“Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time to spend that money on anything you want”

Insidesocialgames.com recently reported on the phenomenon of social gaming “whales”, or rather players who spend over $1000 buying virtual items like farmville cash and facebook poker chips in online games. Much like the well known “whales” of Las Vegas casinos who routinely drop millions of dollars in a single night at the tables, these whales have become a significant source of profit and revenue for social gaming companies such as Zynga Games, Playdom, and Playfish, often spending $1000 or more to buy their in game items.

Spending $1000 is one thing and spending $25,540 on virtual items like facebook poker chips is in another league though. Below you can see the top spenders reported by the payments platform company Social Gold. Suprisingly their biggest spender isn’t some crazed online gamer from the US, but rather someone from Saudi Arabia. If this guy is spending $25,000 on facebook poker chips and farmville, imagine what his weekly entertainment budget must be..

However, in place of cocaine are crack, these dealers are distributing Facebook poker chips, Farmville coins, and Mafia Wars or World of Warcraft Gold and other coveted virtual goods and currencies to their loyal buyers. Instead of an artificial drug induced high, players are rewarded with surges in endorphins and neurotransmitters.

Will Wright, legendary game developer of mega hit titles such as The Sims and Spore, delivered a keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. He likened the relationship between game developers and gamers to that of drug dealers and their users.

Full Article: http://gdc.gamespot.com/story/6253594/will-wright-game-design-a-lot-like-dealing-drugs

Building off the success of virtual simulation games like Farmville, Playdom’s Social City lets you customize and build a city from the ground up, developing every aspect of it as if you were the mayor, city builder, and real estate tycoon all rolled into one. Players can customize the factories in their city, decide which industries to pursue, and open commercial chains like restaurants and hotels.

Many of the game elements are similar to that of Zynga’s Farmville, except the backdrop is your own city rather than a plot of farmland. The visuals of the game are quite engaging and many elements of the game are unique. Player’s efforts in the game are rewarded with game coins as well as increases in population. The game has been a huge hit, garnering almost 3 million players within the span of a few weeks. Players can check out the new game on Facebook here: http://apps.facebook.com/socialcity/?reload

Full Article: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/03/03/playdom-constructs-its-own-facebook-city-builder-social-city/

Hacker arrested for stealing 400 billion zynga poker chips

Between June and September of 2009, British resident Ashley Mitchell used his backround in computer programming to hack into the systems of Zynga Game Network and steal nearly 400 billion (thats billion with a B) in facebook poker chips. Mitchell attempted to split up and store the chips in dozens of fake player accounts in order to hide them, but the sheer size of the heist alerted Zynga employees, who proceeded to set up a sting to catch the hacker.

By the time authorities arrested Mitchell, he had sold off nearly $86,000 in zynga poker chips to players. They also found out that Mitchell was the owner of a competing facebook poker application called Gambino Poker.

The judge presiding over the case said that Mitchell could face prison time because at the time of the hacking he had already received a suspended sentence for a previous incident where he hacked in to the systems of an employer of his and gave himself thousands in undeserved benefits.

Disney acquires Playdom for $560 million

In the largest social gaming deal since Electronic Arts bought Playfish, this week entertainment goliath Disney purchased Playdom, the creator of games such as Mobsters, Facebook Poker Palace, Tiki Farm, and Sorority Life for social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace.

Does this mean Mickey Mouse will be coming out with his own brand of Facebook Poker Chips anytime soon? Playdom’s Poker Palace game was never able to reach the same level of popular as that of the #1 Texas Holdem Game on Facebook, Zynga Poker, but hat doesn’t mean that they can’t mount another try at marketing a decent facebook poker game with their new financial backers. Having a sponsor like Disney in a social game maker’s corner opens all types of marketing and advertising opportunities to a game maker that they would have previously had to pay millions for.

Selling zynga poker chips to online texas holdem gamers has been a hugely profitable enterprice for Zynga so far so it only stands to reason that Playdom might make another attempt to promote Poker Palace. While the popularity of other games like farmville has risen and fallen over the past year, facebook texas holdem poker games seem to be the one theme that doesn’t seem to fade. One thing is for sure, online gamers sure love their poker games.

Facebook Poker Chips

Zynga Poker Chips

Zynga replaces zynga poker chips with real cash at Poker Con

Zynga invaded Las Vegas this past weekend by dipping their toes in real money poker games for the first time ever, offering players a cash prize pool of $100,000 (that’s USD not facebook poker chips).

