Disney-acquired Playdom has outdone itself with a new Facebook app discovered by the folks over at Gamezebo. Called City of Wonder, it’s a game that combines some of the best parts of Playdom’s past titles, as well as socialized mechanics of others.

In short, City of Wonder is a streamlined, very social version, of Civilization, but unlike other titles influenced by the classic Sid Meier PC game, it focuses more on city building, and has a beautiful pattern of game progression. While some may complain that it’s a Civ clone, the truth is, that it feels more a balanced combination of Social City, Civilization, and Facebook social mechanics.

So what is the point of City of Wonder? When starting out, the game is primarily a city builder set somewhere between the Stone and Bronze Ages. The idea is to create a bustling society by growing one’s population in the same manner as one does in Social City. This means that residences are constructed that periodically increase population, and things like décor, markets, and cultural structures must be built to keep happiness up, lest population decrease. Like in its predecessor, if happiness is not kept, population will stagnate, and here, even decline.

What makes this critical is that a high population is needed to reach various milestones in the game (sort of like achievements, which are here too), but more than this, they are required to construct more “Goods Buildings.” This is where minor, “farming” elements come into play as these Goods Buildings create one’s primary income. From farms, to quarries, to vineyards, players use these structures to produce goods for sale. Also, any unclaimed goods will “spoil” if not collected in time (à la Social City contracts). In addition to this, different market buildings such as a grocer or trade depot can be constructed to add periodic income as well.

Most social games would get to this point and call it quits in terms of depth. But in City of Wonder, here is where the Civilization influence comes into play. Yes, it’s fun to decorate a city the way one likes, but now each type of building has a deeper strategy to it. Not all structures are unlocked by mere level gains, but rather require a certain types of research from the statistics of Culture, Trade, or Military.

Aside from the residences, every type of building increases one of these stats. However, many of the better, more advanced versions of these structures require a certain type of research to be done. For a sum of in-game currency (Silver), the player’s society will study some new form of knowledge such as writing, masonry, mysticism, and so on. Each one will take a certain amount of time, with higher level ones taking longer. What determines their “level,” though, is where they are in a technology tree, meaning research on pottery (clay), for example, must be done before masonry can be studied.

This earns more than just aesthetic reward, but plays a major role in one of the game’s primary social mechanic called Expeditions. City of Wonder actually has a world map, of sorts, where users can set out and explore other players’ cities. From here, one can not only view another users’ creation, but can consult with their three non-player advisors about the benefits of cultural exchange, trade, or battle (as a side note, these advisors also help the player through the construction of their civilization itself). Unlike Civilization, there are no units that determine the outcome of any of these three actions. In order to win a cultural, trade, or military exchange, the player’s collective buildings must have higher statistics, determined by the type of buildings they build in their civilization, than the other player, and the advisors will let the player know what is their best option.

The benefits of each are great, so no single one is better than the other (assuming all stats have an equal chance of success). If players choose culture, a successful exchange will earn bonus experience. If they choose trade, Silver will be acquired. And if they are feeling aggressive, a successful military attack will garner more populace. Furthermore, and though it is unclear, players can also initiate a “Quick Attack” before exploring a civilization. This appears to be a sort of surprise attack that influences the outcome of battle. Regardless, whatever choice one chooses needs to be a wise one, as only so many expeditions can be made before they have to recharge (about 20 minutes for one).

You should also be cautious about picking to many fights too, because other players can just as easily start one with you, while you are away, leaving your city in flames. It’s easy enough to repair with just a click, and the game even gives the player a chance to instantly retaliate. That said, there doesn’t seem to be any real detriment to losing, other than a win/loss record.

Allies can also influence results of these three exchanges as well. Like most social games involving any sort of virtual space, friends can be added as neighbors/allies and will occasionally grant bonuses when out on expeditions. In addition to this, the game has a typical visit spur random events that players can “help out” with for some added coin. One slightly new addition, however, is that once allies, both friends will get a free embassy building from that player. Once placed, it will not only increase the populace’s happiness, but that ally can click on it daily for extra monetary rewards.

