Social games news roundup: King.com, Detroit and Jay-Z

King.com launches seventh "Saga" game on Facebook — King.com is launching yet another game for its "Saga" series on Facebook, Pyramid Solitaire Saga, hot on the heels of Candy Crush Saga. The game follows aviator Helena Lightfoot as she explores the Pyramid Kingdom, clearing decks of cards and collecting scarabs along the way. Pyramid Solitaire Saga is launching with 60 levels. Detroit using social game to help plan the city's future — A new social game called Detroit 24-7 launches May 7 to let players decide on city planning priorities. Players are given different missions that award them with flags, which they then plant on a digital map of priorities like public transportation, affordable housing and environmental sustainability. The game is set to last for 21 days and developer Detroit Works will hold a city-wide meeting to let players and discussion participants meet so dialogue can continue. Jay-Z launches Facebook game — Hip hop mogul Jay-Z just gamified his life on Facebook with a new title, Empire. The game covers the rapper's early days Brooklyn's Marcy Projects, with players working to acquire enough wealth and fame to escape. Sulake launches new social hub for third-party games — Sulake is launching a new platform to expand its offerings to its Habbo Hotel players. The hub will feature content from third party game developers and signed U.K.-based Remode Studios as the first publishing partner. Remode Studios created iOS games like Magic Muddle and its first title for the new platform is expected to debut in July. CyberAgent acquires Pitapat — Tokyo-based developer CyberAgent just acquired match-making service Pitapat. The service was originally launched by four university students as "Facematch" and lets users communicate with one another using social graphs and event functions on Facebook. CyberAgent is the company responsible for Facebook titles like Animal Land and Magic Saga, and it seems likely that Pitapat will be used to improve in-game communication. Marvel: Avengers Alliance dresses up for The Avengers — Disney Playdom's Marvel: Avengers Alliance made it onto our Top 25 Facebook Games list this week, but the game's continuing to benefit from the film debut of The Avengers this week: special edition uniforms based on the characters from the movie. Any team using a character dressed in one of these outfits receives special abilities like follow-up and counter attacks in both the main game and player versus player matches. NBCUniversal launches social game platform — NBCUniversal just launched a new platform for social and casual games called Universal Games Network. The platform will take all of NBCU's various online, mobile and social games and put them on a single platform. Not only can players play games, consume media content and earn and redeem reward points, but they'll also be able to go against their friends in tournament style games thanks to the integration of Facebook Connect. I AM PLAYR hits 1 million MAU milestone — We R Interactive's football game I AM PLAYR has passed the 1 million monthly active user mark and is now the largest Unity-powered game on Facebook. The game's been growing steadily since it launched in October 2011, and its current traffic numbers also include over 120,000 daily active users. Correction: It was reported that Remode developed My Star on iOS. This is not the case. My Star was developed by Mobile Pie.

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Social games news roundup: King.com, Detroit and Jay-Z

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