SGN aims for cross-platform social gaming domination

SGN aims for cross-platform social gaming domination

Last year, SGN made a bet that social gaming would transcend any one platform, and it aggressively expanded from its core group of gaming applications on Facebook to building games for the iPhone. Even though many rivals have gotten bigger than SGN on Facebook, it… Continue Reading

iPhone game developers rejoice at Apple’s latest update plans

iPhone game developers rejoice at Apple’s latest update plans

There were a lot of happy game developers among the 200 or so people who attended Thursday’s iGames Summit in San Francisco, which was devoted to iPhone games.

Speakers at the summit, including game developers such as Tapulous, ngmoco, Booyah, Demiforce, Zynga and Social Gaming Network,… Continue Reading

Whose mob war is it, anyway?

Whose mob war is it, anyway?

An intellectual property court battle around popular mobster-themed Facebook game Mob Wars has been resolved. Coincidentally, real-life mobster Salvatore Riina has recently been gaining thousands of users on Facebook fan pages — and provoking protests in his home country of Italy.

Some mob wars, it seems,… Continue Reading

SGN’s iFun puts a bit more Wiimote in the iPhone

SGN’s iFun puts a bit more Wiimote in the iPhone

Gaming company SGN has a strategy that has worked so far with iPhone and iPod touch games: Use the device’s accelerometer to create simple sports games similar to one that have been made popular on the Nintendo Wii console thanks to the accelerometer in its… Continue Reading

Playfish raises $17 million for Facebook games

Playfish raises $17 million for Facebook games

Playfish, a social gaming company that has four of the top ten games on Facebook, has raised $17 million in funding.

The deal shows that the intersection of games and social networking remains a hot sector in spite of the weakening economy.

Playfish came out of nowhere… Continue Reading

SGN’s iPhone success is an important step toward social gaming unification

SGN’s iPhone success is an important step toward social gaming unification

Social game maker Social Gaming Network (SGN) found out the easy way that there is something to gaming on the iPhone: It released two hugely successful games for the Apple device. But now it’s on to the next phases of its plan to further infiltrate… Continue Reading

Social Gaming Network acquires (fluff)Friends virtual pet game

Social Gaming Network acquires (fluff)Friends virtual pet game

Social Gaming Network has acquired (fluff)Friends, a Facebook virtual pet game maker. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Palo Alto, Calif.,-based SGN is in a race with Zynga to dominate Facebook games and it has been on an acquisition spree, buying small game developers who… Continue Reading

Mob Wars, the million-dollar-a-month independent Facebook app, may legally belong to SGN

Mob Wars, the million-dollar-a-month independent Facebook app, may legally belong to SGN

Updated

When David Maestri launched Mob Wars in January of this year, he may have made a multi-million dollar mistake.

I have learned from a handful of sources that the entrepreneur, whose popular game is one of the most lucrative apps on Facebook, both developed and released… Continue Reading

Virtual goods starting to pan out for Facebook game app developers, and not just the venture-funded ones

Virtual goods starting to pan out for Facebook game app developers, and not just the venture-funded ones

Like grizzled miners panning for gold on a river high in the Sierras, Facebook applications developers have been toiling away, trying to figure out how to make money from the millions of people who use their apps every day. Those developers who focus on games… Continue Reading

Social game creator SGN gets funding from Amazon’s Bezos, who looks for more Web hits

Social game creator SGN gets funding from Amazon’s Bezos, who looks for more Web hits

Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, seems to have fallen for investing in hot new web properties. The latest one: Social Gaming Network (SGN), a top developer of gaming applications on Facebook and other social networks.

Bezos, who invests through a fund he… Continue Reading

SGN, on quest for social gaming revenue, raises $15 million

SGN, on quest for social gaming revenue, raises $15 million

Social Gaming Network, or SGN, is one of the more promising companies exploiting Facebook’s platform. It builds “social games” — online games that use friend relationships and other social data from social networks to deliver more compelling games.

It’s promising because it wants to straddle the… Continue Reading