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 Social Point, 50 Cubes, Jana, Kubra, Acquinity Interactive, 6waves Lolapps, Natural Motion Games and 24MAS Group.

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps 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.

Google+ Still Growing - Google’s social network is now adding 625,000 new users every day, and has passed 62 million members according to a post on Google+ by Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen. Allen predicts that the social network will have 293 million users by the end of 2012. In related news, analytics company Chitika is reporting online activity (such as posts and discussions) on the social network increased by 118% between September and November.

American McGee Switches from AAA Console to Social Games - Noted video game producer American McGee and his Shanghai studio Spicy Horse are done with AAA console titles, according to an interview with Gamasutra. The studio just completed Alice: Madness Returns for EA, and will now focus on social games. “It’s not likely we’ll go back to big-budget AAA development,” he said. “While the studio has proven itself more than capable of producing beautiful AAA console games, there’s no long-term business for us there. We feel online is where it’s at.” The studio’s first Facebook game is BigHead Bash.

HappySNS Reports 30 million MAU a Month in Chinese Social Game Market - Penn Olson is reporting that Beijing-based social game developer HappySNS now has more than 100 million installs, 30 million MAU and 10 million DAU for its games, which are found on Tencent, Kaixin001, Renren, Facebook and DeNA’s platform. On Facebook the developer’s games see just a fraction of it total traffic, accounting for 140,00 MAU and 33,000 DAU according to AppData.

Social Gamers Are The Most Helpful Friends - If you need someone to help you move, ask a social gamer first. According to an article in the Nature Reviews/Neuroscience journal by University of Iowa psychology professor Douglas Gentile, playing social games can lead to “helping behavior” among players. One study cited in the article found students who started playing social games early in a school year were generally classified as more helpful later in the year.

Even Healthcare Can Be a Social Game – San Francisco-based startup Keas has developed a healthcare platform that disguises itself as a social game, reports the Wall Street Journal. Keas’ gaming platform allows groups of people compete with each other to complete quests and contests based around eating well and exercising. The social game mechanics have proven far more popular for the company than its original business model — providing personalized information and feedback from healthcare professionals.

In 2011, Inside Social Games tracked nearly 20 mergers and acquisitions involving Facebook game developers and publishers, with total disclosed purchase prices in excess of $1.7 billion dollars. Here are the biggest M&A stories of the year.

Often the results of these purchases and mergers were observable on AppData, our data tracking service. For instance, some developers enjoyed the cross-promotional and advertising power of their new parent company, while others saw their games sunsetted, as the development teams transitioned to other games within the company’s portfolio. To better contextualize the data, we’ve provided our list in chronological order. Additionally, Zynga has been given its own category, as it made at least eight game-related purchases throughout 2011.

RockYou acquires Playdemic - January

Publisher RockYou purchased UK-based Playdemic, creators of the farming-restaurant sim Gourmet Ranch, for an undisclosed sum right at the beginning of the year. Roughly 10 months later, RockYou sold Playdemic back to the studio’s founders as part of a dramatic restructuring.

In the months leading up to the January 2011 purchase, Gourmet Ranch was attracting MAU in the mid six figure range, and strong engagement rates of between 15 and 25%. In the months after the RockYou’s purchase, MAU grew rapidly, reaching a peak of about 6 million in June before beginning a gradual decline for the rest of the year. In the four weeks before RockYou sold Playdemic back to its founders, Gourmet Ranch saw a jump in growth that took DAU/MAU from 10% to about 26%. This growth continues even now, currently seeing around 30% DAU/MAU from 490,000 MAU. For RockYou’s part, the company has seen growth of about 3.15 million MAU since the November cutbacks, and now has 6.9 million MAU. The company also saw a drop of DAU/MAU during that period, falling from 18% then to 13% as of this week.

Visa acquires PlaySpan for $190 Million – February

Credit card giant Visa purchased game monetization service provider PlaySpan for $190 million in cash toward the beginning of the year. The acquisition is significant in the social games industry as it marked Visa’s entry into the virtual goods market — where PlaySpan facilitated transactions within Facebook and other web game platforms. Though we have no data-driven way to track the influence Visa had on PlaySpan post-acquisition, we do observe that the PlaySpan Marketplace page saw a very sharp spike at the time of the Visa announcement, jumping briefly from 6700 MAU to 23,000, before returning to normal usage levels of between 4000 and 6500 MAU. PlaySpan told us in August that a partnership with Facebook allowed the company’s continued existence on the platform following the mandatory integration of Facebook Credits as the sole currency.

