We spoke to Jagex's Henrique Olifiers about the launch of RuneScape HD at E3 a few weeks ago (and covered it as part of our Online World Atlas a long, long time ago!) and since the launch of RuneScape HD Jagex have claimed over half a million new players, increasing the monthly rate of new free accounts by more than 50% in a few weeks.

They've also let us know that the Guiness Book of World Records has voted RuneScape HD as the "World's Most Popular Free MMO" again, with the game having seen over 135 million users since 2001 and an active player list of 6.5 million, and that internet ranking site Hitwise has ranked runescape.com as the second most visted game site in the US.

Runescape HD uses a thin-client concept that means the initial download of the title is only 1.2 megabytes, and due to procedural generation it doesn't have to download bandwidth-heavy textures and models.

"With the total graphics overhaul introduced in RuneScape HD, new audiences were drawn in – the game is browser-based, requires no downloads and utilizes the graphics card within a player's computer to heighten visuals," stated a Jagex representative, explaining the growth. "Existing players are also still able to log in and play from the same machines they did when the game launched in 2001 -- no additional investment is required. Players can access the game from anywhere, at anytime."

Developer of the "virtual life" social networking site Koinup has announced that it is going to expand its presences in Second Life – by building and placing kiosks "strategically" on Second Life sims that have a high traffic count to drive users to the Koinup site. Wyatt Benoir, owner of Second Life location The ARTist Park and in-world photography magazine The Artisan, is to build the kiosks .

Koinup has also announced new features for the site, which combines "social networking, photography, machinima display, weekly events and contests for all virtual world platforms," including Best Places, which allows members to take pictures of their favorite locations in Second Life and to add them to a list of Best Places.

Koinup continues to be "strictly" for users of virtual worlds only, setting it apart from other social networking site.

"Koinup is quickly becoming the preferred site to display your 'Second Life'," said a Koinup representative, "It's a diverse virtual community in which you can share commonalities with fellow members -- it has something for everyone and is free and open to all."

Online child protection solution developer Crisp Thinking has announced its latest partnership -- with Metaverse Mod Squad, an avatar staffing provider that itself concentrates on protecting the safety of children online.

Metaverse Mod Squad moderators are to be trained to use Crisp Thinking's NetModerator solution, which intends to enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of moderation teams, and is to allow the two companies to mutually participate in advertising and marketing their similar products/services – the partnership has been created because of a recognition that maintain a safe environment for children online is a challenge that requires both technology and trained staff.

Crisp Thinking have previously announced partnerships with Cartoon Network and Xivio.

Andrew Lintell, Chief Executive of Crisp Thinking said, "Crisp Thinking is proud to offer our solutions in conjunction with Metaverse Mod Squad as a powerful combination in the virtual world environment. This opens up a whole new area for our customers to continue protection of their younger audience."

Gaia Online is unique among virtual worlds, beginning as a forum before evolving into a virtual world which boasts over 7 million users every month. Gamasutra's Christian Nutt talks to CEO Craig Sherman about the site's evolution, the challenges of balancing the business model against creativity and community needs, and upcoming MMORPG zOMG!.

We recently did profile Gaia and what I found interesting is the site started as more traditional community site, and then grew into an online world.

Craig Sherman: Yeah, it was started by a group of comic book artists and one sort of genius developer literally out of their apartment. They built something for themselves, and for their friends, that just ended up resonating with, at this point, five million plus users every month. But it was extremely authentic, and they're just trying to build something that fit around their own internal passions. So I think it did start out with a very strong anime, and gamer, and community focus. And over time it's broadened, so now you can describe it more like an online hangout for teens and people in their twenties. Or you can say it's an activity hub, and activity portal on the net, but with a meta experience around it that feels more like a place, rather than a tool or a website.

SceneCaster, a developer of 3D web applications for social networks has announced that its technology now supports the Khronos Group’s COLLIDA 1.5 specification, and has announced a partnership with 3D content developer Blue Marble Project.

Using COLLIDA 1.5 allows SceneCaster’s 3D content to be exported to and shared with other 3D applications and authoring packages across differing delivery platforms, while the partnership with Blue Marble Project is to provides companies with an “easy and affordable” way to create and promote 3D content using SceneCaster’s technology and Blue Marble Project’s 3D model development.

SceneCaster has also stated that by adding COLLADA export to their toolkit , they are demonstrating that it openly supports and encourages 3D content exchange with other programs. SceneCaster currently allows users to embed 3D scenes in any Web page or blog and view them without requiring a download or a plug-in. Using COLLIDA, SceneCaster content can also be shared with users working with any open standards-based 3D solution that reads COLLADA files.

