The first English-language Facebook game by Chinese company 活力飼舍 is Happy Tribe, a title that uses war game mechanics for a primarily player vs player game. Although the graphics and gameplay are generally solid, the play experience is marred by poor localization and lack of documentation.

Happy Tribe combines mechanics Facebook RPGs such as Crime City and Mafia Wars, along with elements from strategy games like Starcraft or Command and Conquer. Gameplay involves harvesting resources, building your village, training warriors, casting spells, defeating invaders, and eventually attacking or defending yourself from other players and collecting taxes from the defeated.

The primary resources of Happy Tribe are food, population, magic, and combat power. Going in order, food is required to build, population determines your maximum number of warriors, magic is used in spells and combat power determined how strong your army and warriors are. Generally, the majority of the single player game is spent waiting for your production buildings to complete their production cycles, as there are no other tasks to accomplish. There isn’t much of a shortage of resources, and in the early levels you’re primarily bottlenecked by a lack of production buildings, which you can’t build more of until later levels.

In building your city, “cruel natives” and other wild fauna will appear around your village, threatening your safety and well-being. While these threats don’t actually attack you, you can fight them off and collect experience, food, and rare items from them. Fighting them consumes a certain number of combat power points, which you’ll have to rebuild later.

Spells in Happy Tribe are cast from special buildings such as temples and ziggurats. These buildings not only require food to build, but also require rare resources such as giant skulls and wood to complete. Players can find these through killing natives and some other special in-game promotions, and can also purchase them with premium credits, costing real money. More spells are available as you build higher level buildings and do tasks like destroying enemy warriors or summoning great beasts for you to defeat and collect resources from.

The player vs player and only real social aspect of the game is shallow at best, and only allows you the ability to attack and steal from your friends.  Unlike Crime City or Mafia Wars where you’re given a list of random players you can attack, you can only attack other players you’ve added as friends.  Upon initiating an attack, you simply allocate a number of warriors to the attack and hope it works out.  Once a village is defeated, you can tax it to gain resources as well as “tease” the subjugated player, which earns you additional food and publishes the humiliation on his wall.  You’re also able to liberate friends who have been conquered, sometimes will fight off people trying to attack you, but without the ability to formalize alliances or send resources, your only real way of interacting with other players is through combat.

The gameplay of Happy Tribe is simple enough, but the poorly done localization makes the game much harder to play than it should.  In some cases, the mechanics of the game aren’t explained clearly or at all, leaving some large amount of trial and error to determine how to play the game.  Apart from translation and writing issues, the “cruel natives” of the game fit the cutesy atmosphere but could inspire some ire, especially from US audiences, for being drawn in blackface.

All in all, Happy Tribe is a simple player vs player game where you gather resources, build your village and attack your friends.  While simple enough to pick up and play, the flaws in localization make the game more difficult and less enjoyable than it might be otherwise.

January 25th | San Francisco

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, our second conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is happening January 25th in San Francisco.

Often, the best way to understand an industry and its influencers is in an informal setting. We invite you to kick back and get to know the industry’s most influential developers at the Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 afterparty. The Inside Social Apps afterparty will feature a limited-time open bar, appetizers, and great networking! It will take place in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco, and is only open to registered attendees.

Inside Social Apps is just weeks away — last year’s event was sold out, so we encourage you to register now.

Who’s Speaking?

At Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, executives and experts from Facebook, Google, 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.

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
	Kristian Segarstrale Co-founder and CEO, Playfish (now part of EA)		Vish Makhijani SVP Business Operations, Zynga
	Kevin Chou Co-founder and CEO, Kabam		Peter Relan Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
	Rick Thompson Co-Founder, Playdom (now part of Disney), and Investor		Jason Oberfest VP Social Apps, ngmoco:) (now part of DeNA)
	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		Paul Bettner GM, Zynga with Friends
	Jens Begemann Co-founder and CEO, Wooga		Eric Goldberg Managing Director, Crossover Technologies
	Carey Kolaja Senior Director, Digital Goods Operations, PayPal		Raph Koster VP Creative Design, Playdom (now part of Disney)
	Atul Bagga VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity		Manu Rekhi GM Games and Platform, MySpace
	Matthaeus Krzykowski Founder, Xyologic		Asokan Thiyagarajan Dir. Platforms & Tech. Strategy, Samsung
	Justin Smith Founder, Inside Network		Eric Eldon Editor, Inside Network

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 $299. 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 at Inside Social Apps!

