Posts Tagged ‘Social Gaming’

Mobile social gaming network OpenFeint has just appointed Sarah Thomson, a former Glu Mobile and IUGO executive, as its Director of Developer Relations. Thomson is a heavy hitter in the mobile gaming world. As such, OpenFeint hopes to utilize her insight and deep connections to continue building its relationships with both traditional and free-to-play developers.

Tagged, the social network that specializes in helping people meet others, recently announced the acquisition of WeGame, a San Francisco based game discovery startup. Tagged has been hosting social games for quite some time and this acquisition signifies their continued emphasis on keeping users around through social game discovery.

Social gaming development studio RockYou recently announced its release of Galactic Allies, an RTS game for Facebook. Galactic Allies was developed by 3 Blokes, an Australian-based team owned by RockYou. Can RockYou’s game hit a trajectory?

Companies progress forward by maintaining stability yet occasionally instituting dynamic change in leadership. Kabam, a major player in the social gaming space, announced Steve Klei will be assuming the role of Chief Financial Officer. We just covered a major shift in executive leadership at OpenFeint – namely John Citron being replaced by Naoki Aoyagi as CEO. At a time when social innovation is gripping tightly on the gaming industry, Kabam is making big plays in their growth as a company.

Naoki Aoyagi, ex-head of GREE International, has just been named the new CEO of Openfeint. Aoyagi will be replacing Jason Citron as he moves on to pursue other endeavors. While sudden shifts to the chief executive role occasionally appear out of left field, Aoyagi has been with GREE, Openfeint’s parent company for 5 years, having joined in 2006.

Competitive social gaming giant King.com announced today the launch of Bubble Witch Saga, a game available on Facebook. While the initial launch is only available on Facebook, King.com intends cross-platform portability on mobile devices later this year.

Tokyo based mobile social-gaming giant DeNA announced a plan of acquisition for Punch Entertainment Vietnam, a subsidiary of California-based Punch Entertainment Inc. As part of the acquisition, Punch Entertainment Vietnam brings engineering talent that will support to scale Mobage, the offspring of DeNA and ngmoco.

Zynga, the leading game developer in the social gaming market, has continuously proven itself with successful gaming titles: FarmVille, Texas Hold’em and CityVille. If we took the time to break each game down, we could analyze why Zynga did so well with its titles, but social gaming isn’t the only thing Zynga does well: effective social media marketing strategy is another one of Zynga’s success stories.

Mike Turner is a managing partner for Bitfold Online Games, an independent social game developer that focuses on original social game IP for Facebook, international social networks, and mobile devices. Read more about Bitfold after the article. The social gaming market is without doubt the new buzz in the world of gaming. The top companies [...]

Social mobile gaming network PapayaMobile announced an array of compelling stats today. It’s most notable accomplishment is that it has hit the 25M user point, indicating 940% growth since January 2010. With Android controlling 52 percent of the market, can PapayaMobile maintain its lead against upcoming competitors’ platforms like Mobage?