Analysts say Zynga must add nine million new DAU per quarter - Industry analysts Cowen and Company have calculated than in order to maintain its current DAU count across its business, Zynga must add at least nine to 10 million DAU every quarter — approximately 100,000 new users every day — to outpace the number of DAU lost quarterly. According an interview on Gamasutra, Zynga’s games lose about 18.4 percent percent of DAU each quarter.

Japan gets mobile social games platform for adults only - Japanese video distribution company DMM has launched its own mobile social network featuring pornographic social games according to Japanese industry watcher Serkan Toto. DMM is a leading Japanese producer of adult video content.

Namco Bandai: free-to-play damaging game industry – Gamespot is reporting that Olivier Comte, Namco Bandai’s SVP for Europe has come out swinging against the free-to-play model, saying games that follow the model aren’t high quality, and that low-cost games lower the perceived value of games, ultimately harming publishers.

Sterne Agee: Zynga loses $150 to acquire every new paid customer – According to Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, Zynga has spent $120 million on new player acquisition so far this fiscal year, or $150 for every new paying customer according to his interview with Develop.

513 million internet users in China - Penn Olson is reporting that China now has 513 million citizens online. According to the latest data from the China Internet Network Information Center, 38.3 percent of the country’s population now uses the internet.

MegaZebra appoints Godager and Goeldner to board - Munich-based social game company MegaZebra has appointed European video game industry veterans Gaute Godager and Jürgen Goeldner to its board of directors. Gaute Godager was a co-founder of Funcom.

Japanese social games market to be worth $4.4 billion in 2012 – Japanese market research firm Yano is predicting the Japanese social game industry — driven mainly by mobile social game companies like DeNA and GREE — will be worth $4.4 billion in 2012.

Zynga moves towards online gambling – Zynga has confirmed what many already suspected, telling All Things D that it looking into real money gambling. The company is currently is undertaking “active conversations with potential partners to better understand and explore this new opportunity.” While Facebook does not currently allow real-money gambling on its platform yet, the company will soon in regions were it is legal.

Final Fantasy Brigade has half a million users – Square Enix’s first mobile social game based on the Final Fantasy franchise is now live on  DeNA’s Mobage network for both feature phones and smartphones. According to Andriasang, the game already has more than 500,000 users.

GREE buys stake in Mobicle for mobile social game development - GREE has bought a 6.8 percent share in Korean game company Mobicle. The two companies will co-develop a variety of mobile social games that will be available globally in the second quarter of 2012.

Nexon licenses Unity - Tokyo-headquartered gaming company Nexon has signed a deal to license Unity’s game development platform, reports Develop. According to a statement from Nexon, the company will be using Unity to develop multi-platform content.

[Launch] University of Washington releases Facebook game – The University of Washington Bothell has released its first Facebook game. Called UWB Wetlands Restoration, the game was created by undergraduate students and 100 percent of the proceeds go to restoration of the real UW Bothell wetlands.

Chinese social, online game markets booming - According to information released at the 2011 China Game Industry Annual Conference, China’s online gaming sector (MMOs, casual games and social games) is now worth more than 42.85 billion yuan ($6.8 billion), 32.4 percent more than it was worth in 2010, reports Penn Olson.

Persona 3 Social has 1 million members – Persona 3 Social, the social spin off game of PS2 hit Persona 3 has over a million members on Mobage, according Siliconera. The news bodes well for the Personal 3 Social creator Index Corporation’s next game, Persona 4 Social.

TeePee Game partners with OK! TeePee Games, a games discovery service based in the UK has signed a deal with The Express Group, the publisher of supermarket tabloid OK! to create a branded games discovery portal for the company’s UK Facebook group called OK! Games.

Vostu adds more Android games to its portfolio – Latin American social games developer Vostu is quietly expanding into mobile. The company soft launched three Android titles last year and will be releasing four more in the first quarter of 2012 according to Business Insider.

Monumental Games shuts down – UK-based Monumental Games, creator of the Facebook 3D MMO Little Horrors and the Prime toolkit for 3D browser and Facebook games has shut down, laying off 20 workers according to a report on Develop.

Cave pivots to social – Andriasang is reporting that Japanese developer Cave is shifting its focus to social games following a disappointing earnings report that predicted the company would only make $650,000 in operating profit this year. The company already makes social games for both Mobage and GREE.

