Zynga lives up to Facebook deal, Facebook Credits now primary currency

Zynga has finally issued its paid currency change across most of its social games to Facebook Credits after a five-year agreement was settled in May between the two companies. While this has been done for some of its offerings over the past few months, Facebook Credits are now officially the primary form of paid currency in all Zynga games (except for Zynga Poker)
on Facebook. Direct money transfer via Pay Pal accounts and credit cards are still valid (phew!).

Keep in mind that this change only goes for Zynga's presence on Facebook. Other social platforms have not yet required Zynga to change its primary payment methods to their native payment methods.

In an official statement made today, Facebook and Zynga said, "The companies are committed to working together to provide the best possible customer experience during this transition."

Facebook has also signed similar five-year deals with social game developers Crowdstar and Playdom in an effort to make its digital dollars the primary virtual currency on the platform. With its Facebook Credits even in Target stores everywhere, it may truly be only a matter of time before total Facebook domination (well, in the social world at least).

Pocket God to dominate Facebook thanks to Frima Studio

Pocket God
Soon enough, you'll be able to dominate hapless island villagers both at the desk and on the go. The hit iPhone game Pocket God will soon be on Facebook through Quebec-based Frima Studio's efforts later this fall. (I hope Frima knows that fall is nearly over.) Original developed by Bolt Creative in San Francisco, Pocket God instills the power of a god into players, allowing them to do nearly whatever they please to a growing group of island pygmies.

On Facebook, however, a breadth of social features and episodic content has been promised by Frima Studio. Not to mention that "a host of hilarious ways to both dispose of and resurrect the immortal pygmies of each island" will be added to the Facebook game, according to Frima Studio.

Steve Couture, CEO of Frima Studio, says, "Everything fans have grown to love about this game and its characters has been happily fed to the sharks and tossed into the volcano, only to be resurrected onto Facebook in a way that fans are truly going to love." Pocket God will enter a closed beta phase later this year, according to Frima Studio, with access granted only to the game's "rabid fanbase." Players interested in playing god on Facebook early can soon find out how over on the Pocket God Blog.

Facebook is down: FarmVille & FrontierVille down, sorry social gamers!

If you're experiencing the same issues we are, Facebook is currently down completely. That's right--kaput. We're unsure as to why exactly the website is down, but we're on to one possible lead. Users have reported that their profiles have been forcibly switched to the new Facebook profile on the fly, which could have caused the crash.

And that means all of your favorite social games, including FarmVille and FrontierVille, are also down. Stay tuned for updates and hopefully an explanation as to why Facebook bit the dust.

Update: Facebook is back for us here at Games.com as well as FarmVille and FrontierVille. However, search is still unavailable. Keep your eyes peeled for more updates.

Update #2: Facebook seems to be up and running for everyone, which includes all applications and search. Enjoy your return to [insert name of social game here]. According to All Facebook, the downtime was intentional to fix some glitches related to launching several of the website's brand new features at once.

Disney-branded Facebook games coming in 2012, Playdom head says

Can we all just say, “finally?” During a panel named “The Rise of Social Games” at the f8 Facebook Developers Conference in San Francisco, Disney Interactive and Playdom head John Pleasants revealed that two to four Facebook games surrounding Disney xd brands will hit Facebook in 2012. The general topic of the panel was the fact that branded social games are taking off.

Pleasants was joined on the panel by Kabam CEO Kevin Chou, EA Interactive head Barry Cottle and Zynga CBO Owen Van Natta. Facebook director of games partnerships Sean Ryan moderated the panel with the preface that branded games will take over the Facebook platform. And he might be right: EA just released The Sims Social, Zynga will soon re-brand its new Adventure World with Indiana Jones and Kabam recently announced The Godfather: Five Families.

Playdom, which Disney acquired in July 2010 for a whopping $740 million, is ahead of the pack with two branded games on Facebook: ESPNU College Town and ESPN Sports Bar & Grill. Both games performed well, thanks to advertising through the ESPN TV network. While Disney owns the ESPN brand, notice how neither of those actually involve the insanely popular Disney characters we’ve come to love.

Honestly, we’re surprised this didn’t happen sooner. Consider this: Disney has its own cable TV channel through which it could, in theory, advertise whatever it wants. Pleasants didn’t get into why it’s taken this long for disney channel games to throw its cast of characters into Facebook games, but did reveal the power of the Disney name.

