Russian developer Game Insight is exploring new platforms with old games by launching Resort World on Google+’s games platform and prepping Mystery Manor for iPad later this month.

Resort World first launched on Orkut in February 2010 before migrating to Facebook in June through a publishing agreement with 6waves (now 6waves Lolapps). The beach resort industry sim is now available on 15 different social networks, including G+, and is Game Insight’s third-largest title on Facebook behind Big Business and Mystery Manor. Resort World is self-published on G+ by Game Insight.

Speaking to Inside Social Games, Game Insight VP of Business Development Darya Trushkina explains that G+ looks like it could be the next big platform for social games if growth increases and the Games platform finds traction.

“Google+ is a big deal right now in the market from our perspective,” she says. “ From what I know, it’s the fastest growing platform and hopefully it will remain on that path and become a competitor to Facebook.”

The key difference between Facebook and G+ Games at this point is in virality. Facebook relies on social discovery of new games via News feeds and the App Ticker and Games Ticker features while G+ breaks games off into its destination tab that encompasses all game-related invites and notifications as well as the games themselves. Neither Facebook nor G+ have publicly released data that could tell us how the different approaches do or do not user affect acquisition and retention.

“It’s a good filter for spamming,” Trushkina says. “From the virality point of view, that’s probably not the best for developers, but from the end user perspective, it’s a great thing because now you have this perfect environment where you can go choose from good games — because Google is very picky [during the submissions process]. So I can go there and I know that I don’t have to go through thousands of games to find something that I love.”

Not much has been said about how Google works with developers to launch social games. From what we and Game Insight both understand, the APIs are open to developers to experiment with — after which point, a developer can approach Google about launching a game for G+ Games.

“From what I know, Google choose the games that will be the most complimentary to their platform,” Trushkina explains. “We just pitched them with Resort World because there is no game like it there yet. It’s actually perfect because we can test the social network and see how it actually performs.”

Mystery Manor also would have been a good fit Google+ given the lack of competing hidden object games on the platform, she says. That game’s development team, however, is very focused on launching an iPad version before the end of November. After that point, G+ and perhaps an Android tablets maybe the next two markets Game Insight targets with the title. This comes as something of a surprise as Game Insight was previously exploring an Android-only mobile strategy when we last spoke with them. Trushkina says that although the developer continues to see success on Android with new games, Mystery Manor on iOS just seemed more attractive.

Interestingly, Trushkina explains that some platforms make for safe “test” environments before rolling a game onto a new platform. For social games, Game Insight uses VK.com as its guinea pig social network because the developer has a very clear understanding of the platform and its audience — which makes it easier to integrate player feedback in the first few weeks of launch. For mobile games, iOS maybe the safer route because the Apple approvals process buys the developer more time to polish the product.

“It makes it easier for us to fix bugs, see what people like and don’t like in terms of new features,” she says. “So we always release our games there first and then on Facebook and then on other social networks. On VK, you can polish a game [over time], where on Facebook it would fail right away. It’s the same with Android. On Android, it needs to be a perfect game because users get discouraged so easily and so fast, they almost never go back to a game even if you make it the best game on Earth after [launch]. The iOS approvals process helps out with this, but it makes [development cycles] a little different. Here you have up to three weeks to polish the product.”

As for future games, Game Insight is already testing Lords of Atlantis on VK with a possible Facebook launch in the works. Trushkina says it will be a couple more weeks before Game Insight makes a final decision on launching more titles for G+ — but a key component of that decision is whether or not the developer has games that Google wants on its platform. It’s also too soon to tell, she says, how average revenues per user stacks up on G+ compared to social networks.

San Francisco-based startup Swrve is ready to exit beta today with its cloud-based feedback and testing tool of the same name. The graduation comes a little over a month after the company netted $2.7 million in seed funding to put toward developing its service and hiring new staff.

Swrve is a tool that creates multiple split tests within a game where developer can try, fine-tune and deploy changes live. Company CEO Hugh Reynolds explains that the service isn’t an analytics platform like Kontagent or its competitors, but rather a component that allows developers to see and act on feedback collected from split tests conducted in-game. As an example, he says a card game developer can deploy five versions of the same piece of art for one card type in-game, interpret which performs best among its demographic breakdown, and push the one art piece that performs the best live. Or, Reynolds says, a developer could even consider deploying more than one art piece for the card in-game that varies depending on the user’s demographic.

