We started hearing reports midday on Friday that Critter Island had disappeared. It’s now a day later, and Critter Island is still down, along with dozens of other apps we have listed in AppData for developer LOLapps. All redirect to facebook.com.

All signs point to a complete suspention of LOLapps apps by Facebook. LOLapps is a large and stable developer on Facebook, with a slew of quiz and gift applications, as well as Critter Island and several older games. Before yesterday, it had over 14 million monthly active users, making it the twelfth-largest developer on Facebook, and just under a million daily actives.

Preliminary rumors we’ve heard suggest that the ban is real, and that LOLapps did not see it coming. CEO Arjun Sethi declined to comment in response to an email sent yesterday, and hasn’t provided any update since. Facebook has not responded at all.

Update: Facebook responded as this story was being posted: “We have disabled applications from LOLapps due to violations of our terms.”

Facebook has suspended quite a few developers since opening its platform; the largest recent example was Pencake, a company that had several massive quiz apps disabled overnight in July. However, almost every case of a complete ban targets a developers spamming Facebook users with non-game apps. Individual non-game apps are disabled quite often.

LOLapps, by contrast, made a point of its turn to game development in June, and appears to have focused mostly on Critter Island and upcoming titles since. The company is venture funded and generally well-known in the Silicon Valley development community.

Second update: While there have been some suggestions that LOLapps and others were suspended for exploiting loopholes that allowed them to auto-post to users’ feeds, such loopholes are discovered by developers from time to time, and upon using them are reprimanded by Facebook – it’s often part of the day-to-day operation of many developers.

Instead, we’ve also learned that these suspensions possibly relate to worries at Facebook about privacy, specifically relating to sharing data with third-party advertising services. More information may emerge soon. For now, the silence from both parties is enough to make other developers nervous.

Third update: We were correct about the involvement of third-party advertisers; a firm called RapLeaf is behind the LOLapps suspensions, according to a longer Wall Street Journal expose.

Final update: LOLapps is back on Facebook, after less than three days of suspension.

Since LOLapps was reinstated, we’ve written more about Facebook’s data market and policies:

• Public Facebook Information Is Just Part of Larger Online Data Gray Market
• Quinn Emanuel: Facebook’s User Data Policies Are Somewhat Ambiguous

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 6waves, Mindgames, PlayFirst, and Rocket Ninja.

• Business Manager (San Francisco, CA)

• Lead Programmer: Sports Casual Games (Los Angeles, CA)

• Art Director (San Francisco, CA)
  
• Product Manager, Social Games (San Francisco, CA)
  
• Game Designer, Social Games (San Francisco, CA)
  
• Creative Director, Social Games (San Francisco, CA)
  
• Software Engineer, Social Games (San Francisco, CA)

• Lead Game Designer/Systems Designer (San Francisco, CA)
  

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.

RockYou Restructures, Lays Off Employees — Social game developer and advertising network RockYou, which was once considered an equal to Playdom or CrowdStar, has laid off a significant number of employees, according to TechCrunch. The company is moving to focus only on social games, like its recent release Toy Land.

Deal United Introduces Offer Wall Converter — At the Virtual Goods Summit, Deal United announced the launch of its Offer Wall Converter, which will allow easy integration of Deal United’s pay.by.shopping platform alongside existing offer providers. Additionally, the company is offering a $50,000 sign up bonus for the first 10 online games to use the Offer Wall Converter.

i-Jet Media to Raise $20 Million — Russian social games publisher, i-Jet Media is seeking to raise $20 million in funding at a $100 million valuation, according to Vedomosti. I-Jet says that the funding will be used to further expand the company and enter new markets.

Virtual Greats Continues to Grow — Earlier this week, we noted the growth of virtual goods with Virtual Greats’ integration of branded goods within PageFad’s sports games. The company just announced another partnership, this time with Mentez, to bring branded Paris Hilton virtual goods to the Latin social network, Orkut.

