Playdom is offering $50 for playtesters -- are you man enough for the job?

Playdom Mountain View Map Headquarters
Last Friday morning, Playdom made a post on the gigs section of Craigslist, asking for folks who'd be willing to come into their San Francisco headquarters to play "a recently released game" for $50 USD. To be qualified for the action, you'll need to allow them to videotape you playing, must sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, be an experienced social gamer, and lastly, (sorry ladies!) be a guy between the age of 18-35. Now we don't know why they specifically want guys, or why they want to film you playing, but we're pretty sure they're not out to start a playtesters reality TV show for casual games. (But they do have a dorky video podcast on YouTube.)

There's also no saying how many guys they want, but the Playdom Usability Research Group does have a screening process, which will involve answering a survey through email. If they think you're the man for the job, they'll get back to you, but they're sure to be swamped with replies. As for the authenticity of this ad, we've yet to verify this. (The last time we saw something like this, Playfish was offering select players an $80 Amazon gift card to host a phone interview while folks played.) But if you have any concerns, you can contact Playdom here.

Judging by these details, we're betting this is a playtest session for their hit game ESPNU College Town, which debuted on Facebook this September. The session is scheduled to take place this coming Thursday, November 4th, during normal business hours and is expected to take an hour.

What's in a name: Playdom rebrands City of Might as City of Warfare?

Not much, apparently. Fusible reports that Gardens of Time maker Playdom filed for the trademark "City of Warfare" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Oct. 26. While the website seems to think that the developer is creating a whole new game, we're thinking that Playdom might simply be rebranding its upcoming City of Might as City of Warfare.

Regardless, the game will almost certainly center around the same premise that we caught a glimpse of at this year's E3. When we last saw City of Might, it looked to build a franchise out of Playdom's existing City of Wonder and enter new genres. However, the game appeared to be terribly reminiscent of competitors like Empires & Allies and perhaps more hardcore social strategy games.

The game was expected to launch this summer, but has yet to leave its closed beta test. Since then, Playdom has teased two more games, Galaxy of Wonder and Secret Agent X. The first of which sounds like it will take the familiar City of Wonder gameplay into a new environment, while the latter appears to entertain new gameplay ideas.

Regardless, City of Migh--er, Warfare should be close to release, if the company was willing to show it in action months ago. Fusible mentions that it nailed the Gnome Town trademark right on the nose, only for Playdom to release the game days later, so perhaps we're even closer. The developer also plans to release games focusing on Disney brands--it's about time.

Why do you think Playdom might rebrand City of Might as City of Warfare? Could this game give E&A and other Facebook strategy games a run for their money?

Disney-branded Facebook games coming in 2012, Playdom head says

Can we all just say, "finally?" During a panel named "The Rise of Social Games" at the f8 Facebook Developers Conference in San Francisco, Disney Interactive and Playdom head John Pleasants revealed that two to four Facebook games surrounding Disney brands will hit Facebook in 2012. The general topic of the panel was the fact that branded social games are taking off.

Pleasants was joined on the panel by Kabam CEO Kevin Chou, EA Interactive head Barry Cottle and Zynga CBO Owen Van Natta. Facebook director of games partnerships Sean Ryan moderated the panel with the preface that branded games will take over the Facebook platform. And he might be right: EA just released The Sims Social, Zynga will soon re-brand its new Adventure World with Indiana Jones and Kabam recently announced The Godfather: Five Families.

Playdom, which Disney acquired in July 2010 for a whopping $740 million, is ahead of the pack with two branded games on Facebook: ESPNU College Town and ESPN Sports Bar & Grill. Both games performed well, thanks to advertising through the ESPN TV network. While Disney owns the ESPN brand, notice how neither of those actually involve the insanely popular Disney characters we've come to love.

Honestly, we're surprised this didn't happen sooner. Consider this: Disney has its own cable TV channel through which it could, in theory, advertise whatever it wants. Pleasants didn't get into why it's taken this long for Disney to throw its cast of characters into Facebook games, but did reveal the power of the Disney name.

Gnome Town, which Playdom launched in the summer--and we enjoyed quite a bit--peaked at 530,000 daily players. But just plopping the Disney logo on top of the existing one made users more likely to spend in the game just through trust of the company's name, according to Pleasants. "We think it's an advantage, if you put game play first," Pleasants said.

It's comforting to hear this emphasized by these developers. (Kabam's Chou shared the same sentiment.) Branded games on Facebook are OK in my book, but the last thing anyone wants to see is the genre become a branding machine.

[Source and Image Credit: VentureBeat]

Are you on board with the growing trend of branded games on Facebook? Do you think developers will maintain integrity as the focus on branded content in their games intensifies? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment