Facebook game developer Idle Games — the studio backed by Playdom co-founder Rick Thompson — has secured a second round of funding totaling between $10 and $15 million, according to conflicting reports.

VentureBeat reports that the total is $15 million, citing an SEC filing. The total quoted in that document is $14,590,645. AllThingsD, meanwhile, puts the sum at $10 million without indicating a direct source of information — although it’s implied Idle Games CEO and co-founder Jeff Hyman confirmed the total in a statement. Depending on which report is accurate, Idle Games’ total funding is now between $19 and $24 million following Thompson’s initial $9 million investment.

Whatever the case may be, Idle Worship is still in closed beta as of today. The life simulation game puts players in the role of an omnipresent god to a primitive culture of creatures known as Mudlings. While gameplay and art style both set Idle Worship apart as a deeper, richer social game experience than anything currently available on the Facebook platform, the game’s technical achievements seems to be capturing most of the attention. Already, Idle Games has filed a series of patents around cloud-based gaming technology built specifically for this title and Flash developer Adobe consistently name-drops the game as a prime example of the Flash platform’s potential. Read our deep dive on Idle Worship.

Idle Games did not respond to request for comment on its latest round of funding as of press time.

UPDATE: Hyman confirms the total as $10 million. As far as Idle Worship’s release date, he says that beta tests have convinced the developer to take more time polishing the game before release. “Evidentially,” Hyman writes in an email, “building a massively distributed simulation platform providing an unsharded game world with patent-pending asynchronous and synchronous social mechanics … was hard :)”

Hiring remained steady this week in the social gaming space. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources, eight companies hired 11 new employees.

Zynga brought on four new team members, including Jonathan Knight, RockYou’s former senior vice president of games. Knight is now studio general manager at Zynga. PopCap also had a high profile move, taking former Real Network/GameHouse senior marketing manager Van Riker on as franchise manager, but this week’s biggest move was Jason Willig’s promotion from COO to CEO at Booyah.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please get in touch with us. Email us at: mail (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get your news into an upcoming post.

If you want to know who else is hiring, the Inside Network Job Board showcases current openings with the industry’s leading companies.

Booyah

• Jason Willig, CEO - In an extremely high profile shift, Jason Willig is now head of the company, moving up from his position as COO. Keith Lee, Booyah’s co-founder and former CEO will stay on as a strategic advisor.

Funzio

• Joey Gentry, iOS Software Engineer - Funzio makes our roundup with one new hire this week. Gentry comes to the company from OpenFeint, where he was a game integration engineer.

Gaia Interactive

• Kristi Goodwin, Account Executive - Gaia Interactive also adds one new face. Goodwin was previously a Sr. account director at MySpace.

IGG

• Paolo Milana, In-game Translation and QA - Milana makes a lateral move within IGG, where he was formerly an Italian translator.

King.com

• Jane Billet, Community Manager - Billet moves up within King.com, where she was formerly a promotion manager.

PopCap

• Van Riker, Franchise Manager - Once again PopCap makes our list by adding a single new face. A high profile hire, Riker was previously the senior marketing manager at Real Networks/GameHouse.

RockYou

• Michiel Kramer, Senior Graphic Designer - RockYou brings on Kramer, who was previously a senior graphic designer at THQ.

Zynga

• Jonathan Knight, Studio General Manager – Zynga brings on four new faces this week. The highest profile hire is Knight, who comes from RockYou where he was the senior vice president of games.
• Camila de Azevedo Lima Mattos, Super Moderator – Next up is Mattos, who was previously a perl programmer at Online Internet Services.
• Brad Francetic, Site Reliability Engineer - Also joining is Francetic who moves from The Martz Agency where he was a systems administrator.
• Amin Razi, Senior QA - Razi comes from KAOS Creative Studios, where he was the quality assurance manager.

Zynga raised some eyebrows earlier this week by announcing a hidden object game that, at a cursory glance, has an awful lot in common with both Playdom’s Gardens of Time and Game Insight’s Mystery Manor from visual style and setting to puzzle types. A closer look at origins of the game, however, reveals a deeper level of investment in the hidden object genre.

Several months ago, Zynga hired on game designer Cara Ely on as creative director. At that time, two significant things were happening in the video games industry — downloadable games-focused companies were scrambling to get into social and mobile distribution and Gardens of Time was killing it on Facebook. It’s not hard to imagine that Zynga wanted to get in on the hidden object game now that other companies had proven it to be a viable genre for a social network. The question was, would they simply copy the mechanics that worked in competing games or try to build a hidden object game from scratch.