App Genius to Reward Players for Losing Online — App Genius has announced the launch of their new title on Facebook, My Mad Millions, where users try to spend $300 million virtual dollars. As a reward, the top 20 percent of active players (chosen twice a month) will be rewarded with 50 percent of the game’s revenue.

Gossip & Ultima From EA — There’s been a huge among of gossip and ranting out of Electronic Arts recently about its problems producing successful MMOGs. Among the rants, the anonymous “EA Louse” alleged that the classic Ultima franchise is coming to Facebook as a pet project of an EA exec.

Bonfire Studios May Have Cost $6.3 Million — A form D SEC filing submitted by Zynga notes that the company paid at least $6.3 million for Bonfire Studios; the developer acquired by the company earlier this month.

Zynga Expands Further — In other Zynga news, VentureBeat noted a list of new job postings from the company, including positions at what appears to be a new Seattle office.

Save Energy With Social Games — After a round of angel funding, Formative Labs has said that they’re looking to teach people to save energy, says TechCrunch. While the company has not disclosed details on how, they will be using social gaming.

Microsoft Unveals Windows Phone 7 & App Hub — Microsoft announced this week the coming of a new series of Windows Phone 7 devices, as well as App Hub, where Windows Phone and Xbox Live game developers can find everything from development tools to support.

Scoreloop Partners with Samsung — Social, mobile gaming platform Scoreloop is partnering with Samsung this week, making the Scoreloop SDK available to developers of the smartphone platform.

Kiva’s Biggest Rival — Micro-lending startup Kiva attracted some attention this week by calling Zynga its biggest competitor. Why? Because Zynga games soak up attention and disposable income online, drawing those resources away from non-profits and other social causes. A video from TechCrunch explains Kiva’s plans to compete over the next five years.

Gravity Bear Rants About “Gamification” — Social developer Gravity Bear has written an amusing rant against gameification, the process of adding game elements to non-gaming media. While much of the digital media industry appears excited about the concept as a business model, Gravity Bear says the concept is just a fad.

When Japanese gaming and mobile giant DeNA announced earlier this week that it would buy its Western counterpart Ngmoco for up to $403 million, the social and mobile gaming industries sat up and took notice. While DeNA itself is hugely profitable, the Japanese market is far more developed than the US, and Ngmoco itself is just starting to make serious revenue.

More details on the deal have been emerging throughout the week, including breakdowns of the money ($146 million in stock, $27 million in warrants and $128 million in cash, plus a potential $100 million earnout) and interviews with Ngmoco CEO Neil Young giving background on Ngmoco’s revenues and future plans.

Below, we talk to Tomoko Namba, the CEO of DeNA Global, which is the US subsidiary of DeNA that led the acquisition.

Inside Social Games: Most people commenting on the acquisition have said that DeNA paid too much for Ngmoco. How will you recoup the investment?

Tomoko Namba: Ngmoco has, I think, four great things. One is the core ability to come up with great social games on smart phones. Second, the Plus+ network is a great network for social games.

Third, and this isn’t well known yet, is the Ngmoco game development engine that enables developers to deploy or develop social games for iOS or Android with one source-code set. Multi-platform is really the key, crucial strategy for us, because when it comes to social games, you don’t want to be restricted to just iOS or Android users. You want to be able to communicate and play with your friends.

Fourth, what’s really fundamental is the management. It was a pleasant surprise when I talked to Neil this summer. We’ve come to share the same vision for the smartphone business. You just can’t find any other company or player that already has these four things that we were looking for. People can say it’s an expensive deal, but I think it’s the perfect fit for us, and I’m really fired up. Within a year, people will look back and say this was a great deal that enabled DeNA to become the global leader.

ISG: You own 20 percent of [social platform developer] OpenFeint, but as you mentioned Ngmoco has its own Plus+ network that you plan to turn into an Open Mobage development kit. Are you now competing with Aurora Feint?

TN: Plus+ and OpenFeint might be in competition. We’re just a passive investor in OpenFeint, and we’re making Plus+ a central part of our strategy.

