Despite its $2 billion market cap, Betfair isn’t a widely known name locally. The company’s main gambling business is illegal in the United States, and gained little notoriety from its minority-share investment in Kabam, back when that company was called Watercooler and built a wider range of apps. But Betfair is coming to Silicon Valley anyway, drawn by new technologies and the possibility of changed regulation.

Betfair’s big business is an online betting exchange, meaning that gamblers bet directly against one another, with its focus on sports and events like horse racing. It’s a hugely profitable business, with each customer sending about $600 a year to the company through betting commissions.

One reason it’s setting up shop locally is an upcoming change in California law. Starting in May 2012, Californians will be legally allowed to bet on horse races, thanks to a recent change in law.

It’s not clear exactly how social game developers could take advantage of this new law, or how Betfair could use social for its new US subsidiary. But CEO David Yu says he’s looking for partnerships to help figure it out. “Ideally we could make social products for territories where gambling is not legal,” Yu told us, giving consumer education on betting terminology and gameplay as a possible use case for an app.

Other states could add carve-outs for horse racing, or the Federal government could decided to re-admit online gambling companies to the US — a measure that is getting a push in the current lame-duck session of Congress. If anything passes, it makes sense for BetFair to be ready.

The company also plans to hire from the social game industry, and is looking for mobile app developers to build apps for other countries on its open platform.

If new gambling laws did pass in the US, the social game industry could be in for a shock; some industry watchers have opined that social games wouldn’t be nearly as successful if online gambling were allowed. Zynga, with its popular Zynga Poker, could probably cash in, while others might suffer. But passage of a new bill isn’t terribly likely for now, so Betfair will be just one more big fish in the pool.

On our Monday and Wednesday AppData lists of fastest-growing games, Digital Chocolate has taken the top spot several times in a row. Now the company has conspired to take over our Friday list of emerging Facebook apps, too, with one of its newer games, Island God. The apps on this list are growing fast, but still under a million monthly active users:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Island God	849,305	+612,201	+258%
2.	THE WTF GAME	812,539	+310,258	+62%
3.	CSI: Crime City	966,822	+215,419	+29%
4.	Vegas	871,994	+214,401	+33%
5.	TRY TO PASS THIS GAME	421,740	+209,482	+99%
6.	Prizee Jackpot	724,186	+177,529	+32%
7.	Happy Hospital	296,031	+171,555	+138%
8.	Epic Fighters	169,483	+169,477	+2,824,617%
9.	FameTown	434,500	+169,019	+64%
10.	Little War	309,710	+159,921	+107%
11.	super spacer	544,023	+135,102	+33%
12.	pegale a justin barbie	440,048	+134,898	+44%
13.	Bubble Paradise	807,772	+134,488	+20%
14.	Super Crayon	641,721	+128,009	+25%
15.	Legacy of a Thousand Suns	137,642	+127,121	+1,208%
16.	How fast can you write?	732,603	+121,105	+20%
17.	Clash of Kingdoms	329,219	+119,732	+57%
18.	Boyaa Texas Poker	336,861	+109,765	+48%
19.	WSOP Poker	706,130	+104,036	+17%
20.	Mighty Pirates	271,521	+94,977	+54%

Island God is a pretty good game, but that’s not the whole story with Digital Chocolate. The company is driving hard to reach the size of one of the top four Facebook game developers. At current growth rates, that might not take long; the company should clear 25 million monthly active users this week. On the above list, it also has Epic Fighters.

THE WTF GAME and TRY TO PASS THIS GAME are the same app with different names. It’s an old web favorite: with your mouse cursor you control an object, and a character jumps around the screen trying to take it. In the case, the object and character are a fruit and a gorilla.

CSI: Crime City is about to cross a million MAU. It’s also the first really successful app from giant French game maker Ubisoft, which has tried and missed with a number of other titles. CSI benefits both from being based on a hit show, and being a little closer than some of Ubisoft’s other attempts to existing games (although it’s still unique).