Social games cheaters cheat in real life too – According to a new survey from EA’s PopCap Games, people who cheat at social games are likely to cheat in real life. Of the 1200 people polled, eight percent of social games players admitted to cheating, and of those 8 percent, almost half admitted to cheating in real life situations. Although more women than men play social games, men were more likely to admit to cheating in them.

Google Making its own social game – Google has released a video of an upcoming social game it is developing that uses Google Maps. The game will be available in February on Google+.

Kixeye releases Backyard Monsters expansion – As of today, the first expansion for Kixeye’s popular RTS Facebook game Backyard Monsters will be available on Facebook. Backyard Monsters: Inferno will allow players to explore below the surface of the earth.

Kabam expands Godfather: Five Families - Kabam has added another neighborhood to its social game, The Godfather: Five Families. Greenwich Village is now available to all players on the Kabam website, Google+ and Facebook.

Transformers social game coming to GREE – Beloved cartoon franchise The Transformers is getting a social game according a report from Andriasang. The game, titled Transformers for GREE was developed by Interspace and will be available next month.

Pulitzer Prize winner to pen social game – Gamasutra is reporting that Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is teaming with non-profit developer Games for Change to create a social game about female oppression. The game will be released on Facebook in late 2012.

[Launch] Mail.Ru releasing new browser-based MMO – Mail.Ru Games announced this week that it will be releasing a new browser-based MMO called RiotZone early this year. The game is a strategy game designed to appeal to casual gamers.

[Launch] PerBlue Brings Parallel Kingdom to Facebook - PerBlue’s location based MMORPG Parallel Kingdom is going against the tide of Facebook to mobile expansions and moving onto the web. The game is now available on Kongregate, Chrome and Facebook.

South Korean game publisher Nexon is eying an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange that would raise $1.3 billion dollars for the company according to TechCrunch’s translation of Japanese newspaper Nikkei. The offering is scheduled for next month.

If Nexon meets its goals, it would be the biggest IPO Japan has seen this year. The announcement comes days after Nexon America reported its third quarter revenue was up 29% over 2010’s numbers, the ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth for the company.

While Nexon may best known as an online gaming company responsible for its hugely successful multiplayer online games (MMOs) like MapleStory, the company has been making an aggressive push into social gaming this year.

So far the company’s biggest hit has been MapleStory spin-off MapleStory Adventures. While still be in beta, the Facebook game peaked with more than 3 million MAU and almost 500,000 DAU in early September. However, since then the game has begun to lose steam, dropping to 1.6 million MAU and 210,000 DAU according to AppData. Nexon has said it plans to bring the game out of beta this month. Below is the traffic trend for MapleStory Adventure for the 30-day period between August 30 and September 30:

The transition to developing Facebook games has not been entirely smooth for Nexon. In September it was rumored that the company would be debuting a cruise ship management sim called Wonder Cruise, but the game failed to launch and has since stagnated. The game is technically still in pre-beta testing, but has dropped from 6,000 MAU to just 248 according to AppData.

KartRider Rush has fared much better than Wonder Cruise with 110,000 MAU and 20,000 DAU, up from 70,000 MAU and less than 10,000 DAU a month ago. Even so, the game is still eclipsed by MapleStory: Adventures and nowhere near as popular as its parent game, KartRider, which sees as many as 230,000 thousand people playing at once in its native Korea.

Nexon’s most recent game, Zombie Misfits, launched in October and is still in beta. The a tower defense title was co-developed with Antic Entertainment and has seen strong growth according to AppData, hitting 100,000 MAU and more than 20,000 DAU in just over two weeks.

Nexon has also solidified its commitment to the social gaming space in recent months through strategic funding. The company invested an unspecified amount in developer and publisher 6waves Lolapps in August and $5 million in social gaming company A Bit Lucky in March. Overall Nexon, currently sees 1.8 million MAU and just over 250,000 DAU across all its Facebook games.

Nexon America could not be reached for comment on a possible IPO as of press time.

Zynga is on the verge of launching CastleVille, its latest life simulation game for Facebook and the first title from the Zynga Dallas studio formed in 2010.