Over the past six months, cross-promotion between games on Facebook has become one of the most vital tools for small developers to grow their apps. Digital Chocolate, one of the largest developers on the platform, is releasing its own third-party cross-promo bar today, the VIP Games Network.

The first third-party cross-promotion bar to grow large was Applifier, which was followed by AppStrip. Both use the same exchange model, in which developers get 0.9 clicks back for every 1 they send out; the extra clicks left over are sold by the service.

VIP Games Network is undercutting the competition by starting as a straight 1 to 1 exchange. It will also offer analytics and ad optimization tools to measure the results.

The negative side to this model, at least for some developers, is that the network will be selective, only accepting games that meet Digital Chocolate’s quality standards.

The advantage to Digital Chocolate seems fairly obvious. If it can pick and choose which games go on the network, the company can tailor the selection to be beneficial to itself, including only games with desirable players who may not have been exposed to Digital Chocolate’s games before.

Self-interest on the part of Digital Chocolate shouldn’t hurt other developers who are accepted to the network, since they’ll have an equal opportunity to reach high-quality players who haven’t been exposed to their games before.

Of course, Applifier, the largest cross-promotion network, has also been selective in the developers that it accepts, and most developers using it have reported good results. The real advantage to the VIP Games Network will be the straight 1:1 exchange; Digital Chocolate can forgo profiting from the network indefinitely, since it has its own lucrative stable of games.

The analytics tools could also prove valuable, and Digital Chocolate COO Jason Loia says that the network could eventually extend to other platforms.

Look for competition to heat up in the cross-promotion space in coming weeks. Most developers will only want to run one cross-promo bar, but Applifier is unlikely to go down without a fight, and AppStrip was recently acquired by TapJoy, which will likely work to capture a new clientele with the bar.

The Inside Network Job Board is 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 Wooga, Games Cafe, Kontagent, and Meteor Games and Luna Digita.

• Designer – Social Games (Berlin, Germany)

• Social Game Designer (Calgary, AB – Canada)

• Enterprise Sales Executive (San Francisco, CA)

• Director, Product Management (Beverly Hills, CA)
  
• 2d Artist w/ Flash Experience (Beverly Hills, CA)

Luna Digita, Inc.

• Social Game Producer (San Mateo, 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. 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.

The folks over at Kabam are expanding their collection of strategy games with a new Facebook launch, Glory of Rome. The successor to Kingdoms of Camelot, this title seeks to recreate the app’s popularity by tailoring itself for gamers seeking a more in-depth game play experience. Those that have played Kingdoms of Camelot, Evony, Verdonia, or other similar titles will quickly recognize almost all the features, excepting only handful of interesting social changes.

Players take the role of Dominus or Domina and are tasked with creating (or recreating) the Roman Empire in their own name. For experienced strategy player, the basics are not terribly difficult. There are six primary resource to monitor: food, lumber, stone, iron, silver, and population.

As one would expect, earning each of these is tied to structures that are built outside of the player’s main city. Filling up over the course of a day or so, players must return to claim the products, lest further harvesting cease. Additionally, silver is earned by taxes (which can be adjusted) and the population, which creates an actual labor force for resource buildings or troops for the army.

There are also entertainment buildings that can be placed, such as the Coliseum, to boost the happiness level of the player’s empire. What’s interesting is that happiness is not earned simply by placing a Coliseum. Doing so actually unlocks events, such as chariot races, that can be run. Some will boost happiness, while others (such as “Tax Day”) will boost coin.

Researching new technologies is also possible. Taking varying amounts of time to complete, these increase the efficiency of various game aspects such as labor and troops. Buildings can also be upgraded to boost efficiency as well; only this time, it affects features such as harvesting and production time.

Production time refers, mainly, to troops. Glory of Rome, like most of its predecessors, is a slow burn game, so users probably won’t be constructing any armies right away. Nevertheless, this eventually becomes the whole point of the game. As users queue up units for battle (with more unlocking as their respective buildings are upgraded), they can begin moving about the world map and waging war on other players.