Friends can also add benefits through gifting as well. Beyond random decorative items, they can also gift NPCs called “Legends.” These include some of history’s biggest names such as Socrates, Pericles, Sacagawea, Hannibal, and so on. Each one will provide a different bonus to things such as military power, income, population, expeditions recharges, and so on. Some require virtual currency (Gold) to buy, – these can also be bought in virtual card packs – some can be bought with Silver, and others can only be gifted. Moreover, there is also a collection book, that grants added reward for collecting sets, such as Legendary artists, tycoons, politicians, etc.

Social mechanics also continue in the form of Marvels. These, unsurprisingly, consist of the great Wonders of the World including the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Wall of China, and the Colossus at Rhodes. The buildings grant tremendous bonuses to culture, trade, or military might, as well as bonus income when market structures pay out. The catch is that unless one uses Gold, it must be posted to the player’s Facebook wall and friends must help out to build it, gaining a bonus themselves when doing so.

This same concept also comes into play with the expansion of one’s land. While the first increase of real estate just costs silver, subsequent ones require both silver and allies or virtual currency.

Coming down to the last, very cool, features of City of Wonder, is a random loot system. As was already noted, residence and market structures periodically produce more population and income. What makes for a nice bonus, is that every once and a while, players will get a “tribute” from their citizens in the form of a free gift. This could be décor, a building, or even a legend.

The biggest part of City of Wonder, however, is its sense of style. Like Social City, the game just feels completely alive with citizens working in fields, tending homes, and even marching parades when happy. More than that, the progression is phenomenal as rather than just unlocking new buildings of the same feel with each level, players progress through the ages of history. Everything that has been talked about thus far has only been from the perspective of the Stone and Bronze Ages, but players can level all the way up to the Modern Age and beyond! It is incredibly gratifying to watch the world grow and change so dramatically. Furthermore, players never have to leave the Age they are in either. Granted, the efficiency is lower as far as population, income, and cultural gains are concerned, but the game is fully functional as a city builder at any Age.

Typically, this is where we would start listing some of the shortcomings with the application. Fact of the matter is, the only, minor complaint to be had with the Playdom title is that players cannot cancel the placement of a structure without exiting the build menu entirely. Other than that, there is only the fact that many may complain about the heavy Civilization influence. Nevertheless, the combination of City of Wonder with that concept, and with one of our top social game picks for 2010, Social City, has created a Facebook title that is a step above the rest. In the end, the game looks great, is highly social, a ton of fun, very addictive, and, of course, free. And there’s not many that can complain about that.

Yesterday we wrote about a new cross-promotion bar for Facebook games called Appstrip. It’s the second of a new type of promotional tool, built by and for small Facebook developers. The first? Applifier, which initially described itself to us three months ago as the “Rebel Alliance” of Facebook.

Applifier isn’t rebelling against Facebook itself, of course (that would be like Luke Skywalker going up against the physical universe). Instead, it’s pitting itself against the Death Star — Zynga, with its 200+ million monthly active users. Not to mention the Star Destroyers represented by Playfish, Playdom and CrowdStar, which have between 35 and 55 million players each.

Besides the obvious advantage of more money, those networks create a big edge over smaller opponents. But Applifier is at the very least larger than Playdom, according to CEO Jussi Laakkonen, giving small developers access to somewhere over 35 million users across the network.

Here’s how it works: above or below each of its Facebook games, a company like Zynga will advertise its other games in a promotion bar. Player traffic between these promoted games are a significant source of growth and player retention.

Lots of smaller developers only have a handful of games, or even just one. Applifier creates an artificial network by providing a strip promoting games from other developers, while elsewhere on the network the original game is being promoted. For the most part player traffic is just traded between games, though Applifier also takes a small percentage of traffic and sells it back into the network to developers that want to grow faster.

