zynga posts

Electronic Arts has suffered from a major defection in its executive ranks for Facebook gaming juggernaunt Zynga. Reuters reports that according to a filing from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, EA's chief operating officer John Schappert has left the company to join Zynga.

While as of the time of this post Zynga has yet to officially confirm Schappert's new gig, the story claims via unnamed sources that he will head up the company's game division. Zynga has been gaining lots of major designers and executives from more traditional game publishers in the past couple of years including Brian Reynolds of Big Huge Games and more recently Ensemble Studios co-founder Bruce Shelley (as a consultant).

Facebook-based game publisher Zynga continues to acquire game developers by the bucketful. Today the company announced its latest purchase; the Boston-based developer Floodgate Entertainment. As always specific financial details about Zynga's latest purchase were undisclosed.

Founded in 2000 by former members of the defunct Looking Glass Studios, Floodgate first started by developing PC games. It was the main developer for the expansion pack Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide which was released in 2003. Later it helped out developer Arkane Studios with its work on the action-RPG Dark Messiah of Might and Magic in 2006. However for the past few years it has concentrated on casual game development.

The massive earthquake and the resulting tsunami in Japan last week has caused untold damage and human suffering in that country. Now game developers and publishers are trying to raise money in order to help relief efforts for Japan.

The Facebook-based game publisher Zynga is asking its tens of millions of players to donate money to the Japan Earthquake Tsunami Children in Emergency Fund. In its first 36 hours Zynga game players have already raised $1 million for the fund. Meanwhile CCP Games, the developers of the space-based MMO EVE Online, have announced that it is allowing the game's players to convert its in-game cash to real money that will be donated to the Red Cross for earthquake relief. The effort will last until March 31.

Last year saw the shut down of InstantAction, the PC gaming company that tried to launch a web-based embeded game technology. The company was headed up by Louis Castle, the former head of Westwood Studios that created the Command and Conquer series.

Now IndustryGamers has announced that Castle has a new job as he has been hired by Facebook game publisher Zynga as its new VP of Studios. Castle is the latest major PC game developer to join Zynga following others such as Brian Reynolds (formerly of Big Huge Games), Mike Verdu (formerly of EA Los Angeles) and even Ensemble Studios co-founder Bruce Shelley who is working for Zynga as a consultant.

IndustryGames promises to post up a new interview with Castle that will reveal what happened with InstantAction.

A time-travel game, a game filled with dinosaurs, a game about a zombie apocalypse, a game about modern day fairy tales, an "M" rated animated cop game, and a revival of a classic adventure game series. Is Telltale the most varied game developer in terms of its settings or what?

• Steam has an automatic update for X3: Terran Conflict.
• You can now download the songs from the Magicka music soundtrack from the game's official web site.
• Check out this video of Valve head man Gabe Newell addressing a high school class.
• Farmville maker Zynga is now valued at $10 billion. Wow.
• Diablo III team members apparently love Torchlight and Borderlands. We wonder why.

A development team that was formed by a number of ex-Ensemble Studios team members is now a part of the ever growing Zynga family of dev studios. Dallas-based Bonfire Studios has been acquired by social networking games publisher Zynga and will be renamed Zynga Dallas. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Bonfire Studios was launched due to Microsoft's shut down of Ensemble in 2009. Members of Bonfire previously worked on the Age of Empires RTS series. Zynga plans to publish all new games from its Dallas studio and it's likely they will be Facebook-linked titles. The Age of Empires franchise is currently in the hands of another Ensemble splinter group Robot Entertainment which is currently developing Age of Empires Online.

The internet is all abuzz today about a report from tech savvy blog TechCrunch that claims through unnamed but "multiple sources" that Google is about to charge into the games business with, what else, Google Games. The story claims that Google has been prepping for such a launch by "secretly" investing in high flying casual and Facebook-based game publisher Zynga.

The story claims that Google has put in between $100 million and $200 million in Zynga which if true is something neither company has admitted to, at least so far. Zynga's games like Farmville, Mafia Wars and the recently launched Frontierville will serve as the core for Google Games which, according to the article, will launch later this year. Google hasn't had much success with previous game and game-related products. In 2008 it launched a Second World-like online game service called Lively but shut it down only a few months after it went live.

Earlier this month Big Huge Games was saved from being shut down by its owner THQ via a purchase by 38 Studios. However it appears that one of the developer's main co-founders, Brian Reynolds, has decided to depart Big Huge Games anyway for other interest.

Today the social web site gaming company Zynga announced that Reynolds will become their chief designer creating new games for sites like Facebook and MySpace. Prior to founding Big Huge Games, which created Rise of Nations, Reynolds was also a co-founder of Firaxis Games with Sid Meier where he was the main designer behind Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.