“People look at it and say it’s more like a game editor than analytics tool,” he says. “It’s something that ‘regular people’ that don’t have a PhD in analytics can use day-to-day to guide development.”

Swrve is now launching version 2 of its server architecture, allowing the service to scale to a larger pool of developers. One of its earliest clients is Facebook social game developer 5th Planet Games; Reynolds tells us that about 18 more customers across mobile, social and open web game developers are also evaluating the product. Swrve uses a business model similar to a phone bill where customers have a low point of entry and then pay for usage with no lock-in agreement. It’s possible to use the service on a month-to-month basis, but there are incentives for quarterly or annual subscriptions.

As an interesting aside, Reynolds and Swrve CTO Dr. Steven Collins are known in the video game industry as the creators of the cross-platform Havok physics engine, which powers games like Fallout 3, L.A. Noire, and Dead Rising. Havok sold to Intel in 2007 and Reynolds and Collins went on to found Swrve in 2010.

Berlin-based social betting game developer Crowdpark has raised a $6 million second round of investment led by Europe’s Target Partners with participation from previous investor Earlybird Venture Capital. This brings the developer’s total funding to $8 million.

Crowdpark made some ink earlier this year with Bet Tycoon (formerly titled “Crowdpark – Betting Game”), consistently landing in our top 20 emerging Facebook games category toward the beginning of the summer. The game allows players to place bets of virtual currency on a range of topics in popular culture (e.g. the outcome of sports games) or on customized private topics (e.g. “Is Jane from accounting dating John from the mail room?”). Players pay in Facebook Credits to receive a pool of virtual currency, which is then placed on bets. Players receive virtual currency whenever they win a bet; but per Facebook policy and many online gambling laws in various countries, this cannot be converted back into Facebook Credits.

As the actual process of the game isn’t very visual, Crowdpark included this infographic with the press release announcing the funding to illustrate the process:

Over the next couple of weeks and months, Crowdpark plans to update Bet Tycoon with content that makes it feel more like a traditional Facebook game — such as a player progression system and a storyline where the player is encouraged to become the ultimate betting tycoon.

Where Bet Tycoon really gets interesting is in the dynamics of bets in real time. Using Crowdpark’s forecasting algorithm, the game shifts the winnings and odds of a bet depending on how the actual event being bet on plays out. At any point during a football game, for example, a player could cash out before losing a bet completely to recoup some of their virtual currency.

It’s this piece of technology that investor Target Partners found especially compelling. Target partner Waldemar Jantz tells us that the company had never before invested in a social game — only in technology The combination of social game and betting (without actual gambling) was also a factor that convinced the firm to invest in Crowdpark. Earlybird Venture Capital is best known in the social games industry for backing Peak Games, a Facebook game publisher-developer that has the lead on Turkish, Middle Eastern and North African markets.

Going forward, Crowdpark’s Ingo Hinterding says the new round of funding will go toward hiring on staff and expanding into other platforms. The developer recently opened an office in San Francisco and plans to release a new game for mobile platforms centered on sports betting in the next three months. At some point after that, Crowdpark hopes to release a third product that leverages dual-screen players that like to watch an event on one screen (say, a TV) while monitoring their bets on another (like an iPad). Hinterding also says Google+ may be a possible platform for the developer, “once we’ve seen the numbers.”

Crowdpark is also launching a Social Betting Index on its own site to show the world what people are betting on. According to Hinterding, this information cannot yet be broken out by region or demographic, but this could be a feature added to the index at a later date.

According to our traffic tracking service, AppData, Bet Tycoon currently enjoys 480,000 monthly active users and 20,000 daily active users.

We’re here at Zynga headquarters in San Francisco for the Zynga Unleashed press event.

The highlights include the launch of major new or sequel titles on Facebook, HTML5 games that use Facebook’s new mobile platform, and the introduction of Project Z, aka Zynga Direct, formerly known as Zynga Live — a Facebook Connect-based gaming platform that has been in the works for two years.

The following is a lightly-paraphrased transcript of the presentations.