Technically speaking, the game is a free-for-all, but as time goes on, the prospect of Alliances begins to unveil itself. Again, like past apps, these become prudent investments as new players are only protected from attack for a week or so.

Kabam has added in a few asynchronous social elements as well. Besides wall posts for special achievements, players can use friends to help expedite the building construction process. Early on, this isn’t wholly necessary, but as buildings and building upgrades reach higher levels, the time it takes to complete each can take several hours to over a day. Through a wall post, users can request help from friends, and clicks will shorten the construction time.

Another social mechanic worth mentioning is actually a lot like the typical Facebook role-playing game. In order to gain extra boosts, players can appoint a friend to a “General” role and receive a bonus to construction, troops, research, and so forth. If that weren’t enough, players are also granted the grace of a Roman god (which they choose at the beginning). Depending on the chosen deity, players can offer “sacrifices” to boost some particular stat by a percentage. As an example, Ceres can boost the amount of resources a player gathers. Furthermore, sacrifices are items that can be requested through yet more wall posts.

The biggest problem with Glory of Rome, is that despite the social additions it holds, it’s essentially a repeat of a well-worn concept. With its acquisition of WonderHill, which brought it Dragons of Atlantis,  Kabam now has three games in the same mold. This is understandable, since the company’s success is built on Kingdoms of Camelot, and a repeat performance is obviously desirable. But Kabam may also find itself pushing up against a limited number of players on Facebook who want to experience the same game concept, an ill that only a more original game could cure.

CityVille is nearing FarmVille in both monthly and daily users, as we can see on this week’s AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook games by daily active users. The new game is within about a million DAU of the old. Several other new games also have impressive gains:

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	CityVille	15,667,523	+4,111,826	+36%
2.	Zuma Blitz	1,244,959	+475,276	+62%
3.	Monster Galaxy	477,666	+289,754	+154%
4.	Treasure Isle	3,158,593	+203,639	+7%
5.	Zoo World	875,255	+194,552	+29%
6.	Pet Society	2,316,823	+173,711	+8%
7.	Ninja Saga	1,134,280	+163,586	+17%
8.	Traveler IQ Challenge	153,909	+148,593	+2,795%
9.	開心農場	1,329,727	+136,915	+11%
10.	Games	1,449,105	+108,189	+8%
11.	Restaurant City	1,937,782	+106,307	+6%
12.	Texas HoldEm Poker	6,755,655	+100,001	+2%
13.	Birthday Cards	576,157	+93,346	+19%
14.	MindJolt Games	1,870,231	+84,672	+5%
15.	แฮปปี้คนเลี้ยงหม	635,026	+79,235	+14%
16.	Crime City	945,072	+78,859	+9%
17.	It Girl	884,921	+73,149	+9%
18.	Happy Aquarium	1,549,779	+70,888	+5%
19.	Millionaire City	2,930,897	+55,860	+2%
20.	Hotel City	629,093	+51,620	+9%

We covered CityVille’s growth over the past week this Monday, pointing out at the time that the game would likely surpass FarmVille within three or four days. So far it’s on target, with the magical point possible tomorrow.

The other top gainers are games that we saw getting started earlier this week or last. Zuma Blitz is the latest addicting arcade game from PopCap. The gameplay experience never changes substantially, but the company is keeping users coming back by switching out the game board weekly and running prominent leaderboards — although it also collected some bad reviews during a period of technical troubles.

Monster Galaxy likewise has a high stickiness (ratio of DAU to monthly active users) so far. The game is one of the first on Facebook to really focus on the tween audience that has driven Gaia Online’s other hits; within a few weeks, we should be able to break out demographics for the title.

Most of the remaining titles are older ones that are working back toward previous peaks in DAU. The only other game that’s fairly new is แฮปปี้คนเลี้ยงหม, a Thai game that has been capturing a substantial percentage of Facebook’s total Thai-speaking population.