We got an early look at the game during Zynga’s Unleashed demo event in October where Zynga Dallas Creative Director Bill Jackson showed the audience a trailer and described the game as massive in both size and scope. Jackson follows up this month with a hands-off press demonstration showcasing roughly the first 15 minutes of gameplay and the neighbor-visiting mechanic.

In CastleVille, players take the role of a man or woman tasked with exploring and clearing a forest in order to build a thriving castle town. The core gameplay loop is similar to FrontierVIlle more so than FarmVille, where players perform a broad range of industry-related tasks (like farming or animal husbandry) and exploration tasks (chopping down trees, etc.) in order to earn experience points, virtual currency, and items. Monetization comes mainly in the form of purchasing energy refills or items like buildings or decorations. As the player progresses in building up the town and opening up new areas of the map, new non-playable characters become available for the player to interact with and receive character-specific quests. There are also “beastie” non-playable enemy characters that the player has to fight off in combat, similar to the critters in FrontierVille. Social features planned for the launch are limited to visiting friends’ kingdoms to help perform various tasks, including fighting off beastie attacks.

One of the key instances where CastleVille differs from we find in FrontierVille and CityVille is in depth of NPC interactions. Like other ‘Villes, NPC characters in CastleVille carry specific quests the player can complete for more rewards. To meet these NPCs, however, CastleVille players have to unlock certain sections of the map using resources — and these sections may or may not contain an NPC. Given the size of the land to explore, Jackson says it is possible for two different players to have two different casts of NPCs in their kingdom. Moreover, additional characterization and animations have been added to the CastleVille NPCs where a character might idly perform a certain action if left alone for a while — or even interact with specific items that the player as placed in their kingdom. For example, the macho Rafael character has a push-up animation that displays randomly, and he may be able to interact with archery butts that the player can place in their castle town.

In this screenshot, we see yellow arrows indicating plants that need watering and animals that need tending, while coin icons indicate buildings that can be harvested for resources. A rat in the upper right hand side of the screen is a “beastie” that the player can attack.

A second instance is in the reputation system. In FrontierVille, CityVille and Empires & Allies, reputation functions as a level independent of player level that increases as players visit and help (or attack, in the case of E&A) other players they’ve accepted as neighbors. CastleVille changes the formula by making reputation into a currency that players earn by visiting and helping neighbors — and then can spend on special items like topiary decorations. This brings the total number of currency types in CastleVille up to four: reputation, coins, gems, and castles. Reputation and coins function as soft currency whereas gems are a premium currency that can sometimes be earned through gameplay (like other Zynga premium currencies) and castles are awarded based on how many buildings or decorations the player has placed in their kingdom.

A third key instance is in the player’s ability to alter their kingdom layout. Currently, FrontierVille, CityVille, and Empires & Allies players cannot restructure the layout of their towns without painstakingly moving individual items — buildings, bushes, roads, etc. — and then rearranging them in a way that meets gameplay objectives (e.g. getting a collection bonus by having a row of flowers alongside a building in CityVille). Though we were not able to see this at work in the demo, Jackson says that players can click and drag the center of their castle town (the courtyard, is what he called it) and all walls that the player has constructed around their castle will adjust to fit. All bodies of water can also be dragged to create moats, ponds, rivers, or lakes however the player wants to structure them.

Aside from that, it’s the little things that set CastleVille apart from its ‘Ville siblings and from other games on Facebook. The quality of the art and sound is much higher than most of what we’ve seen in 2011, and additional animations — like the wobbling of a tree as it’s chopped or fish jumping in a pond — add a layer of depth to the game. Minor gameplay tweaks to traditional ‘Ville gameplay reinforces the feeling; for example, if a player plants crops beside a body of water, the animation of the crop changes to reflect irrigation and that crop happens to grow faster than those planted away from water (see crops around the pond in screenshot below).

Given the use of mechanics well-explored by FrontierVille, CityVille and even Empires & Allies, CastleVille is well-positioned to experiment with new content as the game gains players after launch. Already, Zynga Dallas is planning to add a trading system post-launch where players can exchange in-game goods in a marketplace setting. Additionally, Jackson said there may be room to add player-versus-player combat or adapt the existing player-versus-environment combat to a larger scale that could encompass cooperative multiplayer. It seems to be the developer’s intention to make CastleVille resemble a massively multiplayer online role-playing game more closely than any other Zynga game has so far.