And, staying within the top five, the last app we’ll point out is Vegas. This is one of the rare games we see from an unknown developer, in this case Vitamin Games, that looks well-polished and smart all around. Unfortunately, the game is already having a bit of trouble with retention, with its percentage of MAU coming back daily having fallen to 10 percent. Vitamin appears to be iterating fairly quickly, so it may yet solve the problems.

Each time we look at Apple’s top app ranking, we see more developers making visible use of Apple’s Game Center. The latest application we’ve found to make strong use of these social elements is Gun Bros, top-down, shoot-em-up style game from Glu.

Similar to a recently reviewed app from Half Brick, Age of Zombies, Gun Bros is a digital spoof on 1980s action flicks. Filled with mindlessly entertaining gun-and-run mechanics, coupled with asynchronous social play, it’s a fun time to be had for the all-encompassing price of $0. Of course, as a free app, it relies both on virtual currency and advertisement, which, while it attempts to be unobtrusive, got itself in the way of play rather often.

Players control one of the two gun brothers as part of F.R.A.G.G.E.D., or the Freakishly Rugged Advanced Galactic Enforcement Division, as they gun down wave after wave of cybernetic-looking baddies. Controlled via two digital analog sticks, the game feels fairly fluid, with lack of tactile feedback becoming a problem only rarely.

As players take down enemies — with the help of their non-player Gun Bro — increasingly difficult waves will begin to appear ranging from boss style enemies, to gun touting troopers, to self-repairing robots. Additionally, with a pair of planets available (and more being added over time) and unlockable stages of difficulty called “Revolutions” there is a respectable amount of challenge that helps to mitigate game play stagnation.

In addition to enemies, different levels also incorporate various environmental aspects to help the user out when things get tough. Sometimes, these can be simple objects such as exploding barrels (which take a surprising amount of damage to trigger) to area of effect weaponry that can slow down all enemies on screen.

What makes the game more interesting, is that as players complete waves, they receive multipliers that augment the amount of income they receive. This “income” is dubbed “Xplodium”, and can be converted to in-game currency after the player has died. This currency has its own mechanic, as players can convert it instantly, or purchase (for either in-game coin or the virtual currency War Bucks) Xplodium refineries that will take anywhere from five minutes to 24 hours to convert the resource with a higher coin exchange rate (e.g. the 24 hour refinery has a 500% return).

This is particularly useful, as players utilize this income to purchase and upgrade their character’s armor and defense with snazzy new threads that augment speed, defense, or attack power, as well as every weapon under the rainbow, from simple machine guns to oversized ordinance like the “WTF7000.”

Also available for purchase are in-game power-ups that can be activated mid-mission to bail the player out of tight spots. These include dramatic defense, health, and damage boosts.

The real gem of Gun Bros, however, is the social element called the “Brotherhood.” When users are logged into the Game Center, they can access the Bros of any of their friends, regardless of their level. From here, they can play through the various waves with their friends’ characters and make use of their arsenals to help progress faster. Additionally, whenever a friends makes use of one’s avatar, that avatar will also earn a small amount of experience and bonus rewards (though such rewards are only earned once per day). Unfortunately, since the Game Center doesn’t play nice with older generation iPhones, — which can’t support iOS 4.1 — not everyone will be able to make use of this feature.

As for the style of this game, everything feels like a spoof of 1980s action movies (e.g. Rambo), and is tailored specifically for the male demographic. From ridiculously huge guns, to hyperbolically worded instructions, to buxom, bikini clad women holding missiles, it’s a game that knows who it’s targeting.

The biggest problem with Gun Bros is the ubiquitous advertising. On a number of occasions, these bugged out from their little banner spot and into the middle of the menu screens, effectively obscuring half the screen.