This is where Ely’s history is important. She came to Zynga from I-play Games, one of the leading downloadable games portals oriented toward women with — you guessed it — a massive catalog of hidden object games. Ely spent five years at I-play developing franchises of hidden object games, most significantly the wedding-themed “Dream Day” series. Her design decisions in Hidden Chronicles are based on her learning rather than on the need to do what Playdom and Game Insight did in order to capture the same audience.

Here’s an example of a design decision Ely made for Hidden Chronicles: Do objects remain in the same place each time players attempt the same puzzle? In Gardens of Time, objects remain in the same locations each time the player attempts the puzzle. The only thing that changes consistently is the order in which the player is asked to find the items, and sometimes there are different items added to or subtracted from the list. In contrast, Mystery Manor changes the locations of objects between puzzles and uses word scrambles or silhouette recognition instead of traditional object lists to add challenge.

Based on her experience, Ely tells us it’s best to leave objects in the same place each time — as Gardens of Time does. Difficulty scales with each playthrough of that level by changing the list of items the player needs to find. She says it’s “too easy” if the same objects simply change locations with each playthrough because the player will go into the puzzle automatically looking for what’s visually different from the last time they player tried it.

Here’s another example: monetizing the hints system. Both Gardens of Time and Mystery Manor monetize a series of hints or gameplay advantage items like time-extension with premium currency or through friend gifts. Ely declined to get into specifics for Hidden Chronicles’ monetization, but did confirm that progression through the game’s 50 levels could be accelerated with premium currency and that hints could be gifted. She also confirmed that the game would feature leaderboards to track which of your friends finished puzzles with the highest score, and possible a “racing mode” where friends compete one-on-one to finish a puzzle in the least amount of time.

Zynga declined to provide any launch date details for any of the titles announced earlier this week at its Unleashed event in San Francisco. Hidden Chronicles was not playable at the event, but you can view the trailer shown to journalists here.

Developed by Pacific Interactive Limited, House of Fun: Slot Machines is an up-and-coming title in Facebook’s growing selection of casino games. Despite having few slots that other similar titles, such as GameShow Slot Machines, House of Fun is nevertheless gaining a strong following.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, House of Fun: Slot Machines currently has 740,732 monthly active users and 139,615 daily active users.

This title is a compilation of five slot machines: Jungle Patrol, Fruits Machine, Cleoplay, Diamonds & Dollars, and Gold Mine. Each of the games has different pay-ins and pay-outs, with Gold Mine featuring a random jackpot. They sport unique visual themes, from jungle to Old West.Players can invite their friends to play, as well as share coins with their friends when they win on any given pull. There’s an option to send gifts to friends in addition to receiving them. Two types of leaderboards are displayed: friends and overall.

House of Fun: Slot Machines is monetized through players buying additional coins using Facebook Credits. Coins are sold in packages ranging from $5 to $200. The largest coin value that can be purchased is actually three million, for a deposit of $400.

Pacific Interactive Limited has announced on the game’s Wall that it intends to launch a sixth slot machine soon. A special “VIP section” is also planned.

You can follow House of Fun: Slot Machines’ progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Fall is a make or break time for TV shows where new shows need to quickly make an impression and old shows have to fight to maintain their market share. TV networks are increasingly focusing their marketing budgets on Facebook and social game tie-ins in order to engage viewers even after they’ve left the couch.

Whether you prefer comedy, drama, reality, fantasy or game shows, there is probably a Facebook game for you. Join us for a quick look at the titles that tie into this fall TV season.

2 Broke Girls – Based on CBS’ new comedy about two poor waitresses working in a Brooklyn diner to make ends meet, the Facebook version of 2 Broke Girls takes its lead from Diner Dash, asking players to control the main character Max as she buses tables, pours coffee and racks up tips. Players earn points they can use to upgrade their equipment and menus, allowing them to earn even more during their shifts. 2 Broke Girls currently has just over 4,000 monthly active users and was developed for CBS by Game Salad.

The Big Bang Theory: Mystic Warlords of Ka’a – A collectible card game in the vein of Magic: The Gathering, Mystic Warlords of Ka’a gives fans of The Big Bang Theory a chance to play the same game the show’s main characters enjoy. Featuring many of the cards mentioned on the show, Mystic Warlords of Ka’a is a strategy game where players attempt to win a game by out maneuvering their opponents in card duels and battles. While the game is a light take on collectible card games with simplified rules, players can still customize their decks by trading for and purchasing new cards. The Big Bang Theory: Mystic Warlords of Ka’a currently has more than 80,000 MAU and was developed by Dire Wolf Digital. Read our review.

