• 8 Reasons I Quit Playing Facebook Games

    8 Reasons I Quit Playing Facebook Games

    Two years ago, I ranted about the need for more challenge and chance in social games. Since then, the entire gaming industry has drastically changed. If I sound like a broken record on that note, it’s because in a fast-paced, high-tech market, it’s always true (and thus worth reiteration). It seems ...

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  • How Not to Play Location-based Games like an Idiot

    How Not to Play Location-based Games like an Idiot

    Welcome to the wonderful world of location-based games! I see you’ve just downloaded a copy of Traveler’s Quest, or Dokobots, or CodeRunner, or perhaps you’ve got yourself on foursquare for the first time. That’s great! You’re about to discover what geotagging and GPS-enabled mobile devices can add to gaming and ...

    Read more...

  • Abandoning Facebook: CrowdStar Joins OMGPOP, Kabam, Funzio in Mobile

    Abandoning Facebook: CrowdStar Joins OMGPOP, Kabam, Funzio in Mobile

    CrowdStar, developer of popular Facebook games like Happy Aquarium and the "Girl" series (Modern Girl, Social Girl, Top Girl and It Girl), announced today that they will stop developing games for Facebook, according to an interview with All Things Digital.  Peter Relan predicts that 90% of Crowdstar’s revenue will come ...

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  • Don’t Be a Cheapskate: 4 Reasons Pay-What-You-Like Backfires

    Don’t Be a Cheapskate: 4 Reasons Pay-What-You-Like Backfires

    Pay-What-You-Like.  You’ve sometimes seen it called Pay-What-You-Want.  You’ve seen it while leaving your local museum or hippy café as a big box that says “Donations.”  You’ve also seen it for Radiohead’s In Rainbows or with Humble Bundle, the collection of indie games offered for however much you’d like to pay ...

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  • Cats Wearing GUNNARS: Zooey

    Cats Wearing GUNNARS: Zooey

    Meet Zooey O'Leary. Zooey is sporting a pair of GUNNAR Optik's Attache Phenom glasses, and looking good doing it. If you've been following our Dogs Wearing GUNNARS series, you may notice something a bit off this week. Zooey is a frisky first - special edition feline! You can call her a "domestic ...

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  • Hardcore and Back Again: Video Games in a Nutshell

    Hardcore and Back Again: Video Games in a Nutshell

    The SNES was a young kid's dream (in the early 90's). Every game felt brand-spanking new, because it was. When video games first came along, "copycats" were neither a logical thing to consider, nor an option. Video games were casual. They were made for mainstream audiences. And back then, even the ...

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  • 5 Apps to Make You Smile

    5 Apps to Make You Smile

    These are a few of my favorite digital things... This list is hardly comprehensive, nor is it in any particular order. Enjoy! 1. Timehop - This gets top billing because too few people know about it (and more should - it's neat). Basically, Timehop answers one question, every day, via email. "What did ...

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  • The Time Has Come: Pokemon and Me 15 Years Later

    The Time Has Come: Pokemon and Me 15 Years Later

    Last year, when my mind was busy with summer vacation, I came home to an unsettling sight. Roxy's tumor had grown exponentially. Her arm was swelling up to a point where she couldn't even lift it. All attempts to remove the tumor would only make it grow back with a ...

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Jetpack Joyride is on Facebook; See You Tomorrow

16. May 2012

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Jetpack Joyride is on Facebook; See You Tomorrow

Here’s how this is going to work: I’m going to tell you that Jetpack Joyride, the incredibly addictive, hugely charming winner of pretty much every award that Pocket Gamer has to offer, is now on Facebook in a free, perfect replication of its iOS version. Then, you’re going to go check it out for yourself. Then [...]

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Never Stop Playing Poker for Any Reason with Casino by Zeniz

10. May 2012

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Never Stop Playing Poker for Any Reason with Casino by Zeniz

Gambling at the casino is pretty great, but there’s two fatal flaws in the process: One; you have to go all the way there and at some point they will probably want you to leave. Two; they usually want money from you at some point. Both of these problems have now been solved by TriplePoint [...]

