After Zynga shut down its Boston office in October, that team decided they weren’t quite done making games. So five senior members started Proletariat, a new game studio, and their first title is debuting today: LetterRush, a new word game on Apple’s App Store.

The iOS game (for the iPhone and iPad) has an arcade-like spin on the classic word finding game. Players can play solo or over local multiplayer.

The Zynga Boston team, originally part of Conduit Labs, created the social game Indiana Jones Adventure World. Proletariat is based in Cambridge, Mass. Conduit Labs focused on music-oriented games for the web, and Zynga acquired it in 2010. The team went to work on Adventure World, an ambitious effort to expose Facebook’s social gamers to a new adventure gaming genre. LucasFilm licensed the Indiana Jones character for the game, but it ultimately wasn’t a success.

“We have all known each other and worked with one another for so long that we’ve developed an organic way of making games together,” said chief executive Seth Sivak in a statement. “We all want to make successful games, both creatively and as a business. This team has been on both sides and knows how to find that balance.”

Sivak added, “Building games is all about navigating the chaotic process of discovering ‘The Fun’ and then performing a disciplined march to a polished, final product. That process is important to us.” The goal, said Sivak, is “to keep teams small and let highly skilled groups of creative people innovate.”

The team is self-funded. Another game is already in the works.

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Zynga is shutting down 11 games soon as part of a cost-cutting measure, according to TechCrunch. The free-to-play games are either unpopular or are older titles that stopped monetizing well. Still, some of those, like PetVille (pictured above), had millions of fans once upon a time.

Zynga chief Mark Pincus announced 13 closures as part of a cost-reduction plan in November. At that time, Zynga only identified FishVille and Treasure Isle. But now the company has also notified players of shutdowns in other games. Besides PetVille, the list includes the mobile games Mafia Wars Shakedown, ForestVille, Mojitomo, and Word Scramble Challenge. On Facebook, the affected titles include Vampire Wars (shut down on Dec. 5), Montopia (shut on Dec. 21), Mafia Wars 2 (shutting Dec. 30), and Indiana Jones Adventure World, which is closed for new players and will close Jan. 14 for all.

At the PetVille page, players are greeted with this message:

“Thank you for supporting PetVille and for being a loyal player! We’re sorry to inform you that PetVille will be shutting down on Dec. 30, 2012. In place of PetVille, we encourage you to play other Zynga games like Castleville, Chefville, Farmville 2, Mafia Wars and Yoville. We appreciate your participation in PetVille as it helped make the game a fun place to meet and war with friends. As a loyal PetVille player, you are eligible for a one-time, complimentary bonus package in one of either Castleville, or Chefville, or Farmville 2, or Mafia Wars or Yoville. You can start the process by logging into PetVille and clicking on the “Redeem” button. Please note that this offer will be valid only until Dec 30, 2012.”

Zynga is offering the bonus package of free stuff in other games. PetVille had 1 million monthly active users, while Mafia Wars 2 had only 200,000 monthly active users, according to market analyst firm AppData. At the time that Zynga announced closures, the company also said it was cutting 5 percent of its work force. Zynga shares are trading at $2.39 a share, far below the initial public offering price a year ago of $10. A spokeswoman for Zynga confirmed the closings.

[Editor's note: I didn't link to actual TechCrunch story since my antivirus software flagged it for malware.]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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You probably don’t think much of Facebook games asking for permission to access your basic information (birthday, friends list, profile picture, and other public details tied to your account), but that little dialog box (like the one pictured above) can turn off potential players from trying a new game. When you’re a giant publisher like Zynga or Electronic Arts who deals with an audience of millions, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to open your app.

This is why Zynga, Kixeye, and EA have worked a deal with Facebook to allow users to start playing their games without having to agree to any dialog boxes. For select games, like Zynga’s Indiana Jones Adventure World, a “play now” button allows the app to access some basic profile information without having to request permission, according to Inside Social Games, which also reported that these games see increased installs and lower opt-out rates. The move could reduce so-called “friction,” or the loss of players because there is an obstacle in their way.

This new functionality is currently available to a small amount of Facebook users, though the “play now” button should begin appearing for more players soon. If a game needs to access more detailed information, like an e-mail address or a birth date, it’ll still have to ask for permission, but it can do so after the initial installation.