The Live Blog

After a promotional video about Zynga games, Mark Pincus has taken the stage.

10:38 We started a few blocks from here. Tells story about growing from there.

Tells story about the new office — it had been the Sega building back in the 80s. Now it’s getting remodeled.

Zynga launching ten new products, that have been in development for over a year.

Before we show you the products I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about what we’re trying to do. What’s in all these games that we have now. How do you string it all together, tie it back to our mission that we’ve been pursuing for the last five years.

We challenge ourselves every day with the question “how do we get you guys to play.” You don’t have time to sit and play games, yet we really think that play is this macro theme activity that we all need to fit back into our lives. Everything behind the products we’re creating is our mission to build what we think of as a platform for play.

We’re not trying to be the company that makes the next hit game — although we want to do that too. We want to do something broader. Make up a platform for play. We’re going to talk about the technology, infrastructure, behind all that we’re doing to create socialness. To help and inspire you to many more friend connections. In any given session, we’re measuring and tracking how well our teams do with the content. To inspire you to connect with more people in meaningful ways.

We’re trying to design the games — we have some design principles. The First Time User Experience. The FTUE. We believe in those first moments, those first three clicks, why you want it, why you want to check out more of it. It’s kind of a three-click deal — we sold you or we didn’t.

We can’t ask for more than 15 minutes of your time. We don’t want to ask you to change your day. Just like a good show (I’ve been addicted to Breaking Bad lately). Like a good show, if you do like our games, we hope to give you enough depth that you can keep playing for three months or a year.

We hope to enable a platform for direct relationships. Wether on the web or mobile. We hope to create socialness around the game.

Friends from Facebook (corp) are here. We’re excited to be a launch platform for their mobile platform. We’ll be showing you 3 HTML5 versions of our games I think launching today. We’ll start unveiling pieces of Zynga Direct. We hope you’ll see that it’s the deepest integration with FB Connect of any service on the web or mobile.

In terms of the games we’re showing today, including one that launched last night…. with every game we hope it moves the genre, answers the question “how is this more social.”

They took this component of the game — clan fighting — and brought it front and center.

We think that’s going to be a new spin on social crime-fighting. We’re going to show you CastleVille. That game is built by a team in Dallas that has a long track record building Triple-A PC titles like Age of Empires. We think the art and graphics are really beautiful. The design, the user-driven story line, character development, new ways to collaborate and get ahead through partnering with other players in the game.

We’re going to show you another casual game category called Hidden Chronicles. A first for us in the hidden objects and puzzle category, a long established category in the download market. We hope to show a more social spin on it, let people collaborate and compete to do puzzles.

David Ko is going to show you a bunch of mobile titles now and in the next few weeks. We’ve really ramped up our mobile game offering, worked to deliver mobile in social context. With our FB Connect integration, and a lot more firsts for mobile social gaming.

10:50 After going through the first few games in mobile, we’re going to introduce our Zynga Direct offering, which has been two years in development. The first of many many releases that you’ll see in the coming weeks and months.

I really hope you get the chance after this to touch and play the games.

I’m going to turn this over to Cadir Lee (CTO). We’ve worked together since he was 22, when he was in his first job. We both learned product development at the same time. Lucky to have him come back and build out the tech.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the tech. Over half the Zynga employees are engineers, and are hard at work making the games better.

I wanted to share some of the highlights. The gaming engine itself: can display thousands of objects in a world, make the world come alive, show animations. All of our game engines focus on making it easy to build game, and enhance game. We’re also hard at work on new capabilities with Flash 11.

We think there’s a lot more to come. We also talk a lot about infrastructure; we’re long-time public and private cloud users. We have our own, Z-Cloud. Worst thing is if you can’t play one of our games. We try to make sure they’re available all the time. We’ve been known to deploy 1,000 servers to meet a game launch. Elasticity of key, makes play always available.

One of the things I want to share with you today.

We’re working on HTML5, R&D to make games entirely from HTML, CSS and Javascript. Snapshot of one of our test games.

Analytics — long been known as an analytics company. Not what to build, but how the things we build are working. How to match up with the right somebody across the street, across the country, across the world. We’re trying to make sure it’s not the data that comes in but the personalization that comes out. How do you make sure the right player with the right skill-set can have a fun and challenging game.

