Toyota’s Social Network Racer

By far, the best ever Facebook Integration in a Game. Brilliant execution, the game graphics are on standards of actual racing games, and I yet can’t believe everything was being executed in flash. So good is the game, and aptly named ‘Social Network Racer‘ by Toyota made by Japan agency – PARTY.

Many features like personalized tracks, friends tracks which you can compete with, photos and status updates between the game, etc. make it highly interactive. Watch this video for the customized race-track:

 

Also a screenshot of the friends integration in the game:

Don’t want to add any more words words, but definitely something you don’t wanna miss! This is something which will raise the bar in online gaming soon.

Here’s the link again:

http://apps.facebook.com/socialnetworkracer/

Economics of Social Gaming

Mashable published a new infographic about the economcis of Social Gaming, and gave out a few really important statistics we were waiting to hear. A few key points are:

• $6 billion to be spent for virtual goods in 2013
• 70-80% of all mobile downloads are games
• Angry Birds has a reached a total 140 million downloads

INFOGRAPHIC: 26 Million users Play Social Games on their Mobile Devices

The guys over at Rounds have been researching a lot around the social networking gaming industry, and they created a truly awesome and informative infographic about the evolution of social gaming.This infographic will take you from the early stages of gaming in 1972 to today’s billion dollar gaming industry, and all within this infographic. One of the most successful social media games is of course FarmVille, but there are countless of other games that are bagging money by the boatload. If you have ever played a social game, you know exactly how addictive those games are. That is exactly why social gaming is such a huge industry. What would you say are the most addictive social games and why do you think you keep playing them? Have a look at the infographic below, and click to enlarge it.

[Sources: BitRebels]

INFOGRAPHIC: An average Farmville-r plays more than 5400 minutes a year

An infographic put together by Hasai, a social media strategy firm that explores Americans’ use of social media, reports that the 63 million active FarmVille players spend an average of 15 minutes a day, totaling 5,475 minutes a year tending to their digital crops.

The infographic also shares an interesting statistic overall: Online video games, the second most heavily-used Internet activity, make up 10 percent of all Internet activity in the U.S. And yes, that includes Facebook gaming. Honestly, I thought this percentage would have been larger, considering the amount of online gaming platforms there are even outside of Facebook. You can click on the infographic below to get a larger view:

Virtual Russian Roulette

Russian Facebook Roulette from Ilya Malyanov on Vimeo.

 
A great concept by students of Miami Ad School in Europe for Russian Standard Vodka. These are the future industry creatives, and this is a good idea, only if allowed by Facebook’s TOS.

The Russian “Facebook” Roulette App is pretty much the real thing, only you aren’t playing for your life, just your virtual one, arguably almost as valuable to some people these days! The app lets you connect with 4 friends, who each hit the “spin” button to initiate their turn, before hitting “fire” hoping to avoid the bullet and deletion of their Facebook profile, everyone who survives enters the draw to win an all expenses trip to experience Russia for themselves.