You can find more information about this new policy at Facebook’s Help Center.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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“Fortune and glory.” Those two driving forces inspired a hero in 1977, when George Lucas took the advice of fellow filmmaker Steven Spielberg and gave the world not Indiana Smith, but Indiana Jones. The fedora-hatted character, whom Harrison Ford played on the big screen (in addition to portraying another rascal with a winning smile in the early Star Wars films), straddled an epic divide only possible in Hollywood. In the classroom, Jones would elicit laughs as he fumbled over spelling and nervously side-stepped the lusty gazes of young female students. Placed outside the stuffy academic setting, he assumed a whole new persona: that of a charismatic ladies’ man and daring adventurer, fast on his feet in a crisis and brave despite his chronic fear of snakes.

“He’s the original prototypical fictional adventurer,” says Hal Barwood — designer, writer, and narrative assist on Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures, and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine for LucasArts and most recently Indiana Jones Adventure World for Zynga. For decades, movies and video games have clambered to fill those shoes since Ford originally stepped out of them.

Arguably the most widely known example is Lara Croft of Tomb Raider, a brilliant and buxom female adventurer who shared Indy’s love of archeology and need to protect the world’s most precious relics from falling into the hands of those who would abuse their power. Only instead of charming the ladies and brandishing a whip, Lara teased the boys and fired dual pistols, a shotgun, Uzis, and whatever else she found in tombs and remote locales. Rather than squaring off with the high priest Mola Ram, she wrestled with bears, dinosaurs, Yetis, and countless other monsters — including some that used to be human.

“She comes from a long line of adventurers,” says Stellalune, owner of the renowned Stella’s Tomb Raider Site and also BrickRaiders.net. “But just focusing on Lara and Indy for a minute, I think they share a kind of devil-may-care attitude but also a thirst for knowledge. Sometimes that means they’ll have to do things in an unorthodox way in order to achieve their goals, but underlying all the urn-smashing and whip-cracking, there’s a basic reverence for human history and mythology.”

Tomb Raider struck gold. Lara quickly became one of the biggest icons in video games, let alone a female one. First conceived in early 1995, Lara embarked on her first console adventure in November 1996, and commercial success soon followed. Between 1996 and 2000, her games sold 21 million copies worldwide, and the leading lady appeared on the covers of over 200 publications (including Playboy). Details magazine named her one of the world’s sexiest women, while the Guinness Book of World Records called her the “Most Successful Human Virtual Game Heroine.” Her legacy spawned a line of comic books, two movie adaptations, toys, and of course, a barrage of “Nude Raider” codes and pornographic Internet images. The shower scene ending of Tomb Raider II (in which Lara disrobes for the camera but tells her viewers, “Haven’t you seen enough?” before blasting her shotgun point-blank in their faces) was undoubtedly a response to the overwhelming male attention.

“I have mixed feelings about that scene,” admits Stellalune. “I understand why the developers included it, though. As I’m sure you’re aware, the character’s original designer, Toby Gard, had intended Lara to be a bad-ass adventurer along the lines of Indiana Jones — sexy, certainly, but not a sex symbol or a pin-up. The marketing people obviously had different ideas. They exaggerated Lara’s figure and used suggestive poses and double entendre to sell the product, and when rumors began to circulate about a cheat code that would make Lara nude in the game, they didn’t do much to squelch them. I guess the developers thought they’d take a little jab at the Nude Lara crowd by using humor to subvert the classic trope of the sexy shower scene.”

Despite Lara’s sex symbol notoriety, young women wanted to be her and men pursued her (in the games, quite literally). Lara turned them all down. No one had a handle on her.

While her popularity has shrunk in recent years, largely because of a string of disappointing games (Angel of Darkness fared the worst, so much that fans cringe at the slightest mention of it), interest in the archaeologist/adventurer-type character, male or female, runs strong. Hot on Lara’s trail came Nathan Drake in Naughty Dog’s smash hit for the PlayStation 3, Uncharted.

“They’re all cut from the same cloth,” Barwood says. “I love ‘em all.” For him, his favorite part is “the welding of gameplay with storytelling. Adventurous games naturally embody narrative, and the mix is what entertains me.”

