Social gaming has become huge in the last year, reason being that playing games is naturally a social activity. Social gaming basically combines the best of the gaming portals with the social network platform. What’s so great about this idea, is that the social tools offered, enable casual gamers to play in a much more fun, interesting and competitive environment. It not only allows friends to share their scores with one another, it creates a fun way for people to interact, create and receive feedback.

While more and more gaming sites are hopping on this trend, XPO Games is one trend hopper who’s doing it right.

XPOGames describe themselves as a fully-featured social network for both casual gamers and game developers. Gamers can join the fun; play original casual games and use the featured socializing tools to meet new people and share their experiences, while developers can submit and expose their originally created games and monetize them. XPO Games launched in 2007 by Daniel Yaron and Hagay Nave when they realized the void and solitude one can experience on other casual gaming websites. “The games were there, but the community and social tools weren’t!” says Daniel Yaron. They decided to go beyond the portal functionality by including features such as the ability to like games, create profiles, friend other users, send them messages, post on walls, utilize the live scoring system and news feed, and win trophies. In addition to all this, the XPO Games platform allows developers to ask users for feedback on which games to create.

Gaming just makes more sense when you play against your buddies. Daniel and Hagay have realized this and have taken it to the next level.

XPO Games is still in private Beta and we’ve got  invites for all Blonde 2.0 readers! Get yours here.

The gamer’s dilemma has always been between the quality of dedicated gaming vs. the convenience of casual flash based games. You can play Gears of War if you have the game (80$) the console (300$) and a TV (500$ for a good one) or you can play limitless flash games on limitless sites -for free- if you  happen to have a computer. But whichever way you go there will be a tradeoff: quality vs. ease of access.

Downtown Defender is a new game, just publicly launched, that bridges that divide; it is browsr based, but features true 3D graphics and it tackles one of the most popular online genres; Tower Defense. On its Website Downtown Defender is described as the following:

“The objective of Downtown Defender is to fight off a flood of giant monsters as they storm downtown San Francisco before they eat all the people fleeing to the Ferry Terminal Building. To accomplish this, you will command a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with a payload of heavily armed gun turrets. You must drop these turrets at strategic locations throughout downtown to inflict maximum damage on the monsters. Every monster you kill will give you more soldiers so that you can build larger and more deadly turrets. To win the game, you must detain the monsters long enough so that the civilians can board the ferry and escape.”

Downtown Defender is the first game launched by plaYce a TechCrunch50 start-up and takes advantage of the plaYce player, a proprietary browser plugin that allows a full 3D gaming experience all within the Web browser. Later in the year they will be launching more games set in Hong-Kong and Manhattan and other cities around the world. The platform will soon be open to developers to construct their own games in whichever cities they like, imagine pod-racing in Hong Kong or team combat in Sydney.The possibilities of full 3D gaming online are endless.

Here is a look at Downtown Defender:

[Image Credit: XKCD] 

The gamer’s dilemma has always been between the quality of dedicated gaming vs. the convenience of casual flash based games. You can play Gears of War if you have the game (80$) the console (300$) and a TV (500$ for a good one) or you can play limitless flash games on limitless sites -for free- if you  happen to have a computer. But whichever way you go there will be a tradeoff: quality vs. ease of access.

Downtown Defender is a new game, just publicly launched, that bridges that divide; it is browsr based, but features true 3D graphics and it tackles one of the most popular online genres; Tower Defense. On its Website Downtown Defender is described as the following:

“The objective of Downtown Defender is to fight off a flood of giant monsters as they storm downtown San Francisco before they eat all the people fleeing to the Ferry Terminal Building. To accomplish this, you will command a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with a payload of heavily armed gun turrets. You must drop these turrets at strategic locations throughout downtown to inflict maximum damage on the monsters. Every monster you kill will give you more soldiers so that you can build larger and more deadly turrets. To win the game, you must detain the monsters long enough so that the civilians can board the ferry and escape.”

