Bigpoint gets social

Open web game developer Bigpoint.com will make its content compatible with social networks including Facebook and Twitter. Article and analysis by Virtual World News

2010 social games prediction

Vator News offers several social media predictions for 2010 by Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed Ventures. Here is his prediction about Social Games:

1. Social games overflow out of Facebook.

I’ve said before that I think that social gaming is a tactic, not a category. 2009 was the year that social games overran Facebook (17 of the top 20 Facebook apps by DAU are games as of Nov. 23rd). I think that in 2010, they will overflow Facebook and spill into the open web.

We’ve seen the first indications of this with the launch of farmville.com recently. But Playfish was the first to take a game from Facebook to the open web when they launched petsociety.com in May. And companies like Bigpoint and Gameforge have been launching similar games on the open web for years.

Games optimized for Facebook will need to be modified to work well on the open web. Some of the elements of serendipitous discovery, such as the feed, will be lost, but the ability to use email and IM without any “platform rules” restricting communication channels may offer new channels for growth.

FarmVille overview video

A nice video provides a general overview of how to play FarmVille

FourSquare Tips

Mashable offers an interesting article with tips and tricks on how to play the realworld-realtime-social game, Foursquare.

Marvelous Team Up: Quepasa meets speakTECH

Social Network Quepasa partners with speakTECH to build out OpenSocial framework. Article by PR NewsWire

Play “Collapse!” on Facebook

Puzzle game Collapse! now available on Facebook. Articles and analysis by:

Seatlle Post Intelligencer

VentureBeat

PR NewsWire

Free-to-Play revenue model gaining traction

The Free-to-Play online games revenue model is becoming the standard method for social game developers to rake in the cash. Articles and analysis by:

VentureBeat

EarthTimes

Social Game Universe unleashes “Hollywood Tycoon” on Facebook

Social Game Universe rolls out new social games, Hollywood Tycoon and Avastar for the Facebook platform. Articles and analysis by EarthTimes

Social Games industry snapshot

Philly.com provides a general overview of the current video game/social games environment.

UPDATE: Very interesting article on the Chinese perspective of the shifting video game marketplace by China International Business

Mind Games

The Get Health Reform Right coalition of health insurance companies lures social gamers with “virtual currency” in exchange for sending letters protesting healthcare legislation to members of Congress.

UPDATE:

“Officials of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Association, which runs the insurance coalition, expressed surprise over the ads and said they had nothing to do with them and that the coalition had temporarily suspended its operations “until the source of these ads can be determined.” They said the coalition has a contract with an Internet advertising firm to run online ads promoting their views that specifically prohibits ads that would give letter writers financial rewards.”

Additional articles and analysis by:

PRWeek

The Consumerist

ReadWriteWeb

VentureBeat

The Inquisitr

UPDATE: The Associated Press (story gaining traction…)