Adobe is announcing today a set of cloud-based tools for game developers.

The tools take advantage of the new cloud-computing trend, where web-connected data centers host subscription-based software. Hosted in the Adobe Creative Cloud service, the tools enable developers to access a centrally located suite of tools for making their titles. The aim is to streamline the game-development process from creation to final deployment.

Adobe says that developers who use its tools can access an audience of 1.3 billion worldwide on PCs and more than 500 million on smartphones and tablets, 20 times the reach of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console.

Among the new tools is Adobe Scout (pictured below), a tool for profiling that “uncovers granular internal information in ActionScript-based mobile and browser content to unlock significant performance optimization opportunities.” In other words, it helps games run faster. Adobe Scout will be available for free to members of the Adobe Creative Cloud, a subscription service. Other tools include the Adobe Gaming SDK, Adobe Flash C++ Compiler, and trial versions of Flash Professional CS6 and Flash Builder 4.7 Premium.

A year ago, Adobe acknowledged that it would give up on a Web version of Flash for mobile devices. But Adobe allows developers to create native versions of their releases for those devices instead. More than 25,000 mobile versions of Adobe Air apps exist, and the majority are games.

In the past nine months, Adobe launched version 11 of its Flash Player, making the leap from 2D games to hardware-accelerated 3D games and its Stage 3D applications programming interface.

Diana Helander, group product marketing manager for Gaming Solutions at Adobe, said that 600 million people have chosen to opt in to a feature that updates Flash in the background. That means a game developer can issue an update for a title and get it to 600 million people within 48 hours.

“With these new tools, we’ve got a single work flow for game developers,” Helander said in an interview with GamesBeat. “The costs of developing games and acquiring new users are rising. We’re helping developers to deal with that.”

The Adobe Gaming SDK lets studios create and monetize both 2D and 3D ActionScript games on Web browsers and mobile devices.

The Adobe Flash C++ Compiler is a new tool that lets developers take a native game and recompile it for the Web. That is, it takes offerings coded for game engines on the PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and iOS and then converts them to run directly online across browsers using the Adobe Flash Player.

Meanwhile, Adobe Flash Professional CS6 is an authoring tool to create animations and games, and it includes support for delivering animated assets ready for use with the open-source framework Starling. Adobe Flash Builder 4.7 Premium adds support for the new ASC 2.0 compiler and the ability to test and debug apps directly on Apple iOS devices.

Those who pay for Creative Cloud memberships can use full versions of Flash Professional and Flash Builder, and they can use future versions of Scout following the introductory promotion.

Adobe argues that using Flash makes developers more productive when it comes to cross-platform experiences. Helander said that Flash has powered popular games on Facebook including SongPop, FarmVille 2, and Diamond Dash. Some of the top Flash implementors include Zynga, Wooga, Kixeye, Ubisoft, Northway, and Damp Gnat. Rivals (and occasional partners) include Unity Technologies, Epic Games, Microsoft’s Silverlight, and a variety of other game-development platforms.

Helander said some cool new users of Starling and Stage 3D include Incredipede and Smart Aliens. She said that Zynga used Adobe Flash and Air for its mobile version of Ruby Blast, and Rovio used Flash for the Facebook version of Angry Birds. Square Enix also released Crystal Conquest using Flash. Helander said Adobe is doing a series of game jams in different cities to support game developers.

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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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It’s possible that virtual rubies are worth more than the real thing.

Developer Zynga announced today that it will release the popular gem-based social game, Ruby Blast, on iOS devices. Previously, Zynga released Ruby Blast Adventures for Facebook as a match-three puzzle game based on a short timer. The developer sets Ruby Blast apart from Bejeweled and others by using a dig mechanic and focusing on short games.

“Ruby Blast is an exciting development for Zynga as we expand our popular arcade genre to mobile and offer players social, fast-paced, and competitive play wherever they are,” said Roy Sehgal, vice president of games at Zynga. “In less than a year, more than 58 million monthly active users are playing Zynga arcade games, and we’re actively working to make these great web experiences available on mobile. Arcade games provide great mobile experiences, and Zynga’s multi-platform approach focuses on accessibility – letting players pick up and play with (or against) their friends no matter the device or platform.”