ISG: How important was Ngmoco’s in-house development engine to the acquisition?

TN: It’s still under development. We’ve taken the prototype, and we really liked it. I think it was the single biggest reason that we acquired them. The engine allows you to develop a game with one code for iOS and Android. That’s essential.

ISG: What will [Ngmoco CEO] Neil Young do at DeNA?

TN: Of course I’d like Neil to run Ngmoco, but in addition I’d like him to join our top management. I need his proactive participation in global strategy development and execution. DeNA is mainly going to be leading the Eastern part of the world. Neil is going to lead the Western part, in terms of strategy and execution. Of course, we’ll make joint efforts.

ISG: Which international markets look attractive, beyond the US and Japan?

TN: Of course in the Western hemisphere, there are the US, South America and Europe. In the Eastern world, China and India. For the Western part of the world, if we deploy services in the US, it easily gets to the other areas.

The Eastern part is more fragmented. We’re in Japan but we’ll have to develop a new set of services for China, and that won’t be accepted as-is by the Indonesian market. There’s a lot of localization effort involved. We need to prioritize, and our priority right now is China for the Eastern world.

ISG: How important is Ngmoco’s publishing business? What about DeNA’s? How much room is there for external developers?

TN: DeNA’s focus is really the platform. We’re not a social game development company, we’re a virtual community. We’re developing games in-house to enrich the platform. As the platform developer, it’s more important to invite outside developers.

ISG: Will you have a version of Mobage Town for the Western market?

TN: I think we still have to get together and examine what elements to port into Plus+. My hypothesis right now is that I’d like to make Plus+ stronger by enhancing the community functions,

ISG: Is free to play the right model for mobile worldwide?

TN: I think so. There are some payment collection service limitations, depending on the market, but that’s the way to go. We’ve been trying various models and observing it in the US too. Freemium with virtual goods sales is the way to go, although there’s much potential for advertising too.

ISG: Where do you see DeNA in two years?

TN: By 2014, DeNA wants to have $4 billion in revenue, 50 percent in Japan and 50 percent in the rest of the world. This is not a formal announcement of a plan, but what I aspire to is a $40 billion market cap company, four times bigger than today. The essential elements that we talked about are what’s necessary to do that. That’s my personal aspiration.

ISG: And what should other companies expect over a shorter time period — say, three to six months?

TN: We’d like to polish the engine and the platform — maybe that will take us three months or so — and open it with a stronger platform and engine, then we’ll welcome the third parties. That’s what I have in mind, but Neil and I will get together soon to come up with a realistic plan, so it may end up taking even less time.

The next generation of Facebook RPGs is here, and its name is Crime City. The new Funzio title leads this week’s AppData list of emerging Facebook games, defined as those still under a million monthly active users, with 301,947 new MAU.

Here’s the list in full:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Crime City	628,109	+301,947	+93%
2.	BRAAAINS	225,207	+221,356	+5,748%
3.	Cupcake Corner	959,457	+208,045	+28%
4.	Toy Land	752,563	+163,761	+28%
5.	Wheel Of Fortune	396,461	+148,096	+60%
6.	Coffee Bar	201,174	+148,006	+278%
7.	Jersey Shore	660,755	+129,919	+24%
8.	King.com	328,873	+124,333	+61%
9.	Bingo Island 2	603,943	+122,597	+25%
10.	Mynet Çanak Okey	685,946	+115,423	+20%
11.	開心水果(开心水果)	811,720	+108,996	+16%
12.	Gourmet Ranch	561,055	+106,559	+23%
13.	Evony	431,167	+104,627	+32%
14.	創世紀2012	981,012	+98,854	+11%
15.	Green Farm	536,509	+96,237	+22%
16.	Bingo Charms	336,228	+94,011	+39%
17.	Party Central	246,400	+92,269	+60%
18.	夢幻都市	129,409	+92,239	+248%
19.	My Sweet Shop	594,331	+89,392	+18%
20.	彈彈堂 – Efunfun繁體版	126,011	+83,064	+193%

What makes Crime City a next-gen RPG? It takes less than you might think. The game, which first appeared on last week’s emerging list, uses standard Facebook mechanics (one-click missions that can’t be failed), but with a 2.5D graphical overlay. The graphics serve to make a infinitely copied game concepts fresh again. Check it out, or just read our review.