Some of the best games on the market are those that give players a creative spark. From Scribblenaughts on the Nintendo DS to Little Big Planet on the PlayStation 3, such games have allowed for tremendous creative outlets for users. The latest is Create by Electronic Arts, released on all the major consoles.

Along with the main version, EA has just announced Create for Facebook, which was actually developed by The Game Agency (TGA), a marketing company. Simplified down from its full PC and console counterparts, Create tasks users to manipulate ordinary objects in a Rube Goldberg sort of way, in order to get an object from Point A to Point B. Interesting as it sounds, the presentation of the game is rather lacking. With its puzzle solving coming down to trial and error using the same sets of objects, the game becomes boring very quickly.

The idea is simple. Players are given a balloon, a windmill, a see-saw, a box, and some sort of pinball bumper. Each object has its own set of physics applied to it: balloons pull things upward; windmills push objects; boxes fall; see-saws, well, see-saw; and the bumper bounces objects in the opposite direction. Using these tools, players must get a soccer ball from its starting position to a goal somewhere in the level.

With odd layouts, pitfalls, and spikes, Create makes things a little difficult, as getting stuck or touching a dangerous obstacle will result in failure. Of the five objects, however, players can use as many as they like, anywhere they like, and each will alter the path of the soccer ball in its own fashion. Furthermore, all of the objects can be rotated and affect one another as well.

Though it’s not a totally new concept, it truly is interesting. The real difficulty is that there’s no sure fire way to tell what affect objects will have on each other, so the four puzzles really become tasks of trial and error.

Puzzles is a term used very loosely, for each level is merely a different layout with the same objects. Yes, players can attempt to use these in different ways, but it just becomes uninteresting after a while. A puzzle game needs to provide actual puzzles to the player, not a layout and the concept of “creating your own puzzle.”

In order to try and hold the player’s interest, Create offers a scoring system with bonus points earned for each time the ball interacts with an object or touches pre-placed hoops in the level.

This wouldn’t be so bad if there was more than five things to play with, or even if it looked better. Considering the names behind the game, the presentation is dramatically underwhelming, consisting of basic background, bland levels, and Photoshopped objects. Everything looks and feels sophomoric, save the physics system, which actually works decently well.

Other than score, there’s also no sense of progression in this game (some might call it more of a “toy” then a game because of this). Right off the bat, players get all four “puzzles,” all five objects, and can place as many objects as they want. Nothing is unlocked, nothing is earned, and there isn’t anything gratifying, save a leaderboard system based on scores.

The saving grace to Create is an interesting concept of “sharing” one’s ball. Balls (which users can create more of) can be passed between profiles on Facebook. Additionally, each ball tracks how many people have played with it, how many times it’s been played, and how many places (levels) it’s completed. Furthermore, users can view the creator of the ball and actually see who has used it. Despite all the problems with Create, this feature is pretty neat.

Another aspect of the game that could help it succeed is that since Intel sponsored the development of the app, for the PC launch, users can enter to win a laptop with an Intel Core i5 Processor, as well as a copy of the console game.

But that’s also the real issue. At the end of the day, Create is yet another half-baked Facebook title that exists only to draw publicity for the full console or PC versions. We’ve seen this idea used before (for core games and other products) with games from Sony Ericsson, LucasArts, and other big name companies, and most are failures. Like the concept of gamification, the problem with such titles is that they’ve been created not for fun, but for marketing.

With Christmas just a few days away, the hype of the holiday is at its peak. Social game developers are making the most of it with a tremendous influx of specially themed goods, décor, and game mechanics. From snowmen to Santa, the Christmas theme is showing itself to be far greater than Halloween and completely dwarfing the holidays from 2009.

From big to small, we take a look below at what Facebook games have done for the holiday. We’ve split our review into two broad categories: virtual goods and new features.

Christmas Virtual Goods
Themed virtual goods are easily the most common Christmas addition across all social games. Here’s a compilation of social developers and which games are hosting what:

A Bit Lucky – Lucky Train has about six Christmas-themed houses such as Santa’s House, a Gingerbread House, Toy Factories, and so on. Additionally, players can change the entire theme of their train town to resemble a winter wonderland blanketed in snow.

Players can also gift special, limited time, holiday items such as candy canes, snowmen, and Christmas trees. This plays well into A Bit Lucky’s more interesting holiday contests, which we cover below.

