We mentioned an Outspark appointment last week—and even interviewed the appointee, new CBO Paul Thind—but the company (an MMO publisher) has just announced another appointment, that of Victor Wachter as the company's Director of Community.

Wachter is to work with Outspark's "growing user base of more than 3.3 million"—not that we know if by "user base" they mean active users or registered accounts, offhand—and previously served as Online Community Relations Manager for Cryptic Studios (launching the community websites for Champions Online and Star Trek Online).

Before that, he lead community relations on PlanetSide for Sony Online Entertainment and Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach for Turbine.

"Victor is a great asset for the Outspark corporate team and community members to have on board," said Wilson Kriegel, vice president of marketing and business development of Outspark. "We are currently renovating Outspark's virtual playground and Victor will be an integral part of our growth."

Free-to-play browser-based virtual world Planet Cazmo has announced that the they are currently running a virtual concert series in the teen and tween orientated world. The series features five artists from Sony Epic Records and Interscope Geffen A&M Records.

Concerts occur on each Saturday of the month, beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and replaying each hour until 9 p.m. EST; the concerts are to take place in a virtual concert arena, with the musicians to appear as animated characters miming (our word, not theirs) to recordings of their recent releases.

Artists to appear include The Clique Girlz and Soulja Boy.

“We designed Planet Cazmo to serve the audience that is graduating out of Club Penguin and the other virtual worlds for children. This concert series, with top artists who appeal to a more mature audience, is part of our strategy to appeal to kids aged 10 – 16,” said Mike Levine, Founder and CEO of Planet Cazmo.

[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.]

It's been a while since we've taken a look at a Korean MMO in our Online World Atlas, despite their position as one of the most talked about segments of the MMO market. So let's take a look at one of the most famous of them – Audition, Nexon's "dance battle" MMO.

French publisher and Atari owner Infogrames has entered into a definitive agreement to fully acquire massively multiplayer online (MMO) game developer Cryptic Studios, with the former City Of Heroes developer acquired for $28 million and up to $20 million in sales-related incentives.

The deal, financed through bond issuance, includes all of Bay Area-based Cryptic’s propriety intellectual properties, tools, technology and current projects. Cryptic employs around 150 staff, all of whom will become Infogrames employees.

The company rose to prominence with the City of Heroes/Villains MMO for NCsoft, which has generated over $100 million in lifetime revenues and enjoyed up to 180,000 peak subscribers. NCSoft has set up its own studio to continue that title.

Cryptic is currently working on three MMO games, with Champions Online due to be completed in 2009, Star Trek Online in 2010 and a third unannounced title.

"The acquisition of Cryptic Studios brings to Infogrames an outstanding creative organization, with a proven track-record of success in the fast-growing MMO category," said Infogrames CEO David Gardner.

"Cryptic’s success is founded on leading-edge technology and the vision of a seasoned executive management team. I am impressed with the tools and technology that Cryptic has developed to make MMOs less expensive to build."

Gardner continued, "Creating vast worlds and interesting interactions can be very people intensive but with the use of Cryptic's toolset they have a proven way of cutting average production costs in half. This is exactly the type of company we wanted to acquire in order to build Atari for the 21st century."

"We share a common vision with Atari and their leadership team," said John Needham, CEO of Cryptic Studios. "With our game development and online platform technology skills, we’re very excited about the opportunities that this unique combination with Atari creates. I am committed to helping Atari grow into a leading online game company and look forward to being part of the team."

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

Online game publisher/operator IGG (Zu Online, Aurora Blade) has announced that the company has round of Series B financing with funding "in excess of $10 million" from two venture capital firms and an existing investor.

The funding was led by Vertex Group and joined by Hearst Interactive Media and IDGVC, and is intended to "bolster international capabilities" according to COO Kevin Xu. The funds are to expand sales and marketing in Asian and Europe, establish strategic partnerships with developers and publishers worldwide, explore new regions and languages, and to further the development of "more innovative and entertaining games in-house".