BRAAAINS comes in next, with 225,356 MAU gained. This Broken Bulb Studios game reuses the same layout and mechanics that this development team used for Ninja Warz and then Office Wars, with players recruiting teams of zombies to fight other players. However, each new title has also evolved the concept, and BRAAAINS is getting good reviews so far.

OMGPOP’s restaurant sim Cupcake Corner is about to turn the million user corner. It’s followed by Toy Land, from RockYou!, which despite building respectable MAU has very poor stickiness, or the percentage of daily active players to MAUs. Right now the DAU / MAU is six percent, but it was as low as one percent toward the beginning of the week.

We can’t cover every entry on the list, but King.com is at least worth pointing out. The skill gaming portal has been on Facebook for months, but its traffic has been in a holding pattern for quite a long time, too. But the company must be watching the success of competitor GSN, which, not coincidentally, has Wheel Of Fortune on the list at number five.

Recently acquired mobile and social developer Ngmoco is expanding its “We” series this week with a new release called We Doodle for both the iPhone and iPad. A Pictionary-style game, the release follows on the heels of We City, but brings a less common genre of game to the Apple platforms.

Some mobile gamers may remember the Pictionary premise was used by Charadium, another game published by ngmoco. We Doodle is definitely an improvement on the concept (and according to the folks over at Slide-to-Play, a direct upgrade from Charadium, though that title still appears to be available for iPhone) and while the core game-play is the same, We Doodle comes with stronger monetization opportunities and plenty of extra enhancements.

Because We Doodle is so similar to Charadium, we took a look at the iPad version, which was not available for Charadium — though besides providing much more room to create, the iPad rendition isn’t significantly different from the iPhone version. In either, you’re given something to draw and you sketch it with your finger while other players try to guess what it is before time runs out.

We Doodle improves on social play from Charadium with both synchronous and asynchronous game play. You are still able to join games with random people — similar to the classic Pictionary game. However, Ngmoco has also incorporated a turn based system with no time limit.

Now, you can now join turn-based games with both random players and friends from within the Plus+ network, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. The app informs you whether it is your turn to draw or guess, so you can play for a few minutes at a time at  your convenience.

Beyond the basic Pictionary rules and new, turn-based play, ngmoco included some bonuses in an in-game store. As you play, you earn experience towards levels and coins. Based on level, you can purchase items to “improve” your drawing skills.

You can buy different types of brushes, ink colors, backgrounds and stencils. These not only make the game easier for the artist, thus easing the core play mechanic, but really let you get creative and digitally finger paint. Stencils consist of houses, people, trees and various shapes, but before you start thinking that this takes away from the Pictionary concept, don’t worry. You’ll still be tasked with drawing words as shapeless as ever. For example, how do you draw autumn?

Many of the items require high levels and many more an almost absurd amount of coin. You have to either fork out real cash for some tools, or play for quite a long time.

Stencils or not, many people still have little artistic talent, so the game also has a nice new feature called “Doodle Assist.” Long story short, it’s an optional mechanic that automatically improves the quality of your work. It cleans up lines and curves and even does a little bit of shading here and there. It’s not perfect, but it still does a nice job improving scribbly drawings.

The number one complaint from virtually everyone playing We Doodle is the intrusive presence of ads. As a free-to-play title, advertising is understandable, but these aren’t out-of-the way banners. They are giant, full-blown ads that pop up between turns and sit there for a long time before you can skip them. Oh, and the “skip” button is conveniently placed right below the button to show more about the ad — so, have fun if you have big fingers.