When it started, Applifier could only be accessed by developers who had been introduced by someone else. However, Laakkonen says that it’s now open for anyone to apply through the website. He’s also opening to non-game entertainment apps that provide value to users (in other words, not spammy quiz or poke apps).

“What’s interesting is that nobody has left, over the three months that we’ve been going. If Applifier didn’t work, people would leave,” says Laakkonen. “Applifier doesn’t exist without its members. It’s a service that will only work as long as we have the trust of our members, and they’ve seen how well we perform.”

Although we’d set up a time to speak with Laakkonen before Appstrip emerged, the new competitor, which is run by game developer and Applifier member Broken Bulb Studios, naturally came up. Laakkonen claims to be happy that there will be competition. At the same time, he seems somewhat annoyed with the form it has taken. “I do think it’s a clone,” he tells us.

For his part, Broken Bulb CEO Robert Nelson told us Wednesday that he created Appstrip as an alternative to Applifier because of technical problems in the latter. The two have yet to work out their differences, so there’s the potential that Broken Bulb will end up getting pushed off Applifier.

Other developers should benefit, though, since they’re free to use both promotion strips if they choose. Laakkonen says his company’s goal is just to improve life for small developers. “I come from the console games business,” he says. “In that space you have huge gatekeepers, like Walmart, publishers, and as a developer you’re so distant from your customers you wouldn’t believe it. Here, with all the changes that have happened on Facebook, it’s still an amazingly friendly ecosystem, and an amazing opportunity for an independent developer.”

In the near future, Applifier will be releasing some unique tools that leverage its large network, according to Laakkonen; we’ll write about those when more details are available.

Friday is the day for our top emerging games list from AppData — fast-growing games still under a million monthly active users. Since we’ve been on a brief hiatus due to a Facebook stats bug that it says is now corrected, the list is packed with new names. Because of the unintentional break, the stats are more interesting than ever.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	開心魚塘	701,006	+402,943	+135%
2.	Party Resort	581,707	+246,244	+73%
3.	Premier League Fantasy Football	691,511	+209,623	+44%
4.	Lucky Train	327,379	+198,290	+154%
5.	Bouncing Balls	928,331	+185,486	+25%
6.	Retail Therapy	616,017	+178,040	+41%
7.	Travel Balloon	538,279	+162,063	+43%
8.	Backyard Monsters	874,213	+153,055	+21%
9.	Casino City	938,695	+147,566	+19%
10.	Bloom Town	565,866	+130,802	+30%
11.	Free Flash Games	399,145	+124,336	+45%
12.	Tellywood	564,611	+113,479	+25%
13.	SI Fantasy Football	280,445	+106,076	+61%
14.	happy harvest new	228,174	+102,857	+82%
15.	Applications List	344,292	+102,422	+42%
16.	FrontierVille Community	840,430	+99,063	+13%
17.	Legacy of Rome	123,074	+94,221	+327%
18.	Glamble Poker	727,691	+91,783	+14%
19.	Fantasy Football 2010	482,824	+87,720	+22%
20.	Lady Popular	165,186	+86,973	+111%

The top name is one many of our readers (and most of our writers) won’t be able to pronounce: 開心魚塘. The first two characters are the beginning of over half of all popular Chinese games on Facebook, though: “Happy”. In this case, the rest of the name could translate to “Fish Ponds”. Despite the name, this Memoriki game (shown at right) actually has an English translation.

Number two, Party Resort, is one to keep an eye on. This relatively unassuming island management app is the second growing game from iWin, which previously hit a seven million MAU home run with Family Feud.

Premier League Fantasy Football, the next game down, is quickly becoming one of the largest soccer games on Facebook; it’s by Citizen Sports. It’s followed by Lucky Train, a train-based city sim that, like a real train, started off slow but now appears to be picking up steam. We reviewed its June launch.

Bouncing Balls is a simple ball-blasting genre, a perennial player favorite. Retail Therapy, at number six, is a bit more interesting. It’s a fashion game from scrappy web publisher Sugar Inc. that incorporates real-world retail brand marketing.