A star of cinematic gameplay, Drake revived the Hollywood good looks, humor, and reckless spirit of the Indiana Jones films while matching Lara’s stride in terms of gameplay. There was less climbing, jumping around, and grumbling over complicated puzzles but just as much shooting and exploring. And unlike Lara, Drake didn’t travel alone. He partnered with “dirty old man” Victor “Sully” Sullivan, wooed Elena Fisher, and flirted with Chloe Frazer as the cast (like the solo Lara) trotted around the world in search of treasure. It was a change of pace for an old concept that refused to retire. Once again, someone was filling the old archeologist’s shoes.

But much like in Tomb Raider Chronicles, Lara was about to prove that even death couldn’t stop her. In fall 2010, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light released to critical acclaim. It marked a dramatic new outing for Lara, and the first of her games to exclude the series’ name, Tomb Raider. And for good reason. The top-down, isometric style distinguished itself from the third-person, over-the-shoulder viewpoint of past titles, even pairing Lara up cooperatively with a Mayan guide named Totec. It was Tomb Raider, miniaturized, with the fast-paced action of the arcades. The healthy reception of Guardian of Light marked a standout success for Lara and developer Crystal Dynamics.

In reality, the company had been working for years to rebuild Lara’s ruined empire, and its attempts have been not only impressive, but also fruitful. After long-time developer Core Design failed with Angel of Darkness, some feared that Lara would have been better off buried under tons of rubble in Egypt (as in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation) than resurrected. Parent company Eidos thought differently, but they realized a proper excavation was in order. They transferred franchise development from Core Design to the California-based studio Crystal Dynamics and invited Toby Gard, who hadn’t worked on the series since its inception, to help with Tomb Raider: Legend. It was the first game to finally set aside Lara’s daddy issues and focus equally on her relationship with her mother. Legend lived up to its name, achieving the best critical response since Tomb Raider II in 1997 and the best commercial feedback since The Last Revelation in 1999. Lara was still alive.

“I think the various development teams just had different visions of what the character should be,” Stellalune said when asked if she felt the developers ever lost touch with Lara’s personality. “The early Lara was not a well-developed character. Much was left to the player’s imagination. Consequently, a lot of players filled in the blanks when it came to Lara’s identity and motivations.”

Tomb Raider: Anniversary also performed well critically at least, retelling the events of the original Tomb Raider with improved graphics and gameplay. Already Crystal Dynamics seemed to be toying with the idea of starting Lara over from the beginning. When Underworld — the team’s third endeavor and a continuation of Lara’s adventures that revived characters such as Jacqueline Natla and Lara’s weird doppelganger — failed to repeat the remarkable success of the previous two games, the developer created the aforementioned Guardian of Light and found the reassurance they needed. Now that they had audiences’ attention, Lara Croft needed an even bigger makeover.

Some fans, however, have viewed this transformation less optimistically. “When Crystal Dynamics came along and attempted to give Lara a detailed backstory and more emotional depth, many players viewed this as a betrayal,” Stellalune says. “This new, emotional Lara was not the character they had imagined. Likewise, the fan reaction to the upcoming game has been mixed. Some players who’ve seen the first trailer for the game have focused on Lara’s youth and inexperience, seeing her initial weakness as being out of sync with the strong, experienced adventurer they’ve come to know over the years.

“I think the ‘old’ Lara still had some life left in her,” Stellalune says. “But I understand [Crystal Dynamics’] reasoning. I imagine they wanted to free themselves of the tangled backstory the character carries up to this point, so they can take her in some new directions.”

With Naughty Dog putting a cap in Nathan Drake’s adventures with the PlayStation Vita’s Golden Abyss, the time is ripe for another adventurer to step foot in exotic territory. In the wake of powerful female leads like Bayonetta and the forthcoming debut of Juliet Starling (shades of Buffy Summers of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) in Lollipop Chainsaw, who better than the woman who started it all? A Tomb Raider reboot is scheduled for next year.

“We’ll always have an itch for adventurous narrative, and some character and scenario will always be around to scratch it,” Barwood says. “Before I revived Jones in video games, it was Tomb Raider. Now it’s Uncharted. Next year, who knows?”

Indiana Jones might be the stuff of the past, but his successors will carry on his spirit for generations to come. Once again, that mantle could belong to Ms. Croft.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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