Virtual Worlds News

Webosaurs Opens Beta Doors to Public

While not the first dinosaur-themed world out there targeted to kids (there is also Dinosaur Junction and DinoKids), Webosaurs is the newest and most recent to open its online playground to users.

Created by Reel FX Entertainment (which has a history in animation and visual effects for entertainment properties, commercials, and conceptual designs -- Open Season 2 and the McDonald's Kung Fu Panda commercial are two well-known efforts they have contributed to), its Webosaurs virtual world and eco-focused online experience is now live.

QuickStat: Mafia Wars Hits 4M User Milestone

Today social game publisher Zynga announced its Mafia Wars game now serves four million daily active users. This number has doubled in the past three months and comes as Mafia Wars celebrates its one-year anniversary. Zynga calls Mafia Wars "social gaming's most popular crime-based game." The game has over 1 million Fans on Facebook. As part of the one-year anniversary, Zynga has launched new Mafia Wars game content include a new in-game location, Cuba, accessible to players who have reached level 35 or higher. Cuba gives players access to 100 levels from new jobs, own property, and buy from a stock of 52 new in-game virtual items including weapons, armor, and vehicles. This announcement comes within a week of Zynga filing suit against Playdom, whose similar Mobsters title has been running ads mentioning their game as a Mafia Wars alternative. While Zynga claims that Playdom's ads "misleadingly associate" the two games, they clearly aren't slowing down Mafia Wars's explosive growth. [via our sister site VirtualGoodsNews.com]

Disney Deals with Spil to Promote Club Penguin

In mid-2007, Disney Corp. made a bid for and acquired the kids' virtual world Club Penguin. It paid $350 million in cash and laid out an additional $350 million in incentives. While the popularity of Club Penguin is undeniable -- it is the top virtual world in United States with an audience of nearly eight million, or 4.3 percent of all US-based virtual-world users; and the Nintendo DS iteration released last year become the fastest Disney video game to ship one million units -- that popularity wasn't enough to qualify the sellers for the first $175 million tranche.

Now, in a likely effort to accelerate user adoption along with revenues from virtual goods, Disney and giant European-based Spil Games announced a deal that will see Club Penguin promoted among a select number of Spil game portals.

Social Gaming, Virtual Goods Discussed in SF Summit

Social gaming is many things to many people, but to the 500+ attendees today at the Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco, it means primarily one thing: games designed to be played with your friends on social platforms like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and Twitter. With games like YoVille, Mobsters, Farm Town and Pet Society, the genres these games tap are wildly diverse -- from growing cabbages to whacking under-performing Mafioso.

According to one presenter, there are currently over 4,000 social games available across all social platforms.

NewsBrief: Super Rewards Heads to Twitter with 140 Mafia

Today Super Rewards announced it would be the first ad offer network to support social games on the Twitter platform, beginning with the text RPG 140 Mafia. Super Rewards CEO Jason Bailey states this partnership will make 140 Mafia the first "proven profitable" venture to emerge from the Twitter platform. VirtualWorldsNews sister site VirtualGoodsNews has the full story.

OpenFeint 2.1 to Increase Viral Reach of iPhone Games

One of the competitors in the race to make iPhone gaming more like social gaming on the Web is Aurora Feint, Inc., publishers of the OpenFeint social platform. Quietly launched in beta in February, OpenFeint is an API that can be integrated into any iPhone game to let users create profiles, publish status updates, and open real-time chat rooms. Now that iPhone OS 3.0 is live, Aurora Feint, Inc., has announced a OpenFeint 2.1, a new API that integrates support for both microtransactions and push notifications into the social platform.

One of the competitors in the race to make iPhone gaming more like social gaming on the Web is Aurora Feint, Inc., publishers of the OpenFeint social platform. Quietly launched in beta in February, OpenFeint is an API that can be integrated into any iPhone game to let users create profiles, publish status updates, and open real-time chat rooms. Now that iPhone OS 3.0 is live, Aurora Feint, Inc., has announced a OpenFeint 2.1, a new API that integrates support for both microtransactions and push notifications into the social platform.

Update: New Blue Mars 2150 Promo Details World

Last week, VirtualWorldsNews.com profiled the progress of upcoming virtual world/TV show/museum exhibit/MMO Blue Mars 2150. What was missing from our story was imagery of the world itself. Now, there is an additional data point to observe -- a recently uploaded video of the world from Virtual Space Entertainment, Inc., one of the project's central creators. Additionally, tomorrow Metanomics hosts Jim Sink, VP of Business Development at Avatar Reality, another contributor to the project.

Zynga: iPhone Monetisation "Below Expectations"

Zynga CEO Marc Pincus (pictured, right) indicated in statements made during an interview with PocketGamer.biz that his company was disappointed in how the company's social iPhone titles were monetising. Zynga has published Live Poker, Mafia Wars, Vampires: Bloodlust, and Word Scramble for iPhone. The first three of those titles are freemium social titles that rely on sales of virtual currency and goods to players in order to monetise.

Quick Stat: Free Realms at 3M Players and Counting

Free Realms, the family-friendly, freemium, fantasy MMO from Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has added another 1 million unique registered users, bringing the total count to north of three million. The game was released April 28 to favorable reviews across a broad spectrum of niche and mainstream outlets. To celebrate the growing community, SOE says it will "grant its first three million Free Realms registrants the 3M Pet Party Pack, filled with goodies for use with their virtual pets, both cats and dogs." The offer expires June 19. "We are pleased to be able to provide such a vast, in-depth and, most importantly, fun world," said SOE president John Smedley. The free-to-play title was four years in development and is adding users at a remarkable rate -- some 500,000 people each week are registering for the game, says SOE.

WebWars Out of Stealth, Layers Web with Weblings

Austin-based WebWars unmasked its eponymous game platform and upcoming fantasy game Weblings today. Part of an emerging genre of social games that are played on an interactive layer which lives on top of the Web -- variously called layered gaming or parallel virtual worlds -- the company is slated to start a closed beta of the game next month and is soliciting players on its web site now.