Booyah – Nightclub City, with all of its glitz and glamor, has put in a variety of stylized Christmas club items. These include decorative club items such as snowflake dance floors and “North Pole Dancers”, as well as holiday clothing for avatars and entourages. Complete with Santa hats and tops, the game also takes a goofier approach with Rudolph, Frosty, and Christmas tree avatar outfits.

CrowdStar – As with both Halloween and Thanksgiving, the majority of themed elements to CrowdStar games are virtual items. Of all the titles within the CrowdStar repertoire, It Girl seems to have been most affected, with city streets covered in the sights and sounds of the season.

Yes, sounds. It Girl is the only title we have seen thus far that boasts Christmas songs playing in the background. Beyond the décor, players can also purchase holiday clothing, of the sexier variety, including a Santa and elf outfit.

It Girl aside, virtual Christmas goods can also be found in Happy Pets, Happy Island, and Happy Aquarium. Such items include Christmas colored pets, scuba diving reindeer, and the ever-coveted Santa fish.

Digital Chocolate – The folks over at Digital Chocolate have decided to focus on Christmas virtual goods. Across five games — Millionaire City, Vegas City, Epic Fighters, Ninjas Rising, and Island God — there are 20 plus virtual items for the season.

The two business-oriented apps (Millionaire and Vegas City) contain the most goods, while Epic Fighters and Ninjas Rising host a special Christmas helmet and Santa costume respectively. All, however, have new Christmas themed backgrounds and snowfall.

LOLapps – In Ravenwood Fair, LOLapps is certainly in the holiday spirit with nearly 40 special holiday items. Igloos, snowy river banks, and holiday lights are only the tip of the iceberg. However, much more interesting mechanics are noted below.

Playdom – A good number of Playdom titles are in the Christmas spirit, including Social City, City of Wonder, ESPNU College Town, Wild Ones, Tiki Resort, Tiki Farm, Mobsters, Mobsters 2, My Vineyard, Market Street, and Sorority Life. For the most part, the items are fairly basic, but some are slightly different.

In Tiki Resort, players are being given daily Christmas items until the end of December (players can also gift “Xmas Charm” and Champagne), while in ESPNU Santa randomly flies about from time to time. In fact, City of Wonder has a few visual surprises in this regard as well, with many older items blanketed in snow.

The real treat is a bit more explosive. In Wild Ones, players don’t just get Christmas decorations, they get an entire “Winter Wonderblammed” map in which to blow each other to kingdom come in. And what better way to do this than with a “Snowman Gun”?

Playfish – As one of the larger social game developers, Playfish has a myriad of Christmas themed goods across some of its major titles (Pet Society, Restaurant City, Country Story, and Hotel City).

In Restaurant City, a handful of items come with functionality such as the “Festive Fridge” that serves drinks 10 percent faster. There is even a special Coca Cola vending machine that will earn 50 percent more profit off of beverages. It’s part of a two-week partnership with Coca Cola, a promotion that includes the Coca Cola penguin, polar bear, truck, and Santa.

As for Hotel City, there isn’t much, but come December 22nd, players will receive special “surprise” items just for playing. This special Christmas promotion will run until the 25th.

RockYou! – RockYou has incorporated new Christmas goods into Zoo World. That in mind, they are not mere aesthetics and actually have a much more complex, functional use described below.

Wooga – German outfit wooga is filling its games Monster World and Happy Hospital with well over 30 decorations that range from Christmas trees, to monster-like nutcrackers, to nativity-themed items. Beyond these, Monster World has been completely covered in snow, with the vendor non-player robot, Robert, dressed up as a robotic Santa Claus. Wooga told us that six new virtual goods will make their appearance come New Years.

Happy Hospital is a bit smaller in the virtual goods area, but has also been covered with snow and even comes with a special snowman that gives small rewards to users from time to time.

Zynga – With the biggest social games in its roster, Zynga has plenty of resources to produce holiday goods in FarmVille, CityVille, FrontierVille, YoVille, Café World, Treasure Isle, and PetVille. While most are fairly basic, such as the Ice Furniture Collection in PetVille, many involve the help of friends to construct, such as the Winter Throne chairs in YoVille that require friends to gift parts.