Finally, take note of both Backyard Monsters and Casino City. Both of these games, respectively a humorous strategy game and a casino management sim, are near to graduating beyond the million player threshold.

Last week may have been a busy week for the social gaming developer community, but since then, the hiring rate has almost completely stopped cold, according to the data found on LinkedIn. In light of this, we took the opportunity to expand our coverage further to two more social developers who have been active in at least the past two weeks, Digital Chocolate and Nightclub City creator, Booyah, in order to get a broader scope of just what is happening out there.

For openings in the industry, be sure to check out our Inside Network Job Board.

Here is the list:

Booyah

• Bryan Bernal – Though the addition is from last week, Booyah‘s Nightclub City may be getting a new beat, as Bernal, the former Project Manager of Insomniac Games, joins the team as its new Music Supervisor.

Digital Chocolate

• Vishwanathan Subramanian – Formerly a Project Manager for Indiagames Ltd., Subramanian is now an Associate Ops. Manager for Digital Chocolate.
• Sami Marsch – Another update from last week, as Marsch gets a promotion within the Digital Chocolate team, moving up from Junior Game Artist to Game Artist.

Playdom

• Tom Margolis – A former Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Margolis joins Playdom as its newest Java Developer.
• Shah Rahman Tapan – Tapan joins Playdom as a CG Artist Consultant for their Game Department. Previously, he was a CG Artist for trippertlabs.
• Jon Rick – Bringing experience as an Engineer for Hewlett-Packard, Rick joins Playdom as a 3D Artist.

Slide

• Steven Kollars – Stemming from the Google acquisition of Slide, Kollars shifts his Software Engineer role from the Slide tag to the Google tag.
• Christopher Rhodes – Continuing the Google transition, Rhodes changes from a Senior Flash Engineer under Slide to a Software Engineer under Google.
• Jason Rubenstein – Now a Software Engineer under Google, Rubenstein was a Senior Software Engineer under Slide.
• Anderson Vitous – Previously a MySQL Architect with Slide, Vitous becomes a Database Administrator.

Zynga

• Hai Guan – Guan joins the Zynga team as their newest Analyst. Prior to this, he was a Quantitative Analyst for Union Bank.
• Paul Murphy – With experience as a Writer and Game Designer for Firaxis Games, Murphy joins Zynga as a new Senior Game Designer.
• Edward LeBreton – Previously an Online Marketing Manager Intern for Electronic Arts, LeBreton becomes a new Product Manager for the folks over at Zynga.

Recently, we launched the Inside Network Job Board – dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Fuel Industries, FreshPlanet, World Golf Tour, NaturalMotion, EA, and AdParlor.

• Flash Developer (Ottawa)
  
• Business Analyst (Ottowa)
  
• Web Developer (Ottowa)
  
• Art Director (Ottowa)

• Google App Engine / Python Expert (New York)

• Senior Game Designer (San Francisco)

• Senior Designer – Social Games (San Francisco)

• Software Test Engineer – EA2D (Redwood City)

• Strategic Account Manager (Toronto)

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts and widgets on the sites. 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.

Editor’s note: The following analysis is based on data from Inside Facebook Gold, our research and data membership service covering Facebook’s platform and advertising ecosystem.

Following up on Tuesday’s post about the performance of three relatively standard games in Taiwan, we’re switching back to the United States with at look at three more apps — though this time they’re rather unusual, at least compared to some of the apps we’ve previously looked at.

What makes these games unusual is, in part, the fact that they’re all products of late 2009 and 2010. Since the turn of the year, social game developers have found that they need to go beyond farming and fish games. The three you see below — Kingdoms of Camelot, Mall World and Nightclub City — are products of this new, more creative environment.

Each game also has a measure of built-in demographic targeting. For the developers, narrowing the focus to particular groups of people has helped build larger audiences for games without the advertising weight of a large company like Zynga behind them.

This built-in targeting should also be interesting to brand marketers and advertisers, though. The demographics for Mall World, for instance, indicate that it could be a good channel for targeting young, brand-conscious women. As discussed in our earlier interview with Alex Rampell, CEO and co-founder of TrialPay, performance advertising’s next frontier will likely be within social games, and brands have an opportunity to lead.

Our demographic data for all three games show that each has a fairly different gender profile. Kingdoms of Camelot, for example, is the only one of the three that’s heavily male, an observation that makes sense given that Camelot is a strategy game with a fantasy theme, a genre that has traditionally appealed more to men.

Focusing on men is a clever move for games like Kingdoms of Camelot. Since most developers have by now realized that women spend more on Facebook games (a phenomenon we cover in depth in our Inside Virtual Goods reports), the competition is heaviest for that group.

Camelot, along with a small handful of other strategy games, neatly bypasses the fight for women, and has netted almost five million users as a result.

Games that do go after women need a unique angle. Nightclub City certainly creates that, by placing players in the shoes of a busy nightclub manager. This is an interesting game on many levels, not least because the music in the game is recognizable — popular artist Girl Talk, for instance, features prominently.

Mall World’s theme isn’t unique anymore. But it’s certainly laser-focused — who doesn’t know young women like malls? As we explore further, a second big difference between Kingdoms of Camelot and its two peers is revealed: a much older audience. Although Camelot may be male-heavy, its average age is closer to female-dominated games like FarmVille, which often go for a middle-aged audience.

Nightclub City and Mall World, on the other hand, both trend young — especially the latter game. That’s no surprise, but it’s again a clever targeting move on the part of both games: Facebook’s growing international audience is younger on average than the mostly-static United States userbase. (Note, however, that these stats are only for the US.)

Over time, expect to see more targeted games and applications like these three. Since the groups that access them are self-selecting, the games themselves should also help lead marketers to their desired audience.

The above analysis is based on recent demographic data for each of these three apps. The full data is available as part of a membership to Inside Facebook Gold, our research and data membership service covering Facebook’s platform and advertising ecosystem. To learn more or join the membership, please visit Inside Facebook Gold.

Since Facebook scaled back the visibility of apps in users’ news feeds earlier this year, advertising has become the core of some social gaming companies. But ads have become expensive, and small developers are looking for new ways to get ahead. The latest, created by game developer Broken Bulb Studios, is called Appstrip.

Appstrip is a cross-promotion bar that a developer can attach to their game. Within the bar are links to games by other small developers, creating an artificial version of the game networks large publishers like Zynga can create on their own.

Some cross-promotion bars are sometimes run by marketers for profit, but a recently created free network called Applifier, created by a group of developers, has taken hold. Applifier is the template for Broken Bulb, which already exposes its 3.5 million monthly active users to the network.

On Applifier, clicks to a link on the bar are a straightforward trade — if a player of my game clicks on your game’s icon, I get a click back from elsewhere on the network. The model works well, according to Broken Bulb CEO Robert Nelson, but a variation might do even better: namely, Appstrip.

In Appstrip, the network takes a 10 percent “commission” on each click. [Update: Applifier takes a commission too; more on this tomorrow.] That means that if you send other games 100 clicks, you only get 90 back. The extra 10 percent will go to a pool that’s sold to bidders who want more traffic.

Nelson says the charge isn’t for Broken Bulb to make money — he doesn’t think there’s any chance that Appstrip will ever make enough to compete with the company’s games.

Instead, the pool will serve as an alternative to buying advertising for small games that want to grow, but aren’t sending out enough clicks to get any back. (At the moment, small developers might not even be able to get on Applifier, as the network is invite-only.) Companies with established games might also want to spend more to grow faster.

The cost per install from paid Appstrip traffic will always remain lower than ads, says Nelson, although it may have to be raised if clicks sell out too quickly. “”Because we’ve spent so much time buying traffic from Facebook, we know what’s fair. We’re not going to add a premium just because they’re in high demand. We’ll sell out [of clicks] before we do that,” Nelson says.

