The iPad is the number one gadget for playing Angry Birds, fans say

You would figure the place where gamers could get their Angry Birds fix on the cheap would be most ideal, but nay. It looks like players just can't get enough of that extra screen space. According to a poll Rovio held for its 11.7 million Facebook fans, the most ideal device for playing Angry Birds is the iPad. Over 11,000 fans responded to the divisive question.

While we don't know exactly how many fans chose which device, 11,352 responses is quite the sample size. Following Apple's oh-so-expensive tablet were, surprisingly, Android phones. Finishing out the top five gizmo's to play Rovio's beloved bird-flinger on were the iPhone, followed by the iPod Touch and the Kindle Fire.

Considering Angry Birds HD for the iPad costs $4.99, compared to a mere $.99 for the iPhone, one has to imagine that the major draw of the iPad experience is the expanded screen space. That said, it's surprising more tablets didn't make the list, but equally impressive that the Kindle Fire, which has been on the market for less than two months, managed to place.

Who knows, maybe all of these iPad lovers are playing the free version over and over again, or maybe they've simply settled for the universal version. One thing is for sure: If you consider yourself a true Angry Birds fan, you gotta try it out on an iPad. And if you don't have 500 bucks lying around, just "borrow" your friend's.

Mercedes-Benz cars can post to Facebook, but can they play FarmVille?

Facebook is coming to a car near you, if that car is a Mercedes-Benz. And it's not taking the backseat either.

After six months of working with Facebook and a new telemetry system -- the "mbrace2" -- Mercedes-Benz USA intends to roll out Facebook integration in a new fleet of automobiles -- the SL class -- this spring. Facebook also isn't the only social network that you can access from the vehicle, as Google and Yelp are also on board with this.

So how will the car interact with Facebook?

First of all, any text functions will be disabled unless the car is motionless. Drivers can post to their Facebook walls via the car interface about where they are, where they're going and how long it'll take for them to get there, but these will all be preset messages that trigger with a button push or a knob turn. If your friends 'Liked' the Facebook page of a restaurant, the car could tell you how far away it is from you, and direct you to drive over. It could also tell you where your friends are.

Facebook games, however, are strictly off the table. But by enabling Facebook in their vehicles, Mercedes-Benz has opened a technological door. If you can plug into the internet from a screen, Facebook won't be far behind, and according to Dan Rose, the Facebook Vice President of Partnerships, that's precisely what they're after: "Now that cars have screens that are intelligent, you would expect that more and more car manufacturers will want to make those screens capable of allowing people to connect with their friends and take advantage of the social context that comes along with that."

And it's not just the cars getting all the action. Also revealed today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is that Panasonic got Justin Timberlake to announce its partnership with MySpace for MySpace TV, which is exactly what it sounds like, social networking via television.

Vostu: Facebook games with real-time multiplayer more likely to spread

Candy Dash multiplayer
It's doubtful many people have reached out to their friends saying, "Hey, you gotta play this new Facebook game with me right now." Given the asynchronous interactions between friends in most social games, that's the logic behind Brazilian social game maker Vostu's claim that social games with real-time multiplayer are more likely to draw in brand new players.

The creator of Facebook games like GolMania and MegaCity said as much to Inside Social Games (ISG), claiming that social games in which people can play together in real time make it three times more likely for players to refer said games to friends that have yet to play the games. According to ISG, Vostu used GolMania as an example, which has both single player and multiplayer.

Vostu told ISG that GolMania players that had experienced the real-time multiplayer soccer matches were three times more likely to refer friends to the game that had never played it before than those who just played its single player portions. (We'd say there's a bit of difference between "asynchronous" and "single player," no?) At any rate, the developer said that its players were far more willing to invite new friends to games with live interactions than asynchronous ones.

As a result, Vostu plans to add real-time multiplayer to as many of its games as it can, starting with a one-on-one race to the finish feature in Candy Dash as early as tomorrow. The company's next major social game will launch by the end of this month with real-time multiplayer. This news comes hot off the heels of four Android games announced by the Brazilian Zynga. Who knows, maybe this real-time multiplayer stint will be just what Vostu needs to make good on its nickname.

NY Times journalist plans Facebook game for women's rights

Back in 2009, Pulitzer-prize winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published Half the Sky, a non-fiction book highlighting the global oppression of women and how its evils pose "the central moral challenge of our time." Its title comes from a Chinese proverb often attributed to Mao Zedong that "women hold up half the sky", and yet, in most parts of the world, they are abused and undervalued. Amidst a sea of positive reviews, the book became a national bestseller that year, holding the bestseller list for seven week's straight.

