While considering myself an avid gamer, I have never played a Facebook game. I’ve been slightly intrigued to do so, but I haven’t really cared enough to do more than attempt to look up information about various games, gave some feedback on the development of a new social game, and that was it.
So it’s really more with a kind of academic interest that I look at the Facebook move to a universal credit system across all the games — the Facebook Credit. In reality, it makes sense to be able to move currency between games and even between developers. It’s no doubt that sleaze-dev (in my totally, utterly and completely unbiased opinion cough ) Zynga had a few choice words to say, which is pretty much implied in the IndustryGamers article about it, which states that there “tense” negotiations between Facebook and Zynga.
Speaking of Zynga, staying true to their sleazy reputation, is now going after developer “Blingville” for trademark infringement over the letter combination, “ville.” Which is pretty ridiculous no matter how you slice it. It’s been my (admittedly somewhat meager understanding) that you cannot trademark pieces of words – even Frankenstein’d works like “Farmville.” Anyway, not at all surprising from a company with a repuatation as slimy as Zynga.
Via IndustryGamers: Facebook Confirms Plans to Make Credits the Mandatory ‘Universal Currency’
Via IndustryGamers: Zynga Tries To Enforce ‘Ville’ Trademark
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