming from StarDunk’s integration with the Plus+ network, are not earnable in this mode. Additionally, an equally long list of unlockable balls are also unavailable.

As a matter of fact, these different balls do add an extra level of interest to the Godzilab title. When first starting out, users get a basic ball with no special properties. Nevertheless, the more they play, the more they will unlock; each with their own unique attributes that will tailor themselves to virtually any play style.

Each of the balls are tied to some corresponding achievement and have their own stats of size, bounce, and speed that is visible via the main menu. Some examples include the Star Ball which gives four, instead of three, balls whenever one gets a multiball bonus as well as increases the chances of getting said bonus. The Ying Ball is more accurate with minimal bouncing. And then there is the Moki Ball (earned by logging into another Godzilab app, iBlast Moki), which increases points earned when a shot is scored without using the backboard. Obviously, this can give veteran players a slight edge over newer ones, but it isn’t all that noticeable. For the most part, it is the level of skill and accuracy of the player that is most apparent.

It is also worth noting that StarDunk is a game with a wonderful presentation. It may be a simple concept, but the visual effects and sound are quite gratifying, down to the slow motion close up of the player’s final shot of the round. Additionally, Godzilab does an excellent job of optimization in that the game never seems to slow down, despite how many effects might be going off.

Overall, for $0.99, StarDunk is a pretty fun time killer and a quality addition to one’s iPhone game collection. Granted, it’s a game that might not be suited for everyone, but it is a fun remake of a classic arcade title.

Earlier this week we noted the rapid growth of 守衛家園, a Chinese-language variation on tower defense games. Since then the game has really taken off, landing atop this week’s list of emerging Facebook games, defined as those still under a million monthly active users.

It’s rare for a Chinese-language game to beat its English peers, but 守衛家園 actually appears to be a pretty good game. Here’s the rest of the AppData top 20 list:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	守衛家園	725,370	+708,996	+4,330%
2.	Market Street	547,474	+547,416	+943,821%
3.	Jewel Box	433,987	+423,273	+3,951%
4.	Office Wars	932,738	+415,127	+80%
5.	Cafe Life	676,692	+376,976	+126%
6.	Crazy Taxi	635,996	+244,710	+63%
7.	Knighthood	373,002	+234,580	+169%
8.	Four in a Row	301,561	+232,625	+337%
9.	Bingo Island 2	449,900	+226,752	+102%
10.	Tellywood	219,609	+218,679	+23,514%
11.	Platinum Life: Web Edition BETA	719,711	+215,754	+43%
12.	Ask Paul the Octopus !	201,077	+197,016	+4,851%
13.	על כל הקופה	194,200	+194,115	+228,371%
14.	WestWars	208,938	+186,656	+838%
15.	Maya Pyramid	716,237	+183,344	+34%
16.	Country Life (lite)	376,207	+157,169	+72%
17.	Bouncing Balls	458,654	+152,714	+50%
18.	Fantasy Football 2010	182,840	+137,951	+307%
19.	Bloom Town	161,556	+137,808	+580%
20.	Retail Therapy	132,439	+131,731	+18,606%

Coming in at second we see Market Street, the newest title from Playdom — or should we call it Disney? It’s unusual for a new Playdom game to grow so quickly, but the company’s new owner may be pumping in more advertising dollars in the future. Knighthood, which Playdom also has through its own acquisition of Hive7, has suddenly taken off as well.

Jewel Box, a fairly simple collection game by Mob Science, is also showing a spike in growth following a long plateau; the growth suggests that, like Knighthood, the game is either getting new advertising, or that Facebook has corrected a bug in the reporting of some older apps, making them appear to have huge single-day gains.

Next up is Office Wars, the new office-based team combat game from Broken Bulb Studios, which is also the only game on this week’s list that’s about to cross the million MAU threshold.

A couple of even simpler games have also emerged this week. Crazy Taxi is an old casual game that involves just dodging other cars on a straight road; here, it appears to be growing as part of a new game portal of some kind that also includes number 17, Bouncing Balls. At number eight,  Four in a Row is just the popular decades-old game Connect Four, but that appears to be enough for a few hundred thousand new players.

Finally, down at number 18 you can see the first fantasy football app of the season, titled, simply enough, Fantasy Football 2010. Expect to see more as the college football season gets underway.

Social gaming hiring activity was relatively subdued this week among top developers, according to our latest look at LinkedIn. Nonetheless, RockYou and Playdom are still seeing some significant additions with veteran game developer Raph Koster taking his official position as Vice President of Creative design at the latter, and Mia Kang beginning a new job as Director of Sales at the former. Additionally, we have expanded our coverage of hiring changes to encompass the top 20 social game developers, based on our AppData leaderboards.

Here’s the list:

CrowdStar

• Marius Pieniazek – Now a Billing Support Representative at Crowdstar, Marius previously worked as an MMORPG Billing & Accounts Specialist at GOA Games.

MindJolt

• Sunli Guo – Formerly an Engineer Intern at Tealeaf Technology, Sunlie Guo gets a new role as a full Software Engineer at MindJolt.

Playdom

• James Robbins – James joins Playdom as its newest Senior Flash Developer. Before this, he worked as a Web & Flash Developer at Brooks Bell Interactive.
• Nicole Jacks – Previously a Recruiter at ACS, a Xerox Company, Nicole joins Playdom under the same title.
• Anupom Syam – Anupom joins Playdom as a new Development Lead. His prior experience stems from MIT Media Lab, where he worked as a Contributor.
• James Gauthier – Part of the Metaplace acquisition, and formerly a Client Lead, James joins Playdom as a Senior Engineer.
• David Kozlowski – With experience as a Producer at Gazillion Entertainment, David Kozlowski becomes a Senior Producer at Playdom.
• Raph Koster – As noted already, the former Metaplace President, Raph Koster, joins Playdom as its new VP of Creative Design.
• Derek Valerio – Formerly an Architectural Intern at Gensler, Derek joins Playdom as their newest Artist.
• Kim Liu – Kim is now an HR Analyst for Playdom. Prior to this, Kim was a Financial Analyst Intern at USAA.

PopCap Games

• T. Carl Kwoh – Though technically not a new hire, T. Carl Kwoh is the newest Producer at PopCap Games, having moved up from his previous role as Associate Producer.

RockYou!

• Mia Kang – Mia Kang marks another major hire in the social world, joining RockYou! as its new Director of Sales. Previously, she was an Account Executive at SocialVibe.
• Alex Sink – Formerly a “Technical Yahoo!” at, well, Yahoo!, Alex joins RockYou! as one of its new Flash Developers.
• Matt Tenenbaum – Mat is now a Front-End Engineer at RockYou! Previously, he worked as a Researcher at Earl Industries.
• Kelli Dragovich – Now Head of HR at RockYou!, Kelli Dragovich was formerly the HR Director for Yahoo Global Platforms Engineering.
• Anatoli Fomenko – With prior experience coming from Oracle as a Java and Java FX Architect (Consultant), Anatoli joins RockYou! as a new Facebook Application Developer.

Zynga

• Panayoti Haritatos – Though not a new hire, Panayoti Haritatos changes roles at Zynga from Lead Developer to Executive Producer.
• Mary Ann Bailey Sharp – In another job shift at Zynga, Mary Ann is now a Research Recruiter for the social company. Previously, she was a University Relations Manager.

And, for a closer look at what jobs are opening up in the industry, be sure to check out our new Inside Network Jobs Board.

In two previous stories on developers internationalizing their games, we’ve focused on the big Asian markets. This week we’re turning our attention to Europe in an interview with Wooga CEO Jens Begemann.

Wooga is a German company, but its target market includes most of the Western world. From the beginning of development, Wooga works on localizing its content for a half-dozen languages, reaching almost 400 million of Facebook’s total 500 million users. The company currently has three games out: Bubble Island, Brain Buddies and Monster World.

Inside Social Games: How many languages do you localize your games for?

We used to do more than we do today, including the Philippines and Indonesia. We’re not doing those anymore for three reasons.

First, most users in these countries don’t monetize so well; second, many of those people use Facebook in English; and third, the user numbers are huge, but many people use Facebook on mobile only, not the web. So at the moment we’re doing English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Turkish.

ISG: Are there any more markets you’re potentially interested in?

All of our current translated language also give us South America, Canada and so forth. What we’re watching most closely at the moment is Brazil, but Facebook doesn’t yet have critical mass there yet.

ISG: What about Russian or languages from the Eastern European countries?

My impression is that the people in those countries are using English, and the markets also aren’t very large. The markets of interest in that region would be Poland and Russia, but Facebook is not as large as their own local social networks.

ISG: What are the components to localization for those markets?

Localization is about translation, then about local customer care. We do local fanpage management and community management. We don’t do local payments, because we use Facebook Credits exclusively.

The one thing we do that’s very special is localizing virtual goods. For example, a football in America is an egg, in Europe it’s round – there are plenty of differences. We believe that translating isn’t enough — local tastes and culture adoption are really important.

ISG: How do you handle translation?

We’re a big believer that you shouldn’t develop the game in one language and then translate. Translation and adapting to local culture is part of development. We’ve got six native speakers, one for each language, who are part of development.

We do everything in-house. That’s what I learned at my last company [Jamba] – if you want really high quality and speed, do it yourself.

ISG: Do the same people who handle translation do the community management?

They’re not alone, but for every language we’ve got one country manager running a team.

ISG: What’s the strategy behind localizing virtual goods?

If there’s a national holiday that’s only in one specific region, we do virtual goods for it. At the moment we target it country-wise – we don’t make it more targeted because experience tells us that people travel. Someone might have grown up in Bavaria and moved to Hamburg, for example.

ISG: Does localizing from the beginning cost a lot more than just building a game for one language?

Our goal from day one was to be an international company. If we create a new game, we immediately consult our country managers on what the specifics should be.

The biggest problem if you’re not doing it that way is not the added investment of localization, it’s slowing down your core team. If you build a game and then ask how you can adapt it to another market, there are all kinds of features that come up that require you to reposition.

For example, English is a very short language – all the words in German are longer, and you need more space for them. If you build your company with localization in mind, I’d guess the added investment is 10 to 20 percent. If you have to go back later to change the game, it can really be a problem.

This interview is part of an ongoing series on localization. Past coverage includes:
RockYou: Working in Japan
6waves: Localizing for Asia

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem. When you place job listings on the Inside Network Job Board, they’ll be distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. That way, you can be sure that your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Here are this week’s new listings from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at EA2D, MeYou Health, HumaNature Studios, Neoedge, Ohai, and Days of Wonder:

• QA Manager (San Francisco, CA)
  
• Senior Game Designer (San Francisco, CA)
  
• Art Director (San Francisco, CA)

• ActionScript / JavaScript Software Engineer (San Francisco, CA)

• Senior Server Side Software Engineer (Albany, CA)

• 2D Artist – EA2D (Redwood City, CA)
  

• Facebook Product Manager (Boston, MA)
  

• Consumer Marketing Manager (Los Altos, CA)

Check out more top Facebook Platform and social gaming jobs on the Inside Network Job Board.

Following on the heels of Playdom’s acquisition by Disney for $563.2 million, we’ve learned that the social game publisher has sealed a five-year contract stipulating exclusive use of Credits, Facebook’s in-house virtual currency, across all Playdom games.

Although we’ve been covering the gradual acceptance of Credits by the big game developers for several months, this deal has an added significance: with Disney as Playdom’s new owner, Facebook now has the support of a major media company for its virtual economy. Playdom’s contract also means that Facebook is one step closer to unanimous acceptance from its most important social game developers.

Facebook confirmed the deal to us this morning. According to a Facebook spokesperson:

Facebook has entered into a five-year agreement with Playdom for the company to use Facebook Credits as the exclusive way to transact in its games on the Facebook Platform. The agreement will give Playdom’s millions of players an easy, convenient and trusted way to buy virtual goods in popular titles like Social City, Sorority Life, Market Street and Bola.

As part of the relationship, Playdom will receive the same revenue share as other developers on Facebook.

CrowdStar, which is about the same size as Playdom, was the first to use Credits exclusively for a game, and recently signed its own five-year contract with Facebook. We’ve also been told by LOLapps, RockYou and Wooga that they’re on board with Credits, while a number of smaller developers have also switched over, sometimes through Facebook promotions that benefit their games.

At this point, Facebook is only missing exclusive deals with the two biggest developers on the Platform, Zynga and Electronic Arts – although Facebook did sign a five year “strategic relationship” with Zynga two months ago. Both offer Credits as payment options in their games, but Zynga also handles payments itself, while EA has other partners like TrialPay.

From here it should be interesting to see what Facebook’s next move will be. The company has steadfastly refused to make a firm statement on whether or when it plans to make Credits mandatory — in part because of opposition from developers who don’t want to pay Facebook a 30 percent cut, the set rate for any company using the currency, as well as loss of control, breakage, and other issues.

Facebook advocates that Credits will create network and ease-of-use benefits that will cause more people to buy virtual currency; with enough exclusive partners in the virtual economy, Facebook should soon be able to make a convincing case for that bigger and better market.

CrowdStar chairman Peter Relan recently listed all the potential positives of Credits in an interview with us, saying that the market could eventually be five to 10 times larger with a single currency; separately, CrowdStar has claimed that it already sees benefits. In time, other developers may also be willing to cheerlead for the currency.

But for now Credits are still a new idea. There are also features and policies that Facebook has yet to make totally clear, like how it deals with fraud, and whether games utilizing its social graph through Facebook Connect would have to use Credits. For more on the issues, also check our interview with Social Gold co-founder Vikas Gupta detailing the downsides of Credits and our own analysis of the remaining questions around it.

For most, it’s probably still a bit early to drink, but you know what they say: “It’s happy hour somewhere.” At least, those are the words that appear to be behind RedAtom’s Bar Society game on Facebook. Published by Playdom, it’s a game that made its appearance on our fastest growing games this past week and now holds over 907,000 monthly active users.

A combination of virtual business and space games like Nightclub City and Café World, Playdom’s new title tasks users with building a successful bar. Between mixing drinks, serving tables, and dancing patrons, there’s a satisfying potential. All the same, it’s a game that feels a bit slow on the uptake, and just doesn’t feel like it has the same level of style that its competitors have.

Right off the bat, players are introduced to Bar Society’s primary social mechanic of hiring friends to work for you. In this case, it’s as a bar tender. Like the cooks in Café World, users task them with creating everything from a simple Gin and Tonic to a rather pricey Washington Apple, with the more valuable drinks requiring higher levels to unlock.

Evidently, your friends aren’t too good at mixing drinks, as they’ll take anywhere from five minutes to a day or so to prepare them. Of course, with behind the back tosses and various animated bar tricks, they at least look good doing it. Once ready, players must use one of their waiters (their avatar plus whatever friends they hire as one) to place the finished drinks onto wheeled drink carts. These work exactly the same as counter space in Café World, as whenever a patron orders a drink, one of the waiters will serve whatever drinks are on the cart(s). Also, like the Zynga app, the carts have a finite number of servings and only one type of drink may be on any single cart at any given time.

This is where the Nightclub City elements come into play somewhat. After guests have ingested a little bit of “liquid courage,” they’ll haphazardly make their way over to any dance floors the player has set up. Like in Nightclub City, these are required to keep guests happy (though we doubt they’d be happy if they knew how badly they danced). Additionally, when a character starts dancing, users can click on the music cleft floating above their head, which will begin to fill up a music icon in the upper right. Five clicks from five different customers will increase the bar’s rating.

The bar rating is the typical rating system seen in these virtual business apps. The higher it is, the more guests will visit. This rating is also affected by a number of elements such as serving guests quickly, better décor and having dance floors. The rating even tells the player exactly how many guests they can expect an hour. However, unlike others of games of its ilk, Bar Society is extremely slow to get started.

Ratings go up extremely slowly based on customers approving things like service, but at the start, users will get only around 100-120 guests in one hour. The game states that rating only goes up while the user is actually logged in and playing. Additionally, even basic decorations are surprisingly expensive, running the player out of their initial starting cash after three or four purchases. As one can imagine, between both of these aspects, improving that rating is painstakingly slow. To draw a parallel, in our review of Playdom’s new Market Street — which follows a similar rating mechanic — our store was brimming within about 15-20 minutes. An hour later in Bar Society, and there’s maybe two or three guests at any given time.

It might seem irrelevant, but this also effects the game’s economy in that an hour later, we’d made a grand total of $175 (with only three decorative purchases), whilst in the Market Street example, the store was already growing and looking fresh and new, while still earning a couple thousand dollars, in half the time. It may all be relative under the surface, but the Market Street example is far more gratifying.

Though the game is comparable to some of the most popular virtual business and virtual space type titles out there, the visual style is pretty hit or miss. The avatars are all very blocky looking and don’t really do much beyond a handful of basic animations (save for the dancing). Additionally, the décor feels very bland when compared to games like Nightclub City. There, things light up, move, blink, and generally feel alive. A few things do that here, but based on what we could afford, the numbers are few and far between.

On the social side of things, it is nice to be able to hire your friends without them having to play, and those that don’t “work” for you will periodically walk in and buy some drinks too. If they do play, it’s possible to visit them and help out their bar on a daily basis. Beyond this, there are special tasks that can occasionally be performed where your friends must help by sending ingredients. Currently, if you get enough from your friends, you can create a “Spirit of the Seven Seas,” for a “BIG,” yet unspecified, reward.

Neighbors are also a necessity for expanding one’s bar as well (unless virtual currency is used), which has always been an obnoxious mechanic. Essentially, if one likes a game yet their friends don’t, they either have to add a bunch of random people they don’t know or be limited in the game they enjoy. However, Bar Society does create more perks for this neighbor requirement by allowing the user to unlock different types of music based on their neighbor count. Music isn’t needed, beyond the initial tracks one starts with, but it’s a very nice plus.

Overall, Bar Society is an alright game as far as virtual business apps go. It’s got a few quality ideas, and has the tremendous potential of some of the most popular Facebook games of the past. That said, it tends to fall far short of such examples with the incredibly slow progression to be had early on, and an overall style that just doesn’t feel as gratifying as its predecessors. All the same, its monthly active user count continues to steadily rise. Whether or not keeps going, is yet to be seen.