Inside Social Games

Playfish has been quiet in recent months, but it’s now working on a new title called Hotel City. The game is live, but in the early beta stages, so we’ll be saving a full review for later. Here’s what we see, now.

The game is a cross between Restaurant City and the Chinese title, Happy Hotel. That said, the emphasis will most likely be on the former, as the Restaurant City elements will probably pertain to the concept of streets full of hotels, hiring friends, and decorating isometric interiors. In regards to Happy Hotel similarities, it includes the concept of increasing the value of rooms through decor and letting your non-employee friends (as well as non-player characters) check in and pay you fees to stay.

Happy Hotel has a bit more to its guest recruitment than just this. There’s a whole spiel about recruiting better paying guests, critics, and celebrities to increase your hotel’s rating and popularity. Playfish could incorporate something similar, but the company has, in the past, always tried to be more original with its concepts, than others. Expect features that similar, in essence, to other Facebook hotel games but done in a much more different way. Nevertheless, in the end, all we know for sure is that the game will grant “more customization offers than ever before” and that you “will employ some of your friends,” with the goal of becoming a 5-Star hotel.

On a different note, it is somewhat surprising that Playfish is not taking the city-building route — especially because its parent company, Electronic Arts, owns the formative Sim City franchise. Already we have seen a number of city games from small developers as well as NanoTowns from Digital Chocolate and Social City from Playdom. Meanwhile, other competitor, CrowdStar is going with tycoon games, having released Zoo Paradise.

Still, while the SimCity-esque games seem to be the bigger boom at the moment, Zynga has also trademarked the names HotelVille and Hotel World, so we could be seeing more hotel games soon.

Most of our readers gladly take the time to look when big developers like Playdom, Zynga, Playfish (Electronic Arts) and CrowdStar launch new games in a popular genre. But sometimes smaller late-comers do a great job out-innovating the big guys — here’s a look at two thematically contrasting titles.

The first game is World at War, a modern warfare-style take on the classic mafia role playing game. That said, the game has all the standards: Money, missions, energy to complete the missions, stamina to battle other players (dubbed “ammo”), and so on.

Really, it’s the style that’s most interesting. Everything is based on modern military technology, with the goal being to build up the largest military force in the world. Of course, to do so, users must complete missions in order to level up, unlock more powerful weapons of war, and use the money earned to build up their forces of land, sea, and air.

This actually is where World at War stands out a bit: when you choose your country, you don’t get bonuses such as “faster energy regeneration” or “faster health regeneration.” On the contrary, the perks go towards branches of your military. As an example, if you choose the United States, your air force is stronger than others. If you are the United Kingdom, your navy is stronger. This obviously plays a fairly significant role in choosing what units to build when.

As far as the units themselves go, these are more or less the equivalent of items in something like Mafia Wars. They add attack and defense stats to your profile, and are required for certain missions, and in the end, a squad of riflemen is still, essentially, the same thing as an uzi or what-not in another RPGs (though it is a bit more gratifying to have little minions rather than just a gun).

Additionally, players can also build up a base to earn periodic income, but what is different is that the user can convert outdated structures to new ones as they increase their level and unlock new buildings. In many other RPGs, you are forced to buy more land (which you can still do here). Furthermore, each building can be upgraded up to three times to improve efficiency, and some of them even grant bonuses to health, defense, attack, and so on.

Okay, granted, World at War isn’t wholly original, but then again, most Facebook RPGs aren’t. Do missions, level up, buy new stuff, invite friends to become stronger, and take over the world – in theory. That’s about every social RPG in a nutshell. However, if you like modern military technology, and you’re sick of mafias and gangsters, then this is an app worth checking out. Moreover, with over 1.1 million monthly active users, you certainly won’t be alone.

The next app is the exact opposite to World at War, in that it is about peace. Called Ocean World, much of the game’s user based appears to speak Chinese, judging from its page; the developer is little-known Stand Up Network. The app has around 255,000 monthly active users.

Ocean World is your standard virtual aquarium game. It is a bit behind the times, as that boom appeared to peak last fall, but the game is still a decent rendition of this common genre. The basics are all present: buy fish, feed fish, plant decorations, and make the world a happier place.