PopCap Games acquires ZipZapPlay – April

Before its own acquisition by EA (see below), casual game publisher PopCap acquired developer ZipZapPlay, developer of the pet game Happy Habitat and the restaurant sim Baking Life, for an undisclosed sum.

As part of the acquisition, Happy Habitat was taken offline. Baking Life, which had about 2.5 million MAU and about 20% DAU/MAU at the time of the acquisition, was placed in “evaluation mode” while PopCap considered whether or not the aging game was worth saving. Though the game continued its slow but steady loss of users that began months before the acquisition, MAU stabilized around October, and DAU/MAU now runs between 22 and 24%.

Harrah’s (Caesars Entertainment Corporation) acquires Playtika $80 Million+ – May & December

Slotomania developer Playtika was first partially acquired by Caesars Entertainment Corporation through its Harrah’s casino brand in May — and then completely bought out in December. The total price of the acquisition is reportedly between $80 and $90 million.

According to our data tracking service AppData, Playtika’s Facebook games — Slotomania, Farkle Pro, and a Chinese-language version of Slotomania — had a total of 2.3 million MAU in the month leading up to May. During that month, the developer gained nearly one million MAU and has enjoyed steady user growth ever since. Currently, Playtika’s overall library has 5.9 million MAU and a DAU/MAU rate of about 25%.

RockYou acquires 3 Blokes – June

RockYou purchased the Australian-based developer for an undisclosed sum, with the stated intention of putting the studio in charge of its strategy and combat titles on Facebook. At the time of the acquisition, 3 Blokes’ four Facebook games had 200,000 total MAU, led by its space-based RPG Galactic Trader (published by 6waves Lolapps) with about 175,000 MAU.

After the developer joined RockYou, its own library of games steadily lost users, and now stands at just 9,520 MAU. Its first game for RockYou, Galactic Allies, launched in September and gained 200,000 MAU before shrinking to its current level of 80,000 MAU and a low engagement rate of under 5% DAU/MAU.

EA acquires PopCap Games for $1.3 Billion – July

EA acquired PopCap Games for $650 million in cash, $100 million in stock, and multi-year earn-outs that would bring the total purchase price to $1.3 billion. The purchase expanded EA’s large library of Facebook games from its social game arm Playfish, such as The Sims Social, and its brand titles such as Scrabble with PopCap’s Facebook hits Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz.

Since the acquisition, Bejeweled Blitz has very gradually declined from 10.5 million MAU to 8.9 million MAU today, while DAU/MAU has remained very strong throughout, fluctuating between 26% and 34% as of this month. Meanwhile, Zuma Blitz dropped from 6 million MAU in June to 2.3 million MAU now; at the same time, DAU/MAU has increased in that period, rising from 15% to over 25% today. In July, PopCap attempted to launch brand new IP on the platform with Pig Up!, but the title appears to have been abandoned by the developer.

Publisher 6waves merges with developer Lolapps – July

Ravenwood Fair developer Lolapps merged with Ravenwood Fair publisher 6waves in July to form 6waves Lolapps. The newly minted company raised $35 million from Insight Venture Partners and Nexon just one month later and went on to establish a $10 million fund for social and mobile game developers in September. The developer officially entered the mobile market this month by publishing two games from developer Escalation Studios on iOS.

Ravenskye City, a continuation of Lolapps’ Ravenwood Fair launched in October, now enjoys MAU of 4.9 million and very stong DAU/MAU rates over 20%. Since the July acquisition and August funding announcement, the company has seen relatively steady user activity, fluctuating between 12 million and 20 million (both as a developer and publisher), boosted by the October publications of Zombie Island from Vizor Interactive and Airport City from Game Insight. 6waves Lolapps currently enjoys 14.8 million MAU as a developer, and 12 million MAU as a publisher.

ngmoco acquires Lionside – September

Leading mobile game developer and publisher ngmoco (itself bought last year by Japanese mobile giant DeNA) acquired sports game developer Lionside for an undisclosed sum in September. At that time, Lionside had a total of about 375,000 MAU, primarily from its game NBA Legend: Official NBA Game but since, has seen a steady decline to a current level of 70,000 MAU and low engagement below 10%.

