Yesterday, during Zynga’s Q1 2013 earning call, CEP Mark Pincus announced the launch of Draw Something 2. The game is available to download for free exclusively on the Apple App Store. An Android version is coming soon.

The first Draw Something was a simple draw-and-guess game where players compete against each other to create pictures based on stimulus words. The game won the award for Best Social Network Game at last night’s Game Developer’s Choice Online Awards ceremony. It was the first time Zynga managed to take home a GDC Online Award, even though its games have been nominated for the past two years.

Draw Something 2 introduces a live feed where players can share, ‘like’ or comment on drawings, and follow friends, artists and celebrities. It also adds a collection of new drawing tools like new patterns, textures and colors.

Television personality Ryan Seacrest first revealed the existence of Draw Something 2 in March, when he posted a screenshot from the game to his Twitter account. Seacrest and Draw Something have long been associated with one another, especially following the revelation that Seacrest was producing a Draw Something-themed gameshow for CBS. Former Zynga vice president and Omgpop CEO Dan Porter was quick to confirm Seacret’s claim that the public was checking out some legit Draw Something 2 artwork, responding with the game’s official logo.

Zynga’s acquisition of Omgpop made some serious headlines last year, especially since the deal was reportedly worth somewhere around $200 million. Earlier this month, shortly after the announcement of Draw Something 2, we also learned that Zynga’s New York office general manager Dan Porter and former CEO and founder of OMGPOP had left Zynga.

“Developing and launching games is a team effort, and we’re proud of the great work the Zynga New York team has done with Draw Something 2,” said Zynga chief operating office David Ko, in a statement. “Our follow up to the original hit is even more social and engaging, and we’re excited to get it into the hands of our players globally. We thank Dan Porter for his efforts in making the Draw Something franchise a success and wish him well in his future endeavors. We’re proud to see talent like Sean Kelly take a bigger leadership role as the head of our New York studio and lead the team to the global launch of Draw Something 2.”

Sean Kelly, who’s been with the company since 2009, stepped in for Porter as the head of Zynga’s New York studio. Kelly’s official title is the vice president of mobile and general manager of Zynga New York, reporting to Zynga’s senior vice president of mobile Travis Boatman.

Inside Social Games will publish a full review of Draw Something 2 soon.

In Zynga’s Q1 2013 earnings call, CEO Mark Pincus’ opening statement  focused on Zynga’s transition from web to mobile. ”Our next opportunities are clearly on mobile,” he says.

Pincus laid out three key concepts for Zynga now and moving forward. He says Zynga is focused on building games, a network and working on profitability.

On the games front, Zynga’s most recently released mobile game, midcore card battler War of the Fallen, is monetizing 15 times higher compared to Zynga’s “With Friends” franchise, Pincus said.

“We’re following a playbook proven on the web to lead on mobile with a disciplined approach. We’re encouraged by early execution,” Pincus says.

Pincus also announced Draw Something 2, the sequel to Omgpop’s hit Pictionary-like drawing game Draw Something, is launching today. The sequel was first revealed in a Tweet by radio and TV personality Ryan Seacrest back in March.

As for Zynga’s network, which consists of 253 million monthly active users (MAU) across all platforms, Pincus says that the company has 65 million MAU on mobile. To demonstrate the power of Zynga’s mobile network, Pincus says word game What’s the Phrase, the company’s only mobile release in Q1, reached the No. 1 spot on the top free iOS apps charts, two days after the company turned on cross-promotion for the game within its network.

“The best way that we can be competitive in the market and positively move customer acquisition is by investing in our network and by better leveraging our large audience,” says Pincus, in the Q&A portion of today’s earnings call.

Since Zynga already has a strong user base on the web, Pincus says Zynga will continue launching cross-platform games that connect web and mobile users, a strategy that has worked for other companies such as King.

Aside from Zynga’s release of What’s the Phrase in the U.S., the company did launch two real-money gaming titles — Zynga Plus Poker (review) and Zynga Plus Casino (review) — in the U.K. in April. Both games are powered by real-money games operator bwin.party.