CSI: Crime City - One of the most popular TV related games on Facebook, CSI: Crime City still boasts more than 1.7 million MAU just under a year after it launched. Developed by Ubisoft and Area/Code (now Zynga New York), the game challenges players to solve murder mysteries by gathering evidence and getting it back to the lab for analysis. Players can purchases their own lab equipment, or use equipment their friends own, which adds a cooperative element to the game. Read our review.

Deadliest Catch The Social Game – Reality TV is also well represented in the TV tie-in Facebook game genre. Discovery’s Deadliest Catch The Social Game puts players in charge of their own boats, sailing the dangerous Bearing Sea in a quest for crabs, dollars and domination of the game’s leader board. Players can either upgrade their boats, equipment and staff the hard way – catching and selling crabs – or by using real money to buy Crab Coins, a premium currency that unlocks specialty items and deckhands from the show. Deadliest Catch was developed by Hive Media and currently has just over 47,000 MAU.

Dexter: Slice of Life - Unlike many of the TV tie-in games on Facebook, Ecko Code’s Dexter: Slice of Life stands apart from the field, thanks to its stealthy gameplay and close ties to the TV show. Each Monday the Facebook game updates with new content based on the episodes that aired on Sunday night, allowing players not only to recreate the events of the episode, but to explore them in even more detail. Currently Dexter: Slice of Life has just under 100,000 MAU. Read our review.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Game – Fans of Extreme Makeover who have always dreamed of designing a home for a family in need can finally get in on the action, with the Facebook version of Extreme Makeover. The game ties directly into the show, allowing players to build the a dream house for both virtual and real families. The focus of the game is clearly on the act of designing a virtual house — everything from the floor plan to the kind of furnishings can be customized. Premium decorations can be bought with Facebook Credits. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Game currently has 168,000 MAU and was developed by Quebec based Frima Studio. Read our review.

Jersey Shore - Anyone who has ever wanted a taste of the hard-partying G.T.L (gym, tan, laundry) lifestyle espoused on MTV’s popular reality TV show Jersey Shore are no doubt big fans of Jersey Shore for Facebook. The game lets players live out their trashiest fantasies by completing missions based on events from the TV show and fighting other players for control of the boardwalk. The Jersey Shore game allows players to purchase clothing, accessories and energy drinks for their virtual guidos and guidettes. While the game’s user base is dropping from the 1.7 MAU it boasted this March, more than 360,000 people still log in every month.

Pawn Stars: The Game – The History Channel has also jumped into the Facebook game arena, releasing Pawn Stars: The Game as a promotion for their popular reality TV show Pawn Stars. The game lets players set up their own pawn shop, and allows them to haggle, bribe and negotiate with customers in order to get the best deal they can. Players can use Facebook credits to purchase premium appraisal services, which offer more information than ones purchased with the free in-game currency. Pawn Stars has reached nearly 900,000 MAU. Read our review.

Spartacus: Gods of the Arena – One of the older TV games on Facebook, cable network Starz launched Spartacus: Gods of the Arena in January to promote the six episode prequel series of its show Spartacus: Blood and Sand. While based on gladiatorial combat, the game is actually a management sim. Players train and equip their own stable of gladiators, and then send them into battle. Players can’t control combat or the outcome, but they can cheer for their gladiators (and boo the competition), which may help convince the crowd to spare a defeated gladiator. An important distinction, because if a gladiator is killed in the game he remains dead. The game can be rigged in the player’s favor by using Influence, which can be bought for Facebook credits. Spartacus: Gods of the Arena was created by Large Animal Games and currently has more than 450,000 MAU.

Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In - One of the newest TV games on Facebook, The Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In casts players as a new high school student in the strange town of Mystic Falls. Players help out characters from the show and uncover the town’s mysteries by finding objects, completing mini-games and answering trivia about the show. The game was developed for Warner Bros by Arkadium and while still in beta has still racked up an impressive 118,000 MAU. Read our review.

Weeds Social Club – Last but not least is Like Showtime’s other Facebook game,  Weeds Social Club. The game was also developed by Ecko Code along with Mytopia but is much less connected to the plot of the game, instead following the lead set by other TV social games and bringing in subtle connections to the series. The the game, players are brought into the “business” by Andy Botwin and must learn the ins-and-outs of marijuana, collecting different strains, raising crops and then selling them on the black market. Weeds social club currently has more than 147,000 MAU. Read our review.

Did we miss a game? Let us know in the comments with a link so that we can play it for ourselves. And keep an eye out for “TV & Film in the Age of the Social Game,” a panel we hope to share with you at SXSW 2012.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Liquid Entertainment, Lolapps, Games Cafe Inc., TinyCo, Storm8, CrowdStar, King.com, Midasplayer AB, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and OpenFeint.

