Engage Digital Wrap-Up For The Week Of April 9, 2011

By On April 9, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Welcome to the Engage Digital Wrap-Up for the week of April 9, 2011. The Wrap-Up is where Engage Digital spotlights stories that we didn’t get to cover individually, but still make for interesting reading about the business of user engagement.

700,000 Join World Of Tanks Beta: Wargaming.net announced that over 700,000 players participated in the open beta test of its World of Tanks MMORPG in Europe and North America.
Allods Online To Officially Launch Next Month: Gala Networks Europe plans to launch the European version of Allods Online on May 11, after an open beta phase over a year long. The game’s official launch will happen alongside the launch of Allods Online’s fourth official expansion.
Analyst: Social Gaming Industry To Hit $5 Billion By 2015: Market research firm Parks Associates calls for social game revenue to quintuple to $5 billion by 2015.
API Highlight: A Special For Our Four-Legged Friends: Foursquare highlights GranataPet, a German partner business that automatically dispenses a dog treat to any owner that checks in at a specially designed billboard location.
Atari Releases iOS Greatest Hits Collection: Atari has launched a free iOS app that lets users purchase any of up to 100 classic Atari 2600 games through microtransactions. The games are sorted into 25 themed packs that cost $.99 each with an option to buy all 100 games for $14.99.
EA’s Battlefield Play4Free Starts Open Beta: EA’s latest freemium online FPS, Battlefield Play4Free, launched this week in open beta.
Electronic Arts, Crisp Thinking To Fight Cyber Bullies: Bloomberg profiles Adam Hildreth, founder of Crisp Thinking and the virtual world Dubit, and details the process he used to develop Crisp Thinking’s real-time, automated moderating software. Hildreth says Crisp’s services are vital because a site’s discussion quality is usually perceived as part of an online community’s brand. Crisp Thinking processed over 500 million pieces of user-generated content in February 2011.
EVE Online Players Raise Over $44,000 For Japanese Ad: Players of CCP’s EVE Online subscription MMORPG raised over $44,000 for survivors of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami by letting players convert PLEX virtual items into donations through its PLEX For Good program.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Artist Creates Social Fairy Game For Square Enix: Square-Enix has paired up with mode-Duo to create a social game for DeNA’s Mobage service called Traveling Fairy.
Former Cisco SVP Joins Zynga As Chief Information Officer: Zynga has hired Debra Chrapaty, former Senior Vice President of Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group, as its new CIO.
Foursquare Checkins Get Encrypted: Foursquare is now using HTTPS across its Website, mobile site, and smartphone clients, to help protect its users location-based data.
Gardens Of Time Launches, Here Come The Hidden Object Games To Facebook: This week Playdom launched its latest social game, Gardens of Time, a hidden object game.
Hope For Zynga As Twitter Granted Tax Relief: San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has approved a plan to grant Twitter a six-year payroll tax exemption if the company moves its offices to the city’s blighted Mid-Market area. The same deal may help keep Zynga’s headquarters in San Francisco, too.
Interview: How Sulake Keeps Habbo Going Strong After The Virtual Worlds Bubble: Sulake’s Teemu Huuhtanen discusses how his company has kept Habbo Hotel profitable after the virtual worlds bubble popped. The company plans to keep driving growth through smartphone apps and more international launches.
iWin Creating Facebook Games For Deal Or No Deal, 1 vs 100: iWin has closed a licensing deal with Endemol to produce social games based on its game show properties Deal Or No Deal and 1 vs 100.
Mall World Opens Virtual Fitting Room For Levi’s Curve ID Jeans: Levi’s is promoting its new Curve ID brand of jeans through a partnership with social game Mall World. Levi’s is doing the social game promotion because it feels it’s a perfect fit with Curve ID’s 18-to-24 target demographic.
Nestle Adds Augmented Reality To Cereal Boxes: Nestle is doing a massive augmented reality campaign for the upcoming film Rio, printing augmented reality markers on over 26 million Nestle cereal boxes that will be distributed throughout 53 different countries. The augmented reality game the markers trigger was developed in conjunction with Dassault Systemes.
New 3DS Augmented Reality Game Finds Ghosts In Your House: Majesco plans to launch an augmented reality game for Nintendo’s 3DS, called The Hidden. The game will also incorporate location-based features.
Parrot Reveals ‘AR.FLYINGACE’ Augmented Reality AR.Drone Shooter: Parrot plans to launch a new app for its AR.Drone augmented reality device called AR.FLYINGACE on April 15. The app is a two-player dogfighting game that requires two iOS devices and two AR.Drones to play.
Playfish Retiring Three Games, Including Pirates Ahoy: Playfish plans to close down its games Pirates Ahoy, Poker Rivals, and Gangster City on June 7.
Ragnarok Online Switches From Subscription Servers To VIP Accounts: Gravity Interactive’s freemium MMORPG Ragnarok Online has effectively gone freemium, eliminating its subscriber-only servers in favor of a VIP account system.
ShrekVille? Zynga Adds DreamWorks Animation Chief Jeffrey Katzenberg To Board: DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg is joining Zynga’s board of directors. Katzenberg is a longtime friend of Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.
Social Game Firm RockYou Looks Inside For New CEO: RockYou has promoted former COO Lisa Marino to become its new CEO. Marino oversaw RockYou’s recent repositioning as a social game developer.
Sony Expects 100M Free Realms Players: Sony Online Entertainment CEO John Smedley predicts that Free Realms, SOE’s virtual world for kids, will eventually reach over 100 million players. Smedley thinks Free Realms may be able to accomplish this in the next five or six years.
St Pete CVB Deploys Augmented Reality In ’3D Tour’: Destination marketer Visit St.Pete/Clearwater has launched a new augmented reality ’3D Tour’ that users can trigger with a printer marker while at the Florida resort town’s official Website.
Stunning Augmented Reality Stargazing Arrives On iPad2: Vito Technology has released a version of its Star Walk stargazing app for iPad 2.
Toys Use Augmented Reality For Different Personalities: British designer Berg and Japanese corporatioin Dentsu are teaming up to market a new line of augmented reality toys called Suwappu.
W3i’s Recharge Studios Funds 12 Titles, Plans To Have 20 Games Out In 6 Months: Pay-Per-Install ad offer service W3i is moving forward with its plan to begin fully publishing and marketing games through its Recharge Studios division. Recharge says that the costs of funding a hit mobile social game are increasing, from roughly $60,000 to over double that.
Will Outspark Be Stuck In Gaming’s Middle With Divine Souls?: Outspark is launching a new freemium 3D action MMO called Divine Souls. While prior Outspark games were localized Asian releases, Divine Souls is a full co-production created in conjunction with Korean developer Gameprix. Divine Souls is the first of an upcoming wave of similar co-produced titles that Outspark plans to launch in the near future.
Zynga Buys Team At Online Poker Tracker MarketZero: Zynga has made a talent acquisition of the team at MarketZero, developers of the online poker stat tracking site PokerTableRatings.
Zynga: ‘We Might Do’ Sequels: Zynga game designer Brian Reynolds says that the company might start making sequels to some of its hit social games, but that those sequels may not be coming in the immediate future.