One thing that makes the game stand out, however, is the overall atmosphere that comes with it. The visuals are a cross between Zynga’s somewhat cartoonish FishVille and Tall Tree Games’ more realistic looking Fish World. It actually looks quite good, and there isn’t a bad selection of decorations to choose from either.

What makes Ocean World more interesting is that players are in the ocean, not a tank. That means all of the visuals are centered around reefs, beautiful shells, and actual sunken ships. There are still fun, random, items tailored to special holidays. At the moment, these are decorations themed for St. Patrick’s Day and the Chinese New Year. Unfortunately, these all cost the virtual currency, Sun Coins, or an exorbitant amount of the in-game Shell Coins.

Further adding to the atmosphere, the fish actually grow and change as they reach adulthood, rather than just get bigger. Of course, you sell them when this cycle completes (“release them”), and then buy some more. Standard aquarium game economics. As players continue to repeat this process of buying, feeding, and releasing, they earn new levels and, in turn, unlock new fish and decorations to purchase.

The music helps pull the game together, too. It’s not some bouncing rhythm like so many other virtual aquarium titles have, but rather it’s a very tranquil tune that fits with the mysteries of the ocean. Frankly, with the opening directions of the game talking about saving the sea, it sounds like something you might actually hear at a place like Sea World.

In the end, neither World at War nor Ocean World bring anything significantly new to the realm of social games — but they show that smaller developers can take a tired genre and make it interesting, even when the big developers are using their resources to get the most users.

Zen Bound 2 Revealed for the iPad – Despite the buzz circling Apple’s new iPad, little has been actually seen regarding games on the coming platform. However, via a post from Kotaku, we’ve been able to catch a glimpse of Secret Exit’s Zen Bound 2, a “sequel and a revision” of the original iPhone application. In a nutshell, the original rendition is about attempting to wrap a rope around an oddly shaped object, with the sequel’s concept being more of the same. However, as you can see, the bigger and more powerful iPad sure does make it look better. A full gallery can be found here.

Frosmo Expands to Asia – Frosmo has seen a good deal of success with its tournament and team-based platform of the same name, in terms for social gaming. Already the company has expanded its collection of titles across Europe and into Facebook, but now the Finnish company is expanding into the Asian game market as well. Currently, the company is slated to let 10 different Asian game companies use its tournament system, and be available through 51.com, China.com, Ren Ren, and Mixi.

Platogo Gets Casual Games Facebook Ready – Though third party firms helping developers socialize their titles is nothing new, a social games platform from Austria, Platogo is looking to socially enable casual games directly for Facebook. Dubbed “Platogo Wrapper” this tool allows developers to integrate their games into Facebook withonly a few lines of code. With this new tool,  apps will be able to take advantage of Facebook friend invitations, leaderboards, achievements, and player challenges.

Game Investments Dropped 29% in 2009 – It would seem like the video game industry has seen some hefty decline due to the recession as VentureBeat reports that of 115 game startups, only $663.1 million in funding was raised during 2009 (discounting those with undisclosed amounts). That is 29% lower than the $936.8 million raised in 2008. In fact, had it not been for Zynga’s acquisition of $180 million deal from Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, the year would have been down a depressing 48%.

Tapulous Taps Into Kings of Leon – The popular rhythm-game company for the iPhone, Tapulous, has added another new title to its collection of Tap Tap games. The new app is dubbed Kings Of Leon Revenge, and if you hadn’t guessed already, features, well, the Kings Of Leon. In addition to hosting 10 of the band’s top songs, the new game will also include a curious ”Battle Mode” that will allow users to directly compete with each other using the iPhone’s bluetooth capabilities.

Unity Games Gain a Social Platform Through dimeRocker – More and more frequently, social games empowered with Unity3D are appearing around both Facebook and the web. To that end, Overinteractive Media Inc. has announced the launch of a new social platform, specifically tailored to support Unity enabled games, dubbed dimeRocker. Through the platform, games will be able to support microtransactions, achievements, leaderboards, friend invites, challenges, and be deployable on both the Facebook and MySpace networks. Already, around 150 developers have signed up for the service’s beta stages.