Other than the ads, We Doodle doesn’t have significant flaws. Even with the advertisements, it’s a fun game to play, and a good upgrade from Charadium, which was high quality to begin with. That in mind, between the iPhone and iPad versions, the iPad lends itself much better to this kind of game — the bigger canvas really improves the experience.

A recent mix up with the developers behind a new Facebook game, Oceanopolis, led to a premature look at the green-oriented title. Now the developer, Greenopolis is telling us that the real Oceanopolis is launched and ready to go, so we decided to give the game another spin.

Still a collection-oriented game post-changes, many of the environmentally-themed title’s more mundane aspects have been remedied, and the mechanics revamped to have some semblance of a point. The game’s different elements now feel much more interconnected, forming a sort of ecosystem of their own (no pun intended). Along with presentation upgrades, the app has come a long way since its closed beta. It’s still not the greatest title in the space, but for a, primarily, non-game developer, it’s an improvement, and thankfully, not another farming, city-building, or business sim clone.

The goal of Oceanopolis remains the same, which is to create the perfect island paradise. The problem is that trash litters the space. The game informs users that a nearby ocean gyre is continually washing the litter upon the shore. Considering the wastefulness of many people, the amount of trash that appears is not terribly surprising.

This trash must be picked up, with blurbs of text portraying the proper way to dispose of it. Since its first version, Oceanopolis has modified the once-monotonous mechanic of picking up trash, in that it doesn’t constantly reappear at an accelerated rate and only has to be clicked on once (as opposed to two or three times in past versions). Once collected, the trash becomes a means of income as it can be turned in to an in-game Greenopolis recycling kiosk — in sets of 10 — for extra coin.

This income is complimented by buildings that can use smaller quantities of litter to “upcycle” it into things like jewelry.

Of course, these are all merely improved mechanics from older versions. There are some new aspects as well, to help to tie everything together. Previously, we complained about the fact that players could care for decorative items called “Greenspace.” These were things like flowers, trees, and so on, but there was no real point to it. In this new version, three new consumable elements are introduced: Water, Energy, and Food.

Energy is roughly the same as any other Facebook game. It gates how much a player can do in any single sitting. That said, it doesn’t appear to regenerate passively. Instead, users must eat food to recharge it. While new users do start with a nice chunk of food, once it’s used up, new sustenance can only be acquired from specific Greenspace items (e.g. coconuts from palm trees); others are merely decorative.

Water plays a major role here as players must use this consumable to care for these trees, flowers, plants, etc. until food can be collected. In order to gain water, players must purchase certain “Accessories” to place about their island. Unfortunately, the only one that appears to have water-gathering capability for now is a rain barrel item that collects water on a daily basis. In general, food and water require a 24 hour wait to collect, which some users could find frustrating.

The only means to expedite collection of these resources is through friends who can gift water, as well as decorative items, to one another. Aside from this, however, the social elements are still fairly basic, consisting of island visitation and cleaning up one another’s trash. There has also been an addition of sharable achievements.

The educational aspect of Oceanopolis is also improved slightly with random events. We had a dolphin wash up on our beach. These items work the same as interacting with any other object on the island with blurbs of moderately educational text, but sadly, the animals can’t be kept as a reward.

Truthfully, Oceanopolis does still suffer from repetitive game play with its basic, point-and-click, collection mechanics, but at least now there feels to be more of a point to it all. Presentation-wise, it looks more respectable as well. It still has a bit of a flat and static look to it, but everything is at least more vibrant and less clunky feeling. Unfortunately, that clunk still rears its head in placing objects. Sometimes they just don’t want to go where they’re told.

Of course, we haven’t yet mentioned what is, perhaps, the most important aspect of Greenopolis. The developer has a real-world parent company, the giant trash-handling company Waste Management, which has the in-game Greenopolis Recycling Kiosks placed, in reality, at grocery stores and other locations nationwide. These kiosks offer users a unique way to earn virtual currency: recycling real-world trash. It’s not yet clear that such extensive effort is warranted, since the players have yet to arrive, but the real-world tie-in should provide great marketing for the game, provided that it’s as widespread as Greenopolis states.

