Rebellion announces Evil Genius Online for Facebook, Zynga.com

Image via Rebellion Entertainment

Rebellion Entertainment has announced its Evil Genius Online will come to Facebook and Zynga.com later this year. The game is the latest in the Evil Genius series, which focuses on “super villain” humor and real-time-strategy gameplay.

As reported by Polygon, the game will feature the expected social features of a Facebook game, including allowing players to “form evil syndicates, send spies to rival lairs and share rare and crucial items in the form of bribes.”

Rebellion’s Facebook page promises that Evil Genius Online will stay true to the original Evil Genius franchise, giving players the chance to construct large underground lairs and complete a variety of evil actions as their super villain character. The overall goal of the game will be to become the “world’s most notorious criminal mastermind.”

“As an independent developer, it’s crucial that we really explore free-to-play beyond mobile games,” said Rebellion CEO and Creative Director Jason Kingsley. “We challenged a small team here in our Oxford studio to create a social game that was not only compelling, but technically impressive and we just kept coming back to Evil Genius — the lair construction, the strategy, the humor — it was just a perfect fit.”

A closed beta is being planned for Evil Genius Online, with the full launch coming this fall.

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Zynga.com lowers the drawbridge for Kingdom Quest by Playdemic

by Joe Osborne, Posted Nov 13th 2012 10:30AM

If you love CastleVille, then you'll adore Kingdom Quest on Zynga.com--wait, that doesn't sound right. (Hey, we'll be damned if the two don't look at least a little alike.) Playdemic, the UK-based creator of Gourmet Ranch, has returned with its first game on Zynga's own game platform and Facebook. Available now, in Kingdom Quest players must rebuild a kingdom destroyed by an evil warlord.

After opening with the dramatic destruction of their kingdom at the hand of villainous overlord Lord Osric, players will complete sprawling quests, mine for resources, craft items to sell and explore a vast map. Of course, the story of Kingdom Quest is led along by a cast of likely characters, such as friendly monk Brother Martin, mysterious knight Sir Borin and more. (Again, we must be missing the difference.)

As any decent social game should, Kingdom Quest will allow players to visit their friends' kingdoms to help them with tasks and ask for their help in return. It seems like the major differential for Kingdom Quest is a system that allows players to buy and sell goods amongst one another through a trading post. If that tickles your fancy, then Kingdom Quest is ripe for the playing.
Click here to play Kingdom Quest on Zynga.com Now >

Are you interested in Kingdom Quest at all? What do you think of the fantasy side of social games? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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This is why social game makers want to join the new Zynga.com

It's called cross promotion. A practice in which a game developer pimps new games within or around existing games to pique the interest of its loyal fans in said new game, Zynga has arguably mastered the art. Cross promotion is one of the number one tools the giant games maker uses to make sure multiple games reach tens of millions of players at the same time, and it's one of the many services the developer offers to third party studios that sign offer their games on the new Zynga.com.

Start-up Row Sham Bow is one of those studios, and Woodland Heroes is the first game to experience the power of Zynga's cross promotion machine. Inside Social Games reports that Woodland Heroes now appears above other Zynga games on Facebook in what the company calls the zBar, or the marquee-type feature that rests above all of its social games. The idea is that players will notice Woodland Heroes above, say, CityVille and click on it to see what's up.

And according to Zynga Platform Partners head Rob Dyer, this is just the beginning for the promotional tools at hand to make sure Zynga delivers on its promises to third party social game makers. And even with 292 million monthly and 65 million daily players, Dyer knows that there's plenty more work to be done if Zynga truly wants to deliver.

Driving players to try out new social games is one thing," Dyer wrote on the Zynga blog, "but the trick is making sure they stick around; that's where some of our upcoming tools to increase social engagement come in."

Do you think that Zynga.com will successfully uplift games like Woodland Heroes? What does this mean for other social game networks? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.

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Mob Science raises $1M in funding, preps mid-core RPG for launch on Zynga.com

Social game developer Mob Science landed $1 million in seed funding from angel investors, including Joyent CEO David Young and GameSpy Industries founder Mark Surfa.

