Major Korean internet provider NHN is making an entry into the European market. The company, which operates the ijji game portal and owns online game company Hangame, reportedly aims to establish its free-to-play online titles in the region, as fellow Korean-headquartered game operators NCSoft and Nexon have begun to do.

NHN has already made strides into Japan, North America and China; it also recently announced it would publish Webzen's FPS Huxley in the U.S. and Western Europe.

"Europe has tremendous growth potential that is too often overlooked by international MMO publishers," overseas business development head Dongmin Lee told GamesIndustry.biz.

Aside from the Huxley announcement, NHN has not further detailed its European launch plans or which of its broad suite of services, which in addition to online operations and games includes search portal Naver.

Lee continued: "We understand the opportunities the European market presents, and by meeting the unique requirements of European gamers, we believe we can offer them an outstanding service."

The call for submissions for the 2010 Game Developers Conference has opened and will be available through August 14th, for those game developers and businesspeople wanting to submit simple abstracts.

The pre-eminent annual conference dedicated to the art, science and business of games -- presented by Think Services, a division of United Business Media -- returns to San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center March 9th - 13th, 2010. Session proposals can be submitted via the official GDC 2010 Call For Papers website.

This year, the GDC (a sister event to this website) is continuing its successful three-phase submission system, introduced in 2008, easing the initial entry process and thereby allowing the submitter to have ample time to expand on their session proposal if selected to advance to phase two.

The simplified first-phase of the call for submissions reduces the entry form to session focus and attendee takeaway, along with basics such as biographical information and speaking experience.

The GDC advisory board - consisting of industry-leading figures - will review phase one submissions and determine who will proceed to phase two, at which point submitters will be asked to prepare a complete presentation plan.

In the third phase of the process, the advisory board will review the presentation plans and make the final cut. To read more regarding the submission phases, visit the official submission site. Guidelines for submissions can be found at the submission FAQ site.

Tracks at GDC 2010 include Audio, Business and Management, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts. Session formats this year include 20- and 60-minute lectures, panels, roundtables, one- or two-day tutorials and poster sessions.

For further information and to begin the submission process, please visit the official GDC 2010 Call For Papers website.

GDC organizers have also announced the addition of Ubisoft Creative Director Clint Hocking and Epic Games President Michael Capps to the Game Developers Conference advisory board, which guides the direction of the show, rates GDC lecture submissions and coaches prospective speakers.

Hocking, during his eight year tenure at Ubisoft, has worked as level designer, game designer, script writer and creative director on top titles including the original Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2. Capps is president of Epic Games, makers of the hit titles Unreal and the Gears of War franchise.

The duo join existing GDC Advisory Board members which include major game industry notables such as Maxis' Chris Hecker, Blizzard's Rob Pardo, Warner Bros' Laura Fryer, Bungie's Chris Butcher, Cerny Games' Mark Cerny, and Eidos' Julien Merceron.

The number one social game on MySpace is getting an iPhone app, as Mountain View-based Playdom announces Mobsters for iPhone today.

Most significantly, the company tells Gamasutra that its 13.5 million users can now play the game on either MySpace or iPhone seamlessly. This brings the company into more direct competition with social gaming rivals like Zynga, operator of rival title Mafia Wars.

Further, existing players of Mobsters on MySpace will be able to transition their progress to the iPhone version at launch.

But the company also tells us that it's adjusted gameplay in the iPhone version to account for the fact that the platform's less viral, and to allow those introduced to Mobsters via iPhone to still participate on the same level.

"For the pure iPhone players discovering the game for the first time, it’s a bigger game," Playdom product director Jesse Janosov says. "It's more content and more dynamic."

As more social game companies begin migrating and extending their content to the iPhone, it's sure to add a new dimension to the social gaming phenomenon.

Ubisoft launched UbiFriends, a gaming portal available on social network Facebook and the first project to come out of the publisher's internal development team at its San Francisco office.

The company debuted TickTock as its first title released through the platform, a free trivia game that pulls content from players' status update feeds to generate questions. In TickTock, players and their friends exchange Cherry Bombs, arming and disarming the explosives by answering multiple choice questions about each other.

Ubisoft built UbiFriends on Google App Engine, which it says makes web applications "easy to build, scale, and maintain". The company plans that its future games released through the portal will encourage similar interaction with Facebook friends and users' social graphs.

"We've been a leader in the art of making games for many years and we're happy to bring the Ubisoft experience to Facebook Platform," says Ubisoft's North America president Laurent Detoc. "Our first application, TickTock, is about leveraging user generated content to interact with your friends, and it's the first of many applications that we're building for our UbiFriends portal."

Today, Mind Control Software and Richard Garfield, board and card game design legend and creator of the seminal Magic: The Gathering collectible card game, have announced a collaboration to produce Mind Twist.