6waves Lolapps acquires Smartron5 – October

Four months after its own merger (see above), social game publisher-developer 6waves Lolapps bought Beijing-based social game developer Smartron5 for an undisclosed sum. At the time of the purchase, Smartrong5 was only making games for the China-based social network Tencent, and as of this writing, has no apps on Facebook. As for 6waves Lolapps, the purchase had no discernible impact on its user activity as tracked by AppData. As a publisher, the company now has 11.8 million MAU and 1.8 million DAU.

DeNA acquires Atakama Lab – October

DeNA acquired Chile-based social game studio Atakama Labs, creators of the retro RPG Little Cave Hero, for an undisclosed sum. While this move and ngmoco’s Lionside acquisition suggest DeNA’s commitment to Facebook development, we haven’t seen much movement in the games themselves. Little Cave Hero went into steady decline just before the acquisition and appears to have been sunsetted just after the acquisition.

EA acquires KlickNation for $35 Million – December

EA bought the Superhero City developer for about $35 million, according to Inside Social Game sources, and folded into the social game arm of its BioWare studio. Given the developer’s history and EA’s previous Facebook efforts with BioWare game Dragon Age 2, we expect to see KlickNation producing titles that draw from BioWare’s IP library. KlickNation’s existing roster of Facebook games currently have a total of nearly 400,000 MAU and moderately strong engagement at 15% DAU/MAU.

Zynga acquisitions in 2011

Leading up to its IPO in December, Zynga made a number of game-related purchases through 2011, at least eight of which were publicly announced or confirmed.

In January, Zynga bought Area/Code, developer of CSI: Crime City, for an undisclosed sum. At the time of the purchase, the game had about 2 milllion MAU, with growth trending downward, now standing at about 1 million MAU with relatively high engagement rates between 15 and 19%.

In April, Zynga made a talent acquisition from UK mobile game developer Wonderland Software, using the new hires to create Zynga Mobile UK. Zynga also acquired talent from poker industry service provider MarketZero that month.

In May, Zynga acquired DNA Games, developer of Casino City and other titles. The developer sunsetted all three of its Facebook titles shortly after, despite consistent performance from Casino City.

In August, Zynga is believed to have bought Astro Ape Studios to strengthen its mobile development efforts.

In November, Zynga’s IPO filings revealed the company had spent $20 million acquiring four companies in Q3 2011. Among them was development studio Five Mobile, bought in July and renamed Zynga Toronto. Among the other three are believed to be Astro Ape Studios (see above), with the remaining two unidentified.

Israeli social game developer Playtika is now completely owned by U.S. casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corporation, according to a report from Globes filed late last week.

The Slotomania developer raised some eyebrows back in May when it was quietly announced that Caesars (via its Harrah’s casino brand) had purchased 51% of the company for up to $90 million. We couldn’t get the developer to comment for the record at the time, but this week’s report reveals that the partial acquisition contained a an option to acquire the balance of shares within two years — which Caesars has apparently taken advantage of just seven months later. Globes cites an unnamed source that puts the current value of Playtika shares slightly higher than what Caesars paid the first time.

Since that time, Playtika has kept Slotomania growing at a steady pace and recently released an iOS version. A Chinese language version of the game launched in April, but hasn’t seen as much traction. Playtika’s other game franchise, Farkle Pro, has been in steady decline since about October. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the developer enjoys 5.8 million monthly active users and 1.68 million daily active users across all its Facebook apps.

GameHouse’s Bayou Blast leads our list of emerging Facebook games this week with Broken Bulb’s Miscrits sequel, Volcano Island, and Paprika Lab’s Toyz & Zombies rounding out the top three.

During this quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s, we’ve spotted several established Facebook game developers quietly launching open betas of new games — like Broken Bulb, Paprika, and also Gaia Online and MegaZebra. Notably, each of these developers last launched games over the summer, suggesting that social game devs are beginning to settle into release calendars that put games up to eight months apart. This may be how some devs handle the cannibalization problem some sequels and expansions cause their games of origin.