Later this quarter, Zynga plans to launch a casual title for mobile called Running With Friends, an endless runner game, which has already soft-launched in Canada, and action role-playing game Battlestone, which we reported on at the end of 2012.

Today, Zynga reported it made $263.5 million in revenue, with $229.8 million in bookings for Q1 2013. In terms of revenue, that’s flat year-over-year while bookings were roughly by 30 percent year-over-year.

Zynga’s earnings report shows it had a net income gain of $4.1 million; up from Q1 2012′s loss of $85.4 million, and adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $29 million. The diluted net income per share was $0.00, up year-over-year from a net income loss of $(0.12).

Daily active users (DAU) decreased from 65 million in the first quarter of 2012 to 52 million in the first quarter of 2013, down 21 percent year-over-year. DAU were down 8 percent from 56 million in the fourth quarter of 2012. Monthly active users (MAU) decreased from 292 million in the first quarter of 2012 to 253 million in the first quarter of 2013, down 13 percent year-over-year. MAU were down 15 percent from 298 million in the fourth quarter of 2012.

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Quiz Buddies is a new Facebook and mobile game from Playdemic. It’s available now on both platforms, and features cross-platform play between the Facebook and iOS versions. The iOS version does not require a Facebook login to play — the game also features a proprietary username system whereby friends can compete against one another without requiring a connection to the social network. This review is based on the Facebook version of the game.

Quiz Buddies is a simple asynchronous multiplayer quiz game that pits two friends against each other in an attempt to score as many points as possible over the course of five questions. The questions are initially all general knowledge, multiple-choice challenges, but as the player progresses through the game, they can unlock various themed question packs. These question packs may also be acquired by asking friends or paying real money.

Gameplay in Quiz Buddies is designed to be quick and easy to understand. Players must simply answer questions as quickly as possible, at which point they gain points if the question was correct, plus a bonus depending on how quickly they answered. This bonus can potentially double their winnings for a single question, and this score may be further increased by using a once-per-game powerup that doubles the score attained for a single correct answer. Two additional powerups are also available: one swaps the current question for a new one, and the other removes two incorrect answers, giving stumped players a 50/50 chance of guessing the correct one.

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Full-service Chinese mobile games publisher Yodo1 announced it has secured $5 million in Series A Funding. The round was led by SingTel Group with additional funding from original investor Chang You Fund.

Yodo1 CEO Henry Fong said in a statement that the main challenge for the company now is keeping up with Western developers eager to join its roster of partners. For this reason, the new funding will be used to expand Yodo1′s production capacity to work with more Western game companies and build the company’s platform and production team.

Yodo1, which came out of stealth in June 2012 with $2 million in seed funding, helps its publishing partners crack the Chinese market by focusing on app store distribution, social distribution, payments and advertising. Yodo1 also does a deep dive into the localization process with a fully-staffed studio of artists and developers who work with Western partners to adapt their games to Chinese tastes.

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Full-service Chinese mobile games publisher Yodo1 revealed a social games platform it plans to launch in Western markets. The platform, titled Kryptanium, allows developers to add social and cross-promotional features into every game, including single-player games, with an API.

The Kryptanium platform emerged naturally out of Yodo1’s localization and publishing business, helping Western developers monetize their games in China. In Western markets, social networks like Twitter and Facebook are invaluable tools to developers for marketing their games, and can, in the best cases, have a viral affect. But this is much harder to achieve in China where Google, Twitter and Facebook are blocked.

Kryptanium aims to solve this problem by integrating with the popular alternatives to Facebook in China (Sina Weibo, QQ and Tencent Weibo) and pulling them all to one platform which can then cross-promote to a large audience. An added benefit to the platform is that the user can interact with the platform, tap on cross-promotions and download new games all without exiting their current game session. “Never leave the game,” is the guiding philosophy, Yodo1’s vice president and lead on Kryptanium Spencer Liu told us.  “When the developers we work with saw Kryptanium in action, the response was very enthusiastic. They asked us how they can use it, right now and in the U.S.”

