EA free-to-play studio GM leaves to head Ngmoco Sweden studio

Yet another EA executive has left the company for a competitor in the casual/free-to-play games industry. This time, former general manager of EA's free-to-play developer Easy Studios, Ben Cousins (pictured), has left to lead Ngmoco's Sweden studio in the making. According to Gamasutra, Cousins left EA back in March of this year, and just now has announced his association with Ngmoco's upcoming Stockholm studio, which will focus on global free-to-play titles for DeNA's Mobage Network.

The games industry is at an inflection point," Cousins explained to Gamasutra. "These platforms are bringing hundreds of millions of new gamers into the fold, and at the same time existing core gamers are discovering the innovation, immersion and connectivity they bring." This is the third time in just under two months that a former EA executive has left the company and later joined a competing free-to-play games provider.

Even Bing Gordon, former EA CCO and now an investor in Zynga, has shared his personal advice for the giant to survive amidst the rapidly shifting games scene. Times are uncertain for everyone in social games. While EA has enjoyed a distant second to Zynga for some time when it comes to Facebook games (and possibly even in wealth), it stills holds some valuable brands like Monopoly and its EA Sports games. So, all is far from lost. Though, it might be time to consider Bing's business-wise words.

Diamond Dash creator: 'Asynchronous play is not going to go away'

Well, there goes my dream of a real-time Diamond Dash battle with hundreds of crashing fireballs. Wooga CEO Jens Begemann (pictured) laid it out for everyone who had questions about social gaming at his GDC Europe keynote recently. Begemann said, "Social games are not here to take today's gamers and make them Farmville farmers," Gamasutra reports. The CEO of currently the second most popular Facebook games creator (according to AppData) also pointed out that, "Asynchronous play is not going to go away."

What he seems to imply here is that hardcore social games aren't going to overtake Facebook and other platforms. Social games weren't designed for your friends that play Call of Duty for 30 hours a week, but for those who pop into FarmVille for a few minutes to check on their crops every day. This is exactly why Begemann thinks that asynchronous gameplay (think of how friend interaction is handled in Empires & Allies as opposed to CivWorld): It caters so much better to casual spurts of play.

Begemann is of the belief that the majority of the 270 million plus Facebook gamers play for just minutes a day, and judging from a recent study regarding FarmVille players he's probably right. So, there are a great amount of Facebook gamers that play hardcore games like the recently-released Edgeworld by Kabam or Kixeye's Backyard Monsters. But, in Begemann's eyes, they pale in comparison to the growing casual Facebook player base that just doesn't have the time or care to check in on whether their base was invaded in the middle of the night.

"Social games are parallel play," Begemann said during his keynote address. "People want to play for themselves. Sometimes, they may walk up to the other and either help or destroy what the other has been doing." Considering wooga--which just launched Magic Land--is the second largest social games developer right now, it's hard to argue with that ideology. However, the hardcore approach is doing just fine for a select few companies. If anything, Facebook is proving to be quite the microcosm of the games industry at large.

Disney-owned social game studio Three Melons suffers layoffs

Disney has had quite a time getting used to the whole "Facebook" thing. The next of the company's troubles--or rather its employees--is a series of unfortunate layoffs that have struck Three Melons, one of Playdom's social game studios. Gamasutra reports that, according to an anonymous source, "30 people and counting" have been affected in the Buenos Aires, Argentina-based studio.

Playdom, snagged by Disney last year for around $763 million, bought Three Melons just months before being acquired, and conducted the layoffs through Disney's Interactive Media Group. "As part of our ongoing strategy to best position the Disney Interactive Media Group for success in digital media, we continually evaluate and refine our business," Disney told Gamasutra. "As part of this process we've made targeted layoffs within the division."

Three Melons, known best for a Facebook game called Bola! that enjoys 1.9 million monthly players, employed 45 people in March 2010, according to Gamasutra. (We sure hope the studio made quite a bit of hires before today's terrible news.) This news follows analysts recently playing doomsayer over Disney and Playdom's place in the social games business. Disney didn't reveal what will happen to Three Melons after the layoffs were through, though some "good luck" wishes are in order.

With layoffs beginning within its network, how do you Disney and Playdom fit into the larger social gaming puzzle? Which Disney or Playdom game would you miss most on Facebook?

Putting the 'face' in Facebook games: Arkadium and Image Metrics

Arkadium is likely best known on Facebook for games like Mahjongg Dimensions and Cooking Mama, but that's about to change. Thanks to a brand new partnership with Image Metrics, an animation studio best known for the facial capture technology it provides to traditional game developers, your own face could be the star of Arkadium's next Facebook game.

During an interview with Gamasutra, the new found duo revealed Portable You, a new toolset for Facebook game developers--starting with New York City-based Arkadium--to allow players to include their own face as the centerpiece of their avatars. Using a simple webcam, Portable You, embedded in any given Facebook, could create a 3D rendering of your head and face.

By the way, that picture to the right is a 3D reproduction of an actress's face done by Image Metrics--it's not real. But we doubt Portable You will be as powerful. This is especially considering the technology was bought through an acquisition of Big Stage earlier this year.

"Mostly we've been the user of our own technologies," Image Metrics CEO Robert Gehorsam said to Gamasutra. "But we've also really come to realize and believe there's a major shift going on in how people want to represent themselves, express themselves and communicate online, starting with creating your own character in a game."

"We work directly from video; we don't require any kind of markers, or the special makeup," Gehorsam told Gamasutra. "We can go directly from a video screen or from a single image to 3D animation... through a whole bunch of equations that recognize the face in a 2D context. It's not a photo; it's really 3D."

Sure, this has the potential to introduce a never-before-seen level of immersion to Facebook games. The idea of representing or expressing yourself more accurately than ever has plenty of charm. But the more pressing question I have for Image Metrics is: How well does Portable You render beards?

What do you think this type of technology means for Facebook games in the future? Would you ever place a 3D version of yourself into your favorite Facebook games?