I’d like to introduce you to Roy Sehgal, vice president and general manager.

Today, I’m pleased to unveil a new game genre for Zynga. Hidden object games. Our first game in this new genre: Hidden Chronicles. A new journey for our players, and one we’re excited to share today.

And now for the first time ever, let’s take a sneak peek at the game.

[Video starts.]

The game is about mystery, discovery, social competition. Use skills to find thousands of hidden objects within beautiful scenes. Begin at Ramsey Manor. Here, you’re going to explore, build, discover, customize, the self expression we know our players love.

Compare scores….

Hours of play within a single scene. I’m proud of our team. Unique sound, animatics — make you feel like you’re underwater. Deep, rich, engaging. A new and unique art style for Zynga.

Mafia Wars 2.

Easiest the edgiest game we’ve had: Franchise, feel, friends and fighting. Mafia Wars launched in 2008. Great honor to work with veterans of Mafia Wars team to create sequel. But even greater to give back to our players from the first game. All about rising up, getting revenge and kicking ass with your friends.

[Video starts]

11:00 Epic missions with your friends. Example: blowing up casino and getting stacks of cash. Happened asynchronously, but shared social experience. Moment that’ll continue through the game.

Also bosses: very important story points in the game. A don is sending thugs to take cash — won’t stop until I fight back. Use power-ups and defense, call friends. Also hit boss on my game board. First boss. Took him out. Future bosses are super tough, have lots of tactics to defeat.

Fighting: bone yard, any weapons. Any guns. Shotguns, rocket launchers, even chainsaws to cut people up. Lots of sophisticated matching. Lots of fun rewards.

[Our review here.]

Go to others houses. Take their cash, products. Then they call their friends and come fight you. Friend bars. But we built a rival bar — keep track of the friends you hate. Keep these cycles going. That’s a little taste of Mafia Wars 2.

Before I go. We also just went live on Google+ with Mafia Wars 2.

Here to talk about Zynga Poker, our first social game. Launched in July 2007. Still the world’s largest and most social social game. While the game is traditional Texas Hold’Em poker, we have social features — fantastic presence across Facebook, Google+, Android and special interface for iPhone and iPad. We realized we could broaden our scope and go beyond.

We’re launching a new franchise. Zynga Casino. We’re bringing fans the full Monte Carlo experience with the launch of Zynga Casino. You can’t always take your friends on a plane to Vegas. But you can on Zynga poker tables and other rooms.

Joining the franchise: Zynga Bingo. This is the first new game in the Zynga Casino Franchise. It was created by our talented New York team with our poker studio.

Zynga Bingo features a number of themed rooms. The Zynga ball shoots out of a Cadillac. Or  a sweet shop. Or FarmVille background. Fun social twist — friends with benefits. More friends playing, more advantages in the game.

Launching on Facebook soon.

11:10 We’re bringing players a new way to play. Also on Zynga devices.

Bill Jackson, creative director from Zynga Dallas. Before we were Bonfire Studios — Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, Halo Wars. Zynga was *the* company putting social in gaming. We’re very proud to be putting on the next “-Ville” game. CastleVille. FarmVille was about social expression, brought social games to mainstream like no other.

Frontierville was all about narrative. Then CityVille, fastest-growing of all time. Number one on Facebook.

CastleVille is latest, most beautiful to date. New level of social. Caste of characters: Giselle a singer, dragon-slayer Tom, Sonia the pirate, George the viking. Antonio the playboy woodsman.

[Video starts.]

We put a lot of love and attention to detail to our characters.

CastleVille: true manifestation of Zynga’s social magic. Improves upon each of the things of the games before. Build castle, craft art, armor, potions. Help friends with those, as we progress through the epic journey through the game.

Go through the free market to trade. Work with friends to defend against Beasties that lurk outside of the castle walls. New storytelling in a personal way. Players create their own story, own path through games. New locations, items, hidden characters. Your journey will be different from your friends. I might meet Antonio, you might meet Giselle. We learn the characters’ stories as we work our way through the games. Zynga is bringing massively multi-player role-playing games.

One more thing is music: orchestral arrangements.

Couldn’t show you without heart and soul that Dallas team puts into it.

