Unity Technologies is teaming up with everybody these days. Today, the San Francisco-based game development engine maker is partnering with Facebook to enable developers to create better games on the social network.

The deal will enable Facebook to hang on to its gamers by giving them a better overall visual experience with games based on Unity 3D, a cross-platform game engine. Facebook has historically been good for two-dimensional casual games, but it hasn’t been great at displaying 3D ones. Some specialty titles do work well on Facebook, but the goal with the Unity alliance is to make it much easier to create better hardcore games using the Unity Web Player.

David Helgason (pictured), the chief executive of Unity Technologies, told GamesBeat that both companies are working on features that allow players to engage in social functions such as sharing without popping out of the gaming experience in a Unity-based game. Normally, when that happens, the game issues a pop-up screen created by Facebook. On top of that, Unity-based titles will deliver a better installation process for players on Facebook.

It will be easier for developers to make cross-platform games that include Facebook. For instance, if a developer creates a Unity-based game, it will run easily on the web, Android, and iOS. Now it will also run easily on Facebook.

The alliance with Facebook is the third major deal in a week for Unity. The company has also announced partnerships with Sony for getting Unity games on the PlayStation 4 and a support partnership with Qualcomm for its Snapdragon processors.

“We are moving from strength to strength,” Helgason said. “Everybody wants to work with us.”

The reason this is happening is that every platform owner sees that the big hits are coming from developers on small teams, Helgason said. Hits like Supercell’s Clash of Clans (the top-grossing game on iOS) are paying off big, and platform owners want to be positioned to get those hits. Since Unity is used by so many small developers, the alliances make sense.

Unity has more than 200 million installations for its Unity Web Player, which can display games with cool 3D graphics. It is building a new social-network applications programming interface in the player to enable full-screen and full canvas experiences on Facebook. So far, 75 million active Facebook users have installed the Unity Web Player by playing games.

Some of the biggest Unity-based games on Facebook include Offensive Combat, Robot Rising, Wizard of Oz, Uberstrike, Kings Bounty, and I Am Playr. The new integrations will help make these existing titles better.

Helgason showed a demo for beautiful sci-fi racer The Chase that showed that Unity games are marching upward in quality. It has a large environment, atmospheric effects, and other cool 3D graphics features. A few years ago, Unity-based games on social and mobile platforms were unimpressive when it came to graphics. Now it is getting hard to tell them apart from triple-A console titles, Helgason said.

“Our customers are doing very impressive work,” Helgason said. “The mobile devices are becoming ridiculously powerful. I haven’t seen game that are more advanced than Unity on mobile. It has taken awhile as we have been doing this for 10 years.”

Unity has more than 250 employees, about half of them engineers.

“The Unity Web Player is an incredible browser-based platform for core games,” said Sean Ryan, the director of games partnerships at Facebook, in a statement. “People on Facebook are looking for the type of immersive games that have traditionally existed on consoles and desktop PCs. This collaboration will drive discovery of the Unity Web Player for Facebook users, make it easier for Unity games to integrate with Facebook, improve the full-screen experience on our games platform, and make it easier for these developers to build cross-platform games across desktop and mobile.”

At Facebook’s briefing at the GDC, Ryan said that core and mid-core games are priorities for Facebook, which believes in both the mobile and desktop markets for games as a service. He said Facebook’s share of the worldwide games-as-a-service market is $3 billion out of a total of $15 billion. Most of the rest of the market is hardcore and mid-core games, and Unity could help Facebook capture more of that share, Ryan said.

Unity has 1.5 million game developers using its tools. Rivals include Epic Games and Crytek on the high end and Game Salad, Corona, and others on the low end on mobile.

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Dorothy isn’t in Kansas anymore. She’s on Facebook. Developer Spooky Cool Labs is announcing that its Wizard of Oz game has more than a million registered players on the social network. That shows that it has enough traction to keep building its audience and updating the game.

“We jumped into social games head first, and we’re having a lot of fun doing it,” said Bob Holtzman, director of marketing at Spooky Cool Labs, in an interview with GamesBeat.

Chicago-based Spooky Cool Labs and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment launched The Wizard of Oz on Facebook in November as a social game based on the beloved film.

In the game, you can take a trip down the Yellow Brick World along with Dorothy and Toto — as long as you build the road first. That’s because Wizard of Oz is a city-building game with 3D graphics and voice-over narration. The good witch Glinda shows you how to maneuver and build a better Munchkintown. The game features music from the film, video clips, and animated likenesses for characters. You can spin the world to see it from different 3D perspectives or look at a top-down view.