Despite some complaints, Oceanopolis earns brownie points for trying to teach users a bit more about the environment, and not trying to be another FarmVille, Social City, or Restaurant City. Yes, the game is still rather basic, but the interconnection between elements such as water, food, and energy does open up options for greater depth and even potential strategic choices. In the end, this new Greenopolis app is much improved from earlier versions, but still has more than enough room to learn and grow.

As a final note, the developers have given us word that readers can also redeem the promotional code “InsideSG” for a free 200 coins in-game.

After a fairly big wave of hiring last week, we have found nine developers making changes this week, according to LinkedIn as well as information sent in by the companies. While a few are merely internal shifts, most are hiring new faces, including a few big positions as well.

Kabam, in particular, announced three major hires. Former Blizzard artist, Mike Dashow, is joining the team as their new Art Director, Sheridan Hitchens becomes the new VP of Product & Revenue, and Tim Villanueva joins as the EVP of Engineering. Aside from this, Jacob McMahon becomes the new Director of Operations – Social for PopCap Games.

If there’s anyone we missed, and your company is bringing on new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email editor (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get it into this or next week’s post.

As for people who are hiring, be sure to check out our Inside Network Job Board.

Here’s this week’s list:

Ayogo Games

• Jesse Spink — Vancouver-based Ayogo Games sent us this information, as the social company hires Spink as their new Creative Director. His past experience stems from interactive firms and brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola, British Airways, Müller, and more.

Kabam

• Chris Casey — Formerly of Quality Assurance for 5TH Cell Media, Casey joins Kabam as a QA Analyst.
• Mike Dashow — A former Artist and Art Director for Blizzard Entertainment, Dashow joins Kabam as their new Art Director.
• Sheridan Hitchens — Hitchens also joins Kabam, but as their new VP of Marketing & Product Management. Previously, Hitchens was VP of Product Management for PlayFirst.
• Tim Villanueva — Also noted prior, Villanueva becomes EVP of Engineering for Kabam. Before this, he was CTO of TurnHere, Inc.

Metrogames

• Mariano Semelman — A single hire for Metrogames as Semelman, a former Developer for Zauber, joins the team as “Desarrollo de Juegos.”

MindJolt

• Chinmay Chandragiri — MindJolt also comes with a single hire this week, as Chandragiri joins the team as a new Software Engineer. Prior experience was as a Data Automation Engineer at The Find, Inc.

Playdom

• Robert Anthony — Only an internal change from Playdom, this time around, as Anthony changes roles from QA Lead to Product Manager.

Playfish

• Stuart Leneghan — Previously a Technical Analyst for Broadridge, Leneghan joins Playfish as a Server Side Developer.
• Arun Horne — Formerly the Vice President of Goldman Sachs, Horne joins Playfish as another Server Side Developer.
• Johnson Lieu – Now a Sr. Business Analyst for Playfish, Lieu was previously a Consultant for Monitor Group.

PopCap Games

• Jacob McMahon — The former President of Gas Powered Games joins PopCap this week, becoming their new Director of Operations – Social.

RockYou!

• Josh Forester — Forester joins RockYou! as a new Community Advocate. Prior to this, he was a Localization Lead & Community Manager at Changyou.com (US) Inc.

