If you are looking for a fun way to waste a few minutes each day, I highly recommend checking out Mouse Trap. Mouse Trap is a game of strategy which requires players to figure out ways to trap the most number of mice as possible. You accomplish this by choosing the right combination of cheese and mouse traps. As you progress through the game you obtain new mouse traps and begin acquiring new types of cheese.

I have been playing the game for days and I keep checking back a few times each day. It’s pretty addictive and the illustrations are of amazing quality. Personally, I think that this game is a perfect example of a high quality Facebook game. It is extremely simple but it drives you to return. While the game isn’t extremely social, there is a forum where users discuss various strategies about how to obtain the most amount of gold and maximize game scores.

So far I haven’t been able to generate a substantial amount of gold but I also haven’t been playing it for long. I think the creative illustrations help to make the game more engaging. Even though there isn’t much motion taking place I am working to unlock other locations to travel to and unlock more advanced mouse traps. If you’ve come up with any highly effective strategies, please post about them in the comments. Otherwise, if you haven’t had the opportunity to check out Mouse Hunt, I highly recommend doing so.

Will Electronic Arts (EA) lumber to a bargain basement valuation behind the record labels?

Will EA’s Pogo.com raise the company to a Facebook style valuation? (using social network community metrics and Facebook as a comparable).

Gabe Zichermann made a strong case at the LA Games Conference that Facebook is going to Napsterize the games industry. Incumbent majors are taking a wait and see approach to Fabook, while the people, “the little guys”, now have the tools to create a whole new gaming paradigm.

Gabe cites developers who are not traditional game developers are using Facebook’s platform to create highly successful games: Blake Commagere created Vampire, Zombies and WereWolves, some of the most successful apps ever. Scrabulous took an established game and leveraged Facebook as a social utility to achieve a new level of success for the game Scrabble (at least its hard to believe that the board game would have over 600 concurrent users 6.22.08). Zynga Game Network raised 10 million dollars and SGN raise 15 million on the promise of building games on top of the social graph.

Gabe has the perspective to make such assertions. As founder of Trymedia, Gabe was the first to make a business of putting legitimate music content on Napster. Trymedia received applause from only the youngest employees at the labels, and open disbelief and hostility from the labels’ executive ranks. Gabe is a bear on the prospects of the video game majors if they put their head in the sand like the record labels did in the late 90’s.

Gabe is CEO of rmbr.com, and clearly understands the power of Facebook. rmbrME is Social Networking for Real Life. It’s an easy way to share your socially-networked contact information with someone using text messaging. It works with every phone, carrier and social network (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.). There are no downloads or subscriptions–it’s an easy, fun, cool and green way to keep in touch with new friends you meet in real life. Check out Gabe’s profile for his contact information and read more at http://rmbrme.com/.

This afternoon I got sucked into banging on my computer mouse trying to get a simple digital basketball into the hoop. It’s a simple concept but for some reason nobody else has built a good Facebook basketball game so far on the site. I’m not quite sure why nobody has made a Facebook basketball game but this one sucked me in for at least 45 minutes as I tried to continuously beat my own high score.

The Hot Shots game has been successful at attracting close to 56,000 players. The game accepts both single player and multi-player. Playing is easy. All you do is drag your mouse around and click on your mouse button. I’m not sure if there are any other Facebook basketball games but this is so far the best one that I’ve played. I’ve played a fair number of games on Facebook and I’d say this one is one of the simpler ones.

The multiplayer version of Hot Shots is turn based like most other games on Facebook. Unfortunately though when I tried playing the multiplayer version, it ended up reverting back to single player. While perhaps a little misleading, the game did appear to get the job done. I was playing it for almost an hour but chance are good that I won’t go back again. If you are looking to waste a little bit of time I highly recommend checking out Hot Shots Basketball.

Today there is big news from Kongregate, the social gaming website. On Monday Kongregate will be launching the Facebook Challenge Platform. Kongregate is an indie gaming site with over 4,000 original user-uploaded Flash and Shockwave games. Kongregate has decided to launch a platform which enables users to challenge their friends to compete for Kongregate points in one-on-one, asynchronous challenges.