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Social-mobile gaming developer Digital Chocolate today launched its first real-money gaming title Slots! Pocket UK for iOS in the U.K.

Powered by real-money gaming platform Betable, Slots! Pocket UK is a slots game that allows U.K. users the option to wager either real money or virtual currency and chips on pulls of the slot machine. Betable first announced its partnership with Digital Chocolate back in November 2012. Digital Chocolate is one of 10 developers so far to partner with Betable for its real-money gaming platform, which is still a private beta program. Betable handles all the real-money aspects of the game on the backend, including compliance, fraud prevention, identity checks, wagering, and gambling results, while Digital Chocolate can focus on the development of the actual game. In order for players to gamble with real money, they must be authenticated with Betable by signing up, depositing money, and more.

“[Betable] helped us leapfrog the whole race into real-money gaming by allowing us to partner with them on their platform, and of course, they have the license in the U.K. to do real-money gaming,” Jason Loia, chief operating officer of Digital Chocolate, told Inside Mobile Apps.

Game developer and publisher Electronic Arts announced that on June 14 it will retire three of its Facebook games: Sim City Social, The Sims Social and Pet Society.

EA made the announcement on its website and explained that the games were being retired so it can “can reallocate development resources to other titles.” The announcement also encourages players to spend their existing balance of in-game currency as it will become invalid starting June 14.

This is a dramatic but not at all surprising move for EA. EA’s Q2 2013 earnings report was scant on information about the company’s performance and plans for its social games. However, former EA CEO John Riccitiello then revealed the company’s changed its outlook from last quarter as it’s shifted to focusing on mobile development, killing or delaying as many as 10 different social games.

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Mittens is a new iOS game from Disney. It’s available now as a $0.99 download from the App Store for iPhone or a separate “HD” version for iPad for $2.99, and carries additional in-app purchases to unlock later levels early — and also one additional in-app purchase for an extra level pack that is not part of the main game.

Mittens is a physics-based puzzler somewhat similar in execution to titles such as Cut The Rope. Players take indirect control of a cat as he attempts to make his way to a perilously-located milk bottle somewhere in the level. Players must navigate the cat by making use of various physics-based objects around the levels, which vary from sunshades that can be closed by removing their supports, to blocks of wood that can be chopped in a specific place by swiping through them with your finger. Some levels feature physics-based elements that interact with one another — for example, chopping a wood block so it falls onto a series of gears will cause it to slide down, hopefully depositing the cat in an advantageous position. Each of the game’s “worlds” are themed around a particular aesthetic, and each introduces new mechanics and hazards to the mix.

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Dragon Eternity is a new iPad-only iOS release from Game Insight. It’s available now as a free download from the App Store, and carries additional in-app purchases.

Dragon Eternity for iPad is actually an adaptation of Game Insight’s Web game of the same name, and includes cross-platform play with the browser-based incarnation of the game. There are some restrictions on the iPad version of the game, however: players may only level up to 30, may not play “mini-games” that are required to complete certain quests — these objectives may be skipped for free on iPad — and may not engage in the game’s “sea battles” system. These restrictions are apparently temporary, so presumably the full functionality of the Web version will be implemented into the game in due course.

Dragon Eternity is a massively-multiplayer role-playing game in which players take on the role of a custom character and direct them through a series of largely combat-focused quests. Rather than attempting to emulate the 3D perspective of computer-based MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and the numerous free-to-play offerings on the market, Dragon Eternity instead adopts a top-down view from which the player sees an overview of a complete area, and is able to interact with the inhabitants — friendly or otherwise — by tapping on them. This method of presentation removes a lot of the immersion factor inherent in being able to actually wander around and explore the world freely, but it is an eminently more sensible method of control for a touchscreen-based game. It also eliminates the large amounts of “travelling time” found in more traditional MMORPGs.

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