• Social Games Designer
• Social Games Programmer

• Support Engineer- Browser and Social Games
• Product Manager for Popular Social Gaming Company
• Sr. Game Engineer for a Popular Social Gaming Company
• Producer/Project Manager

6waves Lolapps has rolled out its latest licensed title, this one based on an ABC reality series. Developed by CubeToy, Extreme Makeover: Home Editionlets players re-create the charitable home remodeling of the show on Facebook, with more than 160,000 would-be designers signing on per month so far.

According to our traffic tracking service AppData, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition currently has 168,623 monthly active users and 13,715 daily active users.

Sticking closely to the premise of the show on which it’s based, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has players working to remodel the homes of deserving families, such as those who care for multiple foster children or people with special needs. The game presents a series of fictional families to help, but also integrates real life situations by updating each week to include the actual family that will appear on the show’s latest televised episode. No matter which one players choose to help, they start off by choosing a house style and floor plan based on the family’s needs. They then go room to room, selecting wallpaper, flooring, cabinetry, furniture and decorations, placing them until their design has met a list of requests for that particular family.

In order to buy and place items, players must assign Volunteers. Thus these virtual, unseen helpers serve as the game’s soft currency. Once a player has used up all of their allotted Volunteers, they must wait to use more. They recharge over time, or can be purchased. This works out to a game mechanic where players can choose to be more conservative with their designs and get more done, or wait and go all out. Of course, they can also opt to invest real money to make the home as extravagant as possible.

As they continue playing, more deco items unlock, with certain items being specific to certain families and their needs. There are two in-game shops: one with basic items and another “art tent” with specialty deco. Players can keep track of their progress on each home using the floor plan, even marking off when they feel a room is done. Once all of the needs of the family have been met, they can reveal the home and earn hearts depending on how good a job they did. Screenshots can be taken and stored in a scrapbook to document the entire process.

The primary social feature is using friends for currency — the more friends a player has that also play the game, the more Volunteers they have at their disposal. Other social features include sharing accomplishments via the player’s Wall, sharing scrapbook photos, and sending gifts.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is monetized through the sale of Volunteers for Facebook Credits, along with standard premium items and decorations.

The game’s developer continues to add new items, deco and even families to the game. Real-life families from the show are added on a weekly basis.

You can follow Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s progress using AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Last week, it was The Pokerist Club on top — this week, it’s Zynga Poker (a.k.a. Texas HoldEm Poker). Bubble Witch Saga holds steady at No.2 and Mahjong Saga rounds out our top three fastest-growing games by daily active users.

The early results of the CityVille Enrique Iglesias campaign are in and it seems that the strongest day of engagement was October 7, where we see a 16% spike in DAU. That figure has since fallen to its present-day levels, but that still reflects enough growth for the week to put CityVille at No.4 on our rankings.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Texas HoldEm Poker	6,420,108	+429,188	+7%
2.	Bubble Witch Saga	1,040,815	+187,950	+54%
3.	Mahjong Saga	681,731	+176,656	+35%
4.	CityVille	13,482,422	+174,959	+1%
5.	Diamond Dash	2,312,891	+164,274	+8%
6.	Car Town	796,199	+126,524	+19%
7.	Monster World	1,769,679	+126,017	+8%
8.	Bubble Island	2,043,105	+125,687	+7%
9.	Social Empires	699,895	+114,025	+19%
10.	3D Slots	150,818	+98,345	+178%
11.	Airport City	265,320	+86,559	+45%
12.	Bubble Saga	1,246,759	+82,019	+7%
13.	Bola	72,930	+72,915	+486,100%
14.	Coco Girl	302,844	+67,654	+40%
15.	DoubleDown Casino – Free Slots, Blackjack & Poker	1,030,747	+64,383	+7%
16.	FarmVille	7,449,730	+63,150	+0.85%
17.	夢想城市	391,072	+59,616	+17%
18.	Heroes of Neverwinter	41,739	+55,776	+292%
19.	Top Eleven – Be a Football Manager	993,738	+55,005	+6%
20.	المزرعة السعيدة	430,121	+54,820	+15%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Zynga’s newly-christened “Project Z” (or “Zynga Direct,” to hear CEO Mark Pincus tell it) is a forthcoming social games platform and social network enabled through Facebook Connect. It is also, some say, Zynga’s bid for independence from Facebook — but the details of the platform don’t support the claim any more than Zynga’s own behavior in the past year.

For nearly two years, the world has been watching for signs of trouble in the relationship between one of the world’s largest social networks and its largest third-party developer. Seventeen months ago, there were spats about Facebook Credits integration, sudden platform changes that curbed viral growth for social games, and even rumored threats that Zynga would quit the platform.

