The iPhone Poker team is proud to announce the release of Live Poker for the iPhone, the device’s first truly live social gaming experience!

Live Poker connects your iPhone to Zynga’s casino — over 3G, Edge, or WiFi — so you can play Poker online with over 1.4 million daily users from Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Hi5. We’re really excited about the iPhone as a social gaming platform; Phones are inherently social devices, and with Apple’s engineering and UI ingenuity we think the iPhone is positioned to be a leader in social gaming.

A few features you’ll see in the app:

• Playing with Poker Buddies has never been easier. Find friends online and join their games instantly. This is truly what mobile social gaming is all about!
• Facebook Connect support, so you can play with your Texas Hold’em Facebook account and chip stack, or optionally register with a new account. We’re happy to be the first iPhone app on the market featuring Facebook Connect.
• Redesigned user interface specifically for the iPhone. I think it looks beautiful and makes for a better new user experience. We simplified menus and made the gameplay much easier to follow.
• Support for fun social stuff like chat and drinks. After all, Poker’s always been about more than just the cards.

Check out Live Poker today!

At the recent Austin Game Developers Conference, area/code co-founder and lead designer Frank Lantz discussed the development of Parking Wars, an advergame on Facebook. Parking Wars was, admittedly, more successful than even area/code anticipated. Frank’s proposal for why was simple. According to Gamasutra:

The game, in which your park your cars on your friend’s ’street’ on Facebook, is specifically intended to take advantage of a “light but persistent” rhythm of interaction.

Lantz explained that, sure, there is a competitive aspect, but there’s also a sense in which it functions as a light social MMO. In fact, it’s “…designed specifically to be something that you would do twice a day for five minutes.”

Social networks benefit from bringing users back day after day — through tropes like inboxes, newsfeeds, notifications, invites, messages. What could be a more perfect game than one where players feel compelled to return day after day, week after week, month after month?

This is what I’m calling the “long tail” of game design (a cousin concept to Chris Anderson’s long tail of business strategy). Rather than building games that promote brief and intense play, why not build games that promote short spurts of play over a much longer timeline?

Zynga gets the best of both worlds by enabling both of these play styles, but ultimately is focused on the long-term. You can play Scramble against your friends in a turn-based capacity, or you can engage in one of our many live rooms, and play Scramble fans around the globe for hours every day. For the ultimate long-tailers, RPGs like Street Racing, Mafia Wars, and Fashion Wars are great games. I guess the only question is: what kind of player are you?

Last Tuesday we launched an update to Zynga.com. Scott the blog master has been after me to post about it ever since — so it’s time to put down my mouse, stop designing, and start writing!

Our goals for the redesign were straight-forward: make our site easier to use, better looking and a whole lot more fun. In my opinion, our design leads on the project, Chris and Henry, nailed it!

Here are a few things you’ll notice about the new site:

• Zinga’s tail wags! OK, so it’s tiny and easy to overlook, but once you notice it, you can’t stop looking. At least I can’t. For hours. It’s like pixilated crack. Maybe you have more self-control than I do…
• White is the new black! The new site is brighter and lighter. While I’m sure there are a couple of neo-goth vampire lovers who’ll miss the darkness of the old site, I’m guessing that most folks will appreciate the fresh air and sunshine of the new site.
• It’s easier to find and get to our games. The games are grouped by network, so, for example, if you’re a MySpace-only kind of gamer, you can filter the list down to just the MySpace games. Just click on the “Games” link in the header.
• We’ve got a killer new spotlight. Check out the awezome tranzition effect that Chriz developed. How cool iz that?
• Our job listings are much easier to scan, so please check out the jobs section. If you’re the kind of person who cares enough about Zynga to slog through five bullets worth of my writing, you’ve got the kind of grit and tenacity we’re looking for.
• Did I mention Zinga’s tail? I’m still staring…

There’s more, but suffice it to say that if you dig under the hood, you’ll notice tons of little improvements to the site. Enjoy!

-JC

This past week, the Facebook team pushed the remaining old profile users over to the radically altered new profile design. The new design’s been somewhat controversial, with groups being established in opposition to the changes, and an unprecedented number of users registering as Facebook developers (solely because developers can still access the old profile).

Though change is never easy, the new Facebook profile is definitely a step in the right direction for both users and developers, built to create the best user experience and the best environment for developers. Here are a few reasons why you too might eventually kind of like the new Facebook:

Emphasis on searching:
Facebook has a rather clever search engine built in, with its search bar attempting to auto-complete with both your friends and installed applications. If you know the name of your favorite app (or even just part of the name), accessing it is as easy as typing.

Application presence not worse, just different:
The “Applications” button now in the bottom left hard corner of the Facebook window gives you quick access to your bookmarks. Your top six favorite applications are also always displayed along that bottom “taskbar.”

Wider pages means wider apps!
It’s true! Now that the older, small profile is a thing of the past, we can take advantage of the wider format to deliver just as much excellent content with less scrolling!

Simplified app installation:
Old Facebook users had to view a long, confusing list of checkboxes before installing an app. With the new profile, that process is a lot more user-friendly. It’s better for players, which is always better for us.

Attention to detail:
This isn’t new, but Facebook has always had an ear to the ground when it comes to feedback. In the months prior to the full release, the new Facebook profile evolved in a very dynamic way during its beta period. We fully expect that as time goes on, the new Facebook will continue to be fine-tuned to strike that delicate balance between user experience and developer flexibility.