Top Gainers This Week – Games

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Bayou Blast	900,000	+280,000	+ 45%
2.	Miscrits of Volcano Island	520,000	+180,000	+ 53%
3.	Toyz & Zombies	180,000	+176,000	+ 4,400%
4.	Bingo Bash	400,000	+170,000	+ 74%
5.	Mission Impossible	550,000	+170,000	+ 45%
6.	Skyscraper City	260,000	+170,000	+ 189%
7.	Puzzle Adventures	440,000	+130,000	+ 52%
8.	Marble Trails	130,000	+126,000	+ 3,150%
9.	Triviador Mundo	410,000	+110,000	+ 46%
10.	Solitaire Castle	110,000	+106,000	+ 2,650%
11.	WeTopia	410,000	+100,000	+ 37%
12.	Treasure City	110,000	+90,000	+ 450%
13.	GodsWar: El Mejor 3D Juego De Fantasía	250,000	+80,000	+ 47%
14.	Storage Wars: The Game	690,000	+80,000	+ 15%
15.	Tetris	260,000	+80,000	+ 53%
16.	GameGround	510,000	+70,000	+ 19%
17.	ชีวิตคนเมือง	230,000	+70,000	+ 44%
18.	Fantasy Basketball	190,000	+60,000	+ 46%
19.	Hemp Tycoon	310,000	+60,000	+ 29%
20.	House of Fun – Slot Machines	990,000	+60,000	+ 6%

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Come back next week for our top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, our daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Hiring in the social gaming industry was down this week, with six companies reporting 17 new or recent hires and promotions. According to data from LinkedIn and other sources Zynga and Plumbee showed the most activity this week. The biggest moves were at Booyah where EA PopCap’s former director of operations – social came on as the director of product development and at Mail.Ru Games, where there were two high level executive changes.

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

• Jacob McMahon, Director of Product Development - Booyah leads the hires this week with a high profile hire. McMahon was previously the director of operations – social at EA PopCap.

EA Playfish

• Rachel Yu, Marketing Manager – EA’s Playfish adds one new employee, bringing on Yu from her previous position as a consultant at Ruder Finn.

Plarium

• Leonard Frankel, Business Development Manager – Eastern European social games company Plarium makes our list this week with a high profile hire, bringing on Frankel, the former CEO of Universal Business & Trading as its business development manager.

Plumbee

While not technically a list of new hires, Plumbee, the London-based social game startup founded by Raf Keustermans, Gerald Tan and Jodi Moran announced its initial staff lineup:

• James Cook, Server Engineer – Cook was a lead server engineer at EA Playfish.
• Jakub Pudelek, Client Engineer – Pudelek was formerly a game developer at EA Playfish
• Darren Ward, Client Engineer – Ward came from Nokia where he was a senior software engineer.
• Simon Loader, Automated Deployment Engineer – Loader came from Betfair, where he was system architect.
• Marc Trepannier, Associate Server Engineer - Next up is Trepannier, who was previously a software engineer at Agena Ltd.
• Dragos Dogaru, Associate Server Engineer - Dogaru begins his career with Plumbee, and was formerly an intern at SoftVision.
• Rav Singh, Art Director – Singh moved from Codemasters where he had the same title.
• Kate Steinmeyer, UI/UX Designer – Next is Steinmeyer, who was formerly a  user experience & user interface designer at Gamesys.
• Saikala Sultanova, Marketing Intern – Sultanova moves from The Table where she was a marketing associate.

Plumbee also announced its list of advisors: Dan Fiden (previously the GM of Playfish’s US studio, former VP Publishing at Gazillion), Joachim Timmermans(previously head of casino at Unibet Group Plc), Ben Fried and Anton Bell (both former Betfair executives)

Zynga

• Chien Ly, Temp QA Engineer – Zynga announces three hires in what has been a quiet week. Ly was formerly a data analyst at Premier Retail Networks.
• Sara Leedom, Quality Assurance Engineer - Leedom moves from Meteor Games, where she was a quality assurance tester.
• Mazedur Rahman, QA Engineer – Next up is Rahman who was previously a teaching assistant at San Jose State University.