Downtown Defender is the first game launched by plaYce a TechCrunch50 start-up and takes advantage of the plaYce player, a proprietary browser plugin that allows a full 3D gaming experience all within the Web browser. Later in the year they will be launching more games set in Hong-Kong and Manhattan and other cities around the world. The platform will soon be open to developers to construct their own games in whichever cities they like, imagine pod-racing in Hong Kong or team combat in Sydney.The possibilities of full 3D gaming online are endless.

Here is a look at Downtown Defender:

[Image Credit: XKCD] 

Hard core gamers looking to play quick-engagement games on the Web face a problem. Due to the fact that they are used to the superior game play and graphics of high-end console games, quick-engagement games seem flat, bland and uninteresting. The majority of the current quick-engagement games simply don’t cut it for real gamers.  plaYce is changing all of this.

plaYce provides a virtual world, where gamers can play 3D quick-engagement games with their online friends. Getting started is simple, all you need to do is install the plaYce player once (a browser plug-in).  Once the player is installed, you can stream high-end games without having to wait for a download, installation or set up. Just enter the game arena and you’ll be playing in under a minute.

Since plaYce’s 3D world mirrors the real world, plaYce games take place in real locations.  Imagine race car games through the streets of Hong Kong or first-person-shooters in Manhattan.  Their first game, a 3D Tower Defense game called Downtown Defender takes place on the streets of San Francisco. Games in New York and Hong Kong are soon to come.

In addition to providing a superior experience for gamers, plaYce offers game developers the unique opportunity of Game-Platform-as-a-Service. This service will allow game developers to create games in any city of their choosing within plaYce’s 3D world and use plaYce’s API and advanced 3D development tools to build their game within this world. plaYce will provide hosting, marketing, user acquisition, game analytics and monetization infrastructure. This service can save developers between 50–70% of their development costs, allowing them to create more games of higher quality in a fraction of the time.

plaYce will also bring a social element to their games. Users can link to friends from existing social networks and play games together in locations from around the globe. This is the first time that a social, console-quality game with impressive graphics has been available on the Web with no download necessary.

plaYce is introducing the gaming world to a whole new concept—casual games for real gamers. plaYce recreates the world as a playground with a high quality, 3D platform that simply redefines quick-engagement gaming.

Sound like fun?  plaYce is launching shortly, but I’ve got 300 invites for Blonde 2.0 readers to the private beta.  Want an invitation? Click here.

For a taste of the action, watch the video below.

I don’t usually cover WOW and other multiplayer games on my blog, but since this game is after all a community, I found the latest news regarding the fact that many US players are leaving to be an interesting story.

Warcraft Realms reports that the overall number of players online at any given time has been dropping since the latest expansion of the game, The Burning Crusade, was released. In May, the average number of US players online during primetime again fell to just over 380,000 players, while the number of EU players online increased to nearly 400,000.

The below chart shows the decline in player activity in the US & EU combined:

Still, after the decline, there are 8,000,000 active primetime players, which is astounding. I am amazed by how extremely popular this game is, how people spend their hard earned cash on WOW characters on ebay, and how many countless hours users spend daily playing this game. Blizzard has done an amazing job making their product as addictive as possible and making it appealing to users of all ages. I must add that even though I am not really into multiplayer gaming, the visuals are simply breathtaking.

The answer to why US players are leaving may be because as one player comments:

“IMO BC isn’t anything special or really new.
Yes, there’s new content, and new instances, blah blah blah. But when it comes down to it, there hasn’t been a lot of real ‘changes’ to the game. I think a lot people want to see something NEW. Something that hasn’t been done in WoW before. If you think about it, all WoW is, is a grinding game that repeats itself. You grind to hit the next lvl cap, then you grind to get the best gear, which entails rep and instance grinding – only so that you can run raids and grind those instances for even better gear. One day you might have all the gear and gold you need. Finally an expansion comes out, and you do it all over again.
There’s gotta be something new Blizzard can add that would actually be DIFFERENT then what we’ve been doing since day one. I’ve never had as much fun as I did when I first started playing WoW. Once I got used to that, it was the same thing at 60, and now in BC.”

So perhaps this is the reason. Perhaps once players reach 70, they feel they have conquered the game. What do you think?

Thanks to Beketchai for this pic.

Technorati tags: wow, world of warcraft, multiplayer games, the burning crusade, gaming, ebay, blizzard