Zynga General Manager Laurence Toney had the following to say about Zynga’s latest push into real money poker game:

The goal with Poker Con is to bring fans from the web to the felt. The hope is that our hardcore fans will want to replicate the social aspect of poker that they get online in a live setting. The event will consist of a live tournament with a cash prize pool valued at over $100,000, celebrity and poker pro appearances, a poker school and of course, the Zynga Poker party which will allow our users to meet each other and the Zynga staff.

Zynga’s emphasis was on creating a fun and exciting social scene in poker world and growing their brand by getting exposure amongst the real money poker games rather than ones with digital facebook poker chips. Whether this is the first amongst many steps toward a foray into real money gambling or just another marketing event to spread the Zynga brand remains to be seen.

No, you didn’t misread the title. Yes, creator of popular social games like Zynga Poker, Farmville, and Mafia Wars is really planning to blow up an armored truck as part of their promotion for the new expansion, Mafia Wars Las Vegas. When it comes to marketing and grabbing peoples imaginations, Zynga is way ahead of the social gaming developer crowd with their ideas and tactics.

They plan to air the event on the internet live once Mafia Wars Las Vegas reaches ten million visitors to the page. They’re also giving out a ton of free stuff like iPads a week and $25,000 in cash (thats real money, not facebook poker chips incase you’re wondering).

The counter for the event currently stands around 4 million as of today. There’s no doubt Zynga will eventually get 10 million players to the site, so for  those of you hoping to watch an actual armor car get lit up like a firecracker, it’s only a matter of time..

TechCrunch has reported that Google is in talks with Zynga Texas Holdem Poker and Farmville developer Zynga Games to launch a new social gaming portal called “Google Games” where gamers will be able to play games the latest Zynga games. Google has allegedly invested anywhere from $100 to $200 million dollars into the social gaming leader all the while keeping the topic quiet.

You’ll be hard pressed to find any details on this new gaming portal by Google as for the time being it seems to be under lock and key and nobody from Google isn’t really talking too much about it publicly. You might be asking yourself what Google’s strategy is by releasing another gaming portal with Zynga games when players can already play games like Facebook Poker, Mafia Wars, Farmville, and the new Frontierville on Facebook and Myspace?

Perhaps Google, in their bid to own a piece of just about everything on the globe, is trying to break into the very lucrative social gaming transactions market like Facebook has done with facebook credits.

Does this mean that players will be buying their facebook poker chips and zynga poker chips with google credits one day soon? It’s too early to say, and Google certainly isn’t volunteering any information about their intentions or plans, so for now gamers and game makers can only use their imaginations.

While other games rise, peak and fall, one game braves through the storm of social gaming fickleness: Facebook Texas Holdem Poker. People love their facebook poker chips in Zynga, Playfish, and Playdom poker games and AOL and Games.com have finally taken notice and decided to introduce their own facebook poker application for texas holdem fans. 

While there have been many imitators of Zynga Texas Holdem Poker over the years there has yet to be a true competitor that has been able to dethrone them completely, instead having to make due with stealing a few thousands facebook poker players here and there for their applications.

So will Games.com and AOL’s version be any different or will it just fall by the wayside like so many others who have come and gone with their own version of facebook poker chips? I guess there’s only one way to find out: play the game.

You can give it a test run here: Games.com Facebook Poker

Yahoo brings Facebook poker chips to its users

Yahoo announced this week that it will be bringing games like Facebook Texas Holdem Poker to it’s suite of gaming sites through a partnership with Zynga Game Network, giving it’s users a broader selection of games to choose from and access to new ways to interact with friends and family while tending to their farms in Farmville or playing with their facebook poker chips.

Benefits of the new partnership will include:

• Ability for people to play Zynga games and access their personal Zynga game updates across Yahoo!’s properties including the Homepage, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and others.

• Sharing of updates across multiple social experiences simultaneously while playing their favorite Zynga games on Yahoo!

• Product integration of Zynga games with the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP), Yahoo!’s OpenSocial container through which third-party developers can develop applications on Yahoo!

“With over 35 million unique users playing our games every single day, social games are fast becoming a leading source of entertainment worldwide surpassing most television shows,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. “Our partnership with Yahoo! gives millions of new users the ability to connect with friends and families through games.”