Nevertheless, when Gun Bros is working properly, it’s a good bit of fun. Of course, without an iPhone that can support iOS 4.1, the Game Center features can’t be utilized and the game’s full potential can never be reached. All the same, it is a free app and a good amount of fun for guys looking for something social to do other than farming. It may not be Call of Duty, but it’s a good time killer all the same.

January 25th | San Francisco

As we announced recently, Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, our second conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is happening January 25th in San Francisco. We’re excited to see all of the developers and entrepreneurs that are planning to attend!

Today, we’re excited to announce 3 new speakers for Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011: Anil Dharni, Co-founder of Funzio and Founder of Storm8; Jens Begemann, Founder & CEO of Wooga; and Eric Goldberg, Managing Director of Crossover Technologies. They will be joining our full list of speakers below.

Finally, if you’re considering attending Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, take advantage of early registration pricing and sign up now. A limited set of early registration tickets are currently available at the Early Admission price of $249. This price will be good through Friday November 19th only, so we encourage you to register now.

At Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, executives and experts from Facebook, leading social networks, mobile platforms, social game and app developers, media companies, virtual goods and payment services, and investors will be discussing the future of social platforms and virtual goods monetization in social games and apps from a global perspective.

Who’s Speaking?

We’re honored to present the following confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011:

	Bret Taylor CTO, Facebook		Eric Chu Group Manager, Android Platform, Google
	Kevin Chou Co-founder and CEO, Kabam		Vish Makhijani SVP Business Operations, Zynga
	Rick Thompson Co-Founder, Playdom (now part of Disney), and Investor		Peter Relan Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
	Rex Ng Co-Founder and CEO, 6waves		Deborah Liu Commerce Product Marketing, Facebook
	Sean Ryan EVP and GM Games, News Corp		Bill Gossman CEO, hi5
	Anil Dharni Co-founder, Funzio; Founder, Storm8		Jason Oberfest VP Social Apps, ngmoco:) (now part of DeNA)
	Jens Begemann Co-founder and CEO, Wooga		Eric Goldberg Managing Director, Crossover Technologies
	Atul Bagga VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity		Manu Rekhi GM Games and Platform, MySpace
	Raph Koster VP Creative Design, Playdom (now part of Disney)		Eric Eldon Editor, Inside Network
	Justin Smith Founder, Inside Network

Key topics for the day will include:

• Growth and User Aquisition on the Facebook Platform
• New and Alternative Social Platforms: Where Do Opportunities Lie?
• Growth and Monetization on Mobile Social Platforms
• M&A Landscape for Small & Midsize Developers
• Monetization on Facebook in a Credits World

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco

Social applications first emerged in 2007, and are today maturing into a global media ecosystem. With the launch of the Facebook Platform, followed by platforms from MySpace and other social networks, developers worldwide could leverage the social graph to create new kinds of social experiences never before possible.

Now, three and a half years later, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry, punctuated by numerous major acquisitions by the world’s leading media companies and developers. But now, new challenges are emerging, affecting big players and new entrants alike.

Inside Social Apps will investigate the latest trends and challenges for social applications, and look at what’s to come for developers throughout the space – including the growth of virtual goods and social applications on mobile devices.

What are the biggest uncertainties and opportunities facing the future of social games and applications in 2011, and who is leading the way?

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 takes place January 25th, 2011 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, and brings together the world’s leading entrepreneurs to weigh in on the future of social app and game monetization.

Inside Social Apps will be a one-day summit led by Inside Network’s Eric Eldon and Justin Smith, and will take in-depth investigative approach to the day’s discussions. At Inside Social Apps, Inside Network will work alongside founders and executives of the top social networking, social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies to analyze the most important issues affecting the industry. Inside Social Apps is geared towards developers on Facebook, iPhone, Android, and emerging online social platforms.

Inside Social Apps will be a content-rich day of critical discussion, followed by an evening and nighttime of casual networking.

Register Now

A limited set of “Early Admission” tickets is available through Friday at a special price of $249. This price will change after Friday, and space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register early.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on January 25th in San Francisco!

