Leading game industry site Gamasutra has announced new additions to the staff of its award-winning web publications, with former Shacknews EIC Chris Remo joining its suite of websites as Editor-At-Large, and Eric Caoili now aiding as Gamasutra Associate News Editor and Co-Ordinating Editor of its market-specific sites.

Remo, one of the main architects of the recent renaissance of veteran gaming site Shacknews as Editor In Chief, as well as a Founding Editor at respected game culture site Idle Thumbs, will join Gamasutra and associated sites as Editor-At-Large to help shape and evolve website strategy, as well as usher in a major upcoming site redesign.

In addition, journalist Eric Caoili, contributor to sites including 4 Color Rebellion and the AOL-owned DS Fanboy and Wii Fanboy, will be aiding as Gamasutra Associate News Editor, as well as acting as Co-Ordinating Editor for the company's market-specific subsites.

Caoili's co-ordination responsibilities include writing or co-ordinating editorial for online worlds weblog Worlds In Motion (replacing Leigh Alexander, who has taken a new position outside of Think Services' sites), cellphone game site Games On Deck (replacing Mathew Kumar, who is now moving to contribute to Gamasutra), and 'serious games' site Serious Games Source.

Remo and Caoili join an two-time Webby award-winning Gamasutra staff that includes Edge Online alumnus and Gamasutra News Editor Brandon Boyer, and game journalism industry veteran and Features Editor Christian Nutt, overseen by Think Services group publisher Simon Carless.

Think Services' unique editorial structure also allows significant symbiosis between Gamasutra and sister publication Game Developer magazine, headed by Insert Credit co-founder and Senior Editor Brandon Sheffield and Production Editor Jeff Fleming - as well as input from leading educational game website Game Career Guide, run by GCG Editor Jill Duffy.

Global virtual community for teens Habbo has announced that independent in-game advertising firm Double Fusion is now the exclusive advertising sales agency for the Habbo.com property in North America.

As the exclusive advertising representative for Habbo.com, Double Fusion are to handle advertising sales, sponsorships and promotional opportunities with brands interested in reaching Habbo.com’s user base of 2.4 million unique visitors per month.

Advertisers are to be able to execute a variety of marketing initiatives including in-game billboards, contests, interstitials and instant-console messaging, customized brand rooms and sponsored quests.

Double Fusion are to work with advertisers from the entertainment industry, retail, fashion and sports arenas, and Gamasutra talked to Double Fusion’s president and CEO, Jonathan Epstein, and Teemu Huuhtanen, the Executive VP of Marketing, Ad Sales and Business Development of Habbo developer Sulake about the new agreement.

Why did you decide to partner?

Jonathan Epstein: As a company I feel we’ve developed technology and sales expertise that’s focused on delivering advertisers unique, engaging advertising experiences in games, and of course games are virtual worlds with a plot.

We’ve done some work with virtual worlds in the past, and virtual worlds are a natural extension of the gaming experience -- where users are creating their own plots. And among the virtual worlds Habbo has been doing it longer than anyone. They’ve been at it for 8 years, have a huge audience, and have tremendous experience in building successful ad campaigns already.

Plus, as a toolkit, the ability to create custom quests, branded rooms, and to have users take an active part in brand campaigns, becoming brand ambassadors has a lot of opportunity.

Teem Huuhtanen: We actually work with third parties in quite a few countries, and Double Fusion really stood out in North America. They’ve got a really great sales team, but probably the most important thing was their unique knowledge in how advertising works, and can coexist with gaming.

What do you think advertising should mean in virtual worlds?

TH: I’ve been saying this for quite a few years, but it comes down to: stop advertising, start engaging. Add value to the community.

How are you working together?

JE: At this point it doesn’t involve the use of any Double Fusion technology. Right now this is a sales partnership. Habbo is built in Shockwave, and they have their own internal ad server, and what we’re talking about is, yes, doing media campaigns using interstitial ads, but more integrated programs offered on a limited nature.

What kind of more in-depth campaigns are you talking about?

JE: We’ve delivered some really exciting programs to advertisers. For example, in Stuntman 2, we worked with Armor All, giving users the opportunity to film a TV commercial for the Armor All brand -- so Armor All was used in the game play.

In Habbo, they’ve done some tremendous work with Target, for example, bringing Matt Hoffman into the environment as a Habbo and there were different Target items for the users to use, and they’ve recently done a program with the Spiderwick Chronicles, with Spiderwick themed rooms and Spiderwick items for the users to decorate their rooms with -- a lot of focus on user decoration.