Facebook App Penny Drop Teams Up with Kiva – A simple Facebook application called Penny Drop – powered by CircusPop - is out to help the working poor. The quasi, game-like app consists of players using tokens (earnable through logins every few hours and inviting friends) to drop the price of featured items by one cent until someone purchases it. However, working with Kiva, from March 11th to March 22nd, for every token used in Penny Drop, a penny will be donated to Kiva in order to help poor entrepreneurial individuals and businesses grow.

Gowalla Adds New Platforms & Branded Goods – Location-based iPhone app Gowalla has launched its social game on two new platforms this past week: The Android and Palm’s webOS. In addition to this new support, the game is also bringing branded virtual goods to the table from the Travel Channel’s show, Food Wars. With the new deal, players will be able to earn special badges and virtual items by visiting locals featured during the show.

IMVU adds Voices as a Virtual Good – Popular teen-oriented virtual world IMVU announced a curious partnership with Vivox this Thursday. Now, the virtual world will be capable of integrating voice services, but beyond being just another feature, it will also add a new source of revenue. Currently, 25 different voice styles are being offered for the cost of 990 IMVU Credits.

Sometrics Launches GameCoins.com – Social analytics firm, Sometrics announced the launch of GameCoins.com this week - the company’s first direct-to-consumer play. Game Coins will serve as a community site for gamers, allowing them meet new people as well as participate in forums and blogs that revolve around various social games and virtual worlds. More than this, however, the site, per its name, will also be an online marketplace for virtual goods and currencies. From the portal, players can make use of the Sometrics Offer Solution to complete ad offers and earn goods and currency for their MMO, virtual world, or social game of choice. The company tells us it plans to help grow the community through users discovering relevant content in searches. The idea is that by helping people play these games better, its monetization services will get even more usage.

50% of Gamers Will Earn Virtual Currency – According to a survey performed by comScore for Offerpal Media, and released at the Game Developers Conference this week, alternative payment methods enable greater monetization capabilities that one would think. Derived from comScore and Offerpal’s own monetization analytics, 53.3% of players are “very likely” to complete a marketing actions (i.e. completing a survey, watching a video, or shopping online) in order to earn virtual currency for their favorite games. Conversely, only 22.8% of those surveyed stated they’d be willing and able to buy it.

In fact, 29.7% of social gamers actually don’t have the means to buy virtual currency in the first place; at least not with cash options. Curiously, even among those that could, 34.9% stated that they were “very unlikely” to do so.

Of all the popular genres seen in free-to-play games – be they social, casual, or otherwise – ninjas seem to be a highly reoccurring theme. Be they in Naruto RPGs, epic sagas, or battling armies, these Japanese assassins have been anything but stealthy. So why not make a free-to-play massively multiplayer online Facebook-connected social game about them? And thus we get the open beta rendition of Nindou International from 1001F Interactive.

Incorporating players from not only the United States, but other regions such as Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the Facebook Connect-using site provides a competitive battling ninja war, of sorts, set within a Japanese, cel-shaded world. As a matter of fact, the art style is one of the most noticeable element to the game, as it is likely inspired by the PlayStation 2 title, Okami. For those unfamiliar with the game, the entire world looks similar to a Japanese semi-e ink painting (just with more color). This style, coupled with over the top and quirky animations make Nindou most interesting right off the bat.

Despite a warming aesthetic style, the core of the game is anything but. Using a click and hold technique, along with a mouse drag, players charge up “NP” and dash about a screen in order to reach and attack various objects and, ahem, inflict “great suffering” upon any enemy players who get in the way. Attacking with these objects is basically point and click (though eventually you do get ninjutsu), with the point being to complete the objective of various game modes.

Each mode is a hosted battle within the game’s world, with each having a unique objective. “Save the Princess” grants victory to the team the breaks the wall containing the princess first; “Spooky Hunters” marks one person on each team as a ghost while the other team hunts them; “Death Instructions” is a team deathmatch; “Thousand Kill” is a timed deathmatch where the team with the most kills wins; and “Last Man Standing” is a free-for-all with a self-explanatory goal.