The Wizard of Oz is an enormously valuable license, and it’s about to go through another revival with the launch of Disney’s Oz: The Great and Powerful film. The 75th anniversary of the original movie is coming up, too, during the summer, and that will create more marketing activity for the game. Warner Bros. has already run a several promotions for the Facebook game and will do more in the future.

“It’s a great time for the Wizard of Oz,” Holtzman said.

Warner Bros. gave the license to the original movie to Spooky Cool Labs because it was founded by well-known game designers, Joe Kaminkow and Larry DeMar, who have both created some of the most popular games in arcade, pinball, and slots.

Kaminkow said in an interview with GamesBeat that he has taken a job as senior vice president of game development at Aristocrat Leisure, an online gambling company that recently acquired the Product Madness social casino game. Kaminkow will remain chief executive of Spooky Cool Labs, where he will do less day-to-day work. Meanwhile, Brian Eddy, formerly chief creative officer, will become president of Spooky Cool Labs.

The dual role will allow Kaminkow, who worked at slot machine maker IGT for 13 years, to help Aristocrat move to the forefront of the real-money online gambling and social slots gaming business. Meanwhile, Spooky Cool Labs is working on its own social casino game, and Kaminkow will help build an alliance between Spooky Cool Labs and Aristocrat. Spooky Cool Labs is beginning to test its game, and Kaminkow has high hopes that it will draw millions more people into the company’s fold.

“The opportunity came to redefine my role at Spooky and keep me as a creative force while building a relationship with Aristocrat,” he said. “It keeps me on the front edge of real-money gambling.”

In The Wizard of Oz game, players have chopped more than 3.4 million trees in the land of Oz. They have visited their neighbors more than 4.7 million times. And Munchkinland minigames have been played more than 7 million times. Players have defended their Munchkinlands from more than 750,000 Wicked Witch attacks, and more than 110  million bricks have been created to help Dorothy on her way home.

That’s some payoff for the team, which worked on the game for almost two years. Spooky Cool Labs has 55 employees, which is down from 70 at the time of the launch.

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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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Media giant Hearst Corporation has announced today that it has made a minority investment in Spooky Cool Labs, a social game studio that just released its Wizard of Oz game on Facebook.

It did not disclose the amount of the investment. But this remains interesting, as Hearst is a big media corporation without a lot of holdings in the game business today. It owns 15 daily and 36 weekly newspapers (including the daily San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston Chronicle), and it also owns 29 television stations and hundreds of magazines. But this is one of those rare instances in which a game company fits its definition of media and entertainment. It’s definitely a case of old media becoming hip to new media.

Word on the deal came from Frank Bannack, the chief executive of Hearst; and Scott Sassa, the president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication. Spooky Cool Games is in Chicago. Its founders are video game veterans Joe Kaminkow and Larry DeMar, who once worked at storied arcade game giant Williams. Spooky Cool Labs is trying to push the boundaries in social games by creating a 3D world that is playable within Facebook, which is normally home to simpler 2D games. The Wizard of Oz game is based on a license from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, which owns the rights for the classic 75-year-old film.

“We believe Spooky Cool has achieved a step function improvement in social and mobile gaming with their 3D game engine that powers The Wizard of Oz. Joe and Larry are two of the best land-based casino and pinball game developers in the world,” Sassa said. “We plan on pairing our intellectual property and access to third-party intellectual property with the game development expertise of Spooky Cool to build a big presence in this space.”

In the Wizard of Oz, you take a trip down the Yellow Brick Road along with Dorothy and Toto, as long as you build the road first. It’s a city-building game with 3D graphics and voice-over narration. It features music from the film, video clips, and animated likenesses for characters. You can spin the world to see it from a different 3D view or look at the world from the top down.

“This investment is an affirmation of the mission we’ve embarked on at Spooky Cool,” Kaminkow said. “We’re starting an amazing new adventure with The Wizard of Oz, and we’re proud to have an organization with the foresight of Hearst realize our potential and support it.”

Kaminkow and DeMar got their start working in the coin-operated arcade business. DeMar was the partner of Eugene Jarvis, the creator of the classic arcade game Robotron 2084, and Kaminkow began working DeMar at Williams, one of the original arcade game companies. Spooky Cool Labs has about 70 employees.