2011 saw a growing diversity in social games with new genre and gameplay types emerging on Facebook, such as hidden object games, racing games, and strategy combat titles with real time multiplayer modes. Based on data collected from AppData, our data tracking service, here are the most popular genres for successful Facebook games this year.

Note: For the purposes of this report, “successful” is defined by games with over 100,000 monthly active users and current retention rates (daily active users as a percent of monthly active users) of 20% or higher. Because many Facebook games (especially those from top publishers) enjoy artificially high usage rates in their first three months, this list only includes games that were launched and reviewed by Inside Social Games between January and September 2011.

1) Arcade — 14.2 million MAU
Three games with the fast casual action of the arcade genre gained strong traffic in 2011: Wooga’s Diamond Dash (11,600,000 MAU), PlayQ’s HotShot (1.4 Million MAU), and GameHouse’s Collapse! Blast (1.2 million MAU). Notably, all three have similar gameplay of matching (or destroying) three like objects for points.

2) Word — 13.8 million MAU
Since launching in July, Words With Friends, Zynga’s Scrabble-like board game, has enjoyed consistently strong growth and engagement rates. It’s the only 2011 game in this genre to reach extremely large user numbers.

Words With Friends’ success is probably due both to its heavy resemblance to Scrabble and its cross-platform feature, which allows Facebook users to play with others both on desktop and mobile. Because Scrabble-type games typically focus on asynchronous play with simple graphics, they’re well-suited to the Facebook platform. Indeed, Electronic Arts’ official Scrabble game for Facebook attracts heavy engagement (if less users, with just 1 million MAU), as does Lexulous, an independently-produced Facebook game once called “Scrabulous” before Scrabble rights owners demanded a name change.

3) Casino — 13.24 million MAU
Led by Playtika’s Slotomania (5.5 million MAU), DoubleDown Interactive’s DoubleDown Casino (4.5 million MAU), and Buffalo Studios’ Bingo Blitz (2.8 million MAU), the gambling-themed casino genre games of 2011 attracted high traffic and heavy engagement. Notably, each of these games currently has very high DAU/MAU rates of over 30%. While the top spot in this genre remains Zynga’s Texas HoldEm Poker, Slotomania and DoubleDown now hold the second and third positions, supplanting other slot machine and card games with a gambling aspect.

4) Hidden Object — 10 million MAU
Disney Playdom’s time travel-themed Gardens of Time (8.3 million MAU) leads this genre, in which players must find valuable game objects cleverly hidden within a graphically dense image. Also gaining heavy traffic is Mystery Manor (1.7 million MAU), developed by Game Insight and published by 6waves Lolapps. Both were launched during March/April, reached a peak of users in September (17 million MAU and 3.75 million MAU, respectively), and have shed users since then, while still maintaining strong DAU/MAU rates. Gardens of Time and Mystery Manor both arrived on iPad this month, but it appears as thoughonly Gardens of Time features Facebook Connect — which could lead to an increase in traffic for the parent game as mobile logins are counted toward its MAU and DAU. Despite the early success of these two games, it’s notable that these were the only 2011 entries in the genre tracked by Inside Social Games throughout this year.

5) City-Building — 4.3 million MAU
A genre in which players get to customize, develop, and manage the economy, infrastructure, and social aspects of their own unique city, 2011 saw the successful launch of Wooga’s Magic Land (2.7 million MAU) followed by Disney Playdom’s Gnome Town 1.6 million MAU). It’s interesting that both games merge city building with a fantasy theme, as do two games launched after September — Zynga’s CastleVille and 6waves Lolapps’ Ravenskye City. This represents a new trend in city-building games, as compared to market leader Zynga’s CityVille (launched in 2010), which has a realistic, modern day city theme.

