THE SOCIAL TIMES — If you have or are planning to get into social game development on a tiny budget, you need to get financially creative and learn to bootstrap. The practice of bootstrapping a startup is essentially an act of balancing costs against revenues, and it applies as much to a game development studio as any other business. Do it right, and your business will likely survive long enough for your games to have a chance of success -- something that’s a necessity given how many small studios and bedroom entrepreneurs are jumping into the social game development space. Here are a few tips on bootstrapping as relevant to game development...

THE SOCIAL TIMES — EA is promoting Saboteur, one of their newest console titles, by creating a Facebook quiz application that involves videos and content from the game. The application isn’t a full-fledged game, but does have a quiz element and leaderboards to compete with friends. There are also prizes to the top players, including an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas. The game basically asks you to identify details from promotional videos or photos from the Saboteur console game...

GIGAOM — When it comes to apps, the iPhone platform is now bigger than the Facebook platform, according to a report by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company. Flurry said today that Apple’s iTunes App Store has over 140,000 applications compared to 60,000 apps available on the Facebook platform. "Since the App Store launched in July 2008, 35,000 unique companies have released applications, which translates to 58 new companies launching apps each day," Furry said in its Smartphone Industry Pulse report for February 2010...

INSIDE FACEBOOK — WildTangent is continuing its foray into Facebook and social gaming, now providing brand-advertising offers on developer Playdom’s Facebook app, Tiki Farm. The tropical island farming game is beginning to feature brands that sponsor particular existing virtual goods in the game. Instead of a user paying for the good, they watch a video or somehow engage with an ad to get it. The first available is an orange tree, sponsored by Herbal Essence. Although WildTangent has been offering a variety of sponsored advertising services for casual games, massively multiplayer online games, and other web-based games, it began focusing on tighter integration of virtual goods recently with the launch of BrandBoost...

INSIDE FACEBOOK — In the frozen void of space, a now derelict mining vessel has had a communications failure. Unfortunately, for engineer Isaac Clarke, the USG Ishimura isn’t quite so derelict after all, as its inhabitants are now the skittering, the lumbering, and the grotesque horrors that hail from the deepest corners of the galaxy. This, of course, is the basic premise behind the sci-fi, survival horror game, Dead Space from Electronic Arts’ studio, Visceral Games. As a popular title among the horror genre, the folks over at Visceral are looking to make the next one even better, as they work to spark up some buzz for their next deep space adventure...