“We’re bullish on Facebook,” Kaminkow told GamesBeat in an interview last week. “We think it has broad reach and is a place where players can get enthralled with and engaged with a product. We’ve never had a chance to reach such a large audience with one of our visions for a game.”

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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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This week, Valve claims the Linux operating system is more viable than Windows 8, Disney buys Star Wars studio Lucasfilm as well as LucasArts, and hurricane Sandy delays Take-Two Interactive’s earning call.

You’ll also find reviews for Halo 4, Pid, Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, Assassin’s Creed III,  WWE 13, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

News:

• Halo 4, Xbox, and American Express partnership: kill Covenant nasties to earn cold, hard cash
• The DeanBeat: Halo 4 is the romance of Master Chief and Cortana, disguised as a combat game
• Startup accelerator Tandem Capital rolls its new capital into mobile technology and games
• Twitch embeds livestreaming in Sony Online Entertainment’s Planetside 2
• Flurry’s knowledge is power as it raises a whopping $25M for mobile app analytics
• Wii U’s browser is better equipped for HTML5 than Internet Explorer 10 on PC
• Now streaming for Windows 8: 1,000 games from Agawi’s GameZen
• Preorder Crysis 3 and return to the beginning with a free download of Crysis
• Here come the brands: Wizard of Oz game launches on Facebook
• Mystery narrative and new features headline CityVille 2′s launch
• Minecraft-like first-person shooter heads to Steam in December
• Israel’s Plarium debuts graphically rich hardcore Stormfall game on Facebook (exclusive)
• Mountain Dew-branded Halo 4 game makes a weird sort of sense
• Valve prepping next batch of Greenlight-approved games in November
• Disney’s recent history suggests it might not be ‘business as usual’ at LucasArts for long
• Grand Theft Auto V delay blows a $600 million hole in Take-Two’s outlook for 2013
• Imbibe a Nos Energy Drink to unlock Assassin’s Creed III multiplayer character
• Disney buys LucasArts alongside Lucasfilm (updated)
• Gaming’s ‘Nite to Unite’ raises over $800,000 for children’s charities and scholarships
• Publisher Valve says Linux is more viable for games than Windows 8
• Browser-based steampunk: City of Steam enters closed beta in November
• Hawken publisher Meteor Entertainment raises $18M as big launch draws near
• Developers are mostly thrilled with the chance to make money with Windows 8 games

Mobile news:

• Boom! EA brings its Madden football franchise to iOS & Facebook
• Developer support builds for Ngmoco’s mobile social gaming network
• Amazon Game Studios launches its first mobile game: Air Patriots
• Joining the insane social sports-betting crowd, Bunker Mode debuts its High Limit Sports app (exclusive)
• Wooga expands into mobile with its Bubble Island arcade shooter game
• Leap Motion hires former Apple director to lead its marketing team
• Gameloft doesn’t hesitate to support Windows Phone 8 with 12 optimized games
• Activision preps two more Skylanders mobile games for this year
• Developers wary about investing in Windows Phone 8 games

Earnings:

• Sony’s game division revenues fall nearly 16 percent in Q2 2012
• Hurricane Sandy forces publisher Take-Two Interactive to postpone earnings report

Reviews:

• Halo 4 is the next chapter, not the next evolution (review)
• Pid turns childlike magic into planet-sized punishment (review)
• Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s bearded badasses can’t defeat mediocrity (review)
• Assassin’s Creed III: The revolution will be gripping but glitchy (review)
• Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation can’t match the quality of its console brethren (review)
• WWE ’13 gives fans plenty of nostalgic Attitude (review)

Previews:

• Nintendo Land will make you hate your friends and family (hands-on preview)

Interviews:

• 343 Industries’ Josh Holmes on Halo 4′s love story, weaponry, and new enemies (interview)
• Better graphics and physics gave designers more freedom for Halo 4 (interview)
• Treyarch’s Mark Lamia promises that Call of Duty: Black Ops II will push gaming’s boundaries (exclusive interview)
• How to find the secret website in Shadowgate’s Kickstarter video and more (interview)
• David Vonderhaar’s expert advice on how to get ahead in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer (exclusive interview)

Pieces of flair:

• You don’t have to play horror games to pee your pants in fear
• You can play Tetris on this pumpkin
• From celluloid to pixels: Movie personalities crash video 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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