6) Role-Playing Games — 2.5 million MAU
In a role-playing game (RPG), players customize and enhance their own unique game character, and use it to progress through a series of game challenges and objectives, in a variety of environments and themes. Led by Digital Chocolate’s undead-themed Zombie Lane, the RPG genre added a number of new entries in 2011. The Vampire Diaries: Get Sucked In — based on the TV show of the same name — has 300,000 MAU, while the dungeon crawler-type Hello Adventure has about 100,000 MAU. This year saw the launch of over three dozen RPG games, most of which have lower traffic or engagement rates than these three. For instance, Zygna’s Mafia Wars 2 still has 6.1 million MAU, but less than 10% DAU/MAU, and EA Playfish’s The Sims Social, has 27.2 million MAU but less than 20% DAU/MAU (and trending downward), as does Coco Girl, a fashion-themed RPG (3 million MAU) launched in October. Zynga’s CastleVille, which launched late in 2011, has both strong city building elements (see above) and RPG features.

7) Strategy & Combat — 1.86 million MAU
Three entries in the military and battle-themed genre of strategy & combat maintain high engagement rates: Kixeye’s Battle Pirates (720,000 MAU) and War Commander (530,000 MAU), with Kabam’s Edgeworld between both with 610,000 MAU. Zynga’s Empires & Allies still maintains a large base of players (15.6 million MAU), as does Social Point’s Social Empires (4.9 million MAU), but have seen engagement rates fall below 20% DAU/MAU in December. Their overall size should also be considered as an indicator of the genre’s popularity, however, and we anticipate seeing more entries in strategy & combat throughout the end of the year and into 2012.

8) Game Show — 1.06 million MAU
Led by Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader (650,000 MAU) and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (410,000 MAU), game show-themed trivia games have over a million players on Facebook. Both are licensed from popular TV game show franchises. New entries in 2011 like Jeopardy! have gained smaller, but very engaged audiences. Three other 2011 game show games — Deal or No Deal, $100,000 Pyramid, and 1 vs 100 — have not done as well, however, which leads us to question just how easily a game show’s TV audience is translated to Facebook.

Going into 2012, we expect to see more entries in the casino, arcade, and strategy-combat categories as new developers experiment with the genres. Hidden object games may also see some growth in the new year as Zynga attempts to replicate the success of Garndes of Time with its own entry, Hidden Chronicles. In contrast, the city-building and RPG genres seem to be saturated, though it’s possible that a hybrid of the two genres — say, Zynga’s CastleVille — may still have room to grow.

This year was big one in terms of hiring activity in the social games industry, led mainly by Zynga, as the developer continued to grow and prepare for its eventual IPO. Kabam also made a lot of changes this year to its executive ranks, hiring three new vice presidents in the span of just a few months.  Here is a roundup — and in some cases, an update — of the highest profile hires, moves, and promotions of 2011.

5th Planet Games

• Braden Moulton, Chief Business Officer – Moulton left his position as director of business development at RealNetworks to take on the role of chief business officer at 5th Planet Games.

6waves

• Dan Laughlin, Director of Business Development – In May, Dan Laughlin joined the 6waves team as director of business development, moving from his role as lead producer at Microsoft Game Studios. 6waves later merged with developer Lolapps, and as far as we know, Laughlin maintains his current job title.

Appssavvy

• Rahul Daterao, Chief Technology Officer - Appssavvy brought on Daterao as its new chief technology officer, moving him from KickApps where he served the as CTO as well.

Atari

• Gui Karyo, Executive Vice President, Development & Operations - Atari brought on Karyo, the former president of Mindspark’s IWON.com to help bolster its casual gaming expertise in November.

Bossa Studios

• Yoshifusa Hayama, Creative Director - London-based Boss Studios hired former Sony vice president Hayama as its creative director at the end of the year.

Booyah

• Jason Willig, CEO - In May, Willig left his position as the chief operating officer of EA’s Hasbro division to join Booyah as its chief operating officer. By October he was the company’s CEO, replacing Booyah’s co founder Keith Lee.

Crowdstar

• Peter Relan, Chief Executive – Crowdstar’s year got off to a turbulent start in January when Niren Hiro was replaced as the company’s chief executive by then-chairman Peter Relan.

DoubleDown Interactive

• Glenn Walcott, President – In February, Walcott left his role as chief financial officer of Big Fish Games to lead DoubleDown Interactive as its new president in a high profile move. The company’s one social game, DoubleDown Casino, continues to perform well on Facebook.