IGG launched its first MMORPG in May 2006, and has released and operated eight MMORPGS with eight million registered users to date.

“The global experience of Vertex will greatly bolster our international capabilities, and Hearst’s vast connection in the media world is the perfect support that we need to expand our business globally. It’s great to have our original funding partner IDG on board again as well.” said Xu.

Billing and fraud management software provider Vindicia has announced a new version of its hosted billing solution, CashBox. CashBox is "designed for recurring and one-time transactions," and includes a built-in tax engine and support for multiple processors, currencies and languages.

New features include integration with payment processor Global Collect (for access to global payment methods), metering (allowing pricing plans based on usage) and increased support for Chase Paymentech Account Updater, which automatically provides VISA/MasterCard cardholder account updates relating to upgrades, card expirations and account closures.

Merchants auto-cancel subscriptions if chargebacks occur—especially useful, with fraudulent chargebacks a constant threat for MMO publishers.

“Building and maintaining a loyal, satisfied customer base is job one for all online merchants,” said Gene Hoffman, chairman and CEO of Vindicia. “This latest CashBox release supports our merchants to that end by offering a compelling infrastructure on which to serve their own customers. We handle over 140,000 transactions per day and we continue to work closely with our merchants to ensure that our billing solution optimizes their customer acquisition and retention techniques."

Though it's not quite a virtual world, we thought this news was neat enough to share—GoAnimate, a "web 2.0" user-generated animation site, has announced a a licensing partnership with Capcom Entertainment allowing Street Fighter characters to be used on the site.

Street Fighter characters and assets are now available to be used in user-created animations, and the characters all include the ability to be animated in classic Street Fighter moves, such as dragon punches, hurricane kicks and fireballs.

The site is to offer eight characters at no cost and three premium characters that can be purchased with "GoPoints" (earned on the site from views) and "GoBucks" (purchased as a virtual currency). Dhalsim and Sagat can be acquired with GoPoints, and M.Bison with GoBucks.

“We are very pleased to announce this partnership with Capcom for their unprecedented Street Fighter property, especially with the highly anticipated release of Street Fighter IV,” said Stone Newman, Senior VP of Licensing and Business Development for GoAnimate.com. “Street Fighter, the pioneer of fighting games, has established itself as a household name among boys and girls of multiple generations. GoAnimate.com gives fans the chance to actively interact with their favorite Street Fighter characters.”

[And if you want to see the animation that we took our image from, you can see it here.]

We've been visibly big fans of Avaloop's unique MMO Papermint for quite some time, and though they've had little news to report recently—I think the last time we mentioned them was when lead artist Barbara Lippe detailed the game at ICE 08—the company has announced that the title has now entered open beta.

Papermint is a free-to-play, browser-based 3D MMO that combines casual gaming and social networking. Players create an avatar from "paper cut-outs" and can then play mini-games, design objects and decorate their personal space, and get involved in family networks, roughly described as " a web of fictional family relationships between players"—which can include the possibility of getting married and having children, which are in turn new players in the world.

Avaloop are a fully independent company working out of a "former local cinema" in
Vienna, Austria, and Papermint has been in development since May 2006 and was in closed beta since May 2008.

The game world is modular, consisting of an ocean with different islands created in collaboration with different artists and illustrators, which allows "microlocalisation of in-game communities according to geographic and thematic differences," with different islands for nationalities or common interests.

"Papermint is 100% pure brash indie spirit," said Lippe. "Two and a half years of intense effort, sweat and tears and the unbreakable will to not to give up were the ingredients that enabled Avaloop, a small independent team in Vienna to create a truly innovative web 2.0 experience—with no investor money or any big publisher at hand! Papermint's unmistakeable flavour and immense potential has of course raised the interest of the biggest computer and media companies today—but Papermint was and is a true child of independence."

Sony has announced that the full open beta of online community PlayStation Home will be available worldwide on December 11. After ongoing closed beta programs, the initial public version of the service will be available as a free download starting tomorrow.

