Social Gaming Roundup: Trademarks, Funding, Earnings, & More

PlayFirst & Wooga Reach Agreement Over "Dash" Trademark -- Earlier this week, PlayFirst announced an agreement with wooga over the use of the word "Dash" in wooga's Diamond Dash Facebook game. The exact compensation wooga makes to PlayFirst remains undisclosed. PlayFirst says its "Dash" trademark was filed back in April of 2008 and awarded in December of 2009. Howard Marks Focuses In on Social-Mobile Startup Gamzee -- Activision co-founder and ex-Acclaim CEO Howard Marks is turning his attention to social-mobile gaming startup Gamzee, says VentureBeat. According to Marks, the developer will be focusing on cross-platform games built with HTML5, in theory allowing them to make games that run on social networks, mobile devices, and the web. We R Interactive Secures $5 Million in Funding -- London-based online games publisher and I AM PLAYR creator We R Interactive announced a second round of funding closed from private investment worth $5 million. The funding is allegedly going towards supporting the international expansion of their I AM PLAYR title. Gameloft Makes Its Own "FarmVille" for iOS -- Mobile developer Gameloft has released a new game for iOS this week by the name of Green Farm. The new title is essentially a mobile-social rendition of Zynga's popular Facebook title, FarmVille. IGN Launches Game Check-In App -- Gaming network IGN is entering the social-mobile check-in space with the launch of its free app, Dominate. Players can "check-in" the games they are playing and become the "Dominator" of the games they play the most. It's a very barebones app and it sounds like this might be a little late considering recent big ticket acquisitions in the space of companies like OpenFeint, which offers similar mobile game ranking features. Live Gamer Partners with Skrill -- Online game monetization solutions provider Live Gamer has partnered with payment company Skrill, according to VentureBeat. Through the partnership, online games publishers will more easily be able to incorporate both the former's virtual goods platform and latter's Moneybookers payment system. Konami Reports Fiscal Earnings - Social Games Grow -- Core games publisher Konami reported its fiscal earnings this week, noting growth in its social games sales, increasing from $156.7 million to $195 million. Gamasutra reports that the company will be putting greater effort into its social gaming portfolio over the course of the next year. Social Games May "Crash Very Hard" -- In an interview with Industry Gamers, game developer and Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack forecasts a bleak future social games, stating that "it's probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industry's seen in a long time and I think when it crashes it's going to crash very hard." His reasoning, in a nutshell, is that social games feel more like marketing rather than "real gaming," and thus the market isn't all that sustainable.

Social Pro Daily

Social Gaming Roundup: Trademarks, Funding, Earnings, & More

Christopher Mack

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Christopher Mack