Ruby Blast is available now on the iTunes App Store and soon on Android’s Google Play market.

This is one more step in Zynga’s transition to mobile. The developer faced criticism due to its over-reliance on the Facebook platform. In response, the San Francisco-based game company started to move games to its own Zynga.com web portal and to mobile in an attempt to diversify.

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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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Zynga has lots of veterans like Jim Veevaert, a general manager of the social game company’s studio in Seattle. An 18-year pro, Veevaert was previously cofounder and president of production at Jerry Bruckheimer Games and an executive producer at Microsoft. He led the production of of big budget games, such as Halo 3, Viva Pinata, and Gears of War. In 2011, he gave up hardcore games and joined casual game maker Zynga, which is often accused of being a copycat. Now he’s leading teams that create social games like Ruby Blast. Veevaert says now that he’s had a taste for designing games as a service, with daily updates and analytic feedback, there’s no going back. He has kissed the console development world goodbye. We caught up with him for a cup of coffee at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Tell us about your early days.

Jim Veevaert: At Vivendi, I was the executive producer on the Half-Life franchise. We were starting this thing called the Mod Pack, which I wanted to do. I was a big proponent of it. [The company] said, “We don’t need to do a Mod Pack. They’re all free.” I said, “No, I think this is a really good idea. We could use Counter-Strike, and it would be really cool.” They said, “Nobody’s going to buy that.” I ended up having to convince Vivendi. They said, “Nobody in sales is interested in something like Counter-Strike.” I thought it was really going to catch on. I pushed it and pushed it. I had to shove it into the retail channel. They loaded in maybe 100,000 units, and it was just like, whoosh! Like that. Never looked back. It was amazing.

We even helped start Gearbox. When we did the first add-on pack for Half-Life, Opposing Force, that was the beginning of Gearbox. That’s how we got them started. It was pretty cool. Good days. What I like about this industry now — what’s so great — is that it’s so reminiscent of the way the industry felt back in the early ’90s: small teams and getting games done quickly. Being really close to the product. Making progress on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. It’s amazing. We can sit down, brainstorm out a design, and have a prototype of that design in two to three days. On Halo, it would be like…. We had to have a meeting. We had to have a conversation, talking about design and environmental art. We’d have meetings about how we would execute pulling the systems together. It would take a lot longer. The results were great, but it was a huge operation pushing Halo 3 forward.

GamesBeat: Mark Pincus mentioned that they had more than 100 developers working on CityVille. I thought, “That sounds like the team for a console game to me.”

Veevaert: I know. We’re operating on a much smaller scale, but we’re looking at…. Ruby Blast — what we just did. We’ve already got a mobile version of it running right now. It’s working on iPhone. We’re going to be doing it on iPad and iPhone. We’re looking at how we’re sort of cross-developing. We’re doing a new IP, as well, the same way. We’re developing platforms and connectivity at the same time. That’s what’s really fun. Working with a handful of developers and just figuring out what’s the best way to make the game work. How fun can we make it? How will the PC connect with mobile? What is a unique experience or gameplay mechanic that we can apply in mobile that’s linked, in case somebody never connects to the web? We’re also finding that there’s not necessarily a great process for that. People who play one game don’t always go and play on mobile, as well. We need to make sure the experiences are stand-alone enough on mobile and the PC.

GamesBeat: Do you have the same developers on social and mobile?

Veevaert: Absolutely, absolutely. That’s what’s fun. Having to design for the smaller screen and make it more…. Like in Ruby Blast’s case, we had to collapse it, shrink it down, and experiment. How far can we push the visual effects on the iOS? If it’s not iOS, what if we start working with Adobe Air? So we work within the technology some way or another and see. That’s what’s been fun: leveraging technology.

GamesBeat: The Kixeye guy, Will Harbin, was getting really excited about Flash 11.4. It’s using more hardware acceleration to make really fast 3D games.