After considerable delays, the launch will allow all PlayStation 3 owners to experience the virtual 3D space by creating their own unique avatars, chatting with other users, playing mini-games and viewing streaming media.

Users will also be able to create their own communities by using the “Club 2” feature to create individual clubs for specific interests. To do so each “Clubhouse owner” will be required to pay an unspecified fee.

The service will launch directly from the PlayStation Home icon of the PlayStation Network column of the XMB (XrossMediaBar). Once in the Home environment, groups of users will be able to launch directly into online games.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe already offer themed environments for specific games, beginning with Ubisoft’s Far Cry 2. Similar spaces for Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Warhawk, MotorStorm and SOCOM are expected in the near future. Third party publishers such as EA, Midway, Sega and Atari have also expressed interest in similar promotions.

Energy drink company Red Bull was announced as the first non-games sponsor earlier in the month, with fashion label Diesel and furniture designer Ligne Roset also set to offer virtual clothing and items for download. Paramount Picture, Hexus TV and Eurogamer will offer video content.

"PlayStation Home is truly a promising network community service on the PlayStation platform, made possible with the powerful combination of PS3's overwhelming computational power and PlayStation Network that covers many countries around the globe," said Sony Computer Entertainment president and group CEO Kaz Hirai.

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

MMO technology company Simutronics and BioWare announced that upcoming massively multiplayer online PC game Star Wars: The Old Republic is being built with Simutronics' HeroEngine development platform.

The HeroEngine collaborative design platform allows for development in real-time, enabling teams in different geographic locales to build and play in a game world live on the server simultaneously.

The platform is also designed to provide "instantaneous" updates and changes to game environments, potentially reducing long MMO development cycles by negating the need for nightly builds.

Officially announced in October, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set 300 years after the events of BioWare's acclaimed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic franchise, thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, with the galaxy divided by war between the Empire and the Sith.

"Our goal was to partner with a platform developer that knows online gaming and virtual world development, and the team at Simutronics has an excellent track record in that respect" says BioWare co-studio director Gordon Walton.

He continues, "Their HeroEngine was specifically created for building MMOGs and it allows for a great amount of flexibility in the way our entire team collaborates."

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

Online world firm Trion World Network appointed two gaming industry veterans to executive positions -- Malcolm Dunne as senior vice president of Finance, and Dorothy Ferguson as vice president of sales.

Previously, Dunne was CFO for Eidos' U.S. publishing operations. He has also held positions at Electronic Arts and Capcom, serving at the latter as European finance director and Capcom Germany's director.

Prior to Trion, Ferguson was vice president of Sales and Marketing at NCSoft. Her previous work history also includes Maxis and LucasArts, where she was senior director of Global Sales.

The two appointments follow another recent new hire, Carbine Studios co-founder and Blizzard Entertainment vet Kevin Beardslee as the company's senior development director. He is currently overseeing Trion's massively multiplayer online game co-developed with the Sci-Fi Channel.

“Dunne and Ferguson are both experts in their respective fields with years of outstanding experience,” says Trion World Network's founder and CEO Lars Buttler.

He continues, "These new executive hires represent Trion’s continued growth and dedication to attracting the best talent in the industry at all levels.”

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

[This blog's owners are helping to organize the Game Developers Choice Awards again for GDC 2009, and for all game developers reading GSW, it's time to go nominate for Lifetime Achievement and other special awards for the big developer ceremony.]

The 9th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards has launched a call for nominations for its three Special Awards, including Lifetime Achievement, Pioneer, and Ambassador Awards, with nominating power for Gamasutra members.

Voted on entirely by game professionals, next year’s 9th Annual Award Ceremony will be hosted on March 25th, 2009 in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Center, as part of Game Developers Conference 2009.

As the first part of this year's voting process, three special Choice Awards - the Ambassador Award, the Pioneer Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award - are available for nominations after logging on with your main Gamasutra.com user ID. (You can register for free if you do not currently have one.)