Funzio

• Jamil Moledina, Vice President of Business Development – Moledina moved from his role as director of business development at EA Partners to join Funzio as the vice president of business development in November. The developer recently to its popular Crime City social game cross-platform on iOS.

Gamzee

• Michael Scholz, Chief Technology Officer – Industry veteran Scholz brought experience from Sierra Online, WildTangent, THQ, and SkillJam when he joined Gamzee as chief technology officer. The developer was one of the earlier HTML5 adopters on Facebook and mobile.

EA

• Barry Cottle, Head of EA Interactive – Cottle was promoted to head of EA Interactive in August after an executive shuffle brought on by the departure of John Schappert for social gaming rival Zynga.

EA Playfish

• Aaron Loeb, General Manager, San Francisco – Aaron Loeb left his position as chief executive officer at Planet Moon Studios to take on a new role as the general manger of Playfish San Francisco.

EA PopCap

• Jeff Green, Director of Editorial and Social Media – At the beginning of the year, Green left a similar position at EA for PopCap in a high profile move. By July, however, his former employer bought the Seattle-based casual game company for $650 million plus $100 million in stock options — putting Green essentially right back where he started.

iWin

• Laralyn McWilliams, VP of Creative – After less than six months at Loot Drop, McWilliams had a change of heart and moved to iWin, to help the company move its catalogue of casual games into social and mobile.
• Scott Arpajian, VP of Product – Dizzywood CEO and co-founder Scott Arpajian joined iWin as the vice president of product in June.

Kabam

• Chris Ko, VP of Product Strategy – Kabam made significant changes to its executive ranks this year. Ko left a position with Electronic Arts to join the social games company in the spring.
• Stephen Pelletier, VP of Engineering – At the same time, Pelletier left his position as the chairman and CEO of Silent Capital Corporation to join as the company’s new vice president of engineering.
• Jen Silverstein, Director of Business Intelligence – In February, Kabam announced it had hired former Google employee Silverstein as its new director of business intelligence.
• Andy Riedel, Vice President of Mobile – In April, Riedel left his position as “All Things Mobile” at Zynga to move to Kabam as vice president of mobile.
• Steve Klei, Chief Financial Officer - And finally in September Steve Klei joined Kabam as its chief financial officer, moving from a CFO position at Jigsaw.

King.com

• Jong Woo, Senior Business Development Director - Woo moved to King.com’s brand-new San Francisco office as the company’s senior business development director in October.

Kixeye

• Brandon Barber, Senior Vice President of Marketing - Kixeye brought on the former co-founder of Lionside and vice president of marketing for Zynga as its new senior vice president of marketing in December.

Kobojo

• Gerhard Florin, Board of Directors Chairman – In May, Kobojo appointed former EA executive VP Gerhard Florin to its board of directors.

Loot Drop

• Brenda Brathwaite, COO & Co Founder; John Romero, CEO & Co Founder; Tom Hall, Austin Studio Head, Robert Sirotek, Co Founder – Formed by by an all-star team of games industry veterans looking to take on the social gaming industry and currently developing games for RockYou, Loot Drop made high profile hiring news this year even after it revealed its executive lineup in the spring.
• Erin Hoffman, Lead Game Designer – Hoffman, famous for taking the games industry to task as the “EA Spouse” recently left Zynga to take on a new role as Lead Game Designer for Loot Drop.

MTV Networks

• Garry Kitchen – In February, MTV Networks brought on Kitchen as its VP of games publishing.

RockYou

• Lisa Marino, CEO – RockYou promoted Marino from chief operating officer to chief executive officer in early April.
• Julie Shumaker, Senior Vice President/General Manger of Media – Shumaker brought experience from 4INFO, Double Fusion, EA and Yahoo when she joined RockYou in March. So far as we know, she maintains her position at the embattled publisher-developer following massive layoffs in the fall.

SponsorPay

• Dave Westin, SVP & General Manager – As part of its U.S. expansion this summer, SponsorPay brought on Dave Westin as senior vice president and general manager.

Turbine

• Alex Galvagni, General Manager – In April Galvagni left Glu Mobile, where he was the vice president of global product development and CTO to join Crowdstar to help the company focus on mobile games. It appears he didn’t stay long, moving to Turbine to lead the company as general manager in September.