On April 10th, for example, Natasha Bedingfield will be doing a live, in-game streaming concert.

There’s a huge array of stuff that can be done.

How do you target advertising in Habbo?

JE: Well, the audience is already targeted as it is. It’s a teen audience purely, and that’s a good starting place, and in terms of male vs. female, there are ways we can discern that… Even down to items, there are things which appeal to women more than men, or the style of quest. But most advertising would work across gender.

When it comes to geographically, the campaigns are really aimed across North America, at national brands, but when we’re talking about the interstitials, they’re targeted as they are across the internet -- very exact, right down to the city the user is in.

Do branded “experiences” have a better pay-off than the interstitials?

JE: It all depends on what you’re aiming for with a campaign. I mean, if you considered, say, item sales as a “click-through”, you know exactly how many people are participating in a brand campaign, and we’ve seen examples showing that 18% of all users are taking an active part in a brand. Those kind of results just aren’t easy to find on the internet. Only in games and virtual worlds do you get that kind of interaction.

TH: We work with over 200 advertisers across the world, and the advertisers aren’t usually thinking about “impressions”; that’s kind of an old school way to think about things. They’re more interested in if the users are getting engaged with the items, using them and showing them off to each other.

So these are generally free branded items?

JE: Generally free, but occasionally they can be charged for. We can even create exclusive branded items that there are only, say, 100 of them available and the users want to show off that they managed to get one.

Teens are very brand orientated. They like to express themselves through brands, and they identify themselves through brands in the virtual worlds just like they do in the real world.

FlowPlay has launched its youngster-targeted online world ourWorld in beta form (or, as more excitedly put by the official site, "Super Beta!"), allowing players to sample its entirely Flash-based interface.

The company claims ourWorld differs from competing virtual environments, with an emphasis on collaborative and cooperative missions providing a more "guided experience."

Within ourWorld, players can build customized avatars, take in-game jobs to earn currency, create artwork, and network socially. FlowPlay has partnered with a number of "leading online game developers" to allow players to partake in a wide variety of games within ourWorld, as well as with YouTube to provide an in-world video theatre.

"We created ourWorld to bridge the gap between casual gaming and social media," said FlowPlay co-founder Derrick Morton. "The casual games landscape is changing and gamers are looking for a deeper, more social experience than what is largely available today. Through ourWorld, gamers will have a single destination to enjoy the most popular online titles, plus experience their other preferred forms of online activities in a community environment."

ourWorld is said to be aimed largely at pre-adolescents, although FlowPlay's press release claims it will appeal to "all audiences," including "hip hop heads," "rockers," "romantics," "fantasy fans," "casual gamers," and "more."

It will launch with a level-capped free-to-play version; players looking to gain access to premium items and environments and higher levels must pay a monthly fee of $5.99.

Social gaming platform developer Emote and Sweden based Avalanche (Just Cause) have announced a new partnership to create a yet-unnamed "cross format socially enabled game" in the third quarter of this year.

The title will be the first to launch on Emote's so-called "PARTICIPATE" platform, which the company says will introduce "a new style of socially enabled game" that is character and community based.

For its part, Avalanche will be using its Avalanche 2.0 engine to lend "unparalleled real life landscape technology" to the social gaming title.

Emote says games on its PARTICIPATE platform can utilize an "exclusive suite of social features" that it says integrates games and communities and broaden 'participative gaming' experiences.

Said Avalanche founder Christofer Sundberg, "We're very excited about this partnership with Emote Games. The PARTICIPATE platform opens the door to a new level of gaming which offers a deeper and more enhanced game experience. The Avalanche technology complements this new genre of gaming by combining the social gaming attributes of PARTICIPATE with our real world landscape architecture to create an amazing life like social gaming experience".

Game ad network Intergi has announced a new agreement with free-to-play game publisher K2 Network to bring in-game and web ads to both K2's GamersFirst portal and its selection of games including New World, War Rock, Knight Online, Global MU Online and Red Stone.

The Intergi also services a number of other web portals and game companies, including those operated by Vivendi, Electronic Arts, Activision, Eidos, Wizards of the Coast, THQ, and Blizzard.

The K2 Network claims over 16 million registered users across its game properties in more than 100 countries, with local offices in the U.S., Korea, and India.