Zynga

• Kai Jing — Now a Sr. Release Engineer for Zynga, Jing was previously a SCM/Build/Release Engineer for SugarCRM.
• Edmund Leo — Leo joins Zynga as a new 3D Artist this week. Before this, he was a Sr. Environment Artist for LucasArts.
• David Newton — Some internal changes stemming from the Conduit Labs acquisition as Newton becomes a Senior Graphic Designer under Zynga. At Conduit Labs, he was a Senior UI/Flash Designer.
• Angie Canary — A former Associate Producer for Changyou.com (US) Inc., Canary joins Zynga as their newest Game Designer.
• Terry Yee — Previously the Global Product Strategy Manager for Suntech Power, Yee is now the Cafe World Product Manager for Zynga.
• David Rippy — As part of the Bonfire Studios acquisition, Bonfire’s former President, David Rippy becomes a new General Manager for Zynga.
• Sam Shafik — Also from Bonfire Studios, Shafik shifts roles from an Artist under Bonfire to an Animator under Zynga.
• Trey Ford — The former Product Manager for the SaaS Business Unit at McAffe, Ford joins Zynga as their new Manager for Security Response.
• Doug Kaufman — In another internal change, Kaufman changes roles from Senior Designer to Design Director: Zynga East.

[Editor's note: Stewart Putney is CEO of Moblyng, a company that specializes in HTML5 development and publishing.]

Zynga’s recent acquisition of HTML5 game engine developer Dextrose AG could be viewed, on the surface, as just another purchase in a slew of buys they’ve made this year. In fact, it’s a clear statement that HTML5 is the future of social game development — particularly for mobile.

Why is this acquisition so important? With the capabilities of HTML5, developers will be able to create richer, higher-quality games that will engage existing users while bringing on new ones. Dextrose AG built a product called the Aves Engine — a scalable HTML5 engine for isometric-view games like Farmville or Café World. Using this engine, Zynga can extend their existing isometric games, or build new titles using HTML5. There are already multiple companies that use HTML5 apps for mobile. But with the potential addition of Zynga isometric titles, we may begin to see all major genres of social games developed in HTML5.

The advantage for developers in using HTML5 is the ability to leverage their code across multiple platforms. All major smartphone platforms support a different type of native code, but the one commonality is HTML5. The iPhone, Android, WebOS, Backberry 6.0, Bada and Nokia’s Symbian and Meego all support HTML5 apps. Even Windows Phone 7 will roll out support in the next year. As smartphones become the largest but also most fragmented market for games, developers must leverage technology that maximizes reach but minimizes cost — HTML5.

And allowing players to take their desktop games to mobile without compromising user experience is a game-changer. We’re talking about more apps, with richer features, on more platforms, ultimately resulting in more engagement and a significant increase in users. Of course, revenues will grow as well.

Right about now you may have some questions:

• Don’t native apps work better and use more features of the phone? Quite simply, no. All major smartphone platforms allow a developer to build native apps that include a browser instance. At Moblyng we build very thin native app layers that talk to the OS and also use a browser window inside the app. We then build the app in HTML5. The app can talk with the OS through the native layer for full access to OS features. Companies like PhoneGap and Appcelerator provide similar tools, and thousands of apps have been built using this architecture. Developers have the additional benefit of being able to deploy their app directly into the browser when the technology or business case requires it.

• What about performance? We (and our partners) have benchmarked our apps’ startup and response times against numerous social games and our games perform equal to, or better, than competitor’s products. Using tools like Canvas, CSS animations, local storage and web sockets, developers have all the tools they need to build great titles. HTML5 is mature enough that the main factor in game performance is the quality of the development team, not native vs. HTML5. Check out Playdom’s Sorority Life for Android, Moblyng’s Dungeon Quest and Rovio’s Angry Birds for WebOS and see for yourself.

• What can’t HTML5 do? Right now, HTML5 is not the best way to build “fast-twitch” 3D games like shooters and many high-fidelity driving games. These games do require a level of fidelity that will not be supported by HTML5, at least until WebGL matures. But as Zynga’s acquisition of Dextrose AG suggests, HTML5 is more than ready for social and casual games.

• What about Flash? While Flash is an option, the current reality is that Flash does not present the same cross-platform solution as HTML5. On iOS, support is still limited both for technology and business reasons. On Android and WebOS, there are well-documented issues with Flash performance and impact on battery life. Looking forward, as desktop browsers (read: IE9) move towards uniform support of HTML5, we expect to see HTML5 eclipse Flash on all platforms, as developers will be able to build truly cross-platforms games with incredible reach.

