social game

Zynga has been in a downward spiral the past several months. It's been hit from all sides, from plummeting share prices to Anonymous cyberattacks to a mass exodus of its top employees.

Despite CEO Mark Pincus' public positive attitude and go-getter mentality about the future of the gaming company, an article by the Wall Street Journal today reports that he may be less enthusiastic behind the scenes. According to interviews with dozens of current and former Zynga employees and investors, Pincus is apparently grappling with how to save the company.

During a September meeting between Pincus and business coach … Read more

King.com, a fast growing developer of Facebook games, unveiled its second Facebook synchronized mobile game tonight, displaying the type of gaming experience Facebook says its wants more of.

King said that Candy Crush Saga, which has nearly 5 million daily active players and 15,600,000 monthly active players on Facebook, launches on mobile in November.

Sean Ryan, Facebook's director of games partnerships, said the game is an example of how popular Web games can successfully translate to mobile games. Candy Crush Saga will be available on iOS devices and synchronized with Facebook. This means players can pick … Read more

You can meet a new lover in unexpected places -- like on a bus, at a winery, or at a pharmacy counter.

Such a chance encounter allows for the relationship to develop organically, right down to the bitter organic end.

For some people, though, chance encounters tend not to offer the precision they require. One of those people is Japanese programmer Noriko Higashi.

She, you see, knows precisely what she wants. Please believe me, it's quite a lot.

In order to find the man of her (rational) dreams, Higashi decided to advertise on social-coding site GitHub. Perhaps because she … Read more

Zynga unveiled four new games at a press event tonight designed to show developers why they should be turning to its newly launched gaming platform.

While Zynga has been hammered by its poor earnings, slumping stock prices, reported player burnout, and executives jumping ship, the company has been focusing all its attention on its new developer partners.

The developers weren't shy about their gratitude at the press event.

Matthew Cullen, president of RocketPlay -- the company that designed Sports Casino, a social sports-betting game that is based on real-time sports events -- said the company would have had to … Read more

To avoid permanently getting rid of plants, zombies, jewels, frogs, or worms, gaming company PopCap announced today that it has to lay off 50 employees at its headquarters.

The social and mobile gaming arm of Electronic Arts that's known for games like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies said it had to reevaluate its costs in order to keep up with the digital gaming world.

"The change in consumer tastes requires us to reorganize our business and invest in new types of games on new platforms," PopCap co-founder John Vechey wrote in a blog post today. "It'… Read more

Amazon has launched a social game development effort called Amazon Game Studios, as well as a game for Facebook called Living Classics.

"Amazon Game Studios is exactly what it sounds like: a new team at Amazon that's focused on creating innovative, fun and well-crafted games," the Amazon Games Studios team said in a company blog post today. "We know that many Amazon customers enjoy playing games -- including free-to-play social games -- and thanks to Amazon's know-how, we believe we can deliver a great, accessible gaming experience that gamers and our customers can play any … Read more

YoVille players starting posting complaints on the gaming company's forum about a month ago. Strange happenings were afoot -- players' virtual items were stolen and not returned and some players' property supply was completely depleted.

Apparently, the game had been hacked. According to the tech news site VentureBeat, hackers disrupted YoVille's gameplay for about 1,000 players during a couple weeks of April. "The Best YoVille Hackers" claimed responsibility for the hack.

"We detected unusual activity in YoVille, and it coincided with reports from a small number of users," Zynga's chief security officer … Read more

Interest in Draw Something appears to have peaked and then fallen off a cliff.

The wildly popular game, which most resembles the board game Pictionary, was released in February, and within the first two weeks, it skyrocketed with 10 million downloads. Quickly, both the free and paid versions were No. 1 on iTunes' download charts.

By early April, the game had exceeded 50 million downloads and boasted more than 14 million daily users. However, in the past month, Draw Something has lost 4 million daily active users, according to data from market analyst AppData, which says it collects information directly … Read more

A U.K.-based Zynga competitor has made some strategic moves to assert itself in the social-gaming space.

Zattikka announced yesterday that it has completed the acquisitions of online-gaming firms, Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, and Concept Art House.

According to Zattikka, Hattrick Holdings is best known for its free-to-play online soccer manager, Hattrick. Concept Art House is a development studio that has worked on a host of games, including Command and Conquer and World of Warcraft. Sneaky Games has a three-game portfolio focusing on online role-playing games.

"The vision for the company is to become a large scale, diverse … Read more