25 top-rated Facebook games from 2012: "Games can be both a welcome and an annoying diversion on Facebook, the world's most popular online social network. This year, Facebook crossed a big milestone – reaching 1 billion active users. Game companies such as "FarmVille" creator Zynga Inc. and Rovio Entertainment Ltd. of "Angry Birds" fame seek to tap into that vast base of users to gain more players for their games.
This week, Facebook Inc. issued a list of the 25 top-rated games that launched on Facebook in 2012. The company says the rankings are based on user ratings and engagement with the games. It's the same methodology that Facebook uses to rank apps in its App Center.
Some of the games are played on Facebook's website, while others are only on Apple Inc.'s iOS or Google Inc.'s Android devices using Facebook's app.
Here's the list:
1. "SongPop" (by FreshPlanet, on Facebook.com, iOS and Android)
2. "Dragon City" (by Social Point, on Facebook.com)
3. "Bike Race" (by Top Free Games, on iOS) . . . "
The virtue of patience: how game design has rediscovered waiting | Technology | guardian.co.uk: "For a while there, games were constantly hurrying us through the experience; now, finally, a new generation is letting us breath and think again . . . The balance between freedom and urgency is a vital one in game design – it is so hard to get right. But I love to wait and to think. I loved the the Surface level in GoldenEye, when you got to creep through the snow, slowly edging toward the guards. I spent many days playing the now largely forgotten real-time strategy title Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, plotting precise strikes on patrolling German troops and then hiding the bodies. It has been fun to discover that feedback loop of surreptitious violence in Dishonored: stalk, strike, stash. It is satisfying because it encompasses two vital gaming mechanics: killing and tidying. I hope we're on the verge of a new era of game design, in which narrative isn't about corridors of action, and in which players truly contribute to the story as agents of change. Time's winged chariot has hurried us long enough; in the next generation, with processors big enough to generate worlds filled with procedural enemies and dynamic events, we should be given time and space to find our own rhythms of play. If you take the time to build a beautiful and elaborate domain filled with clever enemies, the player must be given the chance to drink it all in. Patience is a virtue in life and in game design."
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Gamasutra
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Property Mentor
The Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) this latest initiative has affected many of the game developers business who solely depends on such business such as apps like Wrapp and TripAdvisor. Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) one of the biggest companies in the video ...
Total War developer gets Warhammer video game license
Ars Technica
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5 tips for buying (great) video games for young players
NBCNews.com
Video game boxes come with ratings designed specifically to help parents know which titles are appropriate for which ages. Games that are most appropriate for the youngest players will be marked with an "EC" for early childhood and "E" for "everyone.
MoMA Curator Finds Hidden Design Gems in Video Games
Wall Street Journal (blog)
So, we've had the smaller video game developers that have been really happy and have given us the code, and instead other companies that will not. So, the second best is to have as good an emulation as possible. And if we cannot have the emulation ...
Wall Street Journal (blog)
The 5 trends that defined the game industry in 2012
Gamasutra
Crowdstar has halted development of social network games to focus on mobile. ... And there's Zynga, whose $210 million purchase of Draw Something developer OMGPOP this year showed just how much the leading Facebook developer thought mobile games were ...
Bally Technology Looks to Acquire Online Poker Game Developer ...
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Another source familiar with the matter said 3G, which helped develop a mobile version of the musicvideo game Rock Band for Harmonix Music Systems, had been talking with others about a potential acquisition or partnerships.
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Introducing Adobe Game Developer Tools « Creative Cloud Team ...
You can now download and install our newest game developer tools directly ... I find magnificent progress in the development of video games, and better in flash ...
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