Said K2 CEO Joshua Hong, “Our recently launched game portal GamersFirst is a single point of access for reaching all of our gamers and advertisers. We’re serious about building an ad network that is relevant and valuable to our gamers. We believe Intergi will help make this happen.”

In an online game panel at San Francisco's ongoing MI6 marketing conference featuring representatives of Three Rings, Nexon, and Outspark, Gaia's Craig Sherman quipping that, compared to the 800 million teenagers willing and able to play online games, World of Warcraft's claim to 10 million players was "not a success."

The panel brought together Daniel James of Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates), Andrew Sheppard of Outspark (Fiesta), Min Kim of Nexon (MapleStory) and Craig Sherman of virtual world Gaia.

The session was kicked off by moderator Mark Friedler of BioGraph Games - noting that in the business race between console games and virtual worlds, the latter was more "long tail," adding that there are Gaia employees whose sole job it is to open snail mail envelopes full of cash people send for in-game items.

Sherman explained that Gaia was in between a social network and a game, with full friend networking as a virtual space with an economy. "It feels like a platform for creativity and for hanging out with your friends," he said. "It's like the 21st century version of a mall."

The Model

Friedler asked the panel how their business model differed from retail products, with Nexon's Kim saying free-to-play was still not yet mainstream in the U.S. like it is in Asia, and is often associated with lower quality.

"It's really about educating them in the business model," said Kim. "We're not at the mercy of the retailers, so we can market on our terms."

Three Rings' James added that the user subscription model was one of the biggest differences, but added that "we believe it to be the superior business model going forward."

The Market

But, Friedler asked, how do you market free games? James answered that it was a challenge, and that online portals in the U.S. largely focused on $20 downloadable games, not virtual worlds. On top of that, Three Rings recently put out Puzzle Pirates at retail with Ubisoft, but didn't see much success.

Kim added that the ongoing and real-time nature of online games means developers can adjust campaigns over time - rather than a single static launch campaign. Sherman added that the multiplayer aspect helps enormously with networked and word-of-mouth campaigns.

The Makeup

Moving on to what the panelists were doing to drive stickiness and revenue per user, the panel noted that the word 'casual' was one that didn't get used much around their respective offices.

Said James, "It's casual in terms of accessibility and getting into the experience, but once you're there... it's not exactly casual," with Kim saying Nexon had stopped using the word because "...we think it's dangerous."

Sherman said Gaia actually might be a little more casual than the other panelists' work, adding that spaces like Gaia's were "a little less immersive; you can multitask and do other things while using them." They had the potential to be bigger, he added but also probably less monetizable.

The Money

But, he offered, compared to a high budget game like World of Warcraft with its player base of some 10 million people: "There are 800 million teens in the world. That's not a success."

One important aspect of that audience, though, said the panel, was their financial limitations. Said Kim, "There's a whole audience of tweens and teens out there who want to engage, but don't have access to plastic," adding that free-to-play games have room to grow there.

Sherman agreed, concluding, "Free-to-play online worlds are the future."

[UPDATE: A quotation previously attributed to Outspark's Andrew Sheppard was in fact from Gaia's Craig Sherman. The story has been updated to reflect this.]

Nearly three years since the company launched its Virtual Magic Kingdom, Disney has announced its plans to end the free MMO service on May 21st.

The Virtual Magic Kingdom was originally created and opened to the public in 2005 as a temporary promotion for the Disneyland 50th Anniversary Celebration. Due to the popularity and success Virtual Magic Kingdom, Disney continued the promotion long after the 50th Anniversary Celebration's 18-month-long event ended.

As with Habbo Hotel, Virtual Magic Kingdom was developed by Finnish studio Sulake and shared many similarities with the social networking site. Players with registered accounts are able to decorate their personal rooms, earn and spend in-game credits, and participate in a variety of online events and activities with their customized avatars, all in a "safe, non-threatening environment."

Said producer Seth "Yavn" Mendelsohn: "In the time since we've launched VMK, we've seen many players come and go, and we're hoping you will graduate from VMK too – in particular, to games like Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Disney's ToonTown Online, Club Penguin and the upcoming Fairies and Cars online virtual worlds. We think you'll find you enjoy those just as much as VMK – if not more."

Following its launch in the UK late last March, virtual community VizWoz revealed its plans to expand its entertainment and interaction offerings with two new broadcast features -- a DJ studio and a virtual cinema.