Since that time, however, Zynga has gone on to launch four more social games for Facebook, as well as a series of mobile games that leverage Facebook Connect. True, the company also launched an off-Facebook player reward network and put some of its games on Google’s competing social network games platform. But in all this time, Zynga hasn’t actually done anything to cut ties with Facebook.

If anything, the ties are deepening as Zynga prepares an initial public offering based mostly on the strength of its revenues from Facebook players. According to statements made by Pincus and Zynga COO John Schappert at today’s Unleashed event in San Francisco, Project Z is enabled with Facebook Connect at a level of integration so deep that Facebook is actually a “launch partner” for the network. Zynga also supported Facebook’s launch of its mobile platform with three HTML5 games based on its most popular franchises. And with each new game release, Zynga seems to showcase more and more of Facebook’s newest social game features well before other social game developers even begin to experiment with them. It seems that the special relationship referenced in S-1 documentation filed by Zynga continues even as Zynga expands its reach to other networks.

Even if Project Z launched tomorrow and Zynga’s IPO were delayed into Q2 2012, the idea that Zynga could somehow be completely independent of Facebook by that time is ridiculous. Facebook is Zynga’s primary source of traffic and no other social network or games portal in the United States is in a position to cut Zynga any kind of deals that would yield comparable numbers. There is the idea that Facebook could abruptly change its terms of service with social game developers in a way that would hurt Zynga’s revenues — but why would Facebook do that when it has spent the last year trying to rebuild and nurture its social games ecosystem? Why wouldn’t Zynga stick by Facebook if the platform continues to grow on a global scale?

It seems as though, at this time, Project Z is only a supplement to the Zynga experience on Facebook. Yes, the service asks players to create a new virtual identity using Ztags, but it’s affiliating that with a player’s Facebook identity via Connect. This creates a divergent experience where, on Zynga’s network, you’d have your game-life with your game-friends and publicly displayed in-game achievements. Meanwhile, on Facebook, you’d have your actual social graph — which might include Zynga game activity.

The only factor that could count as a tie cut with Facebook is whether or not Project Z would introduce a platform currency that could compete with Facebook Credits. Right now, Zynga Facebook games accept only Facebook Credits as a means to purchase in-game currency in keeping with Facebook’s July 1 policy change. Currently, Facebook does not require Facebook Connect-enabled games to make Credits a payment option; but it does require games that run both on Facebook and other networks to enforce price parity between games. If Zynga offered a paid currency only for use in Project Z games, it would be a step away from the social network and toward actual financial independence.

Project Z does not have a release date at this time. Facebook users can sign up for a Ztag virtual identity in advance of its launch here.

Zynga announced a series of new games today for Facebook, including a new ‘Ville game, the just-launched Mafia Wars sequel, a hidden object game and a series of mobile games available, some of which will be available on Facebook’s mobile platform as of tomorrow.

Hidden Chronicles – Zynga enters the hidden object genre with a dynamic hidden object game where the puzzles change with each replay.

Zynga Bingo – As part of the “Zynga Casino” franchise minted today, Zynga Bingo joins Zynga Poker (a.k.a. Texas HoldEm Poker) as a social casino experience where players can join a virtual room in which friends and strangers are playing bingo. Like other bingo games currently available on the Facebook platform, games are broken out into different themed virtual rooms with distinct visual elements. It sounds like players in the Zynga Casino network will be able to track which bingo rooms or poker tables their friends occupy in either game.

CastleVille – This is the first game from Zynga’s Dallas studio, formerly known as Bonfire Studios. It’s an expansion of the ‘Ville franchise that asks players to build a medieval-themed town around a castle. Story elements include special characters that players discover as they make various gameplay choices, creating a branching fiction where two players might have completely different casts of non-playable characters in their game. A player-versus-environment element encourages players to team up and defend their castles against attacks from “beasties” that live in the forest around the castle town. Additionally, any item in the game is up for trade with other players in a truly free market experience. In sum, it’s medieval CityVille with Empires & Allies combat and market elements.

Mafia Wars Shakedown – Not much was said here, but Fusible outed the game when Zynga began buying up domains for it. Looks like it’s coming to both iOS and Android at some point.

DreamZoo – Coming to iOS “soon,” this is a zoo game that combines real animals with whacky color schemes for an experience that might help differentiate it from the many zoo games already available on the mobile games market.

Zynga also spent some time characterizing HTML5 game FarmVille Express — which goes live tomorrow on Facebook’s mobile platform. It’s a trimmed-down version of the FarmVille mobile experience that allows players to harvest crops on the go, and potentially complete some quests.