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Make Flipbooks Without Ruining Actual Books with FlipBook HD

10. May 2012

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Make Flipbooks Without Ruining Actual Books with FlipBook HD

After my freshman year of high school, I was denied the school’s offer to buy back my textbooks for a small portion of what I’d originally paid. They reasoned that I had permanently defaced my books by drawing hilariously violent flipbooks in each one. We both knew, of course, that my art had only enhanced the [...]

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The World is Drawing a Lot Less of Something

9. May 2012

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The World is Drawing a Lot Less of Something

How many idle games do you have clogging up your Draw Something queue? According to the app’s data on AppData (by way of Kotaku), I’d guess about a third of your games are sitting idle. In the last month, roughly 5 million players (about a third of its nearly 15 million users a month ago) have [...]

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Facebook + NBA Jam = …Bubble Safari?

8. May 2012

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Facebook + NBA Jam = …Bubble Safari?

Okay. So, Mark Turmell, the guy behind legendarily awesome sports-mayhem-game NBA Jam, just put together a Facebook game for Zynga. Everyone who predicted the game to have nothing to do with either sports or farming, but to instead be a new take on match-three bubble shooters, raise your hand. None of you? Well, me neither, but [...]

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Bigpoint and Square Enix Spin Up Gameglobe

8. May 2012

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Bigpoint and Square Enix Spin Up Gameglobe

If there’s ever been something missing from action-adventure games, it’s… well, I don’t honestly know. But now, if I ever figure out what that is, I can put it there. By way of MMOBomb, we’ve received news that publishers Bigpoint and Square Enix have teamed up to unveil Gameglobe – a browser-based action-adventure game that comes [...]

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Grantoo is Now at Your College, Too

7. May 2012

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Grantoo is Now at Your College, Too

Remember when we mentioned Grantoo to Grant-you? The socially positive social gaming platform for sociable college students (and clients of the very social folks at TriplePoint) had previously offered its tuition-based prizes to players on a select number of campuses, but now they’re done with all of that selectivity and restriction. Social gaming for charity is no [...]

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8 Reasons I Quit Playing Facebook Games

1. May 2012

1 Comment

Two years ago, I ranted about the need for more challenge and chance in social games. Since then, the entire gaming industry has drastically changed. If I sound like a broken record on that note, it’s because in a fast-paced, high-tech market, it’s always true (and thus worth reiteration). It seems social media and video [...]

Continue reading...

Restaurant City is Closing Down the Kitchen

1. May 2012

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Restaurant City is Closing Down the Kitchen

Back in the day, we here at Frisky Mongoose were big fans of Restaurant City, one of Playfish’s early Facebook offerings. The title was one of many in the company’s portfolio that ultimately led to their acquisition by EA, and kept us all going with its ingredient-swapping, dish-cooking, decor-placing, bathroom-mopping antics. So, it is with some [...]

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Social Gaming, Real Money Gaming, and How They Play Together

30. April 2012

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Social Gaming, Real Money Gaming, and How They Play Together

What can social game designers learn from games played for real money? AJ Glasser of Inside Social Games attended the Global iGaming Summit last week and pondered that very same question. Glasser notes that the two platforms are (perhaps inexorably) coming together, though they’re not without their differences: A social games player wants to feel [...]

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How Not to Play Location-based Games like an Idiot

30. April 2012

1 Comment

How Not to Play Location-based Games like an Idiot

Welcome to the wonderful world of location-based games! I see you’ve just downloaded a copy of Traveler’s Quest, or Dokobots, or CodeRunner, or perhaps you’ve got yourself on foursquare for the first time. That’s great! You’re about to discover what geotagging and GPS-enabled mobile devices can add to gaming and social media. Location-based games are [...]

Continue reading...

Abandoning Facebook: CrowdStar Joins OMGPOP, Kabam, Funzio in Mobile

25. April 2012

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Abandoning Facebook: CrowdStar Joins OMGPOP, Kabam, Funzio in Mobile

CrowdStar, developer of popular Facebook games like Happy Aquarium and the “Girl” series (Modern Girl, Social Girl, Top Girl and It Girl), announced today that they will stop developing games for Facebook, according to an interview with All Things Digital.  Peter Relan predicts that 90% of Crowdstar’s revenue will come from mobile next year, even [...]

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