These special awards honor individuals whose achievements have made an impact on games and the game community as a whole, and not necessarily only over the past year:

Independent Developer Klei Entertianment (Eets: Chowdown) has taken the unusual step of developing a free-to-play title, Sugar Rush, for Nexon America—the publisher's first MMOG developed by a western studio and targeted specifically for North American audiences—and Worlds In Motion talks to founder Jamie Cheng about the decision, including the perceived risks (and benefits) of entering the still nascent US free-to-play market.

What made you decide that you were going to go with the free-to-play model?

Jamie Cheng: Free-to-play is something that I harped on about even before I started doing downloadable. On my first year starting the studio it was already here and most people didn't realize it. Even in 2006—when MapleStory had already come in and was already making money. So it was something I always wanted to get into. However, I knew I couldn't just do it without any funding or any experience, so I held off on it. When I saw that opportunity—I was talking to Alex in a bar and I found out what he was doing—I thought that's my opportunity. It's a great, perfect fit for all of us.

Nexon is the publisher, Klei is the developer. If you think about it from a certain standpoint, they're the label and we're the indie crew that created the game.

It seems like it's much more secure route to take than to go with self-publishing.

JC: Oh boy. Self-publishing is totally not an option for anybody that's never done it before—for anybody who's not done a free-to-play game. I can't stress enough how much I've learned in the last year. It's kind of amazing. It's a really exciting business. There are so many variables that you can tweak—you can change the number of users, you can change the conversion rate, you can change the average return per user. Whereas in every other model out there right now there's only one thing you can change, which is the number of users—number of paying users, that's it.

Developer Gamelab (Diner Dash) and virtual world publisher The Electric Sheep Company have announced that their tween boy-orientated MMO Ridemakerz has entered closed beta.

Developed specifically for boys ages 6-12, Ridemakerz is a 3D racing MMO, and the closed beta is to demonstrate "the first playable driving experience, games and overall look, and marks the start of fine-tuning over the next few months to perfect the handling, as well as the environments and regions."

Users can build a "Ride" in either the real world—purchasing different body styles and paint schemes, tires and wheels, lights and sounds, and custom decals and accessories—or within the virtual world with " more than 649 million" possible combinations. A "real world" Ride can be made virtual and vice versa, with a " Make-it-Real" feature allowing a wish-list to be created that can be "emailed to parents or printed out for friends and relatives."

During closed beta, three regions are open for testing—The Open Road, where players can drive freely and watch videos of real car culture activities; Scrap Gulch, where players can investigate to find car parts, and the RZ Motor Speedway, a futuristic race track. Six games also will be tested, including two developed by Gamelab.

The world is also to feature an educational component and safe restricted chat, and is to launch officially in spring 2009.

"Before Ridemakerz boys have been overlooked in both real and virtual environments such as American Girl, Build-A-Bearville, Club Penguin and Webkinz," said founder and CEO Larry Andreini, " Ridemakerz is in a unique position to connect with boys virtually just as we do in the real world—through cars and authentic car culture. Our online experience is an extension of the interactive, off-line experience that boys have customizing 'Ridez' and learning about cars at home or in one of our 'shopz.' And while the boys are having fun playing, what they’re also doing is being creative, making choices, collaborating with friends and family, and building confidence."

Free-to-play creativity-orientated virtual world for children Shidonni has launched an open beta of its premium version, which introduces "an advanced set of creation tools and activities" as well as a set of features based on feedback the game received during its previous beta stage.

In the previous stage, over 30,000 children visited the world, which challenges players to create their own virtual creatures using drawing tools. According to their usage statistics, over 60% of users visited the games more than three times a week to create or play and care for their virtual pets.

Shidonni is has also announced the first set of partners and affiliates for the game, including Zazzle, Gimme5games.com and Ultimate Arcade.

"Shidonni supports and develops creativity and responsibility among children ages 4 and up in a fun environment that they create" said Ido Mazurski, CEO of Shidonni. "In a culture where everything comes ready-made, we are proud to launch a product based on values that promote kids' imaginations and thinking skills."