Facebook is testing a “Pay Later” option for purchasing goods within social games. Users who have never purchased Credits before can spend Credits they haven’t paid for and repay the balance later. Users can only repay a balance with a credit card or PayPal, not offers, gift cards, or mobile payment. Therefore, the option may be designed to get users to comfortable with buying virtual goods and get them to put their credit card or PayPal details on file with Facebook for quick purchasing in the future.

Facebook has signed deals with all the top social game developers including Zynga to make Credits the exclusive direct payment method. With plenty of games that accept Credits, the biggest barrier to users actively spending is getting their payment information on file. Pay Later, which seems to only be available for some users in some games, addresses this barrier. We obtained this information via an industry source and are currently unable to access the option ourselves.

When a user who has never bought Credits goes to purchase a virtual good, they’ll see a dialogue pop-up asking if they want to pay later and have “Facebook send you a bill for [price of the good in local currency].” They’ll then see their negative Credits balance in red with a link to “Repay” while playing games or using the Games dashboard. Users also receive a receipt for the purchase via email with a link to settle their balance.

Read more on Inside Facebook >

After a fairly average roster last week, the past seven days have been filled with new hires across over a dozen social developers. We’ve received a number of updates direct from the source, as well as data from LinkedIn, showing a number of hires filling major roles in the companies of MocoSpace, Cie Studios, Flying Wisdom Studios, and Loopt.

A few samples: MocoSpace is adding Mark Jung to its Board of Directors, Flying Wisdom Studios acquires a CCO and Director of Business Development with Eric Lindstrom and Sana Choudary respectively, and Loopt hires Aditya Palande as its new VP of Engineering.

As always, if 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.

For those searching for new jobs, be sure to check out our Inside Network Job Board.

Here’s this week’s list:

Digital Chocolate

• Asko Puurula — A single internal change at Digital Chocolate this week as Game Artist Asko Puurula moves up to Lead Game Artist.

Flying Wisdom Studios

• Eric Lindstrom — Eric Lindstrom is joining Flying Wisdom Studios as its new Chief Creative Officer. With 20 years experience, he was previously the CCO of SGN and had prior experience with Electronic Arts and Crystal Dynamics.
• Sana Choudary — We also learned that Sana Choudary has joined Flying Wisdom Studios as its new Director of Business Development. Prior to this, her most recent experience was as VP of Social Game Development at Somatone Interactive.

Kabam

• Nathan Germick — Kabam gains Germick as a new Executive Producer. His prior experience was as Director of Platform Development at Vitesse Learning.
• Victoria Kennedy — Now a User Experience Associate at Kabam, Kennedy was previously a Business Development Associate at Martini Media Network.
• Pascal Aschwanden — Aschwanden joins Kabam as a new Software Architect. Before this, he was a Web Developer at AlikeList, Inc.
• Jason Zhu — Previously an Operations Analyst for Silver Lake, Zhu joins Kabam as a new Online Marketing Analyst.

Loopt

• Aditya Palande — Loopt is the third company with a major hire this week, appointing Aditya Palande as its VP of Engineering. With 20 years of engineering experience, Palande’s most recent position was as a Director at Google.

MindJolt

• Solveig Zarubin — A sole hire for MindJolt this week, Zarubin joins the company as a Senior Producer. Previously she was a Producer at PlayFirst, Inc.

MocoSpace

• Mark Jung — In the last major hire of the week, MocoSpace announced the addition of Mark Jung to its Board of Directors. Currently Chairman of the Board for Songbird and Playhaven, he is also known as a former CEO and co-founder of IGN.

Playdom

• Phil Harlow — Harlow joins Playdom as a new Flash Developer. Prior to this, he was a Client-side Software Engineer at Smith & Tinker, Inc.
• Jeremy Kercheval — Now a Senior Software Engineer at Playdom, Kercheval previously held the same title at Yahoo!

Playfish

• Bhasker Allene — Before joining Playfish as a Java Consultant, Allene was also a Java Consultant for Detica.