Most of these items are adaptations of past Thanksgiving and Halloween specials. For example, in FarmVille, instead of a haunted house, players can begin making a snowman, asking friends for parts to build it. As they get more parts, the snowman gradually gets fancier until it ends up as a veritable Frosty, complete with dance moves.

Special Christmas Features
While themed virtual goods are all well and good, most developers attempted to do at least one very different thing for the season. Be they contests, limited features, special quests, or new social elements, the following list is a compilation of some of the more interesting new features:

A Bit Lucky – Lucky Train, with its new snow-blanketing theme, is first on the list, and A Bit Lucky makes use of its themed virtual goods and gifts to offer players a chance to win some “Lucky Bucks,” the game’s virtual currency. Dubbed the “Winter County Decoration Contest,” players can view and submit votes on their favorite player counties. The winners earn Lucky Bucks as their prize.

Booyah – In light of the major changes to Nightclub City, players can now create multiple clubs in the game. One such locale is “Holiday Main Street.” A Christmas themed locale is needed to unlock most of the holiday virtual goods for purchase.

CrowdStar – CrowdStar has thrown a handful of special elements into its social titles. Though not as significant as some of its competitors’ additions, players can experience a few interesting features in both Happy Pets and Happy Island. In the former, there is a special “12 Days of Christmas” feature that will give users one gift per day. If all 12 are collected, players will receive a “Glow Elf Cat” as an extra special reward. If any day is missed, that missed item can purchased for virtual currency. Additionally, players can also spin a wheel for a chance at Christmas themed goods. If all five are collected, users earn Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

As for Happy Island, it also makes use of the 12 Days of Christmas promotion, rewarding a Christmas bundle (North Pole Islet, Santa’s Workshop, Reindeer Stable, and a Flying Santa with Reindeer). Additionally, players can create and send Christmas postcards from their island.

Digital Chocolate – The Christmas mechanic of merit for Digital Chocolate is a new creature in Island God called the “Festive Fiend.” A gremlin version of the Grinch, complete with Santa outfit, it randomly terrorizes the player’s islanders. Of course, since the player is a god, they can easily defend their followers with some godly gusto.

LOLapps – Along with purchasable décor, Ravenwood Fair includes two new holiday quests for users to complete. The rewards are a very special Candy House and Santa’s Workshop. Neither item can be bought; they must be earned.

In addition to these, three new avatars have been introduced. The abominable snowman Brumble appears to scare the wits out of the fair’s patrons, while Briggs, the snowman protector, helps to calm them. Also, players may also see the visitor character Hansel, the gingerbread man, who spreads “holiday cheer” to the characters in game.

Playdom – Social City stands out among Playdom’s games for its Christmas additions. Players are able to construct an entirely new city within the “North Pole District.” This means that every single item within the region is holiday themed. All of them. In fact, this area is all about decorative creativity, as there are no factories one can build here.

Players can still put Christmas décor into their main cities, but many of these items are won using the spin feature introduced when Playdom offered Disney-themed items. As a refresher, players can log in and spin a wheel for a small bit of virtual currency and will randomly win one of eight virtual items. Once all eight are collected, they will earn an extravagant “Town Christmas Tree.”

The additions don’t stop here. Playdom also informed us of a new eCard mechanic within Social City. With this, players can take a snapshot of their city and customize it with special messages, borders, and greetings. Those who the eCard is sent to do not have to play Social City, or even have a Facebook account.

Playfish – As it has in the past, Playfish has fairly involved Christmas game mechanics. Restaurant City is the most prominent, with two new mini-games that allow players to save Christmas.

With an ingredient reward, players can learn how to cook a reindeer’s favorite recipe (basically carrots) and must feed 50 of them as they wander around the outskirts of one’s restaurant. Of course, if décor is more appealing, players can also search the snowy virtual outskirts for Santa’s lost presents. Once 40 are found, users can earn a gingerbread window and door.

Country Story is a little less involved, but every day, Santa will bring gifts for players and allow them to send them to friends. Moreover, there is a small mini-game where players can use the help of friends to rescue a reindeer trapped in a stocking.