Veevaert: Oh, it’s incredible. It’s actually getting to the point where you can do that. You can bring in 3D games and start pushing it. But Flash 11 adoption isn’t as high just yet. Most of the audience is still on Flash 10. We’re being very mindful of that. We’re looking at it with Ruby. It was the case with Ruby Blast that we had to do two versions. We did a Flash 11 version and a Flash 10. Flash 11 is catching up, but Flash 10 is clearly the dominant one.

GamesBeat: Making two versions sounds difficult to do.

Veevaert: Well, what’s interesting is you have a certain amount of people who just have software renderers. No hardware acceleration in their computers. So we have to make the game fun for people who’ve got a 4-year-old computer and still want to play. They won’t have any hardware-accelerated effects, but for people who have great laptops and great computers, why not leverage all that technology? That’s the thing that’s interesting. In console, you had a unified platform. You knew exactly what you were developing to. Here we have to scale high and low. It’s like back in the PC days, when you had to support everybody. Windows 95 and 98, remember that?

GamesBeat: So does choice of technology also matter? Like when Mark did that demo of four players on the Bubble Safari game. If you start moving to synchronous multiplayer like that, then technology matters again?

Veevaert: Well, I think it does matter. It matters that you have a good chain. I think it will still work in software mode, but if you take advantage of hardware acceleration, then yeah, it’s absolutely going to be better. Loading times are still great, so that’s not the issue. It’s just a playable framerate. That’s what we can find out, depending on what people’s connection speeds or processors are like. It’s a matter of how it scales.

GamesBeat: Do you wish you had your Halo multiplayer developers to go to work on that?

Veevaert: I should! I should talk to Bungie and see if they want to do it. The thing that’s interesting to me is I’ve been thinking a lot about the casual gamer. What is a casual gamer anymore? Is this somebody who plays on their phone for a few minutes a day? You were talking about CityVille, where somebody can spend way more time playing a game like CityVille than they could a “hardcore” game. Up to 300 hours a year playing it — that’s far more than somebody might put into a game like even Oblivion or Halo 3, depending on how much they want to spend. So I’m curious as to your thoughts. What is a casual gamer? Is it someone who just plays for a short period of time? Or is it the style of game? And then what denotes a casual game?

GamesBeat: It seems like everybody has some kind of split personality these days.

Veevaert: I mean, aren’t you playing some games on your phone? I’m sure you are.

GamesBeat: Yeah. And if I don’t have enough time to play hardcore games, then I’m only playing these smaller games. So am I still a hardcore gamer?

Veevaert: Yeah! If you haven’t done your routine 14 hours a week, then you have to give up your status as a hardcore gamer. It’s funny because all the guys on my friends list who are core gamers, and all the guys I work and develop with — we’re all playing the same casual games together. I just think that now, the persistence of entertainment has spread so far with mobile that it’s sort of leveled the waters across the board.

GamesBeat: Do you see it as a question like, “If you had infinite time, what games would you play?” And you could sort people out better that way. I would go back to a lot of these console games if I had 60 hours to kill, but then there’s a lot of people who would never get there even if they had all that time. They’re only going to play casual titles.

Veevaert: So I’ll challenge you again because I like going back and forth. I don’t have the time I used to have five years ago to sit down in front of the TV, throw a game in a console, and get invested in it. Because I know, even in something like Dead Space 2, I had to finish that game. I had to go from start to finish. Or Red Dead Redemption. I had to put my 23 hours in and finish the game. I didn’t feel like playing it incrementally: half a level today and come back to it next week. You have to be on it every night to stay in the experience of it. I found that, as far as my own lifestyle, that just doesn’t fit anymore. I’m curious about you. Does that still work for you?

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Social gaming giant Zynga today posted a drop in stock prices, reporting earnings per share (EPS) at $0.01, far below the estimated $0.06 many analysts predicted ahead of time. It posted disappointing overall revenue as well, reporting $332.5 million, which is much lower than the $344.12 million estimation by analysts.

