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EA's Playfish VP finds another social group in Accel Partners
John Earner, general manager of the London branch of social-games subsidary Playfish, has left to join venture capital Accel Partners. Playfish runs EA's Facebook offerings, including The Sims Social, FIFA Superstars and Restaurant City, which Earner oversaw development of in England. Earner will serve as an entrepreneur in residence at Accel, one of Playfish's investors.Playfish lost two of its co-founders in March 2011 -- although both still serve as consultants to EA -- and EA Interactive's Barry Cottle was picked up by Zynga earlier this month.
Facebook's most popular games list topped by Playdom (which isn't Zynga)
You'll excuse our baffled aghast, but we just saw Facebook's most played games of 2011 list and were mesmerized by this list of stuff we've never heard of. Also, we're surprised that Disney-owned Playdom sits at the top of the list with Gardens of Time, while Zynga's myriad "Ville" offerings, "... with Friends" games, Empires & Allies, and Adventure World are instead scattered throughout the bottom nine. EA's The Sims Social edges out Zynga as well for the number two spot, though neither Playdom nor EA can compare to Zynga's four entires on the top 10. According to Facebook, the list is put together by "looking at the top games on Facebook with more than 100,000 monthly active users and giving priority to those games with the highest user satisfaction scores."
Free for All: Massively single-player does not an MMO make
Oh, the constant attempts at defining how we play. While many of them might seem strange or even laughable, they are all attempts at defining something for the sake of streamlining the sale. If you cannot describe your product to someone, especially in very few words, then it probably isn't going to sell. A while ago I attempted to define what MMORPG means, but I would never pretend that I'm the first one to attempt to do so. After all, the games have changed, the way we connect to them has changed, and the interactions we have with each other have changed. So why not the term? Nintendo seems to think that "Massively Single-Player" makes for a good description. It's a slightly odd one, if you ask me, for many reasons. But let's look at it anyway and see how it might fit into the world of MMOs. Click past the cut!
The Sims Social more active than Farmville on Facebook, Zynga still top dog
EA's social-interaction-simulator-within-a-social-interaction-simulator The Sims Social has surpassed casual-gaming monolith Farmville in daily active users, according to Gamasutra. So far this month, The Sims Social has seen an average of 9.3 million active users per day, which play three-ish times a day in 15 to 20 minute increments. Farmville's figures hover slightly lower at a still-bewildering 8.1 million, but Zynga's Cityville still holds the top slot with 13.9 million active users per day. The only Facebook app that sees more traffic than Cityville is Windows Messanger Live, which was a surprisingly explicit text-based role-playing game, last time we checked. What? Oh... oh.
The Sims Social officially launches on Facebook
EA "officially" launched The Sims Social on Facebook yesterday, but it's been in open beta since August 9. That enabled EA to achieve the seemingly impossible task of having almost 5 million "monthly active users" listed on the game's release date. Nice trick! In addition to that achievement, EA is launching its creepy, creepy game bolstered by a Gamescom award. The shadowy cabal of "independent experts" awarded The Sims Social with its "best browser game" award. We suppose there wasn't a "best browser game with which to proposition your Facebook friends" award.
Come, relive the creepy with The Sims Social announcement trailer
Few E3 moments provided bone-chilling waves of creepiness quite like the announcement trailer for The Sims Social during EA's press conference. You can now watch the Facebook title's first look after the jump -- just get ready to get really, really uncomfortable.
The Sims Social brings awkward video game hook-ups to Facebook
At EA's E3 2011 press conference, CEO John Riccitiello was excited to announce The Sims Social, which is ... The Sims on Facebook. That's basically it. You'll be able to "play" a lower-res version of The Sims on Facebook. There wasn't much talk in the way of features, but the announcement trailer was pretty hilarious and ultra creepy. We'll try to track that down for you guys so you can share in our misery right now.