“Our driving philosophy has always been to support and promote open standards and interoperability exchange,” said Alain Chesnais, Chief Technology Officer of SceneCaster. “As more and more applications support COLLADA, it will enable 3D content, such as that created by SceneCaster users, to be repurposed by industries in need of a new source for content. SceneCaster is pleased to further 3D content exchange and accessibility with its support of COLLADA.”

Content delivery software developer is partnering with Age of Conan publisher Funcom to develop solutions intended to help game companies improve digital delivery of large files like updates and patches, the companies announced today.

Solid State has worked with Funcom since April to deliver Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures' beta releases, launching an Early Access program that made the MMO available for purchase to select testers one week prior to its retail launch.

The two companies say they were able to distribute the title to over 100,000 players over several days, generating over 2 petabytes of data transfer, using a hybrid solution that blended P2P capabilities based on the BitTorrent Protocol and and Highwinds Network Group's content delivery network (CDN).

Funcom once again enlisted Solid State's services in June to support the distribution of game content for Sci-Fi MMORPG Anarchy Online.

"We are honored to partner with Funcom because they continue to push the envelope when it comes to game development, and in doing so, they are elevating the challenges of delivering and keeping those games updated," says Solid State Networks founder and CEO Rick Buonincontri.

He continues, "We are proud to be playing such a crucial role in delivering Funcom’s games to players around the world and we will continue to strive to deliver the ultimate game acquisition experience as Funcom expands to other platforms and develops future projects."

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

Just over a year ago we revealed that Mindark’s Entropia Universe (a Sweden-based virtual world with a “real cash” currency) was to adopt Crytek’s CryENGINE 2, and clearly the company are revving up in preparation of the re-launch of the world.

How do we know? Because they’ve announced a rather unlikely (but impressive) new partnership with Lemmy from Motörhead.

Lemmy and his band are “teaming up” with Mindark to create Motörhead Stadium and Lemmy’s Castle within Entropia Universe -- the virtual universe’s first virtual rock arena and castle that is to enable fans to "hear exclusive music as well as battle Lemmy’s Guardians in hopes of joining his private Virtual Army."

Some of the Guardians, will drop “rare and valuable” Motörhead armor parts, and fans must collect a full set of Motörhead armor in order to gain entrance to the “inner sanctum” of Lemmy's Castle and be eligible to join Lemmy's private army, which will allow privilges including “the ability to chat with Lemmy online in the army’s private chat channel” and the opportunity to compete in special quests and events to win both real and virtual Motörhead merchandise -- among the prizes is an exclusive trip to Los Angeles for drinks with Lemmy(!).

Mindark are to launch Motörhead Stadium and Lemmy’s Castle in conjunction with the launch of the CryENGINE 2 powered Entropia Universe.

“The Motörhead Stadium and Lemmy’s Castle will add great diversity to Entropia Universe when we launch the upgraded version of Entropia Universe using CryENGINE 2,” said David Simmonds, Business Development Director at Mindark.

[Editor's note: Mindark don't seem to have noticed that Lemmy's Castle is the third boss stage in Super Mario World. Or maybe they have and it's a very roundabout tribute?]

Mytopia, developer of the online social gaming community of the same name, has announced RUGS, "the Real-time Universal Gaming System", a patent-pending, proprietary framework for rapid rich media creation across the web, mobile and smartphones.

The technology was announced at a presentation given at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco, and is intended to allow developers to code applications only once but simultaneously deploy native versions to every supported platform, including mobile platforms such as iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Android, as well as web platforms like Facebook’s F8 and Google’s Open Social.

Content created on RUGS is to be able to "harness the unique capabilities of each platform," while running from a single code base, according to their announcement, by employing a plug-in architecture and patent-pending semantic translation.

“Smartphones are no longer just phones, but mobile internet devices. People want to access their rich media anytime, anywhere, no matter which device they happen to be using,” said Guy Ben-Artzi, Founder of Mytopia Inc. “RUGS has cracked one of the major barriers to innovation in the mobile space: platform fragmentation. Developers no longer need to learn and code for each distinct operating system in order to create immersive applications for every phone.”

NCsoft will consolidate its U.S. and European subsidiaries into a new wholly-owned organization called NC West, to be established in Seattle by year's end, the company announced today.

Incorporating existing NCsoft subsidiaries NC Interactive, NC Europe, NC Austin, and ArenaNet, NC West will be responsible for the U.S. and European regions, and will be led by Chris Chung as CEO, Jeff Strain as president of product development, David Reid as president of publishing, and Patrick Wyatt as CTO, in addition to yet-unannounced European executives.

In the process, the Lineage and Guild Wars publisher is expected to lay off employees from both its Brighton, UK and Austin, Texas offices.