This title, for which only a teaser website exists thus far, is a head-to-head, free-to-play strategy game to be delivered to iPhone as an app and Facebook via Flash, and supported by microtransaction purchases of player-controlled armies.

Garfield and Magic alumnus Skaff Elias have also joined Mind Control's advisory board, promising future collaborations with the developer on other products.

The Way of Mind Twist

"I'm looking for games that are playable by a wide audience, fairly fast, a good amount of luck, a good amount of strategy, and something that feels more like a paper game but was still made with a computer," Garfield tells Worlds In Motion and sister site Gamasutra, describing Mind Twist and his move towards digital gaming.

"I'm trying to make the game more broadly accessible than a trading card game," says Garfield. "TCGs are often very intimidating because constructing decks is a difficult task. The competition in the area is such that players know that they're potentially getting into something that is very complicated and very expensive."

Former Blizzard North president and Diablo design lead David Brevik has taken on a new role at MMO publisher Gazillion Entertainment. He's now director of the company's Gargantuan development studio, where he'll lead development on the Marvel Universe MMO.

"I’m a huge fan of comic books, superheroes and MMORPGs, so the chance to lead the creative efforts for the Marvel Universe MMO is an amazing opportunity," Brevik says. "Gazillion’s mission to bring MMOs to the mainstream while maintaining the depth in gameplay that enthusiast gamers demand is something that deeply resonates with me."

Brevik spent seven years as Blizzard North's president, and officially was project lead, design lead and lead programmer on both Diablo and Diablo II, playing a key role in the 20 million-selling franchise. He's also credited with the launch of the Battle.net gaming service. Prior to joining Blizzard, he was a director at now-defunct Flagship Studios.

San Mateo-based Gazillion quietly emerged earlier this year with the revelation that not only does it now own formerly-independent NetDevil and Slipgate Ironworks, but that it also has a 10-year licensing deal with Marvel to do superhero games.

The partnership begins with Amazing Society's kid-friendly Marvel Super Hero Squad in 2010 (not to be confused with THQ's Super Hero Squad) and continues with this new Marvel MMO.

"As the creative and technical force behind the Diablo franchise and Battle.Net, David is an immensely talented game industry veteran who is responsible for bringing role playing games and online gaming more generally to an extremely large and thankful audience around the world," says Gazillion CEO Rob Hutter.

"We’re thrilled that he’s chosen to bring his vision and design leadership to the development of our landmark MMO franchise with Marvel."

GDC Austin organizers have confirmed the first of the Sept. 15-18 event's keynotes, with Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce and World Of Warcraft production director J. Allen Brack discussing operating challenges and lessons in "The Universe Of World Of Warcraft".

In the joint keynote, Pearce, executive vice president of product development and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, and J. Allen Brack, the production director on Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, will talk about the ongoing challenges involved with operating one of the world's most popular subscription-based MMORPGs.

After more than four years in development, World of Warcraft was released in 2004 and since that time has grown into a global phenomenon, in addition to garnering critical praise from reviewers and gamers worldwide.

Pearce is well-placed to discuss the game, being one of the original co-founders of Blizzard in 1991, and having worked on classic Blizzard Entertainment titles including Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Diablo, StarCraft, Diablo II and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. He's also overseeing Starcraft II's production.

Brack is responsible "for coordinating the efforts of the game's development team as it creates new content to keep the experience fresh and exciting for the global audience of World of Warcraft players, and previously worked at Sony Online on Star Wars Galaxies and at Origin on the Wing Commander franchise. At Blizzard, he helped created WoW expansion pack The Burning Crusade, and currently manages the production of patches and expansions from their initial conception through their release.

Pearce and Brack's joint keynote address will "specifically discuss the steps taken to create this online world, and the hard work and team coordination necessary to keep that world engaging and rewarding over its lifetime."

"World of Warcraft continues to attract more and more subscribers year after year and has changed perceptions of what online gaming can achieve," says Izora De Lillard, event director at Think Services Game Group. "An exploration of Blizzard Entertainment's enduring success in the online gaming space offers important lessons for all connected game developers interested in developing the next great MMO, casual game, or virtual world."

Presented by Think Services (also owner of Gamasutra), GDC Austin returns with three days of main conference content focused on connected games, including online games, virtual worlds, and social networking game play; and four two-day summits, including the Game Writers, Game Audio, iPhone Games and Independent Games Summits.

The event takes place at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas September 15-18, 2009, and early registration deadlines end soon - more information is available on the official GDC Austin website.

NYC-based casual/advergaming developer Arkadium announced its acquisition of Advergame.com and re-launch of its gaming portal GreatDayGames.com.

The studio believes that picking up Advergame.com will help it "redefine advergames to brand marketers and online publishers worldwide". It claims to reach over five million monthly unique users with more than 250 Flash games presented through sites like GreatDayGames and other branded portals, or "Arenas".