For each match played, players earn experience and gold. The former obviously goes toward new levels which is primarily used as a gating mechanism when it comes to buying new weapons and equipment. Gold, on the other hand, actually buys it. Nonetheless, like most free-to-play MMOs, players have the choice of buying most items with either the in-game currency of Gold or the buyable virtual currency, Nin Coins. Essentially, using the latter is not required, but it allows for faster progression through the game.

As for the world itself, it is broken up into various villages, which serve as community chat rooms where people can walk around, view profiles, and join games. Beyond these, there are also a surprising amount of shops that you can visit. These include weapons, armor, ninjutsu (spells), dougu, seki, plastic surgery (changing your avatar), and more.

If you’re a bit confused by the terms of dougu and seki, that’s to be expected, as the game doesn’t do a very good job of really explaining what all of this is or how to use it, at least not yet. Essentially, these are temporary enhancements to your character and weapon enhancements. And though it sounds a bit clearer when put in layman’s terms, the only tutorial to find this information is a link to a help page that contains a tremendous amount of information that most people are going to forget in a minute or two.

The majority of players are going to learn through doing, which is the other key issue with Nindou. Any sort of matchmaking system feels, currently, non-existent, making a new player’s life a nightmare. At best, there are areas labeled level 10 and under, but are often barren, and thus when a player goes to a more populated area there isn’t any real limitation on who joins a battle. A level one can be put up against a level 21, and there is no way to tell what the levels the players in a battle will be until you join the waiting room.

This is a hindrance on two levels as not only does the match itself become unfair, but for anyone that has played an MMO of any type, they can tell you that internet anonymity leads to a lot of elitist players that often shun the “noob” that doesn’t know what they are doing. Such attitudes are no fault of the developer, but are still something that they need to be aware of and attempt to mitigate. New users need a place to learn and grow at their own pace to see if they like a game. Baptisms of fire aren’t what many players are looking for.

Nevertheless, the game is still in beta so such issues are subject to change. Hopefully there’ll be improvements, as the game actually does have a lot of depth when players become more advanced in using the buyable abilities. Also, the game can be connected to through Facebook itself, so getting started is extremely quick and easy, and it doesn’t hurt that you can post your in-game accomplishments to your feed as well.

Currently, through Facebook, the game is earning around 350,000 monthly active users. However, as a stand-alone site with portals from Yahoo and Yam as well, it is likely getting much more.

The Christmas traffic decline has melted away, and a number of games saw significant growth in February — more so than January, anyway. However, for each significant gain, there were some loses as well, as roughly one-third of the list dropped in monthly active users, and a few of those drops are highly popular titles such as FishVille and Happy Aquarium.

On the lighter side of things, Zynga’s FarmVille continues to hold on to top honors with new records in monthly users once again, while competitor CrowdStar attempts to increase its popularity even further. Also, RockYou makes its move back to its former glory from the early days of Facebook with heavily increased MAUs for both Birthday Cards and Zoo World. Another game, Hero World, also made its debut this month.

February was a potentially big month for games, because Facebook introduced a home page redesign at the beginning of the month that moved applications from a bottom toolbar into the left-hand navigation column, and moved notifications from the toolbar to the top navigation bar. Facebook also added what it calls a Games Dashboard — basically, a home page filter that lets users see a page of the Facebook games they and their friends have been playing. So far, the impact does not look to be negative for social games overall. The full impact of the redesign will only be felt this month, though, as Facebook is removing application notifications from the new notifications bar.

Here are the highlights for the top 25 Facebook Games for February, 2010:

• Zynga’s FarmVille shatters its old records once again, gaining over 7.5 million new monthly active users, bringing the game’s total monthly players up to a whopping 83,004,461.
• At a distant second comes RockYou’s Birthday Cards with just over 47 million MAUs, having gained over 7 million new users as well — this gift-giving app isn’t really a game, although it contains a virtual currency. Rather, it has included a window for RockYou’s game Zoo World (more on that in a moment).
• Surprisingly, the virtual aquarium games did not do too well through February as Happy Aquarium from CrowdStar lost over 1.5 million users, with Texas Hold’Em Poker moving past it to #4. Zynga’s FishVille also dropped from #5 to #7 with roughly a 850,000 MAU loss. Furthermore, Fish World, from Tall Tree Games, has completely fallen off the charts.
• Though aquariums aren’t doing too well, zoo keeping seems to be growing as RockYou’s Zoo World gains an impressive 4.1 million monthly active users, showing that simple mechanics and cute animals — and however else the app is growing — can go quite far. It comes in at #8, up from #10.
• After a long game of cat and mouse, Playfish’s Pet Society finally loses out to PetVille by a difference of less than 300,000 users. They come in at #10 and #9 respectively.
• While CrowdStar’s long popular fish game dropped, the cold winter nights have proven lucrative for its tropical Happy Island app, as this warming title moves up from  #17 to #14 with almost a 2 million MAU gain. Unfortunately, Happy Pets still staggered slightly, losing 566,909 users, and dropping one ranking, to #17.
• In regards to tropical games, Island Paradise, from Meteor Games also sees minor growth, moving up one rank to #19, with just over 7.6 million monthly active users, and just behind it comes RockYou’s Hero World. The super hero RPG earns 7,033,749 MAUs for the month of February.
• Little farming app (Lil) Farm Life reappears on the list, coming in with about 5.9 million MAUs and landing at #22.
• Lastly, the boom that was Shikha’s Pillow Fight seems to have died out, as the app has lost more than 8.4 million users, dropping from #14 to #25.

While drastic fluctuations in users have never been the mark of MySpace applications, the coming core changes to the social network – including analytics – might provide some better insight into the site. MySpace applications may not be as big as Facebook’s, but developers have often reported higher revenue from them.

Nevertheless, the current method of tracking still showed some minor changes over January’s charts, with almost no games earning a negative monthly change. Of course, that doesn’t mean that a handful of titles didn’t shift about in February. In fact, even a newcomer appeared at the tail end of this month’s list.

On another note, many games on the MySpace list can often be classified as merely fun applications as opposed to “games” by traditional definitions. We track some of these applications because they have significant social game-like features.

Here are the highlights for the Top 25 MySpace Games for February, 2010:

• Unsurprisingly, the two mafia role playing games of Playdom’s Mobsters and Zynga’s Mafia Wars appear at #1 and #2 respectively. The two titles earn over 14.4 and 13.1 million installations.
• The simple concepts of Bumper Stickers and Own Your Friends from Playdom, continue to show that simplicity is the predominant preference for users on MySpace as each earn over 12.5 and 10.2 million installs.
• Another simple app, Tag Me from BitRhymes moves up from #9 to #8 to pass RockYou’s Super Pets (now dubbed RockYou Pets in the app gallery), with almost a 500,00 installation gain.
• BitRhymes app, Cheers!! also moves up one ranking to #10 to beat out the Zynga RPG, Vampires. It earns just shy of 5 million installs, but again, does not appear in the app gallery. More likely than not, this issue, that we have noted numerous times, is almost certainly hindering its growth.
• Same as January, Playdom controls ranks #13-#16 with Kiss Me (4,059,001), Sorority Life (3,566,896), Poker Palace (3,386,269), and Overdrive (2,626,783).
• Another simple app from Oxylabs Networks, PhotoBuzz sees an impressive jump, moving up from #23 to #21 with a gain of 152,316 new users. It now totals over 1.9 million installations.
• In fact, newly added to the list is another app from Oxylabs, What is your Street Reputation, which garners over 1.7 million installs. The game appears at #24 ousting Green Spot form the Top 25 and was added due to its similarity to What’s my Impression on friends from BitRhymes.

With the unveiling of the iPad, the cottage iPad speculation industry that had grown up around it has… kept going. Having seen and, in some cases, actually used the iPad, blogs and magazines are continuing a non-stop torrent of ideas and predictions for the upcoming Apple slate.

A particularly popular subject so far has been games. So we’ve taken some of the better lists out there and combined them — not to pick out specific games (for the most part), but to point out the concepts and game mechanics that are getting the most attention ahead of the iPad’s launch.

For this list, we looked at CNET’s top 30 picks, TechRadar’s top 20, Touch Arcade’s iPhone games to port, and Techland’s 5 games to make ASAP. Here’s what we came up with after melding them all together:

Civilization — This game is a top pick for pretty much everyone. Sid Meier’s classic has always been at least partially about seeing the sprawling extent of your empire, and smaller screens like the iPhone haven’t quite done it justice. Along the same lines, SimCity; and, for the real-time fans, Command & Conquer is a popular choice.