CastleVille launches “in the next couple of weeks,” according to Zynga. A spokeswoman said that the timing of the release was in no way affected by Zynga’s impending IPO.

RockYou Finds Social Gamers are Flush with Friends and Disposable Income – Social gamers are socially active, increasingly sophisticated, highly suggestible consumers according to a study commissioned by social gaming company RockYou. Some of the highlights of the study included:

• Social gamers spend 13 hours per week on social networks and an average of 9.5 hours per week on social games
• Social gamers have made 20 new friends through social gaming
• 24% of players report they have clicked on an ad in a social game and made an online purchase
• Social gamers make frequent purchases in real life, especially on entertainment

The study was conducted by market research firm Interpret on behalf of RockYou, and polled 2,000 social gamers (60% of whom were female) over the age of 18 who lived in the US and played at least one hour of social games a week.

Chinese Social Game Maker Papaya Finds Women Most Profitable – Beijing based PapayaMobile has found its most profitable gamers are women. According to Papaya, 4% of the players of its social mobile games are “whales” and 69% of those whales are women. Whales are defined as the most enthusiastic and dedicated players, willing to spend more than $100 on a game and responsible for 60% of the company’s revenue. PapayaMobile was last on Inside Social Games in February, when executive Si Shen contributed a guest post about the rise of location-based social games in Asia.

Setgo Teaming with Teepee to Expand Its Gaming Portal – Games discovery portal Teepee is expanding its offerings, partnering with startup developer Setgo to bring its new game Castaways to the platform. Teepee games offers casual gamers a curated experience, giving members access to a selection of games based on their profiles and incorporating the social features of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Both companies are based in the UK.

Facebook Credits Prove Profitable for Double Down – Double Down Interactive is reporting a massive surge in transactions since adopting Facebook credits as its in-game currency. According to a press release from the Seattle developer, revenues are up 50% in since their game Double Down Casino made the switch. On July 1st it became mandatory for all Facebook games with virtual goods to use Facebook credits, a move that was praised by some developers for promoting cross-game liquidity.

Zynga Goes Sequential with Mafia Wars 2 Comic – Zynga is prepping its fans for Mafia Wars 2 with a digital comic that reveals the back story and main cast of the upcoming social game. While larger game studios such as Ubisoft and Capcom have been using comics to promote high profile launches for some time, the move is a first for Zynga. The comic was created in collaboration with UDON, a Canadian art collective specializing in promotional artwork for the entertainment industry.

Real Prizes Coming to Facebook Games – Two new companies are seeing if combining social games, real world prizes and Facebook could be the next big thing in social media advertising. On September 29th Titan Gaming launched a beta version of a new games network on Facebook called Games and Prizes, the same day that startup Dobango released a Facebook version of its game play2Win. While each service is slightly different, play2Win focuses on letting players earn coupons and gift cards with smaller, local retailers, while Games and Prizes focuses on driving user engagement through branded games, the end result is the same — both services give Facebook gamers the chance to earn discounts and real prizes, and both services reward players for referring friends.

Google+ Gets Big Fast – Google+ has seen a huge influx of new users and traffic since entering open beta last week. According to data from analytics firm Experian Hitwise, traffic to the site is up more than 1200%. The total number of users is also likely to have crossed 50,000,000 according to analyst Paul Allen, who estimates the site is gaining 2 million users a day. We covered Google+ this week as social gaming heavyweights Zynga and Kabam brought their popular CityVille and Global Warefare games to the new social network.

EA Moving Into Social Game Marketing With New EA Legend Platform – EA announced this week it has developed a new game marketing platform called EA Legend. The platform was designed to help developers market their mobile, social, online and console games, by giving them access to EA’s existing user base of 300 million people. EA Legend will be officially unveiled on October 4th. In the announcement, EA touted that it had increased its audience by 30% this year, a great deal of that upswing coming from EA new Facebook game The Sims Social, which now has over 60 million monthly active users.

Raptr Finds That Zynga Draws Core and Casual Gamers – Zynga is great at engaging and converting players, and the appeal of their games is increasing even with hard-core gamers, according to a new report. Gaming based social network Raptr surveyed its membership and found that fans of Zynga’s “Ville” series log as much time on the social games as fans of the top core gaming franchises. In addition a third of XBox 360 gamers have played a Zynga game, a 50% increase over last year. The study also found that Zynga players logged in, on average, 8 times a day, and that Zynga games are played for three times longer than the rest of the top 10 social games combined. The full report can be read here.

