Playdom picks up another $33 million

A week following gigantic Zynga fundraiser, Playdom draws more money for social gaming.

Playdom's latest round comes at a time where social gaming startups are constantly making headlines with fundraisers, acquisitions, and other announcements. A week ago, for example, Zynga raised a whopping $147 million from Japanese telecom SoftBank to expand the company's social gaming offerings in Asia.

It looks like the social media spending wars are on. Time will tell if his leads to innovation or saturation. The drop off in userbase is a sharp one when you count down from the top developers. Zynga and Playdom seem to be saying that you need to buy your place at the top in the current social network geography.

We're at E3!

We're showcasing our latest iPhone/Android game at E3 this week and we're pretty amped on how great it looks.  Here's an exclusive sneak peek at "Hercules - Curse of the Hydra"

This epic action-adventure game allows you to play as Hercules, as he fights to stop the goddess Hera from unleashing havoc on the city of Athens. The game features multiple weapons upgrades, myriads of baddies, and lush levels that introduce you to characters and settings from Greek mythology.

We'll keep you posted with more news and previews as the week goes on...

The Stupid iPhone-Controlled Computer Game You Have to Play Today

Pirata Boat Race gets undeniable cool points for this unique implementation. Download the program, scan the QR Code and start rowing with your iPhone. The set up is a bit clunky but the innovation on the cheap is top notch.  


Check out the title link for more or just go to http://piratalondon.com/boatrace/ .

Boing Boing's 8-bit obsession is now a contest

From Boing Boing:

We love chiptunes, the quirky celebration of 8-bit-style music that's become a a vibrant genre of its own with a thriving scene supporting it. The compositions evoke a time where electronic musicians had to make the most of the limited resources offered by primitive computing technology. Keeping that fire alive, the latest compositions are like the soundtracks to vintage videogames that never existed.

As teased last week, we're joining with Safari Books Online, the massive online library of technical know-how, to honor the mighty chip in the form of a Game Dev Challenge. Your task is to make those games real. For inspiration or technical insight, Safari Books Online is offering Boing Boing readers 30 days free access to five videogame-related books from the library.

Game dev folks have until July 5 to get there 8-bit tribute to Boing Boing to submit in time. The prizes include a limited-edition art print to a Gama-Goon statue


While we understand the nostalgia around 8-bit graphics and music it seems quite tired now. Boing Boing might as well be asking the game development community to make a cubist game. It is endemic of a culture of sentimentality and childhood obsession that is running rampant.


This contest does nothing to move gaming forward. It only keeps us mired in the past.

Big Money in Social Apps Virtual Goods

Investment Opportunities in Social Apps – Not Just Publishers and Not Just in the US

The industry is well on its way to contribute $835 million to the $1.6 billion US virtual goods market this year.  And even though many developers’ traffic has been wracked by Facebook’s changes to its communication channels, there are still opportunities for investment, as leading social app investors told us recently.

We're just excited it's Friday. Let's all go out and buy some virtual beers and contribute to the billions being made by those social games out there.

For Power Users: The iPhone vs Android Showdown

With the new iPhone being released in two weeks and the Android OS continuously getting better software and hardware, the battle between these two is more fierce than ever. Obviously when buying a phone of this type, doing as much research as possible in order to make sure you get the best phone for your money, for what YOU’RE going to use it for. So what phone should you spend your pennies on?

Though this article provides (obviously biased) comparison between the two platforms there are two key areas that they fail to address which still give iPhone the advantage.

Fragmentation
The Android phone market is rapidly fragmenting with all the new handsets making is very difficult for users to find the apps they want. This, in addition to the lack of any Android Marketplace curation or moderation, makes for a vastly inferior Android experience.

Applications
Not to be redundant, but the quality and accessibility of the Android apps in the marketplace leaves a lot to be desired. Developers with quality apps get lost in deluge of crap apps. Even the service providers attempts at their own App Stores are flimsy. Is anyone home at the Android Marketplace? It will be interesting to see if these new phones have an impact on the app market which for Android is estimated to be at $1.7 million annually compared to Apples $250 million.

We're hoping the slew of Android tablets coming out this year to compete with the iPad have a positive impact on the Android app market. We're banking on it. Our new indie title Hercules: Curse of the Hydra, which is due out this summer, will be released on a bevy of Android tablets. Here is hoping for change for the better!

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy: The 10 Laws of Behavioral Cloudonomics

Cloud computing is taking its turn as the hot technology that will solve everyone's problems. It turns out there is a complex psychology to cloud computing, but this article goes beyond that. We think we learned a lot about life, and why we always get the venti size at Starbucks. Check out the full article for the whole skinny.

Risk and Loss Aversion — There are emotional and perceptual asymmetries between losses and gains. A loss is more painful than a commensurate gain is pleasurable: losing a $10 bill can be more irritating than finding one is joyful. Certainly CIOs must exercise due diligence regarding proposed cloud initiatives, but should also be aware that these asymmetries may cause some concerns to be overweighted relative to benefits such as total cost reduction and enhanced agility.

Flat-Rate Bias — One effect of loss aversion is that consumers often prefer flat-rate plans (PDF) even when pay-per-use would cost less. With flat rates or up-front capital expenditures, the charges are never in doubt. The cloud’s pay-per-use pricing for on-demand resources typically reduces total cost while enhancing scalability, but the pleasure of a dollar saved may not outweigh the fear of loss from auto-scaling gone awry. Flat-rate buckets, monitoring and reporting, and auto-scaling policy management with maximum capacity limits can help.

Need for Control and Autonomy — Author David Rock reports that people have a deep-seated need for control over their environment (PDF), or they may exhibit “learned helplessness” and shortened life spans (PDF). Owning a data center may provide a perception of greater control over assets, making dashboards, portals, transparent policies and fine-grained management essential for cloud providers. Autonomy —“I can do it myself!”— is an important driver for cloud computing. Developers can autonomously procure infrastructure resources, and platform services enable the democratization of IT.