Players using the platform can compare their high scores with immediate friends, others in their network, or across the entire Facebook network. Individuals can also play alone if they’d like. I often times get sucked into playing Dolphin Olympics 2 for a couple hours. While I currently do not leverage all of the features of Kongregate.com, which includes personal accounts with points and achievements, the system synchronizes accounts on Facebook to accounts on the website for those that use it.

For developers there are new APIs that make it easy to port games to the Kongregate Challenge platform with little effort. While not all of the games will be launching initially, the platform will launch with Dolphin Olympics 2, Filler, Particles, Ragdoll, Avalance, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 2 and others. This new platform is a direct competition to Zynga and SGN both of which already have plenty of active users. It will be interesting to see if Kongregate experiences the same explosive growth that many of the Zynga and SGN games did during launch.

Below are some screenshots of the games running on the Kongregate Facebook Challenge Platform from within Facebook.

Dolphin Olympics 2

Guitar Maniac

Jumpcat Challenge

Yesterday, news surfaced that the social gaming site Kongregate had launched a Facebook widget which enables you to display your Kongregate profile data within Facebook. This is only the beginning as Kongregate recently raised a round of funding from Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. I’ve been wondering for a while why many of Kongregate’s games are not already on Facebook. I have spent hours playing Dolphin Olympics 2.

Currently, the primary social level to Kongregate games is the chat room next to each game. Aside from that there isn’t much that’s social about the site. Their entry into Facebook should be interesting and given their financing and history of growth they should prove to be formidable competitors to SGN and Zynga, the current leaders in the space. There are a number of companies that are trying to become the dominant players in the space but overall this competition appears to making the pie a little bit bigger for everyone.

While nobody knows if users will grow tired of games on Facebook and other social networks, both Zynga and SGN have been relatively successful so far at retaining users. Kongregate already has a loyal following and hopefully that will transfer over to Facebook and any other platforms the company decides to launch on.

Asia has been one of the leaders in monetizing social networks. How are they making money? Virtual goods. Those virtual goods are sold so users can build virtual houses, clothe their virtual avatars and a number of other things. I’ve found one of the first avatar worlds on Facebook called, Fresbo world. The application provides you with an avatar that you can proceed to purchase clothing, furnish your apartment and play games with.

Currency in the game comes in the form of points and credits. The credits can be purchased and the points are earned. The only way to earn points currently is through a game called “Pass the Bomb.” Pass the bomb is a game of chance with a little bit of strategy. All you have to do is guess what number is under the bomb and based on the number you think it is, you ad 1, 2 or 3 clicks to the counter each turn. If the counter reaches the number under the bomb during your turn, the bomb explodes and you lose points.

I’m embarrassed to say that I played “Pass the Bomb” for a solid hour this morning. Honestly, the game is not that unique and it isn’t challenging. I just found it interesting that I could use the points I earned during the game to go purchase more goods from the local shopping mall. Currently there is only 1 village in the game and it’s called “Noob Villiage.” Given that the game is in beta they will be adding a lot of features.

I can see people figuring out a way to pour a lot of time into this virtual world, the same way people spend time on second life. While there is not as much customization as there is within second life, there is enough for those looking to have fun and waste time. I’ve argued that there is no real point to second life in conversation with my friends and ultimately there is really no point to Fresbo world except for building up your avatar’s inventory and wasting time playing games.

Perhaps I’m just frustrated that I don’t get paid real dollars to play games in real life. Either way, Fresbo world is a great application if you are looking to waste some free time or get sucked in to building up your own virtual character. If you are interested, go check out the Fresbo World application.

A Store in Fresbo World

Pass the Bomb Game

When the Facebook platform first launched, you wouldn’t believe how many people contacted me and said “I’m going to make a beer pong application.” It has been 10 months since the platform launched and finally a top notch beer pong application has been launched. As you would expect, it’s also very popular. In just a few days almost 15,000 people have added the application and the growth is steady.

Mike Lazerow of Buddy Media, the company that developed this game, sent me an email when it launched and I had to check it out. I ended up playing the game for a couple hours trying to get on the leader board. Interesting enough I came very close to reaching the top 10 but I didn’t make it. I had however perfected my game so if you want to test the master, I suggest you challenge me to a round of beer pong.