In Pet Society’s new “Snowflakes Collection,” players collect snowflakes and, should they collect all 12 by the 26th, they will be entered to win one of three Apple Mac Book Airs. Ten runners-up will receive a free PC download from the EA Store (The Sims 3, FIFA 11, or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), while the 10 after that will earn a Pogo Club annual subscription.

RockYou! – Zoo World is using a more involved approach to its Christmas goods, reflecting its Thanksgiving specials. Long story short, Santa has lost his reindeer and users must train new animals to pull his sled. In order to do this, players must first collect all the items needed to do so which includes candy canes, Christmas bells, a reindeer headdress, gingerbread cookies, and a winter scarf.

Each one is earned in different ways: Feeding animals holiday treats (Christmas cupcakes and lollipops) can produce candy canes; gingerbread cookies are earned when friends click a wall post; and bells, headdresses, and scarves are earned through gifting. All of these can be purchased with virtual currency or earned, randomly, from Mrs. Claus who shows up every two hours for a “check-in” opportunity. With five check-ins she gives a random component.

Once everything is acquired, players must ask five friends to help “train” an animal, which also provides the option to turn it into an “ultra rare” version of itself for virtual currency. Additionally, Santa himself visits on three different days, rewarding players with special gifts, should a set amount of animals be trained before his arrival. The special features will run until about January 14th.

Wooga – For Monster World, players that play during Christmas time will notice that their plants are growing rather differently this time of year. Rather than produce the usual, monstrous looking flora, these plants will grow to represent everything from toy blocks to frozen Christmas trees.

As for Happy Hospital, the major new mechanic involves the game’s core concept of treating sick animals. With its quirky ailments, players can now cure a frozen raccoon afflicted with “Icefluenca.”

Zynga – Like Thanksgiving, the biggest changes come from Treasure Isle. Placing a Christmas tree on their island, players can send presents to each other. As more are earned, the tree becomes larger and fancier, and will also grant rewards such as Christmas pets and boats.

The bigger element for the treasure hunting title is the feature to help a frozen Rudolph with friends. While he will get warmer with each day, friends can help expedite the process, and once Rudolph is better, users will unlock entirely new holiday maps to dig in. There is also a set of Christmas quests, tasking players to create elements of the 12 Days of Christmas (e.g. there is a quest to make a Partridge [cookie] in a Pear Tree). Doing these quests will earn significant coin and experience.

FrontierVille also has something interesting along this same thread. Called “The 12 Missions of FrontierVille,” players are given a series of 12 holiday-themed missions to complete in-game. Activated by clicking on carolers near a very Christmas-style toy factory, players can complete these goals for special, daily, rewards. In addition to this, players can earn a new currency “Toys” by helping neighbors, through random daily bonuses, or asking friends. These toys can then be used to redeem special holiday items such as Rudolph or a pink Christmas tree.

Each holiday is getting more and more attention from social developers as they attempt to adapt their top games for the season. From virtual goods, to contests, to special features, each of these listed titles have done something to coax greater user engagement, sharing, and purchasing.

A special thanks to all the developers who sent us screenshots of all their new Christmas features. You can find a full slideshow of these and our own images below:

As often as we hear that Western game developers are looking for a way into China, it’s equally true in reverse — Chinese companies feeling constrained by their market are busy looking for ways to expand outward, as well. The9, originally known as the Chinese publisher of World of Warcraft, is the latest, with a $100 million fund for domestic and international app development.

The9′s core business is in publishing massively multiplayer games, but the company has had some difficulty since losing Blizzard as a client; more recently, it and EA agreed to end its rights to FIFA Online 2.

The move toward mobile dates back to July, when The9 invested an undisclosed amount in Aurora Feint, which runs the OpenFeint mobile social network. Along with the fund, The9 also announced a five-year contract to publish OpenFeint in China today, giving it access to social tools for any apps its fund spawns there.

Shanda, a much larger competitor, has also made note of a growing focus on mobile and social games; in a press release the company put out yesterday, it blamed slipping revenue on a switch to newer product lines.

