Partnership between Civilization game franchise and Facebook, game playing is free, currency is premium, speculation on how user communities will respond
"Arkadium has survived for the past decade by making casual games for the web and Facebook. But with the arms race going in games, that approach may not cut it anymore. So the New York game publisher is announcing today that it has hired industry veteran Stephen Jarrett as its vice president of game design. ...
The new hire goes with the strategy of moving up in games and making big investments in game platforms such as the upcoming Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft."
Abstract: "The most popular Facebook games are being played by millions of users, sometimes
only a few weeks after introduction. Although several of these games and
their users have been studied, there currently exists no open-source version of such
a game.
In this thesis we present the design, implementation, and performance analysis
of WebHack, a Facebook-integrated multiplayer game. WebHack is built upon the
classic, but still popular, game of Nethack. We discuss the technical difficulties
with file handles, process limits, communication networks, and handling failures.
Further, we consider aspects specific to legacy applications, for example legal
issues and technical limitations. We propose methods to circumvent these issues,
and show a successful integration of the legacy game Nethack into our Facebookintegrated
game system.
We present the design of our system and evaluate the performance of the design
in various scenarios. Among other results, we show that WebHack is a highperformance
system, able to support over 300,000 concurrent players, handle arrival
rates for up to 1,750 new players per second for over 60 seconds, and is able
to recover within 10 seconds from a server failure."
From the abstract: "this study investigated how the perspectives of the non-computer science educators changed after learning game-programming and how it could be fitted into the K-12 curriculum. Fourteen non-computer science educators and/or administrators in the K - 16 educational systems who made up a cohort at Sam Houston State University, Master of Education/Instructional Technology Program participated in this study. The participants were required to learn two free Web 2.0 game-programming applications and reflect on an article related to reviving interest in math and science as part of their program. Qualitative data consisted of online reflections, and peer-review processes through Facebook. A quantitative component was added to the analysis. The findings indicated that: (a) the perspectives of the participants changed from negative to positive as they reflected on their own game-programming learning experiences; (b) participants came to understand how game programming could build up students' logical concepts and critical thinking skills improving performances in math, science, and other subjects; and (c) due to the benefits of logical concepts and critical thinking skills game programming could have immense benefits if built into the K-12 curriculum."
Posted in News, Business, Government & Regulation, Transplant PITTSBURGH-A new video game called "Doctor Transplant" will go live and be available as a free download on the Apple App store in April, and Facebook shortly after. Developed by a professor at University of Pittsburgh's school of Public Health to encourage organ donations.
Abstract: "Search-based procedural content generation methods allow
video games to introduce new content continually, thereby
engaging the player for a longer time while reducing the burden
on developers. However, games so far have not explored
the potential economic value of unique evolved artifacts.
Building on this insight, this paper presents for the first time a
Facebook game called Petalz in which players can share flowers
they breed themselves with other players through a global
marketplace. In particular, the market in this social game allows
players to set the price of their evolved aestheticallypleasing
flowers in virtual currency. Furthermore, the transaction
in which one player buys seeds from another creates
a new social element that links the players in the transaction.
The combination of unique user-generated content and social
gaming in Petalz facilitates meaningful collaboration between
users, positively influences the dynamics of the game,
and opens new possibilities in digital entertainment."