Widespread media reports pegged the number of layoffs planned at the publisher's Brighton studio at about 50 employees. Citing anonymous sources, GamesIndustry.biz reports as many as 70 Brighton employees will lose their jobs as the studio stops work on an unannounced MMO in development there, though NCsoft declined to confirm when contacted by Gamasutra for comment.

NCsoft founded the Brighton studio with just 3 employees in 2004, but thanks to a grant from the UK's South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) just over a year ago, the company expanded those offices. It's yet unclear what will become of the grant or whether NCsoft had received any of those funds thus far.

As for the Austin group, NCsoft confirmed layoffs last month of some 21 employees, a day after the publisher's second quarter fiscal results showed profits down 42 percent. At that time, NCsoft also cut staff from its Dungeon Runners team, as it decided to indefinitely suspend plans to port the client to other platforms. It is unclear whether today's reports refer to these or new layoffs in Austin; NCsoft directed all requests for comment to today's NC West announcement, which made no mention of any layoffs.

"We are confident that by combining our subsidiaries into a unified global organization under Chris Chung’s leadership, NC West will become a more powerful force to be reckoned with in the western MMO market," says NCsoft CEO Taek Jin Kim.

"Chris has become a guiding force within our company and has been extremely successful at every position he has held with us. His detailed first-hand knowledge of all aspects of our business is invaluable and will help establish NC West as a global leader."

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

So, you'll see a more formal announcement about this in a couple of weeks, alongside a very neat (and related) competition reveal, but we'd like to announce our new weblog FingerGaming.com, subtitled 'The art & business of gaming on the iPhone.'

But why? Well, this new site, which is edited for us by Matt Burris, continues something we at Think Services have been doing over the past few months and years - supplementing our industry-leading coverage of the mainstream game business, as showcased with products like Gamasutra.com, Game Developer magazine, and Game Developers Conference, with important emerging and vital submarkets such as Apple's touch-based handheld.

FingerGaming [RSS feed] is already publishing daily news, analysis, and reviews from the swiftly burgeoning iPhone and iPod Touch gaming scene, including the latest from Steve Jobs on the iPhone Store's game expansion, early impressions of iPhone titles including Spore: Origins and iSplume, and increasing concentrations on interviews, analysis, and trends in the new business.

In addition, the site is looking for iPhone game-related tips, announcements, news, and even potential developer diaries from those creating iPhone titles - you can reach FingerGaming via its contact page.

We believe that if we help aggregate information for creators (and dedicated consumers) of these submarkets, and then help them form communities through in-person events, networks, and shared knowledge, then everyone benefits.

Now that we've launched FingerGaming, we'd like to point out our full set of submarket and 'focused' weblogs that Think Services currently runs, including the new site:

- GameSetWatch [RSS, jobs] (founded November 2005), Think Services' alt.game weblog, featuring informal editorials, interviews and opinions from our editors and special contributors.
- Game Career Guide [RSS] (founded August 2006), for student game developers and those considering entering the game industry - also helping to support the Game Career Seminar events.
- WorldsInMotion.biz [RSS, jobs] (founded June 2007), analyzing the business of online worlds - from MMOs to virtual worlds and beyond - supporting the Worlds In Motion Summits.
- IndieGames.com: The Weblog [RSS, jobs] (founded January 2008), for independent game creators, from Flash to downloadable and beyond - helping to support the Independent Games Festival and Indie Games Summit.
- GamerBytes [RSS, jobs] (founded June 2008), for digital downloaded console games, from XBLA through PSN to WiiWare and beyond - helping to support the Indie Games Summit.
- FingerGaming [RSS] (founded August 2008), for the art and business of gaming on the iPhone and iPod Touch - helping to support GDC Mobile and IGF Mobile.

[We also continue to run GamesOnDeck - for non-iPhone cellphone gaming, and Serious Games Source, for educational, social, and other 'serious' gaming.]

In exchange for providing these sites to you, we hope that you'll consider posting your industry jobs on the Gamasutra job network, which includes or will shortly include all of these focused sites, or attending our conferences (such as GDC or Austin GDC) when they include focused content on those subjects.

Sony Online Entertainment's working on massively multiplayer shooter The Agency for both PlayStation 3 and PC, which raises a lot of interesting questions about developing an online game for both platforms at once.

For example, with both versions underway for both PC and PlayStation 3, could players on both platforms interact in the same game world?

SOE is indeed considering it, says executive producer Matt Wilson -- "In fact, we're actually doing that at the office. Technology-wise, it's really not that complicated."

But there are three key barriers he says that stand in the way. First is game exploitability -- Wilson uses the example of the high quantity of hacks in a PC shooter like Counter-Strike to describe how it's significantly more difficult to secure a PC online title than it is on a console's closed platform, and maintaining the safety across platforms presents a challenge. "Being able to manage that is no simple task," he says.

