Monumental, the UK-based developer of upcoming football MMO Football Superstars has announced the opening of a new studio in Pune, India. The studio has been established in conjunction with offshoring company Quickstart Global.

In the announcement, it was explained that while Monumental have previously used staff in a traditional outsourcing model, they chose to work with Quickstart Global as "each employee is specifically selected by Monumental and lives up to the quality and productivity standards set by them."

The studio currently houses a core team with plans to increase this in the near future.

"We were highly impressed by the quality of applicants. Prior to interview we viewed show-reels from candidates and were able to select those who met our criteria, both on a technical and personal level," said Gylan Hunter, Art Director for Monumental. "This process helps us maintain the exceptionally high quality standards we demand. The facilities in Pune are excellent, and our staff there have everything they need to deliver first-class work".

Asylum Entertainment launched an open beta for online world for children aged 5-11, GardenParty, a couple of months ago, and so we thought it was high time we talked to Asylum Entertainment's Victoria Pearson, about what the world does to differentiate itself in the ever-more-crowded space of child-orientated virtual worlds.

Introduce Asylum Entertainment.

Victoria Pearson: Asylum Entertainment is an award winning video game developer based primarily in the major brand name children's market. Since starting up in 1998, Asylum has completed a range of titles on multiple platforms for publishers and license holders including EA, Riverdeep, Vivendi, BBCW and Cartoon Network.

The founders of Asylum Entertainment, with young kids themselves, felt that they had the inspiration, creativity and the means to design and develop games for children. It was only back in 2007 that they considered moving into the MMO domain. Asylum wanted to create something which was both safe and fun for their kids, themselves, as well as others from all over the world.

The kid-orientated virtual world space is really crowded now though, no?

VP: GardenParty has been in development for nearly two years. Back then, there was a huge gap in the market. Now however, although the children’s virtual world space is becoming fairly crowded, it is Asylum’s belief that what GardenParty has meets the needs of players in a unique and special way. The feedback that we have received from kids and parents since being in beta has been incredibly positive.

Previous development projects of Asylum have almost entirely centered on the children’s market, and this experience with games for kids is, we feel, very evident in GardenParty.

Successful Flash game developers Paul Preece and David Scott have launched Casual Collective, a new free-to-play social gaming site, and have received $1 million in funding from investment firm Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Responsible for the popular "tower defense" games Desktop Tower Defense and Flash Element TD, Preece and Scott originally launched the site last December in what they describe to Gamasutra as "stealth mode." The relaunch introduces a variety of social networking features as well as several new titles.

"We've rebuilt it from the ground up, and we've spread our content over several servers," Scott tells Gamasutra in an interview conducted prior to the announcement.

"Our goal with the new site is to enhance the social features that did well, to create better and stronger games, and this time not lock them to the site but let people take them and post them all over the internet."

New virtual world Music Mogul has launched, billing itself "the world's first online music world" in a blustery launch announcement that includes claims that the world is to "make a mark on the music industry and social networks" with "ground-breaking design".

"For the first time," they rave, "social networkers can experience the music lifestyle through a virtual living world," that is "set to alter the face of music engagement".

The company was founded by names including Nicolas Longano (former president of in-game advertising network Massive) Rodney Jerkins (a Grammy winning music producer).

"I've been looking for the next big thing to come out of music," said Jerkins. "I found it through games."

As a result of Jerkins' astonishing belief in the virtual world, each quarter a user of Music Mogul will be chosen to receive a three song demo deal with Darkchild Productions.

Music Mogul is being developed by iLemon and in the world users can either audition, promote and perform their music for the other users or simply explore the world, with the ability to establish and decorate their own (and we emphasize this is the release's words, not ours) "cribs". The game is also to feature microtransactions, powered by Aria Systems.

"Music Mogul's attention to realism and detail is pushing the boundaries of virtual worlds. Music Mogul will be a showcase of not only the future of virtual worlds, but how users will experience music and connect with each other. It is unique, focused and compelling," said iLemon President and Founder, Jouni Keranen.

San Jose-based online game publisher OnNet USA has announced that it has signed an online interactive licensing agreement with the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball, MLB Advanced Media, granting it the right to incorporate official Major League Baseball league and club marks, logos, and more in its upcoming micro-transaction based online baseball game, MLB Dugout Heroes.

The multi-year agreement gives OnNet USA the rights to all current and historical Major League teams, ballparks, All-Star teams and "jewel events" such as the home run derby. OnNet USA will also have rights to the official 2009 Major League Baseball regular season game schedule, enabling fans to simulate real seasons through actual game and series matchups.

The title is to be a free PC-based baseball game, expected to be available in North America on OnNet USA's GamesCampus games portal for the 2009 baseball season.

"It is an honor to be working with MLB to bring baseball fans a fully licensed online baseball experience," said David Chang, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, GamesCampus. "Baseball fans are so passionate about the teams they enjoy following, and now they will have the opportunity to play as their favorite team in a high-quality online game experience."

Pre-paid card publisher GMG Entertainment has launched a new line of currency cards for OnNet USA’s GamesCampus, K2 Network’s GamersFirst and Octopi’s PoxNora.

Of those partners, Octopi are probably the most interesting to be launching a currency card as it is one of their first major announcements since reacquiring their assets from FUN Technologies.

In particular, founder and CEO Dan Kopycienski said, “Octopi is pleased to partner with GMG Entertainment in order to provide our PoxNora players prepaid digital cards and exclusive content through retail establishments,” which implies that they will include exclusive items on pre-paid cards, something that GMG Entertainment have noted is a major part of their retail strategy.