Kobojo Commits to Expansion in Latin America – Leading French social games publisher Kobojo is beginning an aggressive international expansion, opening an office in Madrid and bringing on European games industry veteran Nicola Cencherle to oversee operations in Iberia, Italy and Latin America. According to Cencherle, Kobojo’s goal is to localize its games for 10 new languages before the end of the year, expanding that number to 20 by 2012, with a particular focus on Latin American countries. Kobojo recently translated their flagship Facebook game PyramidVille into Portuguese.

[Launch] Tiny Speck Finally Releases Surreal Social Game Glitch – San Francisco/Vancouver based developer Tiny Speck released their long incubating social game Glitch this week. The brain child of Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield, Glitch is a surreal social game that tasks players with expanding and exploring and expanding the Glitch universe. The catch is that the persistent world comes with it’s own highly unique rule set — for example, eggs come from eggplants, and pigs hatch from eggs. Players can do almost anything they want, but the game is designed to be highly social and cooperative.

[Launch] Vostu’s New Social Soccer Game Golmania on Facebook, Orkut – Brazilian social gaming company Vostu unveiled its latest title this week, Golmania, a real-time, multiplayer soccer game that enables players from all over the world to join teams, play in real soccer stadiums and organize private tournaments. The game is available in Portuguese, English and Spanish and utilizes Vostu’s multiplayer engine, which allows players on separate social networks to play and chat with one another.

[Update] Big Bang Theory Facebook Game Sees Solid Growth – The sitcom The Big Bang Theory launched a Facebook tie in game last week called The Big Bang Theory: The Mystic Warlords of Ka’a. The digital card game, based on the character’s favorite game in the show, has seen decent growth since its launch, currently sporting just over 60,000 monthly active users. The game was developed for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment by Dire Wolf Digital.

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.”

Arkadium Launches Arkadium Stadium — Social and casual games developer, Arkadium, has launched Arkadium Stadium this week. Now, players can post to Facebook from its suite of 12 games, all playable directly from their Facebook wall.

Funtactix Announces New Social World Launch: New Boyz — Online world/social game publisher Funtactix recently announced an upcoming hip-hop social world, New Boyz: The World. Part of an agreement with Warner Music Group, the coming title will be an avatar-based, music-driven world monetizing with digital merchandise. It launched May 2.

Scoreloop Creates new Mobile Social Gaming Platform in Hong Kong — Scoreloop has announced a new deal with Hong Kong mobile carrier CSL Limited.  The new deal creates a mobile-social gaming platform directly for the carrier. The service is now available to any CSL user with and Android device.

OpenFeint Debuts in China — Social mobile gaming platform OpenFeint has launched in China this week with the help of The9. The platform is dubbed The9 Game Zone for Android devices, and according to TechCrunch, is one of the reasons why Gree agreed to purchase OpenFeint last week for $104 million.

Playmatics Raises $1 Million — A social and mobile gaming startup by the name of Playmatics raised $1 million in funding this week. The funds will be used to develop a “real world game,” initially for Facebook, called Shadow Government, in which players will attempt to build, or destroy, their own virtual country.

Facebook-integrated massively multiplayer online games have been done before –titles like City of Eternals have made use of the social network as a sort of portal leading to a stand-alone site. Such is the case with an app by the name of DDTank. On our emerging list a few weeks ago, the game currently garners only around 300,000 monthly active users. Nonetheless, both this number, and its daily active users (around 46,000) continue to grow at a steady pace.

Developed by 7th Road, DDTank is almost like a massively multiplayer rendition of or the classic Worms franchise. Sounds interesting, yes, but the game has a number of shortcomings, only somewhat made up for by its visual style and the addition of MMO-style features, such as equipment.

Planted in the middle of a very chibi-anime-style of world, players are immediately engaged in a basic tutorial. Unlike other MMOGs, DDTank doesn’t have users milling about an entire world, but blasting opponents with a rocket launcher within isolated matches. The basic idea of the game is to join matches and beat other players in a Worms-style bout.

