Is FarmVille changing everything? Games biz bigwigs speak out

To say the game industry is undergoing a transformation would be an understatement. The entire playing-games-on-one-system paradigm is rapidly shifting, as more people play games on multiple devices -- consoles, PCs, and increasingly the iPhone, iPad, or even the favorite medium of the Games.com - The Blog! crew, Facebook (along with other social networks). And, more people are starting to play games, period.

    ... Not only are there a lot of new customers showing up and becoming gamers for the first time, but we're seeing really big behavior changes by traditional gamers that used to just camp on one platform like the PlayStation and now they're using a diversity of media, and they're engaging with friends, so they're doing a lot of things that are more casual.

    Trip Hawkins, Digital Chocolate

In this new video series, Game Theory, video game industry bigwigs like Sims creator Will Wright and Fable creator Peter Molyneux talk about the tectonic shifts in the industry and, of course, social games come up more than once.

    "It's changing... and we can feel it. We're literally on the bow of the ship and the waves are crashing and the wind is in our face and we're like holy sh*t."

    Chris Taylor, Gas Powered Games

This pair of videos might be too 'inside baseball' for most of you, but if you dabble in gaming trends, this might be worth a few minutes of your time. I am still amazed at how much of an impact that FarmVille, Pet Society and others have had on the traditional video game console business. Social games might be classified as "casual," but there's nothing casual about the wake up call these non-traditional games are giving the traditional game industry.

PetVille nears 1 million players in four days

PetVille, the new Facebook game from Zynga, quietly launched on December 3. The pet simulation game lets you custom create a pet, their home and then set out to earn as many coins as possible by performing different tasks, such as cleaning your pet and visiting neighbors.

petville zynga reaches 1 million players in four days

Over the weekend, we noticed that Zynga turned on the publicity machine, running ads for the game on Facebook and in its other games, and the number of players climbed from a modest 22K to nearly one million in the past few days, according to AppData.

appdata

The question remains, will this game take over Pet Society's position as top pet game on Facebook? The rival Facebook game has been holding steady at around 21 million players for the past month, so PetVille still has a ways to go before it's in barking distance.

MyBookie for Facebook allows for make-believe, real sports bets

If you're into sports - NFL, NCAA Football, NBA, NCAA Basketball, NHL or MLB - you might want to check out MyBookie, a new Facebook "game" from the folks at Psydian Interactive. The game combines the real with the imaginary, by allowing you to bet fake money on real world games.

Depending on the sport you choose, you'll be able to view upcoming games, the spreads, over-unders and other general betting information, just as if you were betting on the games in Vegas, but from the comfort and (and monetary safety) of your own home. In no way are you playing with real money, and that's something your imaginary bookie will make incredibly clear to you as your first step in gameplay. From there, the game is incredibly simple. Pick a sport, pick a particular game, choose your bet type, and then choose which team you think will win. What happens in the real world affects what happens in the game, so the more you know about the real-world sports, the better you'll likely do with these fake bets (that is, unless you're generally really lucky at guessing games).

You'll be able to alter your winnings by allowing MyBookie to automatically post your bets to your wall (a permission you have to grant the game upon sign-up, but which can be revoked just as easily), and you'll earn bonuses just for logging in. As you continue to play the game, your Reputation level will also rise, allowing you access to "Favor" items, which can also alter your winnings should you correctly place a bet.

MyBookie is both a simplistic and a complex sports-betting game that we're guessing most sports fans would appreciate, so if you'd like to take a look, make sure to play MyBookie on Facebook.