It’s important to remember that a huge component of a social game’s success is its reach. You can build the greatest game known to man, but if users don’t have easy access to it, it won’t be a hit. Making users install a Flash plug-in isn’t exactly easy access, and we all know how Flash performs on most mobile phones — it simply doesn’t.

With HTML5, developers can’t do everything just yet, but they have a browser-based technology that allows them to build great games that can reach hundreds of millions of users, with less time and cost. Zynga’s Dextrose AG acquisition is one more signal that developing games in HTML5 is truly a game-changer.

For months, Hi5 president Alex St. John has been calling out (and poking fun at) Facebook in public forums, alleging that the social network is misusing and ignoring its game developers. The talk is no longer just talk: last week, Hi5 finally launched its own game platform, dubbed SocioPath.

Those who have followed St. John’s speeches on social gaming will already be familiar with what SocioPath offers. On Facebook, developers have for months had acccess to the emails of users. With these email addresses as a starting point, Hi5 wants developers to begin moving away from Facebook and establishing themselves as miniature social networks.

Here’s what players would see: on first visiting a game, if the player isn’t logged into a social network, they can play anonymously, without a sign-in. From that initial touch, SocioPath will try to build a relationship. When the player tries to save, they’ll be asked to create a login; later, they’ll be asked to integrate email and social services like Twitter and, yes, Facebook. From there, the game can freely encourage players to Tweet, post or send emails to friends.

Hi5 itself isn’t much of a social network anymore — the company only has dominant market share in Romania and Thailand, and Facebook is growing fast in the latter. But although St. John is asking developers to put their game on Hi5, he expects viral acquisitions from outside of his social network to drive the vast majority of new traffic.

St. John’s expectation is that reaching out through all of a player’s social connections will be more effective than just using Facebook. Players can be anonymous if they like; they can invite friends that they only know online.

This anonymity is a more important component for Hi5 than it might at first appear. “Real identity is a dumb way to do games,” says St. John. “The structure of social networks is a barrier.” With anonymous play, players who want to play with online friends will build new social graphs composed of other gamers, and thus improve the viral spread games. Meanwhile, players who still want to use their real-life networks can do so.

St. John also thinks that social games can do a better job with their own economics (Hi5 eventually hopes to get developers on its monetization platform). “What social games really discovered is that in the online space you can exchange an invite for monetary value,” he says. That relationship with non-paying users needs to be perfected, as well as the technique of using non-paying gamers to amuse the paying audience and create new content.

At the end of the day, St. John agrees that he’s making assumptions about what players want, which can only be born out with time. Real identity has worked outstandingly well on Facebook; will anonymous play with viral hooks do the same job? Will players be open to games off of Facebook, which for many has become the center of the internet? St. John credits his past experience at WildTangent and Microsoft with giving him superior insight into what’s likely to happen next in social.

History is certainly on his side, if the assumption is that Facebook won’t remain the center of a gaming industry forever — no website has in the past. But Hi5 also doesn’t give Facebook credit for its strengths, like steadily reducing the effort required of players to virally share a game.

With its most recent changes, Facebook is removing player effort entirely through “discovery stories”, which automatically tell a user’s friends what they’re playing. Discovery stories aren’t yet proven to work — some developers doubt they’ll be effective — but for now Facebook still has an edge in ease of use over any other platform.

So St. John’s assumptions have to work out for Facebook’s importance to recede, as well as another prediction he considers inevitable: that bidding for paid player acquisitions, through performance advertising, will pass the lifetime value of players and ultimately cause a crash in the social gaming market.

That scenario is certainly possible over time, but Facebook itself has some say in how much it allows its game market to overheat, through its control of viral channels. For now, Facebook is still the center of the social gaming universe. Whether Hi5 can secure its all-important initial toehold will become evident later this year and into next spring, when the results of SocioPath’s first wave of games come in.