Board games — Another no-brainer, perhaps due to the close resemblance of the iPad to a real-life board. You you can take your pick: Scrabble, Settlers of Catan, Chutes & Ladders or pretty much anything else would work. Several of the lists pick Monopoly, but we’d have to disagree, unless there’s a major breakthrough in battery life.

FarmVille — Maybe it’s just this game’s unending popularity on Facebook, but FarmVille seems to be a consistent pick for any iPad wish-list. There’s certainly a synergy between the intended audiences, although the gameplay might have to be modified for longer play-times.

Line-drawing – CNET wants DrawRace, in which you draw out your car’s intended course, while Touch Arcade wants Boom Brigade, which is a bit like real-time, directed tower defense. The idea is the same in either case: lots of contact between your finger and the screen.

Nintendo games — Techland’s top two picks are both Nintendo games: Scribblenauts and Boom Blox. The latter seems like a good pick; a potential mechanic could involve first touching your target on the screen, then twitching the iPad for an accelerometer “throw”.

Point n’ click adventure — TechRadar suggests Beneath a Steel Sky; our own vote goes to King’s Quest. It’s the ability to tap the screen to achieve any action (this style of game interprets your click to perform the action on its own) that would make these games work.

Physics games — Draw objects with your finger, tilt the iPad to move them around. Crayon Physics, for example, was excellent on the computer, and would probably do even better on an iPad. There’s also World of Goo to consider.

Tower defense — The only question is which tower defense games will do best on the iPad. Fieldrunners would probably do well, as would Plants vs Zombies, which we reviewed earlier tonight. Our own vote is for a graphically amped-up version of Gemcraft, which blends in RPG concepts.

Bright lights, flashing colors — This isn’t a genre, exactly, but extremely visual games seem to be a thematic undercurrent in many of the lists. Pinball, Missile Defense, Geometry Wars — the idea is that the iPad will be bright, beautiful and perfect for some hand-twitching, seizure-inducing action.

Wooden labyrinth — Props to CNET for coming up with this one. This isn’t a computer game, of course. It’s an actual wooden labyrinth in which you guide a stainless-steel ball bearing with physical knobs. The iPad’s accelerometer and flat shape could pull it off perfectly.

Looking through these lists, it might seem that pretty much everything is being fingered as an iPad potential. But we can think of at least a few games that wouldn’t work at all. For example: Whac-a-Mole, played with real hammers. Or, more seriously, any full-on FPS like Quake or Medal of Honor. Without an external controller of any kind, some games will simply be awkward.

Finally, our own pick: Bubble Ghost. Sure, it’s an old game, and one that was never really revived during the console era. But the idea of navigating a bubble through a spiky maze is perfect for some intense iPad gaming, and the internet connection could even make use of some cooperative ghost-play. Just think it over.

Let’s face it. It has been a very cold winter for most of the United States — it even technically snowed in Florida. Until spring gets here, perhaps another tropical island-style game from Playdom will help warm your spirits. The 429,000 MAU-strong Tiki Resort follows up on the company’s tropical farming title, Tiki Farm, and the premise is just what you’d expect.

Tiki Resort is your typical tycoon style game, but rather than roller coasters or zoos, players are tasked with creating the perfect island getaway for their digital patrons. If you’ve played any other tycoon games, especially other social tycoon games like Zynga’s Roller Coaster Kingdom or CrowdStar’s Happy Island (which is also island-themed), then you know how to play this one.

Players purchase various island-themed attractions such as grills, fruit stands, and so on to coax tourists into both flying and sailing into this quaint little paradise. The amount that’s buyable is limited at first, but after some more time spent on your island, you’ll gradually earn the levels needed to unlock the biggest and best attractions, as well as upgrade your existing ones.

As one might expect, these better items attract a greater number of tourists, which in turn, earns the player more money. However, each tourist has a mood in which the user should monitor as better moods keep them on the island longer and spending more. Unfortunately, this does lead to a somewhat annoying level of micromanagement, as the way to make unhappy customers happy is to buy them, well, snow cones. Making the purchase earns a small amount of experience and keeps everyone happy, but having to click on each individual tourist, then click again to give them their drink gets very old, very quick.