PopCap

• Kathy Schmidt — Schmidt joins PopCap as their newest Associate UI Designer. She was most recently a Marketing Designer at Hornall Adnerson Design Works.
• Guy Whitmore — A former Director of Audio for Microsoft, Whitmore joins PopCap as their Studio Audio Director.

RockYou!

• Allyson Willoughby — Now SVP and General Counsel for RockYou!, Willoughby was previously General Counsel at Method Products, Inc.

Wooga

• Miikka Luotio — A new hire for Wooga this week as Luotio joins the company as a new Product Manager. Prior to this, he was an Associate Product Manager at Digital Chocolate.

Zynga

• Ian Brillembourg — Formerly a Global Product Manager at Microsoft Game Studios, Brillembourg joins Zynga as a Product Manager.
• Fernando Alvarez — A new Customer Care Manager, Alvarez was previously a Product Support Manager – Mobile for Yahoo!
• Aaron Ligon — In an internal shift at Zynga, Ligon changes roles from Revenue Analyst to Product Manager.
• Colin Mahan — Previously a Copywriter for EVB, Mahan joins Zynga with the same job title.
• John Pham — A former Global Commodity Manager at Hewlett-Packard, Pham joins Zynga as its new Director of Procurement & Strategic Sourcing.
• Chris Boyle — Now a Web Developer for Zynga, Boyle was also, previously, a Web Developer for Bridge Worldwide.
• Alden Seabolt — Formerly a Marketing Coordinator for UC Davis, Seabolt joins Zynga as an Associate Producer for Texas Hold’Em Poker.
• Vinit Agarwal — A former Researcher at the National Science Foundation, Agarwal is now a Game Designer at Zynga.
• Shell Meggersee — Joining Zynga as a new 2D /3D Artist is Meggersee, whose most recent role was as a Modeler/Texture Artist at Element X Creative.
• William Marsden — Marsden joins Zynga as a new Software Engineer. Before this, he was a Programmer at Steel Penny Games.
• Hernan Alamo — As part of the Challenge Games acquisition, Alamo becomes a Software Engineer under Zynga. While at Challenge Games, Alamo was a Flash Games Developer.

Along with a brand-new game called Happy Hospital, which we reviewed earlier this morning, Wooga is touting a rare achievement today: the company now has more than one game with over a million daily active users each, an achievement which CEO Jens Begemann points out is only shared by Zynga and Electronic Arts on Facebook.

The games are Bubble Island and Monster World, both of which come in just over the mark; the latter just broke through this morning. Wooga only has a total of four games, including the new release.

We chatted with Begemann about Wooga’s progress last night. It’s probably fair to call him ebullient. Only three percent of all Wooga players come from advertising, according to Begemann — a substantial claim, when many developers are complaining that their options to acquire users are narrowing to just cross-promotion and ads.

He points to four channels that fuel Wooga’s growth, three of which are fairly obvious to most developers: cross-promotion, discovery stories and invites between players. The fourth, and less well known, channel driving Wooga’s growth is direct searches on Facebook. Begemann’s theory is that players are learning about Wooga games through word of mouth, and actually taking the time to come search for them on Facebook.

Once you’ve gotten players, they’re only useful if you can keep them, though. “Each user you get, you have to treat like a nugget of gold,” Begemann says. “Virality is icing on the cake.”

Besides Facebook searches, Begemann points to an important change made by Facebook this year: automatic bookmarking and the left-hand navigation bar for games. More than 50 percent of Wooga’s daily active users come through the bookmarks now. “It’s the most important change Facebook has made for 2010,” he says.

Begemann’s theory is that the reality for Facebook developers has made an almost perfect 180 since the social gaming trend started in 2007. Now, virality is of relatively little importance, while retention and engagement rules. For a dynamic view of this change, check out the below Wooga presentation, starting at slide eight. Begemann and a list of other industry leaders will also be speaking at our Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 conference in January — more details here.

