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...

THE SOCIAL TIMES — To be known as a "social game," games need to have a number of elements that encourage player engagement amongst friends.   Players need to be able to interact with their real world friends in many ways: they want to compete, cooperate, show off to and taunt friends. To better understand the ’social’ in social games, we put together a list of the 7 elements that should be included in every social game...

VIRTUAL GOODS NEWS — This week AdNectar announced the results of a recent campaign on Facebook for Jameson Irish Whiskey. The campaign introduced a new type of branded virtual good for AdNectar, one that contained an embedded link to a Jameson Facebook app that asked users to vote for the official Jameson drink of the upcoming St. Patrick's Day holiday. Casting a vote at the Jameson app adds an official Jameson "supporter" virtual gift to a user's profile, shaped like the user's Jameson drink of choice. As of this writing, over 100,000 votes have been cast. The AdNectar branded Jameson goods appeared both in social games that participate in the AdNectar network, and in adult virtual gifting apps like Pass A Drink and Drinks On Me...

MASHABLE — The Facebook platform game FarmVille now supports the Facebook Credits virtual currency. The popular online game uses two units of in-game currency: Farm Cash and Farm Coins. Previously, you could buy them with a credit card or PayPal. Now the game offers Facebook Credits as an option. Facebook Credits are the number-one option, actually. They’re the default payment choice, featured at the top of the list pictured here...