Fear of Change — Rock also observes that people are often uncomfortable with uncertainty and therefore fear change. The cloud offers not just new technologies but new business and organizational models. Consequently, overcoming the inertia of the traditional owned asset model may require free trials, unalterable and explicit privacy policies, and/or multiyear price guarantees.

The Endowment Effect — People value goods that they already own more than they would pay to acquire them. Ariely showed that for the same hard-to-acquire Duke basketball tickets, students were willing to pay up to about $170, but weren’t willing to sell them for less than $2,400. Add in the choice-supportive bias, which rationalizes selected options and discounts unselected ones, and a stubborn fondness for existing IT technology and organization assets can be understood.

The Status Quo Bias and Escalation of Commitment — Moreover, we tend toprefer things the way they’ve always been, and invest additional amounts in past strategies which we have pursued. Again, this can lead to inertia slowing the adoption of new approaches.

Hyperbolic Discounts and Instant Gratification — People tend to discount future risks and benefits hyperbolically, that is, more steeply than accounting texts teach: a chocolate chip cookie is much more valuable now than in an hour. This is good for the cloud, which promises instant gratification via on-demand services. Moreover, the “pain” of payment is deferred, thus discounted.

The Zero-Price Effect -– Ariely argues that zero is special. People would rather receive a free $10 gift certificate (a $10 gain) than pay $7 for a $20 one ($13 gain). This also benefits the cloud, since up-front costs are typically eliminated.

Need for Status — Rock points out that humans and other social primates have exquisite, fine-grained status detectors. For cloud adoption, the status associated with managing a large IT organization with a substantial asset base needs to be replaced by the status accruing to being perceived as an innovator through the use of cloud services.

Paradox of Choice — Web commerce has enabled a shift from a few big hits to along tail of boundless choice. However, too many choices may cause paralysis by analysis, reducing sales. Fewer bundles, rather than unlimited configurability, may best boost service provider revenues.

The next Silicon Valley? It may be New York

Silicon Valley -- or Silicon Alley? To non-techies, that's the San Francisco Bay Area versus New York. If you're an internet startup company, it's a debate that's probably plagued you at some point.

Do you remember the giant Double Click "Welcome to Silicon Alley" sign? The late nineties parties where models swooned with geeks as start ups blew threw venture money like so much confetti. Heady days, friends.

Today's New York tech scene has a different, more grounded flavor, but who knows we may be heading back to the glory days of NY tech. I could use a few more VC funded cocktails.... well, if it's at someone else's start up. Having lived through the ups and downs of the economy in NYC for the last 10 years we appreciate what a rare opportunity it is to have your idea believed in, nurtured to a company and product that is brought to fruition. Yes.. we have a few ideas we're looking to step into the ring with.

Take a look at the article and let us know what you think.

Cellphone in New Role: Loyalty Card

Loyalty cards — those little paper cards that promise a free sandwich or coffee after 10 purchases, but instead get lost or forgotten — are going mobile. And merchants are looking for ways to marry the concept to games that customers can play to earn more free items and, it is hoped, spend more money.

We love this article. It fits in with our mantra that everything is a game. Loyalty programs have always had game-like properties a game, so it makes sense that these be structured around digital and real world play. Don't be surprised if you are playing games while in the check out line of your favorite grocery store sometime soon. In some ways what we're seeing is simply a defined rule set which allows measured competition for activities that have always been played like a game.

Check out teh article and let us know what you think.

Searching With Google On Your Mobile? Expect To See Apps In Your Results

Google is working hard to be the best search engine on the go, and today is tweaking their algorithms to include applications in their mobile results. If you use an iPhone or Android device, for certain search terms Google will now offer you an application to download along with your regular search results.

One of the greatest drawbacks for developers and users to the Google market place, all Android AppStores, and the iTunes Appstore presently is the  lack of visibility for apps. Users can't find quality apps that are relevant to them easily.
Curation, up till now was based on apps that are most popular or are those that are curated by the Appstore gatekeepers. This new innovation by Google has the potential to change the face of the smart phone app market. We're very excited about it. Check out the full article to learn more.

Name Analyzer and Spanish-Language Apps Top This Week’s List of Fastest-Gaining Facebook Apps by DAU

We're interested to see if this trend towards foreign language apps means that the English language market has plateaued.

Check out the article and let us know what you think.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	My Empire	715,564	+615,889	+617.90
2.	PetVille	3,765,887	+399,202	+11.86
3.	MindJolt Games	2,819,402	+336,994	+13.58
4.	Name Analyzer	336,958	+335,298	+20,198.67
5.	Café World	6,099,510	+252,493	+4.32
6.	Facebook	18,502,708	+243,808	+1.34
7.	Entrevista tus Amigos	358,923	+184,522	+105.80
8.	Frases Diarias	1,019,638	+149,403	+17.17
9.	Texas HoldEm Poker	5,745,522	+136,127	+2.43
10.	Causes	1,202,757	+134,357	+12.58
11.	Nightclub City	708,738	+120,629	+20.51
12.	Mall World	538,288	+102,572	+23.54
13.	Ranch Town	194,202	+95,946	+97.65
14.	phrases 4 fun	126,651	+91,633	+261.67
15.	Games	487,339	+89,417	+22.47
16.	Crazy Cow Music Quiz	100,560	+85,521	+568.66
17.	American Flag	83,971	+81,921	+3,996.15
18.	Good and Evil	117,491	+77,343	+192.64
19.	Wild Ones	526,480	+77,339	+17.22
20.	Baking Life	211,049	+74,963	+55.09