As has been predicted, social gaming applications have become the focus of Facebook for the most part. There are also utility applications but there is only so much value that you can easily add to Facebook profiles. I think games are the way to go and from an advertising perspective, custom games are highly valuable. You get targeted individuals engaged in a branded environment for an extended period of time. If you want to play a round of beer pong, go check out the Campus U Beer Pong application.

In the spirit of the Game Developers Conference taking place this week in San Francisco, I figured I would touch on the subject since the biggest buzz at the event revolves around “social gaming.” Ultimately, playing games with your friends is nothing new. People have been playing MMORGs (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games) for a while now and XBOX Live is not exactly the freshest gaming platform out there right now.

While not social gaming may not be a foreign concept for many, playing games on Facebook is becoming an increasingly popular past time. The primary selling factor is that you can easily connect with your friends for a quick game of Scrabble or Texas Hold’em and there is very little time requirements. Best of all it’s primarily our friends that we’re competing with. This is in comparison to sites like Kongregate that provide aspects of social gaming but the users you play against may not necessarily be your friends.

If you take a look at the most popular applications on Facebook you will notice that all the top developers are building either gaming or dating applications and any other top apps are simply an expression of self-identity. So do you think Facebook is going to become the next hot gaming platform or will the users simply go to the next cool thing? Many of these games remind me of a more flashy version of the original Yahoo! Games.

I can’t believe it’s my last day on the force, twenty years and I am out. The guys at the station house are throwing me a little party and I think they got me a cake. I love cake, makes the job worth it if you know what I mean.

One thing I can’t stand are stick people. I know I know, it’s not politically correct for me to call them stick people, dimensionally challenged is what those whimps are calling them these days. To me those scum will always be stick people, and I am going to blast a few of them on my last day.

Ok one thing, my dad was a cop and I heard him talk bad about stick people all the time. I also heard him talk in a 40’s detective novel noir voice all the time. He would self monologue about every day things, “stupid kid flushed is fun toy down the craper again,” puff of a smoke. “I need to move on before these kids kill me,” he would say this while I was standing there; heart breaking.

Ok, so that self monologue thing is a lie but I did find a fun game called Virtua Stick Cop on Facebook and it is killing some time (pun intended). The game is really just a port of the old stick figure games from a site that used to make stick figure movies. I used to watch stick figure fights on this sight and laugh for hours and also played as a stick figure sniper there.

The game lacks all forms of social contact and really offers no way to share you experience with anyone. All and all the game fails in the social realm on all fronts. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t install the game and play it, its loads of fun (like you load a gun).

Now as long as I can make it through this day my wife and I are going to sail our boat around the world, where’s Riggs when I need him, I am getting to old for this…

There’s a relatively new show on TV called Breaking Bad. It stars Hal from ‘Malcom in the Middle’ as a middle aged highschool chemistry teacher who, after being diagnosed with lung cancer, nonchalantly decides to put his chem skills to use by teaming up with one of his old students to cook meth. It’s a somewhat dark drama.. but since it’s Hal, it’s also light, and always entertaining.

The show is on its second episode and its pretty good, but it’s not exactly what inspired me to write this article. The creators of the show have developed a game for Facebook that markets the show in a fantastic way.

The game itself is basically an intense version of mastermind. I was impressed by three things.

Firstly, the integration of the selection of friends or random Facebook players into the game itself is seamless. You need a partner to play, and you get to pick one within the game with pictures and names embedded into the graphics.

Secondly, the game was fun and addicting. It wasn’t just addicting because it was fun, or because you build up your score and rank and compete with your friends and the rest of Facebook. It wasn’t because the game gets more difficult the more you play either.

It was addicting because (thirdly..) every time you win a game it opens up a square on your periodic table, and each square gives you access to a different clip from the show. Collect a whole row and you can watch a whole scene.

This app is a fantastic example of a marketing solution for a product that can attract people who are not necessarily searching for it or anything in particular. This is why Facebook adds value over search marketing. The vast majority of people who find out about Breaking Bad through this app will have been looking for a game and have found the show. It’s also a great way for fans of the show to spread the word. Try that with a keyword ad.

The app only has 80 daily active users, which I think further highlights the problem that faces the Facebook platform right now. I believe that, in time, the new notification rules will let people get completely tired of the useless apps and allow the creamy ones to finally rise to the top.

Hey LOST… where’s YOUR app?

Jonathan Kleiman