For those users still having trouble finding our games, there’s an easy way to add them to favorites. While using the app, click the “Add Bookmark” button that appears along the taskbar at the bottom of the page (shown above). It’s that simple!

- sj

I have a little paper scroll from a Chinese fortune cookie that sits on my desk at work. It originally read “Necessity is the mama of invention,” and while I find nothing wrong with that statement (except maybe the use of “mama”), it didn’t exactly suit me. So I grabbed a pen and made a few edits. Now it reads: 

“Constraint is the mother of innovation.”

As a game designer, I refer to this principle on a daily basis, so it’s nice to have it in writing. Whether working on a brand new title, or making improvements to an existing one, the best ideas are born out of limitations — boundaries which designers must work around to achieve their goals.

“Easy” problems are simply those with too many solutions. It’s when our options are severely limited that we begin to look in new and exciting directions. That’s why my favorite days at Zynga are also the most challenging. And that’s why I immortalized the sentiment on a fortune scroll. It’s the best advice you could ever get from a cookie.

- sj

Some fantastic coverage of the social gaming scene recently came our way from the mainstream media. MSNBCs Winda Benedetti talked with some of social gaming’s most prominent personalities — our own Mark Pincus included — about the strengths and challenges of this new frontier.

Key points include the importance of connecting friends through play, and the distinction between social games and the rest of the video game industry. Though social games may at times look very familiar, there are unseen complexities that make our business a fun and challenging experience for all those involved. 

Thanks for believing in us, Winda. We promise we won’t let you down.  ^_^

- sj

along with our funding news, we are turning on a long overdue blog tonight. i’m excited that bing gordon, a founder of EA and partner at KP, has officially taken an operating director role and more importantly has agreed to contribute to our blog. you will see that he is a much more exciting writer. also, scott derringer, who has joined us from yahoo to run product management will be contributing, and like bing shares the distinction of being another great writer.

we are excited to have the opportunity to invest in developing the next generation of social games. our mission is to build games that *we* would play. we challenge the idea that ‘games are a great time waster’ as social games are already an important way to connect with friends and meet other real people.

-mark pincus

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the Zynga Blog.  It’s an incredibly exciting time here at Zynga – we proudly host the largest game network for members of the major online social networks, and our players are passionate about our games.  If you don’t know about all of the great games Zynga offers, then you’re missing out!  Whether you and your friends are poker players, word-puzzle aces, or fans of fantasy and role-playing games, we have something amazing in store for you.  Install one of our games and you’ll immediately see what other games your friends are playing (you’ll be surprised at how many of them already play Zynga games).

On the company side, we are growing – like crazy!  With offices in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Toronto, we’re bringing on the best and the brightest creative minds and engineering talent we can find.  We recently announced that we closed $29 million in funding led by Kleiner Perkins, and we are honored to be their first Web 2.0 investment.  Thanks for the huge vote of confidence, guys!

Haven’t played a Zynga game yet?  Well don’t wait another second – enjoy real fun with the friends you’ve made on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, , Friendster…there’s so much to do, you really should dive right in!

Pick a new favorite and get started:

• Texas Hold’Em Poker - the biggest free online Poker game anywhere
• Scramble - one of our fun and fast-paced word games
• Mafia Wars - be the head of your own family and play for keeps
• Yoville - set up your home and visit friends in Zynga’s virtual world

And watch this blog for more updates as we release new games and exciting features.

-Scott Derringer

We are lucky to be living in a spectacular new era for consumer software.  Developers are in a creative fervor that reminds me of the first days of computer games, with games being programmed in garages, dorm rooms and start-ups.  Now three of the most important youth brands (Facebook, Apple and Myspace) have opened their APIs and SDKs with stunning success.  Consumers can drink beer on their iPhones, play poker tournaments in their social portals, and put out mafia hits on friends of friends of friends.  If it’s cool to reach out and touch someone, it is totally awesome to slay a total stranger.

The Facebook platform, in my opinion, changed everything when it went live in May 2007.  Its developer APIs were as solid as any videogame console development tools, and it achieved mass market penetration much more quickly (Facebook apps are estimated to have reached 40 million users in just 12 months.)  The iPhone apps development environment has also proven to be enormously productive, and the iTunes Apps store is clearly a new “killer app” for mobile computing. If 2007 was the year of the “API-able Internet,” 2008 is the year of the “Virtual Platform.”

I must  have worked on 24 meaningful game platforms over the years, from the Atari 800 and C-64 in 1983 to Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii in 2008.  I have tried to forget many of the non-meaningful ones, like PC Junior, CD-I, Sega CD and Dreamcast.  There have been cyclical patterns worth noting:

• The Market Maker must have a first party brand owner and driver.  No platforms succeed with brand owners who falter.
• Exclusive apps, from Halo to Mario to Facebook Photos, position platforms.
• Killer apps grow markets.  The “long tail” (multitudes of games) doesn’t matter; but 3rd party software is necessary to provide breadth and energy.
• Critical mass or die.  20 million customers within 5 years in the US.
• Risk is asymmetrical.  First parties “bet the company” before launch, but independent game-makers “bet the company” for years after.  This creates “frenemies” who battle for game market share and profits.

The internet has changed many old patterns. Can these Virtual Platform companies re-shape the experiences of game-makers and game-players? I am hopeful.

Let the games begin!

Bing Gordon