Mob Science plans to use the money for product development and to hire at least four more staff members — a full list of positions is available on the company’s website. The ten-person company is also moving to a new office in the city of Carlsbad, CA.

The funding probably couldn’t come at a better time for Mob Science. Its earlier games inFamous Anarchy, Coffee Bar and Snowball Fight all had solid traffic numbers when they first launched, but none of them are presently drawing more than 1,000 daily active users according to our AppData traffic tracking service.

CEO Michael Witz tells Inside Social Games Mob Science stopped supporting its live games so the company could work on its next project — a fantasy role-playing game targeted at the mid-core market, tentatively titled “KingWorld.” The game will be one of the first third party titles to debut on Zynga’s social games platform, Zynga.com. Witz also explains how the developer stayed on its feet, even though it’s located nowhere near Silicon Valley and its games aren’t monetizing right now.

“We’ve had our ups and downs as a company,” he says. “In December 2009, we had 27 million monthly users and we were only four people. We’ve been good stewards of the capital we’ve been able to earn … when times are tight we’re able to cut back and keep overhead low. Now that this financing has come through, we’re able to scale up and make a bet on our next game.”

Witz previously told us Zynga’s platform saves the developer the trouble of staffing a marketing arm, allowing his team to instead focus on creating quality games. In the case of mid-core fantasy RPGs, “KingWorld” just might fit the bill for Zynga.com, which currently doesn’t offer a mid-core strategy title. The only title in Zynga’s Facebook wheelhouse that fits that description is the modern war-themed Empires & Allies, which currently boasts over 14 million MAU and 2.1 million DAU. Witz says KingWorld’s appeal will come from its depth, which rests between something like Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot and a Zynga’s traditional “Ville” titles.

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Zynga.com launches in open beta: Start adding zFriends for faster in-game progress

At the first of the month, we brought you an overview of the new Zynga.com, a new way to play your favorite Zynga games, make friends and earn quicker progress across your games than by playing on Facebook. The Zynga.com experience has now launched in open beta, meaning that some features are still lacking, but you can definitely jump into this new way to play.

As a refresher, you're not leaving any of your progress or friends behind when playing on Zynga.com - all of your kingdoms, cities and Words with Friends games (as examples) will be there waiting for you when you jump in. The biggest part of this open beta is actually being able to add new friends in the form of zFriends. These players will be able to help you in your favorite games, and you'll be able to help them in return, but you don't have to add them as Facebook friends in order to do so. In this way, your privacy remains intact but you still gain the ability to earn collectibles, quest items or free gifts that much easier.

Each person on Zynga.com has their own profile, where you can see which Zynga games they play, their current level in those games, and how often they play. You'll also be able to see a feed of each player's recent activity across all games. Say a player completes a quest in CastleVille, that item will show up on their activity feed. Or, if a player makes a request for an in-game item, like a Clue to expand their Manor in Hidden Chronicles, you'll see that too. From each profile page, you can choose to send them a zFriend request, or look at their own friends to continue to social circle growth. You can also see your friends' online status and can chat with them if you'd like to really make friends.

As for playing the games themselves, you can choose from the games currently available on the site (which isn't complete as of this writing), and will see the same game you'd find on Facebook, down to the Zynga Messaging Center that appears, giving you quick access to your gift requests. The helpful ticker along the right side of the screen allows you to send items to all people playing the game, and hopefully receive some rewards of your own along the way.

Ultimately, this beginning experience on Zynga.com should be used to acclimate yourself to the site's layout, and as a way to fill out your zFriends list with plenty of new in-game neighbors so that you'll really be ready to make progress when the rest of the site's features come online. We'll make sure to let you know when that happens, so keep checking back with us!

Have you tried Zynga.com? How many zFriends have you found so far on the site? Do you think you'll eventually use Zynga.com as your preferred method of playing Zynga's games, or will you continue to play on Facebook proper as you do now? Sound off in the comments.

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