Along with The9, three Chinese venture funds are in the $100 million fund: Chengwei Ventures, ChinaRock Capital Management, and China Renaissance K2 Ventures.

Turpitude Design may be a newcomer to Facebook, but its studio members have been on the gaming scene since, well, there has been a scene to be had. Most notable among this small, 10-member team is Stieg Hedlund, creator of such seminal titles as Diablo II and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon.  At first glance, its new title Wedding Street feels like quite a departure from Hedlund’s previous endeavors, but a closer look shows the same originality that have distinguished his previous titles.

Wedding Planner might have been a more apt title for the mix of wedding-related tasks: players will variously be a baker, seamstress, reception organizer, and florist (calligrapher to come). As the planner, players will choose up to five weddings to manage.

Each wedding has five characteristics to consider: length, budget, theme, color, and style. The length determines how long the player has to complete the wedding (one, three, or five days) and how many activities must be completed, as shorter weddings have fewer activities. Budget determines how much the player can spend on the wedding. An experienced player quickly learns that a big budget can just as detrimental as a small budget. The bride will become unhappy when a budget is woefully underspent, and some tastes are just difficult to spend.

Theme, color and style determine what the wedding will look like, and a player’s breadth of selection in each will come into consideration when choosing a wedding (or mission). Themes range from Rock’n’Roll, to Casablanca, to roses. Brides have a preferred color, but a range within that color is available – multiple reds, greens, neutrals, or browns. Styles are less specific but no less important, including laid-back, traditional, chic, eclectic, and formal.

The result of this is one of two of Weddings Street’s unique strengths: a tremendous capacity for user-generated content. Using only the default options for shape, a single pattern, one type of edging, one decoration, and a single topper, there are more than 53 billion combinations. Floral bouquets become even more unique as flower placement is freeform, creating a 3D presentation on a 2D frame.

Wedding Streets’ virtual currency system is its second strength. The basic outline looks pretty standard. Additional options for each creation must be purchased with the in-game currency, Honeys. Temporary boosts and permanent upgrades are available for each shop to speed the process, reduce costs, or increase the happiness of the couple. A single job – one cake, one dress – can be sped up and completed for two honeys regardless of whether 14 hours or 14 minutes remain, or all outstanding jobs can be completed for 20 Honeys.

The dependency on premium currency is moderated by the ability for players to earn an unlimited quantity of Honeys each day, beginning with sending coffee to friends. Coffee, of which 22 can be earned per day, speeds up jobs by 20 minutes each, while creating items for friends to use in weddings or to sell in shops earns an additional 22 Honeys per day. Sending friends wedding trivia from throughout the world can earn an unlimited amount of currency. Finally, friends can request that a help completing a wedding once per day; each request earns another honey. The only limitation is that no more than five Honeys per friend can be part of the player’s currency pool at any time – and the “friend” Honeys are spent first.

When asked about the monetization design, Hedlund remarked, “We wanted players to work together so we built in a reward system to encourage it. This allows payers access to a sort of middle-tier of virtual goods. Though it may appear that we are giving away items and losing money, we’ve found that players are more willing to purchase currency.  Research leads us to believe we have a really high monetization rate, approximately three times the norm.”

In other words, impatience and a need to use more expensive items to meet the criteria of a larger variety of weddings encourages the player to purchase the currency.

Some features — upgrades, new design options, and some cosmetic options for the shops — cost only Honeys. On the other hand, boosts and shop managers require the use of coin, which is difficult to obtain in significant quantities without exceptional micro-management. The only way to “purchase” coin is to trade 300 Honeys for 25,000 coin.

A last important component of Wedding Street is sharing. “When it comes to UGC, we think along the lines of ‘make and share’ and our goal was to make it possible for players to create items they wanted show off to their friends,” says Hedlund. “The standard Facebook icon is tiny, and some people don’t want to give permissions to a new game; we wanted people to be able to show their creations from the game without going to the game.”

A lot of care and attention went into the design of Wedding Street. For example, the cityscape changes from day to night with the player’s time zone; the tutorial guide changes clothes periodically; and care was taken to include wedding traditions from throughout the world. But it’s the ability to be creative in a way not previously available as well as a monetization system that truly sets Wedding Street apart.