Beyond drinks and attractions, users can also purchase a range of decorations, pets, and even tiki charms to spice up their resort. For the most part, decorations are purely aesthetic, but pets – though this is limited to crabs and sea turtles – can also be periodically pet for some extra coin, and charms can be applied to attractions to earn some bonus cash from each visitor that steps in.

Socially, the game consists of visiting each other’s resorts. There isn’t a whole lot to do, mind you, beyond cleaning up some trash and giving out drinks to thirsty visitors, but it does earn you a little bit of extra money. Other than this, everything else consists of standard leaderboards amongst your friends (based on level) and, of course, gifting.

As far as complaints go, Tike Resort feels a bit dull. Again, the micromanagement of tourists does seem like a pointless endeavor (especially when you start to get a lot), and clicking on them tells you very little. At least in games like Roller Coaster Tycoon, you could see their thoughts to determine what sort of attractions and necessities they needed.

In fact, the lack of necessity items such as bathrooms, food, and drink takes a lot away from this particular application. In Roller Coaster Kingdom and other virtual amusement park games, part of the fun is finding a balance of attractions, food stands, and restrooms. In Tiki Resort, there are bars or grills but they are merely placed to only satisfy one stat – entertainment. There’s no strategy or challenge to it: It’s just “place building” and wait until you have enough money to “place another.” Additionally, other tycoon games often have employees to manage, which adds another layer of depth, and considering how filthy these tourists seem to be (five minutes and there’s trash everywhere), a maintenance staff is in very high demand.

In the end, Tiki Resort is alright as far as a virtual space app goes. It is nice if you are simply trying to decorate your own, expressive area. Perhaps that was what Playdom was indeed going for, but for a tycoon type of game, it is rather drab with no real strategy or challenge to be had. Nonetheless, it is amusing for a little while at least, so if nothing else, it does deserve a play or two, but will likely be very hit or miss, depending on what the player is looking for.

FarmVille Wins Major Award – In only a few years, social games have changed the video game industry as a whole. However, now that change has been officially recognized as this past week hosted the Interactive Achievement Awards in Las Vegas. At the event, the first-ever award for excellence in social gaming was given out by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. The winner was Zynga’s ever popular FarmVille who was granted the title of social game of the year. Currently, the social game has over 80 million monthly active users.

Vegas, the Dating Market, and Making Serious Business a Success — Siqi Chen talks about founding and growing his social gaming company, coming up with the idea behind its formative social game, “Friends for Sale,” moving to Silicon Valley, and much more in this in-depth interview with Kim Ngo of Intimate Math. Chen’s company sold to Zynga for an undisclosed amount in a deal announced last week — his story includes a lot of good advice for entrepreneurs building Facebook games. Check out the video below for more:

World of Warcraft Partially Resumes in China – Having been in censorship battles for over a year, NetEase has obtained a license to operate World of Warcraft in China; the last expansion, anyway. While The Burning Crusade is now reactivated in the country, word on the most recent expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has yet to be heard.

Pandaren Pet Sales Raise $1.1 Million for the Make-A-Wish Foundation – In other Warcraft related news, Blizzard’s first major use of virtual goods, a pair of digital pets for World of Warcraft, raised a nice bit of money for a good cause. Of the two pets, the Pandaren Monk, had 50% of its sales donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation between November and December of last year. The benevolent little critter’s sales led to a donation of over $1.1 million to the charity.

Apple Gets Strict on Sexual Content – While sex does sell, it would seem like it’s going to sell a little bit less often in the App Store. According to reports from TechCrunch earlier this week, a number of sexually oriented applications have been removed from iTunes completely. Based on an email to Jon Atherton, the developer of Wobble iBoobs, his app (and, likely, many others) was removed due to “overtly sexual content.” Oddly enough, some similar apps, such as Sexy Girls Uncovered, still work, leaving the that “overtly sexual” line a bit obscure.