”GMG is excited to provide consumers with even more offerings brought forth by our new partners,” said Rob Goldberg, Founder and CEO of GMG Entertainment. “GamesCampus, GamersFirst and oxNora are innovative suppliers of some of the industry’s most compelling online games content, and we are thrilled to launch their brands nationwide through top tier retailers.”

The Nokia Foundation (formed in 1995 to supports the scientific development of information and telecommunications technologies and promote education of the sector in Finland) has granted its 2008 award, worth 10,000 Euros, to Aapo Kyrola and Sampo Karjalainen, the founders of Sulake Corporation, developer of Habbo.

The award was presented at the foundation's scholarship awards ceremony on November 18 an event at which the foundation also celebrated the foundation’s 14th anniversary.

Kyrola and Karjalainen were selected for their “contribution to collaborative media and social networking.”

"The Habbo virtual world is loved by teenagers all over the world as an easy way to meet new people and keep in touch with friends. The design of the virtual characters is unique, and the constantly evolving features of the collaborative game have driven innovation in an area where competition is tough," said Henry Tirri, Head of the Nokia Research Center.

The recently launched Moondo "cross-gaming universe" from Funtactix is a intriguing proposition—an online world made of a variety of different games in different genres, in which the player's character, abilities and items are shared between.

To explore this concept fully, we talked to Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix, talking about his reason for starting the studio, cross-gaming`s benefits, and feedback so far.

Why did you begin Funtactix?

Sam Glassenberg: Funtactix is a small, two-year-old game studio. We wanted to take the core thrills of hardcore action games and share it with friends who aren’t hardcore gamers. Why should someone have to buy a $300 console or a $2,000 gaming PC and a $60 FPS to get the thrills of playing games based on concepts like capture the flag or team death match?

At Funtactix, we tease out the core ‘fun’ of these games and put it in a much simpler package you can play with your friends who aren’t hardcore gamers. There are no 20-key combinations: just a quick point and click entry into short game sessions that provide a colorful and varied multiplayer experience.

And that's Moondo?

SG: Moondo is what we call a cross-gaming universe—which means that for the first time, a casual gamer can bring their character and virtual items with them from game to game and across different genres of games.

For example, a power item that provides speed increases a player’s speed across all games in the universe—racing, shooting, sports—and games that haven’t even released yet. People no longer have to abandon an investment in a game when they to move onto another game.

Moodo doesn’t have cheesy flash games. It provides 3D multiplayer action served up in short game sessions that lets players move from game to game.

Google is shutting down its Lively embeddable virtual world just about four months after it was first announced, aiming to prioritize its core business.

Revealed in July, Google's Lively allows users to embed virtual rooms inside web pages, decorate them with graphic objects, and create avatars to interact with friends inside the rooms. "We launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways," reads a post on Google's official blog.

A brief statement on the Lively homepage states simply: "After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down Lively."

"We will shut down Lively on December 31, 2008. Embedded rooms in blogs and other web pages will continue to show an image, but users will no longer be able to enter Lively rooms and interact."

Originally, the service had also incorporated a planned API that would eventually allow users to embed games into Lively.

"Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it's the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people's lives," says the post on Google's blog.

"But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off. That's why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year."

According to Google, all of the project's staff will be relocated to other projects. The move is apparently motivated by the company's need to "prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business."

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

Online world firm Trion World Network announced the appointment of Kevin Beardslee as senior development director for its massively multiplayer online game co-developed with the Sci-Fi Channel.

Previously, Beardslee founded Carbine Studios, an NCSoft North America division, where he helped create and oversee the development for an unannounced MMO. Before that, he worked with Blizzard Entertainment as a lead animator on World of Warcraft.

Beardslee will work from Trion's San Diego studio on an original IP created as part of a collaboration with cable network channel and brand Sci-Fi. The partnership falls under Sci-Fi Ventures, the company's "portfolio of media and non-media businesses that leverage its brand outside of the television space."

Sci-Fi and Trion hope to create an "immersive cross-media entertainment experience" that invites the audience to participate in the developing storyline presented through a Sci-Fi Channel television show and a Trion-published game. Sci-Fi also recently announced that writer Peter Egan (The Dresden Files) will handle the script for the show's pilot episode.

“We are making terrific progress with the joint Trion – Sci Fi project and are proud to announce the addition of these two new key hires,” says Trion World Network's founder and CEO Lars Buttler. “Kevin and Peter both represent the pinnacle of their respective fields in game design and television writing, and their vast experience and creativity are powerful additions to our already talented project teams.”

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

Following the departure of Richard Garriott from NCsoft, the MMO-focused publisher has announced that its PC MMO Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa will be shut down February 28, 2009.

The news was delivered via the game's official site in a letter signed "The Tabula Rasa Team." The closure was pinned simply on a failure for the title to meet its financial targets.

"Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we've achieved that goal," it reads in part. "Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected."

From January 10 through the game's shuttering, subscription fees will be waived for all players. Despite the game's imminent demise, NCsoft promised, "We'll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while."

Furthermore, Tabula Rasa players who were already subscribed at the time today's announcement were made will receive a variety of perks relating to other NCsoft products, including three free months of City of Heroes and Lineage II, and upcoming beta access for Aion.

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

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section, including positions from RealNetworks, TimeGate Studios, Factor 5, and more.

Each job posted will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, downloadable console games, cellphone games, independent games, 'serious games', and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

[Each day, Worlds in Motion will be taking a closer look at individual virtual worlds. We'll start with a nuts-and-bolts overview, then move on to an in-depth tour, to be followed up with a conclusion-- all with the aim of bringing you all the essential info and details on each world in the rapidly-developing virtual landscape.]

We thought we'd look at one of the strangest browser-based MMO titles we've seen yet—Trukz, a persistent browser-based trucking simulation (really).