Gnome Town, which Playdom launched in the summer–and we enjoyed quite a bit–peaked at 530,000 daily players. But just plopping the Disney logo on top of the existing one made users more likely to spend in the game just through trust of the company’s name, according to Pleasants. “We think it’s an advantage, if you put game play first,” Pleasants said.

It’s comforting to hear this emphasized by these developers. (Kabam’s Chou shared the same sentiment.) Branded games on Facebook are OK in my book, but the last thing anyone wants to see is the genre become a branding machine.

Disney-branded Facebook games coming in 2012, Playdom head says

Can we all just say, “finally?” During a panel named “The Rise of Social Games” at the f8 Facebook Developers Conference in San Francisco, Disney Interactive and Playdom head John Pleasants revealed that two to four Facebook games surrounding Disney xd brands will hit Facebook in 2012. The general topic of the panel was the fact that branded social games are taking off.

Pleasants was joined on the panel by Kabam CEO Kevin Chou, EA Interactive head Barry Cottle and Zynga CBO Owen Van Natta. Facebook director of games partnerships Sean Ryan moderated the panel with the preface that branded games will take over the Facebook platform. And he might be right: EA just released The Sims Social, Zynga will soon re-brand its new Adventure World with Indiana Jones and Kabam recently announced The Godfather: Five Families.

Playdom, which Disney acquired in July 2010 for a whopping $740 million, is ahead of the pack with two branded games on Facebook: ESPNU College Town and ESPN Sports Bar & Grill. Both games performed well, thanks to advertising through the ESPN TV network. While Disney owns the ESPN brand, notice how neither of those actually involve the insanely popular Disney characters we’ve come to love.

Honestly, we’re surprised this didn’t happen sooner. Consider this: Disney has its own cable TV channel through which it could, in theory, advertise whatever it wants. Pleasants didn’t get into why it’s taken this long for disney channel games to throw its cast of characters into Facebook games, but did reveal the power of the Disney name.

Gnome Town, which Playdom launched in the summer–and we enjoyed quite a bit–peaked at 530,000 daily players. But just plopping the Disney logo on top of the existing one made users more likely to spend in the game just through trust of the company’s name, according to Pleasants. “We think it’s an advantage, if you put game play first,” Pleasants said.

It’s comforting to hear this emphasized by these developers. (Kabam’s Chou shared the same sentiment.) Branded games on Facebook are OK in my book, but the last thing anyone wants to see is the genre become a branding machine.

Disney-branded Facebook games coming in 2012, Playdom head says

Can we all just say, “finally?” During a panel named “The Rise of Social Games” at the f8 Facebook Developers Conference in San Francisco, Disney Interactive and Playdom head John Pleasants revealed that two to four Facebook games surrounding Disney xd brands will hit Facebook in 2012. The general topic of the panel was the fact that branded social games are taking off.

Pleasants was joined on the panel by Kabam CEO Kevin Chou, EA Interactive head Barry Cottle and Zynga CBO Owen Van Natta. Facebook director of games partnerships Sean Ryan moderated the panel with the preface that branded games will take over the Facebook platform. And he might be right: EA just released The Sims Social, Zynga will soon re-brand its new Adventure World with Indiana Jones and Kabam recently announced The Godfather: Five Families.

Playdom, which Disney acquired in July 2010 for a whopping $740 million, is ahead of the pack with two branded games on Facebook: ESPNU College Town and ESPN Sports Bar & Grill. Both games performed well, thanks to advertising through the ESPN TV network. While Disney owns the ESPN brand, notice how neither of those actually involve the insanely popular Disney characters we’ve come to love.

Honestly, we’re surprised this didn’t happen sooner. Consider this: Disney has its own cable TV channel through which it could, in theory, advertise whatever it wants. Pleasants didn’t get into why it’s taken this long for disney channel games to throw its cast of characters into Facebook games, but did reveal the power of the Disney name.

Gnome Town, which Playdom launched in the summer–and we enjoyed quite a bit–peaked at 530,000 daily players. But just plopping the Disney logo on top of the existing one made users more likely to spend in the game just through trust of the company’s name, according to Pleasants. “We think it’s an advantage, if you put game play first,” Pleasants said.

It’s comforting to hear this emphasized by these developers. (Kabam’s Chou shared the same sentiment.) Branded games on Facebook are OK in my book, but the last thing anyone wants to see is the genre become a branding machine.