FarmVillain Gets Approved for the App Store — After four attempts, the FarmVille spoof app, FarmVillian is finally available in the iPhone App Store. Now, users can take revenge on their friends for spamming their feeds with fertilizer requests with funny and in some cases offensive jokes.
gWallet Forms Advisory Board — Social media monetization firm, gWallet, announced a new advisory board this week. With executives, brand marketers, and entrepreneurs such as Marc Ruxin, Eric Bader, Joe Hyrkin, and Doug Chavez, the board is intended to drive the company’s overall strategies, moving them forward, as it applies to what big name advertisers are looking for. The hope, is to better bring big brands into the social gaming space.
Cie Games Officially Launches Car Town with Big Brands — Cie Games has officially announced the launch of its virtual space game, Car Town, on Facebook. However, the game doubles as a business opportunity, with automakers earning a licensing fee each time a player buys one of their cars in game. Honda is among the first to join, and will provide an in-game showroom for its CR-Z sport hybrid and will advertise via virtual, in-game, billboards. Other noted licensing partners include DeLorean, Dodge, Fisker, Ford, General Motors, Lamborghini, Land Rover, Lotus, Mazda, McLaren, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Opel, Ram Truck, Scion, Toyota, Vauxhall, and Volkswagen.
HeyZap Launches HTML5 Support — The embeddable, social games distribution platform from HeyZap got an upgrade this week as the company has announced that it will now support HTML5 games. Until now, HeyZap has focused exclusively on Flash-based titles.
MySpace Gets New User Homepage — MySpace is getting a new design for its user homepage, as Mashable covered this week. The new look will focus on content discovery through the stream and better sharing tools. Currently, only a handful of people have access to the new layout, but all users will have it come August 16th.
[image via Mashable]
Doubloon Launches iPhone Support — The virtual goods optimization service from Doubloon is coming to iPhone this week. Announced Wednesday, the company will provide Cocoa libraries for iOS developers who wish to add a ready-to-go virtual goods transactions platform to their games. Additionally, the beta iPhone Library will allow for easy integration with the Doubloon API.
Buy a Pet Society Mayor Today — Pet Society fans can now take a piece of their game home with them as Playfish has made available a limited edition figurine of the Pet Society Mayor. The item can be purchased in both the US and UK Playfish stores on Amazon.com for about $25.
PayPal Seeks to Improve Virtual Goods Transactions — According to the Associated Press, PayPal is looking to make it easier to purchase virtual goods. Typically, digital goods are bought with some form of virtual currency that is bought in blocks of money such as $5, $10, or $20. Since many goods cost less than this, PayPal is planning to allow people to purchase such items with a sort of tab, then charging them once they accumulate a set amount.
In addition to this, eBay Inc. is currently in talks with Google to possibly bring the PayPal payment service over to the Android smartphone, according to Bloomberg.
Germany-Based Entreprenuer Dives Into Social Games — Germany-based entrepreneur, Ibrahim Evsan (or “Ibo”) has teamed up with Thomas Bachem to start up Up Web Game, reports TechCrunch. Founders of the European video sharing site, Sevenload, the pair is seeking to get into social games with their first project “Fliplife,” a 2D variation of the Second Life concept and built on its own proprietary platform.
PopCap Buys Intriguing Domains — PopCap Games has purchased dozens of gambling-oriented URLs for some of their most popular games such as Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies, Peggle, and Zuma. A full listing can be found at superannuation. As for what “plantsvszombiescasino.com” will be used for, your guess is as good as ours.
Source: Inside Social Games
Saturday, August 14, 2010