Taking turns, players move about a destructible terrain and lob shots at each other using similar physics to the predecessor. With each shot, players must take into consideration elements such as wind, angle, and firing power, with the winner taking home the most experience. Even when losing, however, players are able to choose from a deck of overturned cards with each containing a random amount of coin.

With each battle, varying numbers of people can join, depending on how many the game creator allows, but in context, the MMO aspect of the game feels somewhat lost. Regardless, it can be amusing to play as players make use of various special abilities to do extra damage, fire more shots, or even fire more missiles. Unfortunately, the resource that governs these abilities is a bit vague, so it’s hard to determine what limits it uses (usually we can only combine two, but have seen other players use more).

It’s part of the natural growth that many MMOGs have. Such games often only explain the basics, and leave it to the player to resolve the rest on their own. Unfortunately, this tends to be a problem as many users are not going to take the time to figure it all out and can often be overwhelmed when it is all available at once. Which is the case here.

Of the MMOG-style mechanics, players can actually perform quests that will reward the user with random items and gems. In one of the few aspects of this explained, these can be augmented with bonus stats through an in-game armory. However, this section of the game actually has five different things the player can use to improve items; only one of which is explained.

What makes matters worse, is that not only are many features available right away, but each item comes with a slew of tooltips displaying half a dozen or more different statistics, none of which are explained. For veteran role-playing players, the stats will be logical (e.g. Luck probably factors in to a critical strike rating), but such will not be the case with everyone.

Though the game doesn’t make direct use of Facebook for its social elements, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t social stuff going on. One aspect of the game that is of interest is that there are actually scheduled activities for users to participate in, and in a virtual world type of fashion, even a Japanese hot spring space to visit and chat within. Aside from these, however, the social is all standard to MMOGs, meaning chat, guilds (called “Leagues” here), and synchronous play.

The real issue with DDTank, however, is that it just doesn’t feel all that special. It’s basically a classic game, put online, painted with new artwork and called an MMOG. The new title isn’t ‘bad’, but it doesn’t really do anything that stands out at all. The virtual world integration of a Japanese spa is nice, but even this is underused and actually seems expensive (10,000 coins) to enter. Of course, coins seem to be easy to come by, but while on the topic of such, we actually had to search quite a bit to find out where the amount we had was shown. That’s a usability issue, as it was within a backpack that was lost in a sea of stats, tooltips, and features.

Overall, DDTank feels bloated with a myriad of superfluous features that feel more tacked on to the core Worms-style combat rather than integral to it. In that, the core of the game is lost and watered down, and time spent on these could have been spent on making everything feel more unique. Again, the game isn’t terrible, but it’s not all that exciting either. With underused Facebook elements, shallow additions, and seen-before-gameplay, DDTank just feels average, at best.

The consumer media’s obsession with World of Warcraft’s subscription numbers often makes it difficult to hear above the din. Nexon’s MapleStory was eight times larger than Blizzard’s behemoth before it ever left American shores; KartRider dwarfs them both combined. Yet Nexon, for all its success in creating massively multiplayer online games, has been conspicuously absent in the social games scene. This is particularly notable for a company that was a pioneer in the dual-currency model.

Later this year, MapleStory Adventures and Kart Rider will come to Facebook correcting what Vice President of Social Games Operations Soo Min Park feels has been a long-standing missing piece to the Nexon portfolio. By re-imagining MapleStory as a less complex title authored in Flash, and building KartRider in Unity with a front-facing playable element during download, Park feels this barrier can be overcome.

“We wanted to expand our web presence to other platforms,” explained Park. “We have expertise in micro-transactions that no one else does and we want to bring that to the social networks. Once our existing IP is launched, original titles will be created to further our efforts.”

Players of the original MapleStory will find MapleStory Adventure familiar but simplified. There will be fewer classes, items, monsters… fewer of everything. And the game will be asynchronous. Due to the use of Unity, players of KartRider should feel more at home with its racing mechanics.

Later this month, KartRider Rush iOS  (and this summer for Android) will launch beginning the campaign to enter the social platform market. Rush features short, Mario Kart-like play against multiple synchronous opponents in a speed or item mode.

The stream of new hires in the social gaming world may have slowed down last week, but that trend didn’t last long. This time around, 12 developers have brought on new members based on data from LinkedIn as well as what companies have shared with us.