Wild Tangent

• Brett Orlanski, Director of Business Development – Orlanski joined Wild Tangent as its director of business development in August.

Wooga

• Antti Hattara, Head of Studio – In April, Digital Chocolate promoted Hattara to vice president of product management. By September, however, he had moved to Wooga to take a studio head position — fueling rumors that Digital Chocolate underwent massive staff cuts over the summer.

Zynga

• John Schappert, Chief Operating Officer – Possibly 2011’s single highest profile move, Schappert left his position as COO of Electronic Arts in April to take on the same role with Zynga.
• Jonathan Knight, Studio General Manager – Knight joined Zynga after 11 months as SVP of games at RockYou to take a position as a studio general manager.
• Dave Wehner, Chief Financial Executive – Zynga brought on Wehner from his position as a managing director at investment bank Allen & Company in June, in a move that many speculated at the time was a precursor to an IPO.
• Paul Neurath, Creative Director – Former Floodgate Entertainment co founder Neurath joined Zynga in March after Zynga acquired his company.
• Cara Ely, Creative Director – A pioneer of the increasingly popular hidden object genre of casual games, Zynga added Ely to its team in June to develop its latest title, Hidden Chronicles.
• Kenji Matsubara, Chief Executive of Zynga Japan – Matsubara joined Zynga Japan (a joint venture between Zynga and Softbank) in March several months after leaving his position as CEO of Tecmo Koei.
• Andy Kleinman, General Manager, Latin America – This year, Kleinman left Playdom to join the Metrogames team as its VP of strategy and business development. Just three months later he had moved again to Zynga, to act as the company’s general manager for Latin America.
• Rob Dyer, Head of Partner Publishing - Zynga brought on Dyer from his role as senior vice president of publisher relations at Sony Computer Entertainment in  December.
• Jeff Karp, Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer – Karp joined Zynga as its new chief marketing and revenue officer moving from his position as executive vice president at EA Play.
• Phil Frazier, Executive Producer – Frazier was another high profile scoop from EA, coming on as an executive producer for Zynga after leaving the same role at EA Tiburon in June.
• Neil Roseman, Vice President of Zynga Seattle – Roseman was added to the Zynga team in March to head up head up Zynga Seattle as its vice president.
• Jason Allen, Director of Development – Allen moved from Geeknet to Zynga as director of development in January.
• Eric McDougall, Minister of Cool – And finally, in January McDougall left a position with Cisco to become Zynga’s Minister of Cool, developing the company’s brand, strategy and creative direction.

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 Social Point, 50 Cubes, Jana, 6waves Lolapps, Natural Motion Games, 24MAS Group, Kubra and Acquinity Interactive.

• Manager- Regional Sales- US West

• Sales Executive – Online Marketing

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps 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.

Coco Girl developer MetroGames began staff cuts this month after a deal to buy the social game developer failed to close, Inside Social Games can confirm.

An email sent to various news outlets last week by someone claiming to be a MetroGames employee says the developer is facing an imminent closure and that CEO Damián Harburguer and COO Julián Lisenberg were privately pressuring workers to quit while publicly asking them to keep working despite nonpayment of December wages and bonuses. Harburguer followed up with ISG this week to confirm that the developer was facing layoffs after months of strenuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts to sell the company to a buyer.

“We informed our staff of our financial condition last week,” Harburguer tells us in an emailed statement. “A significant number of really talented employees have left the company and we will be forced to make additional reductions very soon. We regret that this happened during the Holiday season, but we did not want to take drastic action while any chance remained that a deal would be successful. We are doing everything we can to help our former employees find new positions with other companies in Buenos Aires and elsewhere.”

It was unclear from his statement whether or not MetroGames would be shutting down. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the developer currently enjoys 5.5 million monthly active users and 783,000 daily active users across all its Facebook games, with the recently launched Coco Girl making up more than 60% of that traffic. Earlier this year, the developer officially launched its Grand Theft Auto-inspired Facebook title, Auto Hustle. In June, the company partnered with EA mobile game publishing studio Chillingo to begin its entry into iOS with both existing and new IP. MetroGames currently has two titles available in the App Store — Plock and Typing Maniac.