We haven’t heard a great deal from MindJolt since the company was bought for $20 million by a group led by former MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, way back in March. But the company has come just back into the news with the announcement of AdJolt, a monetization product for third-party developers.

MindJolt has always focused on publishing small casual games that aren’t good standalone products. For AdJolt, it’s sticking with that base, providing both a targeted ad platform and a set of tools to add virtual currency and powerups to games, according to TechCrunch. And, like other web companies, it’s looking at ways into the iPhone and iPad.

The company claims over $20 million in revenue, as well as having kept up its user numbers over the course of the year. In terms of traffic, that’s not the view that an observer of Facebook would get; when DeWolfe picked up MindJolt, the company was approaching an all-time high of over 21 million monthly active users and 3.5 million daily actives. Both numbers are now halved. However, other social gaming companies on Facebook have grown revenues even as traffic has fallen through using better payment flows, incentives to buy virtual goods, and other methods, and it’s possible that MindJolt has done that as well.

But MindJolt’s attention seems to be on other platforms. And the company’s new business is more akin to Mochi Media, which was acquired for $80 million earlier this year. Both focus on monetizing other developers, taking a significant cut — MindJolt’s will be 50 percent of revenues.

We’ll be examining which alternative social platforms offer the best opportunities for distribution and monetization in 2011 at Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, happening January 25th in San Francisco.

German outfit Wooga is going public with a new title in its Facebook collection: Happy Hospital. Still in its early beta stages, the game has been growing over the past week with a total monthly active user count of around 252,000 and a daily active user count near 66,000.

Somewhat similar to games like Hotel City, Happy Hospital is a virtual space game about curing and caring for cute animals. With simple mechanics, the real draws are the visual style and quirky ailments, both of which are almost certainly designed to attract a primarily female demographic. With the user base growing at an ever increasing rate, this scheme appears to be working.

Players start with a hospital, with the true objective being to decorate and build the nicest virtual space possible. In order to earn enough to build and decorate these rooms, however, players must treat patients. This is where the “cuteness factor” (for lack of a better term) comes into play. Each patient is an animal with a rather bizarre ailment, like the tiny dog dressed as Napoleon with “Napoleon Syndrome,” or the sleeping giraffe that had a toy car drive into its mouth while snoring.

For each illness, different rooms are needed for treatment and will take varying amounts of time (the longer treatments reward greater coin and experience, and can be sped up by one hour by consuming slowly recharging energy). Also, some critters will need multiple rooms for treatment. Assuming players have the rooms needed — such as a examination room or a physical therapy room — the creature will make its way up and start treatment under the eyes of an obviously qualified physician, like a goldfish.

However, before the timer for treatment officially starts, players must power up the machines. This is done by batteries that are won through a slot machine already in the hospital. For a small amount of coin, players can win varying amounts of batteries to power their machinery.

As players progress and level up, more rooms and treatments become available. Despite new visuals, it’s basically more of the same play-wise, but there is a level of amusement with seeing each new ailment. The only truly unique aspect that we’ve stumbled across thus far is the “Fountain of Youth” room that plays dramatically on the game’s cutsie style.

Once unlocked (by reaching a certain level) players can build this room and treat an elderly animal by turning them into adorable baby animals. Since batteries and water would be a bad idea, this treatment is powered by gems, which can be found in a magic flower outside the hospital every couple of hours. Once friends unlock this room, their hospital can be visited and their gems collected as well. Treating these “Elders,” as they are called, rewards much more coin and experience, but will only appear after so many regular patients have been treated.

As for other social elements, they consist of the usual suspects for virtual spaces. This means leaderboards, visiting each other’s space, and earning a small amount of income for doing so (by finding some random blue bird). It’s a bit basic, but past Wooga games, like Monster World, also started out basic and succeeded anyway.