The companies of GamesAnalytics, Kabam, and DoubleDown Interactive made some major hires as well. In terms of the first, the stealth game analytics firm brought on former Activision co-founder Alan Miller as its strategic advisor and director of North American operations. As far as Kabam goes, the social game maker has announced the hiring of Kent Wakeford as their new executive vice-president of corporate development and general counsel. DoubleDown Interactive, on the other hand, has appointed Glenn Walcott as its new president.

As always, if your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email editor (at) insidesocialgames (dot) com, and we’ll get it into this or next week’s post. Also, please note that most new hires presented are based directly on company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s full list:

Booyah

• Tracy Espeleta — Espeleta joins Booyah as a lead producer this week. Prior to this, she was a producer for Electronic Arts.
• Grant Rodiek — A former lead producer from Electronic Arts as well, Grant is now a senior designer for Booyah.

DoubleDown Interactive

• Glenn Walcott — As noted, Glenn Walcott joins DoubleDown Interactive as their newly appointed president. Prior to this, Walcott was CFO of Big Fish Games.

Gaia Online

• Monique Vu — Now a project manager for Gaia Interactive (Gaia Online), Vu was previously a marketing and PR intern at Poketo.

GamesAnalytics

• Alan Miller — As stated already, Alan Miller joins the folks over at GameAnalytics as their new strategic advisor and director of North American Operations. He is best know as the co-founder of Activision and its VP of product development.  He is also known for co-founding Accolade, serving as VP of product development and both chairman and CEO, before it was acquired by Atari.

Happy Elements

• Julian Cassimiro — Happy Elements makes its first hire in awhile as Cassimiro comes on board as a Portuguese interpreter. He was previously a Portuguese translator at China Railway Construction Corp. Ltd.

Kabam

• Kent Wakeford — As noted prior, Kent Wakeford joins Kabam as their new executive vice-president of corporate development and general counsel. Wakeford was, in the past, co-founder and president of AdSafe Media.
• Jason Lee — Formerly a manager of strategic partnerships for Zynga, Lee joins Kabam as a producer.
• David Chang — Chang joins Kabam as a senior development director for Kingdoms of Camelot. Before this, he was an engineering manager at Hi5.
• Kam Cheung — Kabam gains a new 2D artist with Cheung, a former teaching assistant at the Academy of Art University.
• Victoria Kennedy — Previously a business development associate at Martini Media Network, Kennedy is now a player experience associate for Kabam.

KlickNation

• Joshua Bell — KlickNation fills us in on two new hires, starting with Bell, there newest associate software engineer. Before this, Bell was a Flash developer for Pandamonium Games.
• Jovana Milenkovic — Previously a compliance analyst at Kaiser, Milenkovic joins the KlickNation team this week as their newest recruiter.

MindJolt

• Michael Ritter — A single hire for MindJolt this week as Ritter is now part of mergers and acquisitions at the company. Prior, he was owner and publisher of Saturday Night Magazine.

Playdom

• Markus Krichel — Playdom gives us the heads up on Krichel, who joins the team this week as a senior producer. Prior to this, Krichel was a producer for LEGO Systems, namely the LEGO Universe MMO.

PopCap

• Heather Kulawiak — PopCap also makes a single hire this week with Kulawiak, who joins as an HR/finance project coordinator. She was previously an HR and benefits administrator at WhitePages.

Wooga

• Freya Poulsen — The folks over at wooga let us know of some new hires this week, starting with Poulsen who joins as their newest game artist.
• Stephan Pohl — Also joining wooga as a game artist is Pohl, a former freelancer.

Zynga

• Neha Joshi — Joshi joins Zynga as a QA engineer. Before this, she was a research scientist at McAfee.
• Sach Steffel — Formerly an artist at Namco, Steffel is now a senior artist at Zynga.
• Aaron Jones — Zynga gains a new mobile software developer with Jones, a former iPhone application developer intern at Bernard Johnson Corp.
• Vaibhav Bajpai — Now a software engineer at Zynga, Bajpai was previously a senior software engineer at Yahoo!.
• Bilal Bajwa — In an internal shift at Zynga, Bajwa changes from revenue product manager (Poker) to a director of business.
• Stanislav Komsky — Another internal Zynga change as Komsky moves from product management intern to product manager.