I hope we’ve given you a taste, a flavor of where we’re taking the Ville franchise.

Mark is back on stage. Turns out there’s an open building space with five stories packed full of Zynga employees watching us cover the event. Sort of surprising.

11:20 Introducing John Schappert, new COO (until recently at EA).

[Video starts about players.]

People want to play everywhere. David Ko, chief mobile officer, now on stage.

Super excited to talk to you today about Mobile. Update you on many of the exciting initiatives that the team is working on. You’ve heard about Zynga equaling play. Delivering where our players are. Not just because I’m the mobile guy, although I may be biased.

Talks about Words With Friends going across platform.

Talking about HTML5 initiative. Launching three on the platform.

Words With Friends and Poker.

New game is FarmVille Express. Wanted to do some actions on the go. Harvest, plant, plough. That’s what we’re offering.

Fourth game, which I’m excited to talk to you about, is Mafia Shakedown. Here’s the gist of the game. The don of all dons has been killed. Bunch of things that you’ll do with requests, missions, gives you opportunity to become the next don. You can steal from your friends. This game will be coming shortly so stay tuned.

Lastly, this fifth game is called Dream Zoo. Zynga’s first game in zoo genre. You get to manage the dream zoo, no cages, the animals get to roam.

[Video starts.]

You can create all sorts of animals….

11:30 Schappert back on.

In addition to mobile and social. More than 60 million daily active players. We know that because we have great stats. We learn a lot more not just from stats but from talking to them. Yes they like our games, play them a lot. Playing our games with friends.

Sneak peek of something new: Project Z.

Centered on bringing players together, giving them what they want. Social environment just for games. Facebook Connect-enabled platform to play environment tailored just for games. Here’s a sneak peak.

[Video starts.]

Link is: Zynga.com/ztag

Can reserve own Zynga tag at Zynga.com. Having own alias. At work I’m “Jon” or probably other names. But online: SchappAttack.

Coming to you. Bringing back MarkPinc to close out the show.

We tried to share a lot with you guys. Hopefully in pretty quick order. More efficient way to share product launches. Even tried to share some things that are works in progress. Project Z, Z Tags, games that aren’t launching yet.

We really want to build a platform for Play. Committed to one vision, one mission, hasn’t changed since we founded the company. You should expect it won’t ever change in the future.

We want to be the biggest macro bet on social gaming. We believe in social gaming, we believe that how more than us in this building, how everyone in the world will embrace play in our lives. Everything we’re doing is an attempt to bring that to life. It’s early, it’s primitive. The game play and socialness is at an early point. We know that in the next couple years its going to come to life, be mobile. More of the WoW feeling, but packaged up in something you can understand and like in 3 clicks, and play in 10 to 15 minutes.

We hope we gave you some more of our flavor, our team, a bunch of our leaders.

[Zynga employee photo courtesy of Anthony Ha.]

Facebook has just released its official iPad app. The tablet device was unveiled in January 2010, but development and negotiations with Apple stalled the release of Facebook’s app until now. It should become available in the App Store soon.

A slide-out navigation bar will allow users to briskly move between the app’s many features. Persistent access to notifications, messages, and requests means users can check for new alerts without having to losing their place as they do with Facebook for iPhone’s dedicated navigation grid screen. Other features include multi-conversation Chat and a full-screen photo browser.

With the iPad app available, Facebook today also announced the launch of its mobile application platform, which you can read more about here. Users will be able to access third-party apps and games from the official Facebook for iPad app, with bookmarks opening previously installed native apps or leading to the App Store where users can download them.

> Read the rest on Inside Facebook.

Facebook finally unveiled its long-awaited effort to help mobile developers market their native and HTML5-based apps through its platform today. iOS developers will get to take advantage of bookmarks, requests and the news feed in the same way that Facebook canvas developers do.

The interesting parts of today’s launch are:

Facebook is playing nice with Apple on viral distribution for native iOS apps, not just HTML5-based ones: If a developer wants to distribute a native application, Facebook’s notifications will send users to the iTunes app store.