Wall Street severely punished Zynga for its weak quarter, sending the company’s stock down $3.03, or about 40 percent, in after hours trading.

All this despite pretty good revenue growth. The social game publisher’s Q2 revenue of $332 million is up 19 percent over the previous year, and its six month year-to-date revenue of $653 million is up 25 percent year-over-year. Zynga is also reporting Q2 bookings of $302 million, up 10 percent year-over-year, with six months year-to-date bookings up 12 percent, at $631 million.

“Our games reached record audiences, achieving over 300 million monthly active users. We grew our mobile footprint five-fold in the year to 33 million daily active users making Zynga the largest mobile gaming network,” said chief executive Mark Pincus.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses for the CEO, though: “We also faced new short-term challenges which led to a sequential decline in bookings. Despite this, we’re optimistic about the long-term growth prospects on mobile where we have a window of opportunity to drive the same kind of social gaming revolution that we enabled on the web.”

Zynga also reported today a non-GAAP EPS of $0.01, down from $0.05 in the second quarter of 2011 with a six months year-to-date non-GAAP EPS of $0.06, down from $0.16 in the first half of 2011.

Zynga’s stock price closed at $5.08 per share today, reflecting a $0.16 per share increase, or 3.32 percent, over its opening at $4.96. Overall, the stock is way down from a high of $14.69 this year, and the after-hours dive is making that drop even worse.

Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter mentioned his surprise at the dismal showing, acknowledging their lower guidance on flattish bookings and EPS. He attributes some of that to the shift from desktop to mobile, implying that they aren’t monetizing mobile as well. However, he cautions that the company may be actively conservative in its guidance, as their bookings are in fact up around 12 percent.

Zynga launched several new games this quarter, including Bubble Safari, which Zynga claims is the number one arcade game on Facebook. Additionally, Zynga released The Ville, which it reports is the number two game behind Zynga Poker, and four other games, including Ruby Blast, Zombie Swipeout, Zynga Slots, and Matching with Friends.

On the user front, Zynga is reporting an increase of 23 percent year-over-year for daily active users (DAUs) for this second quarter, as well as an increase of 34 percent year-over-year in monthly active users (MAUs). Monthly unique users (MUUs) increased from 151 million in the second quarter of 2011 to 192 million in the second quarter of 2012, up 27% year-over-year, while monthly unique payers (MUPs) increased 16 percent. The bookings, however, as Pincus mentions above, were down 10 percent year-over-year, decreasing from $0.051 last year to $0.046 now.

Zynga is lowering its outlook to reflect delays in launching new games, a faster decline in existing web games due in part to a more challenging environment on the Facebook web platform, and reduced expectations for Draw Something.

As a result, Zynga’s updated outlook for 2012 is as follows:

• Bookings are projected to be in the range of $1.15 billion to $1.225 billion.
• Adjusted EBITDA is projected to be in the range of $180 million to $250 million.
• Stock-based expense is projected to be in the range of $410 million to $430 million.
• Capital expenditures are projected to be in the range of $370 million to $380 million, which includes the purchase of our corporate headquarters building in April 2012.
• Our effective tax rate for non-GAAP net income is projected to be in the range of 50% to 60%.
• Non-GAAP weighted-average diluted shares outstanding are projected to be approximately 845 million shares in the fourth quarter of 2012.
• Full year 2012 non-GAAP EPS is projected to be in the range of $0.04 to $0.09.

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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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Among the obvious titles that could draw flack is The Ville, which is a lot like Electronic Arts’ The Sims Social, a people simulator. Zynga’s position on cloning the games of others is clear. It intends to make its games more innovative and fun by moving into familiar genres and making its games more social.

Zynga is clearly moving into areas that are hot, but it is interesting that the company is tackling genres where it will run into the most competition from existing games from rivals such as EA, Wooga, and King.com. That speaks to Zynga’s confidence that whenever it enters a new area, it can make its games more fun and more popular than existing competition.

Jeff Brown, spokesman for EA, said, “Just once, can Zynga publish a game that they didn’t clone from another developer?”