VizWoz offers free multiplayer games and chat tools to its users, primarily 11-14 year olds, and promises a moderated setting where kids can share their interests and make friends. Though registration is free, paid subscriptions with enhanced services and content are also available.

The community's first upcoming broadcast feature, the DJ studio, is set to debut on April 11th and will allow users to "select, listen, and mix" songs from a wide range of genres with other music fans. To encourage participation with its DJ studio, VizWoz is running a UK competition to find the "VizWoz DJ of the Year 2008."

The virtual cinema is scheduled to launch on April 18th and will provide targeted TV and film promotional content to VizWoz's users.

VizWoz founder and CEO Daniel Laurence commented, “The launch of the cinema and the DJ studio form an integral part of our on-going strategy to offer kids and teens interesting content in a stimulating, safe space. We look forward to discussing opportunities with broadcast partners and we are confident that these new features will be a big hit as part of the overall engaging visual experience.”

Media conglomerate InterActiveCorp announced several niche sites earlier today, including Green.com, a new virtual world site built to teach children and 'tweens how to help the environment and "do good deeds in fun ways."

IAC's online properties include search engine Ask.com, dating service Match.com, and virtual environment Zwinktopia. Like Green.com, Zwinktopia targets the middle school set, offering easily customizable avatars -- "Zwinkies" -- that can be exported and shared on blogs and MySpace profiles. Users can purchase rooms and furniture in Zwinktopia with Zbucks, in-game cash that can be earned by exploring areas, playing games, or inviting friends to create their own Zwinky avatars. Zbucks are also purchasable with a credit card or PayPal account.

IAC has yet to announce a launch date for Green.com or any details for a monetization plan similar to Zwinktopia's Zbucks system. The forthcoming community will replace the coupon offerings currently hosted at the site.

In a lecture originally given at this year's GDC Mobile conference, David Collier, the president of Tokyo-based content provider Pikkle KK presented "the next big thing from Japan" for mobile: new mobile sits that mix mini-games, avatars, and virtual money into million-user game services, most off-deck and advertising supported.

Casual gamers are brought in by their friends and easy-to-play Flash Lite games. Collier explained, and then they stick around for the community. Using Mobile Game Town as an example, he revealed that the site had over 4 million subscribers, and 40% of all male teenagers in Japan. "I think the growth has slowed now because they've basically run out of teenagers," he joked.

Explaining the appeal, he showed how the Flash Lite games on offer aren't "super hardcore, complex RPGS," but instead "fun, simple little 30 second games."

Hit the jump to read more.

Talking to Gamasutra as part of an in-depth new interview, Nexon U.S. director Min Kim has been discussing Relic founder Alex Garden's work at Nexon - and the company's U.S. success through its prepaid MapleStory game cards at Target and 7-Eleven.

MapleStory, a PC free-to-play online RPG, has become a global success, with 72+ million users worldwide and $16 million in monthly revenues, according to Nexon's comments at Austin GDC last year.

The title is so successful, in fact, that many Western publishers have decided to emulate the game's business model. But, as Kim explains: "We've been running the microtransactions business since probably the late '90s up to now. So we've got a lot of institutional knowledge."

In addition, Kim talks briefly about Nexon's North American development team, based in Vancouver, which includes noted Relic (Homeworld) co-founder Alex Garden, latterly in 'stealth mode' on his new projects. Kim explains:

"At the same time, we're bringing our best products out here, but we also have a development studio in Vancouver. That's run by Alex Garden, Steve Rechtschaffner, and Chuck Osieja.

We firmly believe that the big moneymakers in this market are probably going to be made by developers in this market, because of cultural things and et cetera. We're trying to position ourselves by bringing products from Korea, while at the same time making products here."

Following this, Kim was asked exactly when the first North American-developed project would debut for Nexon, and he explained: "I can't say, but pretty soon."

Further on in the interview, the subject of prepaid game cards came up, and Kim explained how crucial to the success of MapleStory they were:

"That's the biggest thing, even for us in North America. We didn't really take off until we got the cards into Target and Best Buy and 7-Eleven.

When you do a subscription, you do 13 or 15 dollars a month. For us, certain customers pay nothing, and certain customers pay like 25 bucks a week. It really has to do with appetite and consumption."

You can now read the full interview with Kim on Gamasutra, including lots more detail on MapleStory, the possibility of the Xbox 360 version of Mabinogi reaching the West, and lots more.

[The preceding article originally appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]