So Facebook is not pressuring developers to build HTML5 apps in order to use its viral channels. This is a big deal because it means Facebook’s mobile platform will have greater adoption by iOS developers who don’t want to split their limited resources between developing natively and on HTML5. While promising, HTML5 apps still have a noticeable performance disparity compared to native iOS applications. It’s especially pronounced with games, which are the largest revenue driver on both platforms.

It’s unclear if Facebook will get affiliate revenue for the downloads it drives like other mobile-social gaming networks such as GREE’s OpenFeint do.

Parallel viral channels on Android will be coming soon. There’s no official date though.

Facebook Credits have arrived for mobile web apps (as was widely anticipated): HTML5 developers that want to use Credits as their payment mechanism must use it exclusively. Native iOS apps have to use Apple’s payment system, however. This split in payments between web-based and native apps is expected given that Apple is unlikely to give up revenue from in-app payments and paid downloads.

We were the first to report that Facebook might use an HTML5 platform as a way to extend Credits to mobile back in February, four months before any mainstream outlets wrote about it. And we also correctly reported the launch date as three weeks away from f8 while other blogs incorrectly said this would launch last week at Apple’s event.

MindJolt, the casual-social gaming company run by former MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe, announces a new string of games today along with the news that the company has successfully transitioned its business model from advertising to virtual goods.

The announcement comes roughly five months after MindJolt acquired social mobile game company Social Gaming Network (SGN) and free online game network Hallpass Media. At that time, MindJolt was very clearly activating on DeWolfe’s strategy to expand off of Facebook onto mobile and open web platforms. The acquisitions also helped MindJolt bring much of its game development in-house, effectively educating the company on how monetize games through virtual goods sales as opposed to advertising.

The result, DeWolfe tells us today, is a successful pivot into a new business model with virtual goods now making up one-third of MindJolt’s revenues. Though he declines to give specific numbers, he confirms that annual revenues are in the tens-of-millions and expected to exceed the $20 million figure reported in November 2010. Since April of this year, the company has released or re-launched a handful of games on iOS, including Warp Dash, Master Shot, Dress-up – Fashion, and Mini Cafe.

In the next few months, we can expect to see seven new games out of MindJolt, the first of which DeWolfe says is coming to iOS in as few as a couple of weeks. The upcoming titles include Fluff Friends – Races, Bird’s the Word, and another game inspired by DressUp, which was a web game bought by MindJolt as part of the Hallpass Media acquisition.

The big challenge now will be tackling cross-platform releases, a task many social and mobile game developers struggle with. Currently, MindJolt is building native apps for each platform — web, Facebook, iOS and, eventually, Android — with only very light integration between games of the same franchise via Facebook Connect. The games essentially look and play the same on each platform, however, and DeWolfe says that this is helpful when it comes to promoting games cross-platform.

Another component of the cross-platform challenge is creating a critical mass of users that support the MindJolt brand. As of right now, the company says it has a pool of over 30 million mobile installs, over 70 million social platform installs on social platforms, and over 25 million unique monthly active users on the web. Moving eyeballs between these platforms is crucial in supporting new game launches — as other cross-platform developers like OMGPOP have experienced when shifting audiences between Facebook and iOS.

“We’re getting a trememndous amount of traffic and downloads from web,” DeWolfe says. “It doesn’t usually work to advertise something on the web and then have people go through the friction of the iTunes store, downloading, and then picking up their device and actually using it.” The near-identical appearance of the apps, he says, reduces the friction.

Going forward, MindJolt is also releasing its first in-house developed Facebook game today, titled Bubble Atlantis. Though still integrating the teams at SGN and Hallpass Media, DeWolfe tells us that the company is still “opportunistically” looking for game developer talent acquisitions or second-party partnerships. After successfully beefing up its mobile business, the bar is now higher for what MindJolt can do on social network game platforms and on open web.

Unity Technologies Announces Unity Award Finalists — Unity Technologies has announced the finalists for its annual Unity Awards for games on the web, iOS, Android, and consoles. For games in the social space, Cmune Games’ UberStrike is nominated for Best Cross-Platform title and a Community Choice award while Nival Interactive is up for Best Gameplay with King’s Bounty: Legions.

Zynga IPO Delayed — According to Reuters, Zynga may be delaying its initial public offering. The delay is partially due to questions the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has regarding the company’s means of measuring daily and monthly active users and its bookings. Another reason behind the delay is poor market conditions.