Rixty Announces 13 & Under Payment Service – Payment service provider Rixty says it can now safely and anonymously provide payment services for children under the age of 13. In adherence to the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA) and with the help of Coinstar, Rixty users under 13 can sign up without having to give out any personally identifiable information. All that is required is a username, password, birth date, gender, zip code, and a parent’s email address. Upon the latter’s entering, the parent will receive immediate notification with the options to delete the account or to be notified whenever the child tries to make a purchase.

Ultimate Game Card Expands – Popular prepaid card, the Ultimate Game Card (UGC), from PlaySpan is expanding. Earlier in the week, the card was made available in the regions of Taiwan, South Africa, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. With the expansion, the UGC is now available in over 70,000 retail locations around the world and can be used to purchase virtual goods and premium services in over 300 online games, and over 700 social, Facebook and MySpace games.

Topps Forgives Mom With One Major League Virtual Good (But Don’t Keep This One Virtual) - With the slogan, “We’re giving you back the cards your mom threw out,” trading card company Topps announced its Million Card Giveaway. For every sixth pack of Topps trading cards, there will be special cards with a nine-digit code redeemable at toppsmillion.com. The digital code will then reveal either an ordinary card from last year, or a vintage 1952 card that can be delivered, kept in online Topps accounts to trade, or used in sweepstakes.

Of course, of all the possible cards to get, the company states there are at least three Mickey Mantle rookie cards up for grabs.

Android Gets Flash Support - The Android has, unfortunately, taken a back seat to the iPhone in times past; especially in the realm of gaming. However, expect some changes in the future in how developers create their mobile Android games and apps as Adobe officially announced at the Mobile World Congress that both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR are now supported on Android.

Richard Garriot Launches Portalarium – Creator of the Ultima game series, game designer Richard Garriot has launched a new social games company by the name of Portalarium. By the looks of things, the company will be creating a social games platform that will support games of higher quality than the current Flash standard and will make use of a plugin called the “Portalarium Player.” Already, the company is getting under way with the development of a social suite of casino games, starting with Sweet @$! Poker.

Gas Powered Games Gives Behind-the-Scenes Looks – Game designer Chris Taylor announced the latest game coming out of studio Gas Powered Games this week. The new real time strategy game will be dubbed Kings and Castles will be coming out on the PC and “next-gen consoles,” but the real treat for fans is that Taylor will be making use of kingsandcastles.com, Twitter @DeathBot9, and Facebook let show the development of the title until its release.

Back in September we covered the release of the casual massively multiplayer online game, Faunasphere from developer Big Fish Games. The company has already been testing Facebook Connect for the environmentally-friendly game. Now, it is introducing a Facebook application.

Many traditional game publishers are experimenting with how to take advantage of Facebook — can an app work better than Connect, even though both services provide the same user identity information and communication channels?

This is basically what Big Fish is trying to find out.

Will O’Brien, the company’s new vice president of social games, tells us that the app is intended to give users more choice in where they play the game, even though he says the Connect implementation is already showing some positive results.

The company isn’t sharing overall numbers for the game so far. O’Brien says that “as a standalone site, Faunasphere has demonstrated incredible user growth and consistently high average spend per users.”

The original browser-based version and the app are connected to the exact same virtual world. The only difference is that the app is on Facebook. Some portion of users feel more comfortable playing on Facebook than on the web. The result is that when users check out games by seeing ads, or activity in their news feeds from friends who are already playing, some larger portion of them appear more likely to stay on.

AppData is showing limited Facebook Connect traffic to Faunasphere so we’ll be watching for increases.

For those that missed our first review, the game is a quality MMO where players control a cartoonish-looking animal called a Fauna (which, for the record, can be easily shared on your profile too). Set in a sci-fi sort of universe, users proceed around the world completing quests and cleaning up various forms of pollution (some of which fight back). As they progress, they eventually begin to find trees, ground tiles, and even waterfalls to decorate their own personal space called a Faunasphere.

Eventually, players also gain the capability to adopt and grow other Fauna – beyond the first handful you can pick from – via breeding or feeding them “gene food,” leading to over 50 million possible variations.

All of these qualities that made the browser rendition attractive are still intact, This includes the ability to purchase the virtual currency, Bux, for spending on rare or limited items such as holiday goods or the gene food, as well premium memberships that grant large amounts of Bux per month and a greater cap on how many Fauna a player can create.