Among the new titles the company announced today are Zynga Elite Slots, a new slot machine game that is the company’s cross-platform play in social casino games, a hot category for 2012. Zynga already has a bunch of casino games headed by Jesse Jasonov (pictured above) including its oldest game, Zynga Poker. Other new titles include Zynga Slots on mobile, Zynga Bingo, and now the new Zynga Elite Slots games.

Zynga Poker has more than 35 million players a month. Those players take part in more than 55 million hands per day. That base is valuable because it allows Zynga to cross-promote new casino games in the genre, like Zynga Elite Slots. Zynga Bingo was launched earlier this year, and 368 million bingo cards have been played in it so far. About 10 million rounds are played every day, or about 66 years of bingo time.

Zynga also recently launched its arcade “match three” game, Ruby Blast. That game will be rolled out across smartphone and tablet platforms later this year. That game is proving popular, but it is also subject to the “clone” charge since PopCap Games popularized the genre with Bejeweled many years ago.

Perhaps the most original title Zynga had was ChefVille, a restaurant simulation game. But that seemed like a mashup of existing titles such as Zynga’s own Cafe World and other restaurant-related games.

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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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Zynga’s investors are eagerly awaiting the company’s Zynga Unleashed press event today at the social-game giant’s San Francisco headquarters. As the darling of Facebook gaming, Zynga raised $1 billion at $9 billion valuation in December with its initial public offering. Since that time, the company’s stock rose from $10 a share to $14.69, only to plummet to around $6 a share yesterday.

That’s a volatile trading record for such a young company, whose five-year history we chronicled back in December. Today, all eyes will be on Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga (pictured above at last fall’s Unleashed event), to see whether he can keep his developers churning out games that can continue to capture the hearts of hundreds of millions of social gamers. If Pincus puts on a good show, you can expect Zynga’s stock price to recover. But if he doesn’t deliver, it could be a tough road back to the company’s IPO valuation.

It isn’t clear why Zynga’s stock has seen such wild swings. It rose to its peak in March on rumors that the legalization of online gambling — should it ever happen across the U.S. — could benefit Zynga, which has the world’s largest online poker game (Zynga Poker) and has been investing in social casino games this year. But the stock dropped since the company’s last quarterly report on April 26; the drop was due in large part to the lackluster reception of Facebook’s IPO and a stall in the social network’s growth. Zynga is still dependent on Facebook for more than 90 percent of its revenues.

But the stock drop hasn’t been all bad. Ten analysts now have buy ratings on the stock, and 10 have neutral ratings, according to Thomson Reuters. Zynga’s fundamentals, reflected in its 253 million monthly active users, have been pretty consistent in the past six months. It still has five times more users than its next closest competitor on Facebook. Zynga’s games still account for eight of the top 10 games in terms of monetization on the social network.

Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Baird Equity Research, said in a report this week that Zynga Unleashed should add “clarity to potential growth drivers for Zynga,” since the company will likely announce new games, talk about its growth beyond Facebook, and offer evidence of how Zynga will constantly try to gain new gamers even as players get tired of its older products.

Zynga has nearly 3,000 employees, with more than 150 seasoned game designers. So Sebastian expects a broader and more diverse software slate than it has had before. In the past, Zynga has had a narrow focus on casual simulation games such as CityVille and FarmVille. But it has launched a couple of new titles in different categories in recent weeks.

Atul Bagga, analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, noted that Zynga’s new Bubble Safari puzzle game has become the largest social game in daily active users. Bagga also thinks Zynga’s “match three” puzzle game Ruby Blast will score a large audience as well, based on strong results for rival games from PopCap and Wooga. Sebastian believes it will add more “mid-core” games for serious gamers and mobile as well. And Bagga said that Zynga’s new slots game is now one of the top-grossing games on iOS (Apple’s iPod, iPad, and iPhone platforms). The success of these games could allay concerns about a declining user base that drove down the stock.