Playdom Seeks Armor Designers — Playdom is issuing a virtual call to arms for Deep Realms. Designers and illustrators of all kinds are invited to design a suit of armor for the social game. The winning design will become part of the game and its artists will receive $1,000. Additionally, the 10 highest voted submissions and five runner-ups will be featured in an online gallery.

Woozworld Raises $6 Million — Children’s virtual world Woozworld has announced a $6 million round of funding, reports VentureBeat. The company is looking to use the money to expand Woozworld onto mobile platforms.

Whale Wars Captain Paul Watson Endorses Social Game — Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepard Conservation Society and the TLC show Whale Wars officially endorsed the social game, MyConservationPark. Through a partnership with Sea Shepard, developer Good World Games will donate 15% of earnings to the Sea Shepard Conservation Society.

Night Owl Games Displays New Social Game at PAX – At the Penny Arcade Expo last weekend, Night Owl Games debuted a new social strategy game by the name of Dungeon Overlord. The game tasks users with the management of an army of orcs, keeping them happy and equipped (with the construction of buildings and paths) so that they can battle through dungeons automatically. Players can work with friends to boost aspects of their army as they attempt to expand their dominion across the game world.

[Announcement] Bearville.com Passes 20 Million Avatars — The social virtual world for children that utilizes the Build-A-Bear-Workshop brand, Bearville, has reached a new milestone this week. Developer Frima Studios announced that the game has surpassed 20 million avatars.

[Announcement] NetDragon Websoft Announces Completely Free iPad & Facebook MMOG — Chinese online games developer and operator, NetDragon Websoft has announced that it will be bringing Conquer Online to iPad and Facebook as a free-to-play MMOG. The company states that the game will host no download fee, no subscriptions, and no in-game “Shopping Mall.”

China is fast-becoming the second-largest market in terms of downloads for many developers including companies like Rovio, but it lags behind in terms of monetization. The country came in just behind the U.S. in page views on Google’s AdMob advertising network in July, according to statistics the network shared at an iOS developer conference in China this past weekend.

The promise is there, but how do mobile developers take advantage of it?

Over the past two weeks in Beijing and Shanghai, I’ve had the chance to talk with several mobile developers like High Noon-maker Happylatte, PapayaMobile, PopCap Games and other companies being incubated in former Google China head Kai-Fu Lee’s incubator Innovation Works.

It’s an incredibly complex and different market from the U.S., but here are a few insights into developing and marketing iOS and Android apps there:

1) Android may be the long-term bet, but iOS is showing surprising resilience in spite of lower incomes here: 

iOS has leapt up the ranks of mobile search referrals to Baidu in recent months and sends more queries to the Chinese search engine than Android does, according to a source at the search company familiar with the data. Google’s AdMob also said that close to three-fourths of the pageviews on its network in China are from iOS as compared to Android during the same presentation that the picture at the top is from. Nokia is still the biggest platform in China though.

There aren’t good public estimates available on the actual number of consumers carrying Android and iOS devices considering that there are many “Shanzhai” or knock-off phones that are based on Android but are incompatible with the platform. Plus, many people bring phones into the country through relatives and friends abroad. The country’s largest carrier China Mobile — which doesn’t even sell the iPhone — said it had 7.44 million iPhones on its network in its last quarterly earnings call.

Dianxin, one of the makers of a local variant of Android known as Tapas, estimates there are 12 to 15 million Android devices currently circulating in the country. Many other local mobile-focused companies like PapayaMobile say they’re building products assuming there are at least 10 million iOS and 10 million Android phones circulating in the country.

An unlocked iPhone 4 costs 4,999 renminbi here, or roughly $780, well above its American price and even farther above the discounted price with a two-year plan that most U.S. consumers choose. That is about twice what the average new Android phone from Samsung, Motorola or HTC retails for at 2300 to 2600 renminbi or $360 to $410, according to China-focused research firm ZDC. Most people buy their phones unlocked — and often at full retail price — then pick a carrier afterward.

Apple is an incredibly revered brand in China. Based on observation, it’s hard to say there is a more potent and accessible status symbol for Chinese consumers with newfound discretionary income than the iPhone. There is a reason there are fake Apple stores here. There is a reason why Apple’s newly appointed chief executive Tim Cook said in the company’s last earnings call that China brought in $3.8 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter and $8.8 billion in revenue in the fiscal year to date.