Arkadium also says it serves over 120 million page views through the Arenas, keeping users' attention for an average of 20 minutes with each sessions. Its arena clients include ABC, ESPN, Sony, CBS, Lifetime, and many others.

The acquisition and launch come as Arkadium rolls out a new set of customization, communication, and behavioral features desgined to attend to casual gamers, such as a Loyalty System API that publishers can use to "incentivize and drive traffic towards revenue generating activities".

[Kicking off Worlds In Motion and Gamasutra's Casual Connect coverage in association with casual game website Gamezebo, Nintendo's Tom Prata talks about the 300 million active gamers worldwide, and "for every two players... another one waiting to join."]

Rising development costs and increased competition, combined with pressure to lower price points and decreased profit margins, have created the perception in many quarters that right now is the hardest time to be a game developer in the history of the medium.

However, it's a position that Nintendo of America's Senior Director of Project Development, Tom Prata, doesn't agree with. Speaking at Casual Connect, a three-day conference in Seattle geared towards the casual games industry, Prata said that there's still a lot of room to grow - provided developers are willing to follow two basic tenets: focusing on quality, and going after what is different.

In recent years Nintendo has taken a particularly radical approach to "going after what is different" by distancing itself from the technical arms race and expanding the video game market itself to bring an assortment of non-traditional gamers into the fold.

Based on Nintendo's internal research, 30 million people have become active gamers over the past 2.5 years. That same research shows that there are currently 300 million people playing handhelds and consoles around the world, yet Nintendo says there are still another 150 million people with the potential to be gamers if they were just given the right games.

"Think about that," Prata emphasized. "For every two players around the world, there's another one waiting to join."

Palo Alto-based virtual economy data platform announced Twofish, a new addition to the company's EasyElements product that introduces item and store management.

The EasyElements application toolkit is designed to simplify the setup of virtual marketplaces in social networks, online games, and virtual worlds. It also provides reporting and analytics tools that allow users to test and refine pricing, scarcity, currency, and content pipleline decisions.

According to Twofish, ItemStarter enables companies to launch a store without any custom development. Developers input their inventory into a CSV file and upload it with API, which will make storefront components ready to use in real-time.

The storefronts include skinnable and embeddable client-side HTML and Flash code, end-user notification panels (My Items, Gifts Given, etc.), and item and gift stores with integrated crrrency support. Twofish also notes that ItemStarter provides sales/currency/catalog/user data, e-commerce reports pre-integrated with Googly Analytics, and access to the Elements Analytics framework.

"ItemStarter gives developers for Facebook or any other virtual ecosystem the fastest, simplest way to set up and track virtual items, with full access to Twofish Elements’ robust analytics framework," says Twofish president Lisa Rutherford. "We’re excited to bring the developer community the easiest and most comprehensive tools for virtual economy monetization available, anywhere."

Advertising network Adknowledge announced its acquisition of KITN Media, which owns Super Rewards, one of the largest virtual currency monetization platforms for online games and social network applications.

With Super Rewards, developers can offer virtual currency to consumers who view ads or sign up for advertising offers. That currency can then be spent on virtual goods or other services in more than 1,000 online applications, including iPhone apps, Twitter games, and Facebook offerings (five out of the six largest virtual currency Facebook applications work with Super Rewards).

Adknowledge works with more than 50,000 advertisers and 1,2000 developers to provide banner ads on social networking sites, delivering over 700 million banner impressions daily. Its acquisitions in the past two years also include similar social media and advertising related companies like MIVA, Cubics, Lookery, Mediarun, and Adonomics.

"This is a significant step forward for the social advertising industry," says Super Rewards co-founder and CEO Jason Bailey. "The acquisition combines the strengths of both companies to create an unrivaled monetization vehicle for social application developers. We will be a single company offering developers access to a monetization program for virtual currency, offer redemption, and banner representation."

He continues, "The Adknowledge network will bring sophisticated targeting technology, an international presence, and more advertisers to Super Rewards, creating more choices for our consumers and more revenue for our developers. It's a win all the way around for advertisers, developers and consumers."

Adknowledge's CEO Scott Lynn adds that the combined companies are expected to earn some $250 million in revenue this year, according to a report from marketing and advertising site MediaPost.

[At Seattle's Casual Connect event, Facebook's Gareth Davis has been talking about specific tips and tricks for what to do -- and what not to do -- to succeed with games on the popular social network.]

Social networking platforms like Facebook offer ways for casual game companies to break away from the traditional try-before-you-buy PC download model.

But developers who think they can simply port their existing games over to Facebook and expect them to do well will be disappointed according to Facebook Platform Manager Gareth Davis.

