Deadliest Catch coming to Facebook, developer sees future in branded social game

The hit TV series from Discovery Channel, Deadliest Catch, will soon go viral with an unnamed Facebook game developed by Hive Media. According to Hive Media CEO Brian Laing, the game will allow players to navigate treacherous waters while crab fishing on the Bering Sea, complete with a "crab count leaderboard."

Laing hopes that the brand attachment will help Hive Media's game turn out to be a winner on Facebook. "I think you can still be successful on other platforms, but Facebook is the one place to start, Laing said to Brand-e. "Once you have a winning game there, you can look to bring it out on other platforms."

As for the future of social gaming, Laing thinks, "[more branded social games will] bring in new game types and game mechanics that will be specifically tied to those brands." "I think when this happens we will start to see game mechanics combined to form very interesting games."

Deadliest Catch for Facebook is slated for a November 2010 release and will show up after the release of Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos November 9, 2010 on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii.

While branded Facebook games surely are taking off, whether they'll drive innovation has yet to be seen. Hopefully there is still room for originality in social games, but don't tell Zynga that.

It'sa Mario Party!

One of the world's most popular characters is turning 25, and our friends at Nintendo invited us to a party at the Nintendo World Store this weekend to celebrate with Mario and his creator, Shigeru Miyamoto.

Hundreds of Nintendo fans lined up in front of the newly-relaunched Nintendo World Store, some donning costumes from Mario to Luigi, Princess Peach and even Fire Mario. Nintendo treated their devoted fans to a cake-cutting ceremony with Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime who had the crowd rocking as he introduced Nintendo's famed developer and father of Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto, to take the first slice of the Super Mario-inspired cake.

Miyamoto and his Mario games have sold over 210 million units, and still has games coming out on the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, including the upcoming Super Mario All-Stars on Wii.

It's always great to see the smiles and throngs of fans come out for a gaming event, and we hope more gaming companies take a cue from this Mario party. Head over to Joystiq for more coverage of Mario's 25th Anniversary party!

There are 12M monthly paying Facebook gamers in the U.S.

When compared to the 700 million total Facebook users, this seems minuscule. But remember that under 12 million World of Warcraft players pay $15 every month. PayPal says in a new infographic that 12 million monthly Facebook gamers in the U.S. pay for content in their favorite games. And here's something else: Of those 12 million monthly players, 58 percent of them spend between $10 and $50 on games like FarmVille.

But a tiny 9 percent of that 12 million, just over 1 million, spend $50 or more on Facebook games every month. It was previously estimated that anywhere from 1 to 3 percent of all Facebook gamers pay big every month for new goodies in their games. Then according to PayPal, U.S. Facebook gamers make up just about two-fifths of a percent of the globe's "whales," a casino term that's been applied to these big social spenders.

However, this number was sourced from U.S. social gamers alone, and Facebook games are a global industry. So, you can imagine that the percentage of paying players worldwide is even larger. The oft-sputtered and mystical "1 to 3 percent" has been demystified, at least in the U.S. (judging from PayPal's findings). As the number paying Facebook gamers increases, it'll be interesting to see not only how (or if at all) prices change for Farm Cash, but how pricing changes for hardcore games.