Apple has also gotten away with a lot more than many other Western consumer technology companies which have come here only to fall flat on their faces. Unlike Google, Apple maintains a favorable relationship with the Chinese government. It likely censors sensitive content from the local version of the app store to comply with the Chinese government’s restrictions. Google doesn’t support paid apps in Android Market in China and unless it censors its store (which would require substantial changes to the store’s current review process), it would be hard for it to gain mass adoption here. In that case, alternative Android app stores may thrive.

2) There are many local variants of Android, but none of them are really that big — yet.

Unlike many other Western markets, there are several custom versions of Android here that are tailored to the needs of Chinese consumers (or in less promising cases, the needs of Chinese carriers and OEMs). Because the Android market here is still so new, most Android users still have the standard version of Google’s OS.

“None of them are really big right now,” said Si Shen, the chief executive of Android mobile-social gaming network PapayaMobile.

Don’t worry about them for now. But if you are interested, the handful that come up most often in conversation are:

> Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps.

Game Developers Choice Online Awards Reveals Finalists — The finalists for the second annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards have been announced. Below are the social game nominees and their respective categories.

• Dragons of Atlantis (Kabam) — Best Online Visual Arts, Best Social Network Game
• CityVille (Zynga) — Best Social Network Game, Best Online Technology
• Gardens of Time (Playdom) — Best Social Network Game, Best New Online Game
• FrontierVille (Zynga) — Best Social Network Game, Best Online Game Design, Best Audio for an Online Game
• Ravenwood Fair (Lolapps) — Best Social Network Game, Best Online Game Design, Best Audio for an Online Game
• Empire Avenue (Empire Avenue — Online Innovation
• Zombie Lane (Digital Chocolate) — Online Innovation
• Monster Galaxy (Gaia Online) — Best New Online Game

Zynga Launches Campaing with Edible Schoolyard Project — The Edible Schoolyard Project is an organization that supports education throughout the United States and now Zynga’s FarmVille players can contribute. Players can purchase a limited edition “rainbow chard” for their farm with 100 percent of proceeds going to Edible Schoolyard. Additionally, should players donate $5, $10, or $25 they will both receive the chard but also gain a limited edition garden gnome decorative item. Once the crop is mastered, they will also receive a virtual lunchbox full of produce.

Zynga Boosts CEO Voting Power — According to pre-IPO documents obtained by Bloomberg, Zynga is revising its stock structure into multiple tiers so that CEO Mark Pincus has 70 times more voting power than public investors.

Bungie Aerospace Announces Crimson: Steam Pirates – Social and mobile game publisher Bungie Aerospace is ready to reveal its first game at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle this week. Crimson: Steam Pirates for iPad is a freemium turn-based strategy game developed by Harebrained Schemes. Bungie Aerospace was established by the Halo creator to support independent social and mobile game developers.

Sony to Redesign PlayStation Home — Ars Technica reports on an upcoming redesign for the PlayStation Home virtual space accessed via the PlayStation 3 console. The new direction will convert Home from “a social network to a social game platform.” Within the new Home, players will be able to visit four themed spaces representing and filled with different types of games and participate in an optional quest meta-game that encompasses all of Home.

WildTangent Adds DoubleDown Casino — WildTangent and Double Down Interactive have announced a partnership this week that will bring the social title DoubleDown Casino to the former’s game platform. A virtual casino, the game offers players chances to win virtual currency in games such as blackjack, slots, poker, and roulette.

MapleStory Runs Cross-Promotion With MapleStory Adventures — Nexon is running a cross-promotion between MapleStory and its Facebook title, MapleStory Adventures. Players that log on to the Facebook version will now be able to earn experience points and Mesos (virtual currency) for the primary game.

[Announcements] RockYou Adds Back To School Content to Gourmet Ranch — School across the U.S. started fall semester this week, and RockYou has updated its Facebook title Gourmet Ranch with a “Back to School” set of features. Users can now create a scholastic theme for their restaurant with items such as chalkboards, school-themed costumes, and healthy lunch recipes.