Speaking at Seattle's Casual Connect conference, Davis said that developers should instead design games that leverage Facebook's unique powers as a social platform.

"If you look at the history of games from the games we played as kids to the first board games that were invented thousands of years ago ... to earliest video games like Pong, people have played games socially. All these games are multiplayer. You can't play them by yourself. Try playing hide and seek by yourself; it's not much fun."

A brand-new version of classic online RPG Ultima Online is in the works for the Chinese market, thanks to a collaboration between Electronic Arts and Chinese online game company NetDragon.

EA's Warhammer Online house, Mythic, will support NetDragon in developing a version of the seminal game specifically for the Chinese market, and NetDragon will also maintain licensing rights to operate the game in Hong Kong, Macau and India as well.

"Capitalizing on our ability to create a strong online gaming experience, we are confident that Ultima Online will be a success in China and will also achieve remarkable results in the other markets where we'll operate the game," said NetDragon chairman and CEO Liu Dejian.

NetDragon develops and operates a broad portfolio of MMOs in China, including Zero Online, Tou Ming Zhuang Online and Heroes of Might and Magic Online, among others.

EA is among many U.S. video game publishers currently looking to new business models and online games in Asia as a way to drive global expansion and thrive in the economic downturn. It's been estimated that about half Activision Blizzard's World of Warcraft users are in China -- and with that game currently down for all of the region's users with no set uptime date in sight, it's an opportunity for other publishers to gain some of that marketshare.

Online gaming in China grew by 61 percent in 2008 alone to a staggering total $2.75 billion in revenue, according to research group Niko Partners -- 77 percent of which comes from MMOs. And the online market continues to swell, projected to reach $8.9 billion by 2013.

"Ultima Online is a well known EA property and we're delighted to bring the game to fans in China, Hong Kong, Macau and India," said EA Asia president Jon Niermann. "NetDragon is a proven partner and we're confident in their expertise to build and operate a great gaming experience for players."

Payment and promotions solutions provider TrialPay announced an "enhanced monetization platform" targeting publishers of social applications, casual games, and virtual worlds.

TrialPay's offer-based monetization model has attracted over 40 million consumers in the past two and a half years across sites such as Gap, Best Buy, and Netflix. With the service, users earn virtual currency for free by purchasing products from advertisers like Discover, Starbucks, and Sony.

Game publishers like Zynga, Playfish, Eidos, and Acclam Games also use TrialPay, and can process credit card transactions, run in-game promotions, and provide other purchase incentives with it. Their customers can choose an offer from over 2,000 major advertisers with the platform.

The company says social gaming and application publishers can use its platform's new capabilities to consolidate multiple payment types such as PayPal and credit cards onto a single platform. They can also measure the success of their campaigns using provided data, and take advantage of a transaction tracking system designed to reduce fraud and revenue loss.

"The new capabilities we’ve added to our platform enable social app and game developers to maximize profits from their user base," says TrialPay’s CEO Alex Rampell. "We offer the industry’s highest payouts, most comprehensive set of capabilities, and the highest quality network of premier advertisers. Our high-quality model instills confidence in consumers which in turn leads to higher conversion rates, order values, and total revenues."

Sony Online Entertainment's free-to-play MMO Free Realms is 'close to' 5 million registered users, revealed Sony Online president John Smedley, speaking in a Worlds In Motion/Gamasutra-attended panel at Comic-Con International San Diego 2009,

And DFC analyst George Chronis estimated that right now, 33 percent of United States game revenue comes from MMOs.

Launched this past April, Free Realms reached a player base of 1 million in only ten days, and has seen a series of statements from SOE as that figure has ticked up by the million every several weeks.

Smedley credited the success to the free-to-play business model, which relies on microtransactions for revenue.

The company has also implemented officially-sanctioned microtransactions into its existing subscription-based games EverQuest and EverQuest II, and the exec said user adoption has been strong. “We now have 34 percent of our EverQuest II users using microtransactions,” he said, with the original EverQuest at a slightly lower percentage.

The figures came after several statements by fellow panelist Min Kim, of South Korea-based MMO developer Nexon, which relies heavily on the free-to-play model with its games like Maple Story.

MySpace owner News Corp. says it sees gaming as a crucial element to the social network's expansion, and is considering opportunities to attract video game companies into launching their titles on the site and growing MySpace's current game offerings.

"MySpace is and will be more in the future a gaming platform, a space for people to meet and play games," said News Corp.'s chief digital officer Jonathan Miller at the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference, according to a report from Reuters. Though he didn't mention any specific studios, he added that the media conglomerate could make acquisitions to advance the platform to that point.

This increased emphasis on gaming comes several months after News Corp. ousted MySpace's co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, installing former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta and its own management team. The company also recently laid off more than 400 workers, or 30 percent of its staff, in the U.S. as part of its efforts to cut costs.