In the end, some might mark Happy Hospital’s simplicity as a drawback, but considering the clear target audience and the increasing growth rate of the game over the past week or so, it really shouldn’t be. Wooga seems to have homed in on a group of players who enjoy the specific style of their games, and it would be surprising if Happy Hospital doesn’t do as well as past titles.

These days, new Zynga releases have become a rare thing. For that reason alone, the upcoming launch of CityVille, its latest Facebook game, will get the attention of the industry. But the title’s production quality and ambitions are going to as well.

Zynga has been giving press previews of CityVille in anticipation of its release, which will likely happen before the end of the month. Even the short demo we received said volumes about what Zynga has been thinking about during its six-month lapse between games, including internationalization, social mechanics and mobile gameplay.

CityVille, as the name suggests, is a city building game. You start out with a city named “Ville”, which is mostly an empty green patch surrounded by forest on one side and water on the other. The game map is simply huge, and all of it will eventually be open to building on. During play, that will likely take a while; where most virtual space games let players buy an expansion that pushes their territory out in all directions from the center, CityVille’s expansions will come in small blocks in a direction of your choosing.

The art is worth extra attention up front. While it’s obviously high-quality, given the budget Zynga has for new projects, the really interesting detail is the 3D game engine. This should make it easier for Zynga to release a successful mobile version, possibly with the help of its recent acquisition, Dextrose AG.

In the gameplay itself, Zynga has followed its FrontierVille model of cherry-picking the best mechanics of its own and others’ games. CityVille may have even more unique aspects than Zynga’s previous hit, though.

CityVille’s focus in the beginning is simply on constructing your town, from a startlingly wide array of building categories: houses, businesses, roads, decorations, farm plots, shipping, community buildings and wonders all make an appearance. Three of those seem most important: homes, business and shipping.

Businesses are where you make your money, but they also include the game’s other important resource, “goods”. While most city games have players restock their businesses using virtual currency, CityVille introduces goods as a second resource to balance against cash.

Goods can be produced by specialized buildings, but they can also be delivered by shipping structures, which include trains and ships. This is where the game starts to get really interesting. As the game progresses, you can start sending trains and ships to your friends to either sell or acquire goods. The train mechanic is likely inspired in part by Lucky Train, a smaller title that has been fairly successful.

You can thus choose, from a fairly early point, to focus on either making money or making goods, which the aim of creating a trade economy with friends.

There’s more to trade than just buying and selling goods. You can also create franchise businesses in a friend’s city. For each type of business you place in others’ cities — a bakery, for example — you get a corporate headquarters that can be placed in your own town.

Having businesses abroad creates a good reason to regularly visit friends, as the businesses are more beneficial to both parties if they’re maintained by the franchise owner. As the game goes on, older players should be kept engaged by a feeling of responsibility to other players.

Decorations play an important part in the game as well. As in Millionaire City, which has become Facebook’s most successful city-builder, decorations improve surrounding buildings within a certain radius; for example, a flower bush could improve earnings at a business by 10 percent.

The last part of CityVille that’s core to the game is quests. It has become quite common for social games to use quests to guide players through a tutorial, but in CityVille they’ll be creating an ongoing story that even experienced players can take part in, according to the CityVille general manager Sean Kelly.

CityVille thus offers an array of play styles. You can focus on building up your own city and decorating, or you can become a trade and franchising baron; or, if you want a plotline, you can work on getting through the quests.

Wonders, cars and a few other features are visible, but currently unavailable; they’ll be added to the game over time.

Without having spent much time with the game, we can say that it looks highly engaging, and will probably be a significant success. Zynga has put extra effort into making sure it can find enough players for CityVille by translating the game into Spanish, French, Italian and German — users that together account for around 150 million Facebook users.

The one risk to the game is the use of a real economy — over time, Zynga hopes that trade between players will help set the price for goods. It’s not a full-fledged economy, but it could present some balancing problems. On the other hand, trade makes for a stronger step toward social play than we’ve seen from most games to date, and should help evolve the social game landscape as a whole.