But the book was only the beginning, as the authors tried various other ways to get their message out, via transmedia projects ranging from online videos to concerts. Among the many tools being employed, Kristof has become a big believer in the power of social games:

    I think gaming might be the next big platform for news organizations and causes. There's some snobbery about games. Some people think games are just "what teenagers do" or that they are too fun to be worthy of our attention. But there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time playing games online, so we in the news business would do well to think about how we can use games to attract eyeballs. My wife and I are doing a TV documentary of our book Half the Sky, but we're also creating a Facebook game as part of it.

This is why he partnered with Games for Change (G4C) to build several social games based on the book, one of which will be on Facebook. UK-based Mudlark and ZMQ in India will be developing four games for mobile phones. But to reach the widest audience -- "people who may not necessarily engage with the book, the New York Times, or PBS" -- Facebook is seen as the answer. The game's release will follow a "Half the Sky" four-hour PBS documentary series scheduled for this fall.

As for the game itself, details are sparse, but Kristof describes it as "analogous to FarmVille" and set in a village where you're tasked to care for women and girls, and that involves managing schools and refugee camps. Besides that, players will also be given more direct ways to contribute to the cause.

Kixeye's marketing head on leaving Zynga and Kixeye's future [Interview]

"As it turned out, it wasn't really a good fit at the time, and [I] decided to move forward. Since then, the VP role there has been like the drummer in Spinal Tap," Kixeye's new SVP of Marketing Brandon Barber (pictured ... yes, really) says as to why he left Zynga as its first marketing VP to co-found Lionside. The latter was recently gobbled up by mobile game maker ngmoco, which left Barber open to new opportunities.

Just a few months ago, Barber joined Backyard Monsters creator Kixeye to head its marketing division, impressed by how well the developer is "trying to crack the same nut" as Lionside was: a brand new category of social game. "One of the great things, and smart things, that Kixeye did pretty much from the get-go is say, 'Look, we're going to make games for gamers, games that we want to play and we're not gonna get bogged down by the social plumbing that has become kind of de riguer in the space,'" Barber tells us.

And Kixeye has done just that. All of the San Francisco-based studio's social games feature real-time combat (mostly through asynchronous interaction) and a focus on war strategy. The company's games appeal to almost 99 percent males, and Barber tells us that while most social games can grip a player for eight to 10 weeks, Kixeye's games can hook players for as long as 10 months. And his job at the company is to make sure those gamers stay there through--what else?--brand building.
Backyard Monsters
"The Kixeye brand to me is much more than a logo, it really is an umbrella for the entire organization," Barber says. "I think marketing serves as the bridge between the games teams and the analytics teams. Getting the word out and starting to communicate what Kixeye is about is a really critical function at this point."

However, Kixeye takes an incredibly methodical approach in attracting new players, which Barber says is exactly why we've yet to see massive amounts of players logging into Kixeye games daily. According to AppData, the developer currently serves 936,000 daily players and 3.7 million monthly players, numbers that have remained relatively steady for some time. And while Barber expects Kixeye to grow (the developer expects to launch four more games this year), he likes it just where it is.
Battle Pirates
"Ultimately, I think that was a smart decision, because the games are absolutely resonating with the sorts of gamers that you want," Barber tells us. "People who are going to spend two or three times longer periods of time than most social games see and spend exponentially more money." Sure, but Kixeye is making games for type of gamers its team members are: "hardcore" gamers. But don't call Kixeye's games that. And if you ask Barber, Kixeye's not even a "social gaming company."

"We don't necessarily think of the games as 'hardcore'. They're games that we want to play," Barber gushes to us. "We spend a lot of our entertainment hours, whenever they become available, playing games. We don't even really see ourselves as a social gaming company. We see ourselves as a game developer, like any other. Our games just happen to be on Facebook at the moment, because Facebook is still the only platform that has meaningful growth on it."
War Commander
We didn't know there was a difference (for most social game makers), but OK. Barber tells us that Kixeye is experimenting on new platforms, like Google+, and will make the leap to any area that makes sense. But there's something that Kixeye has come to realize that the crop of new "hardcore" social games companies seem to have glossed over.

"There will always be a segment of guys that don't really want to play on Facebook," Barber admits. "We're going to take steps in the coming year the build games for those guys too, potentially directly into browsers off of Facebook." Maybe that's a sad realization for most, but trust us, these guys are far better off for coming to it.