Zynga has also begun recruiting a number of game developers for its Zynga.com platform, which exists on the web outside of Facebook. Sebastian believes that Zynga.com provides a better interface and experience for gamers, and third parties will likely be drawn to Zynga’s big user base and data analytics. Zynga’s growth opportunity lies in advertising revenue, which is well under 10 percent of the company’s business. Mostly, Zynga makes money through virtual goods sales, but new advertising initiatives may change that.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. Our top speakers include Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your tickets here.

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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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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Microsoft wanted to purge the Internet after several Xbox 720 details leaked, game designer/director Hideo Kojima said he’s not finished with Metal Gear Solid, and Nintendo showed off the 3DS XL handheld.

We also ran reviews for Quantum Conundrum and the Nabi 2 tablet.

GamesBeat:

The DeanBeat: Will your game company survive the zombie apocalypse?

GamesBeat’s Top 10 Gaming Prequels

First U.S. Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 teaser trailer

Tekken development team to make next Super Smash Bros.

Artists use chalk to bring games to life…or sell pizza (gallery)

Turkish gaming climbs to $450 million in 2012 (infographic)

NaturalMotion raises $11 million to set up U.S. headquarters, develop high-end social mobile games

Nabi 2 tablet blends gamification with parenting (review)

Quantum Conundrum is an unbalanced measure of brilliance and flaws (review)

Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima “not yet finished” with Solid Snake

Windows Phone 8 gets a strong gaming push with native code and deep ties to Windows 8

WWE ’13 continues 25-year tradition of Mike Tyson punching you in the face

Why Sony thinks the PlayStation Vita has an advantage over the Wii U

Zynga focuses on simplicity with its latest social game, Ruby Blast

Australia lifts ban on mature games

Man turns an NES into the ultimate Nintendo-emulating machine (gallery)

Unity Technologies looks to rule Linux and mobile gaming with Unity 4

Indie first-person shooter Receiver brings robots, mystery, and one complicated pistol

Sony’s free-to-play online shooter Planetside 2 will pack 2,000 players in an arena (interview)

Civilization V: Gods and Kings can’t fix what is fundamentally flawed (review)

See live demos of Black Ops II, Halo 4, and more from Jimmy Fallon’s gaming week

VentureBeat:

Nintendo 3DS XL revealed, does not have second analog stick

Roadhouse buys social/mobile game maker The Embassy Interactive

Emota’s teddy bears can send hugs over the internet

Microsoft wants leaked Xbox 720 doc erased from existence

Redbox reveals game rental stats and trends (exclusive infographic)

7 awesomely geeky video game marriage proposals

App Annie launches analytics for Google Play Android apps

Turn your iOS device into a musical instrument for free with Ocarina 2

China’s Tencent nabs a minority stake in Epic Games

Kabam acquires indie maker of Realm of the Mad God web game (exclusive)

Bunchball launches 10 apps to quickly “gamify” websites and enterprises

Leaked Microsoft document details $299 Xbox 720 in 2013, Kinect glasses, OnLive acquisition

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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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Zynga’s latest social game, Ruby Blast, combines the match-three action found in games like Bejeweled and Diamond Dash and mixes in a bit of mining. Gamers play as Ruby Stone, traveling the world and looking for mines full of gems. Matching and clearing rows of stones sends Ruby further into the cave where various powerups and rare items lurk.

Ruby Blast is the first Zynga title to make use of Adobe Flash 11′s Stage 3D processing effect. Stage 3D lets developers draw basic graphical power from the player’s GPU (or graphics card), allowing them to design more detailed and active animations. In Ruby Blast, Stage 3D let designers include fun explosions and special powerup effects without having to worry about browser performance.

While Ruby Blast is a step toward more technically sophisticated design for Zynga, it also embodies the company’s focus on developing simple, easy-to-play titles that appeal to a variety of players.

Ruby Blast uses both social and global leaderboards, allowing players to compete against friends or take on strangers. When playing the game on Facebook, pictures of your friends will appear as you approach their top score. This is a more goal-oriented twist on a traditional leaderboard.

Ruby Blast goes live later this week on Facebook and Zynga’s website. It is the first collaborative project between Zynga Beijing and Zynga Seattle.

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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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