From the earnings, most of the money will go toward development of analytics tools for users and work to keep Appstrip stable and running at all times, something that Nelson says hasn’t always been the case for Applifier.

It’s still early days for efforts like Applifier and Appstrip, but these networks will likely become increasingly important for developers this year. Big companies like Zynga, Disney (the new owner of Playdom), and Electronic Arts can easily bid up the price of ads beyond what smaller developers can pay for — and there aren’t any other easy avenues for growth.

For now, Nelson is hoping that Applifier won’t see Appstrip as competitive. He certainly doesn’t; for now, Broken Bulbs’ games will run with both Applifier and Appstrip’s promotion bars.

In-game monetization platform PlaySpan is announcing a new $18 million funding today, led by Vodafone Ventures and Softbank Bodhi Fund. The funding will be used for European and Asian expansion, and the company now claims to be present in 180 countries.

The expansion should be helped along by the two investors. Vodafone is one of the largest mobile providers in Europe, while Softbank is the same Asian tech giant that has pumped money into social game companies RockYou and Zynga.

In total, PlaySpan has now raised $42 million. Its last round, for $16.8 million, was raised in December 2008.

Zynga has been in the news twice already this week, between the acquisition of Conduit Labs and a Chinese-language version of Texas Hold’em Poker. There’s another, unofficial item, though: the company’s next game may be called CityVille, according to a new forum spotted on Zynga’s website by Games.com.

There’s nothing except the name of the forum so far, but it doesn’t take a great imaginative leap to figure out that it could be the name of a city-building game like Social City or My Empire. Earlier this year, Zynga also ran player surveys asking if they’d like to see a city-builder.

One might also take Zynga’s past history into account. Although the days of cloning another game’s look or mechanics are long past, Zynga has still paid close attention to trends that work with its releases this year. Treasure Isle may have been modeled on an earlier game called Treasure Madness, while FrontierVille combines FarmVille with a dash of city (or homestead) building and a Western theme, which has been prominent in other media.

We called the nascent city building trend in February, and Social City proved it could draw the crowds when it hit its peak of 12.6 million monthly active users in April and May. Zynga has had longer development cycles this year, so the timing looks about right too.

Zynga declined to comment, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Today OpenFeint, the social platform for mobile games, announced its latest version and an interesting new feature: cross-platform invites between users with iPhone and Android phones.

OpenFeint hasn’t launched for Android yet, so this feature won’t be available for a few months. However, it’s clear that the company is putting effort into mobile invites. One big problem starting out will be that only a few hundred of OpenFeint’s thousands of games will have both Android and iPhone versions.

So if an iPhone user invites an Android-using friend directly through OpenFeint’s in-game network, for example, the invitation simply won’t be sent if there’s no Android version. If the invitation is sent by SMS (another choice available to users), the link reaching the Android user will send the developer a request to port over the game.

For games that are cross-platform, the invitation feature offers the first possibility of growth through virality. Like Facebook developers, the game creator will have the option of popping up an in-game box asking users to invite their friends through OpenFeint.

At the same time, Aurora Feint’s CEO, Jason Citron, thinks that mobile invitations will be able to avoid Facebook’s spam problems. “The way that we provide the box, the user actually has to go through and decide who to [invite], picking phone numbers. I think it makes people think about what they’re doing more … than on Facebook. You know if you send someone 400 text messages, that sucks.”

Of course, there’s one major viral feature missing from the picture: the ability to broadcast the fact that you’re playing a game to all your friends, as Facebook allows with wall posts. Citron says his company is working on something, but won’t offer up any more details. Also, most mobile games still lack overt social features, beyond leaderboards, challenges and a few other features that services like OpenFeint add.

There’s another similarity to draw between mobile games and Facebook, though: scale. By back-of-the-envelope calculation, Citron estimates 200 million users between iDevices and Android by the time his company is on both platforms — about where Facebook was when social games started to take off.