There developer Makena Technologies has announced that it is to run a holiday charity drive to support Child's Play, the games industry charity "to improving the lives of sick children in hospitals worldwide."

Members of There have bid on and purchased trees located in a "Charity Tree Park" located within the free-to-play virtual world and are now decorating them as Christmas trees, with all proceeds from the tree sales to go directly to Child’s Play’s forty-five partner hospitals.

Trees that members have bid on in Charity Tree Park will be on display until December 27th.

This is the third year There has hosted an in-world charity event and the second time that they have raised money on behalf of Child’s Play. The company is to also donate $10,000 worth of toys to Toys for Tots.

“There members have shown themselves to be incredibly generous during our holiday charity drives and we know that this year will be no exception,” said Michael Wilson, CEO of Makena Technologies. “Setting up a virtual tree park allows our members to give back while they showcase their creativity and holiday spirit, and we expect that the campaign and the mission of Child’s Play will really resonate with our community.”

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 Insomniac Games, Planet Moon, Activision, Telltale Games, and more.

Each position posted by employers 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, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

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

Outspark (Fiesta, Secret of the Solstice) really like sending out press releases recently, and here's the latest one—the announcement that they've relaunched Outspark.com as a community portal, allowing users to create profiles and friends lists "in order to share stories, user generated videos and more".

Makes sense, especially after they announced the appointment of a new director of community!

The site is to use the open API from YouTube to host and embed user generated videos directly, and are to roll out "additional video features" in the coming months. Other features on offer to users include the ability to "gift" premium cash items to other community members.

“It’s been our vision from the beginning to create an online playground where our community can play games, make friends and share online experiences beyond the games,” said Susan Choe, CEO and founder of Outspark. “The launch of the portal opens the door for us to implement a world of interactive features and tools that our growing community can use to experience the virtual playground we have created. In the near future, we can help other game publishers or even developers introduce their games into our portal.”

Another company that can’t ever seem to get enough of sending out press releases is OGPlanet. They’ve recently been running a series of events they wanted to let us know about, so in summary:

In Albatross18, every player who purchased certain items from the OGPlanet cash item store has been entered to win a chance to play the game with the producer of the game, Enrique Mendoza. Twenty-nine players are to be selected and will be allowed to ask him questions and compete against him for a chance to win an in-game club set. Players are also able to win “Astros”—OGPlanet’s in-game currency—in a currently-running fashion show.

In La Tale, players who reach level goals assigned based on their currecnt character level are to be rewarded with in-game items and the chance to win prizes such as Astros and an iPod Touch.

And finally, users can send flash-based holiday e-cards featuring characters from OGPlanet’s titles (specifically Albatross18, La Tale and Rumble Fighters) to give users a “unique, free way to wish loved ones a wonderful holiday season.”

"We're so glad for the strong community of OGPlanet gamers that has developed over the years," said Pauline Hwa, OGPlanet's marketing manager. "These holiday e-cards give our players a chance to share their enthusiasm for our games while spreading a bit of holiday cheer. We hope that all of our players will have a wonderful holiday season!"

MMO technology company Simutronics and BioWare recently announced that upcoming massively multiplayer online PC game Star Wars: The Old Republic is being built with Simutronics' HeroEngine development platform, and so we talked to Simutronics' executive vice president, Neil Harris, about the unique aspects of the engine, Bioware's decision to use it, and the potential it holds for the future development of the title.

How long have you been working with Bioware?

Neil Harris: We've been working with Bioware for a little over two years, but we've been unable to announce publicly until now that The Old Republic was the project that we were working on.

Why did they choose to work with you?

NH: They were actually very anxious to work with us based on a couple of things. We've known the people at Bioware Austin for many years, and they also had two employees at the time who were former employees of ours. As a result they understood the unique philosophy that informs how we developed our engines and how they facilitates online game development, so they were very enthusiastic when they heard that we had build a graphical MMO engine in the same style of engines we had built in year past. They actually started knocking on our door before we thought we were ready to enter the engine licensing business... you could say they kind of forced us into it.