MMO gaming community Aeria Games has announced that it has acquired the rights to distribute Japanese PC MMO Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online -- based on the celebrated line of Japanese RPGs – in the European and North American online PC gaming markets in four languages: English, French, German and Spanish.

The Shin Megami Tensei series is the intellectual property of Japanese developer and publisher, Atlus, and began in 1992 with the release of the original Shin Megami Tensei on the Super Famicom. The MMO has been developed by Japanese developer Cave and was originally released at the beginning of last year in Japan, and is set in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo where survivors attempt to restore the city by defeating (or forming an alliance with) demons and solving puzzles.

In the announcement, Aeria Games highlighted "unique features" of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online, such as a strategic real-time fighting system, diverse weaponry and devil "partnership", plus private dungeons for players to experience with friends.

"Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online has become a huge success with a large fan following," said an Aeria Games representative. "Aeria Games plans on bringing that success to the European and North American markets as it has done with its titles Last Chaos and Shaiya."

PayByCash (a subsidiary of PlaySpan) has announced that its mobile phone payment option for online merchants across the United States and Europe is now operational. The system is operated in partnership with Mobillcash, and adds another payment method to the over 70 payment options it offers for consumers without a credit card.

According to Mobilcash, the partnership was driven by the success they'd already seen within the social gaming/virtual world space, and an intention to penetrate these markets more deeply -- referring to a recent report by Juniper Research that stated 2.1 billion mobile subscribers will pay-by-mobile for digital goods by 2013.

“It’s important that Mobillcash partners with market leaders who take pride in the quality of service and consumer ID protection,” said Glyn Smith, Mobillcash CEO. “PayByCash has a long history of offering great service. I’m looking forward to where this relationship can take us.”

Developers of the "interactive retail experience" RobotGalaxy has announced the raising of $5 million in private investment which is to fuel the company’s expansion, including the launch of a new virtual world.

RobotGalaxy's site currently allows young “explorers” to assemble, program and activate their own robots from thousands of combinations, with two retail stores opened – one in the Freehold Raceway Mall, NJ and one in the Palisades Center, NY.

The RobotGalaxy "online galaxy" is to be a virtual world directly connected to a physical Robot Galaxy robot, making the world somewhat similar in concept to Webkinz or Build-A-Bearville. The world is to utilize a patented robot design to allow the connection of a user’s personalized robot in the virtual world via a “Supersonic Fuel Cell” and USB cable. Once connected to the virtual world, users will enter a “Space Station” where they will be able to go on quests with their robot and battle other players.

“Over the past two years we’ve established a model based on three pillars: retail, entertainment, and online. As we add technology to our product, we will continue to invest in our retail operations as we develop our online Galaxy and build upon our comic book series,” said Ken Pilot, Chief Galaxy Officer.

3D game engine developer Trinigy announced a partner agreement with San Francisco-based networking engine developer PX Interactive to incorporate the latter's Netdog MMO engine with Trinigy's upcoming Vision Engine 7 update.

Trinigy says the Vision Game Engine is currently used in over 80 commercial game productions ranging from real-time strategy titles to RPGs, for various platforms. Companies actively using Vision for developing their titles include Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, and Firefly.

Once integrated into the Vision SDK, Netdog will provide a MMO networking toolset capable of supporting millions of users to Vision customers. The network engine includes load balancing, object management, system monitoring, security, and debugging tools, which are constructed modular way, so that developers can customize the tools to meet their needs.

"Various customers have been asking us about a massive-multiplayer-online component for their Vision based titles," says Trinigy CEO and president Danie Conradie. "With PX Interactive's Netdog MMO engine, we are delighted to offer them a high performance, scalable, and easy-to-use MMO solution they can use together with the Vision Engine right away."

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

Provider of in-game commerce ecosystems Fatfoogoo has announced that it is to enable integration of its microtransaction software with Sun Microsystems' open source development environment for online games, virtual worlds and social networking, Project Darkstar.

Fatfoogoo’s monetizing software services, such as virtual item trading, subscription management and in-game economic control, are now available to the developers in the Project Darkstar community.

Fatfoogoo is the first company to offer commercial billing and transaction software that has been designed to work with Project Darkstar, allowing games and virtual worlds developed with the environment to allow real money transactions via micropayments.

“We are bringing microtransactions first to the publishers and developers and, as a result, to the gaming community,” said Fatfoogoo CEO, Martin Herdina. “Implementing micropayments into a game is a complex process that needs close attention. We make it easy for game developers to integrate our services into their games, so they can focus on their core competence. The real beneficiaries, however, are the gamers who can now easily make small and secure payments within the flow of the game.”