Zynga and American Express are back together again in a new deal that will give prepaid card carriers ways to earn extra Farm Cash.

American Express, which has long been known for catering to high-end consumers, is moving downmarket. They’ve got a new platform called Serve, which is kind of a catchall service that supports many payment methods from traditional plastic cards with magnetic stripes to NFC to QR codes to basic online payments. The partnership with Zynga is meant to onboard new Amex customers and could give the credit card company the so-called FarmVille demographic.

“Zynga has a very large customer base,” said David Messenger, American Express’ executive vice president of enterprise growth. “This partnership isn’t for existing credit and charge card customers. It’s about trying to appeal to a new segment. These customers may be Millennials. They may be somewhat underserved in terms of banking. They may only use debit, cash and check.”

FarmVille players will be able to plant an American Express-branded tree in their farms. If they plant the virtual tree, they’ll be nudged to register for a prepaid card and American Express’ Serve program. Then after that, they can add money to their Serve account and activate the card.

The first five purchases of $25 or more with the card will earn users extra Farm Cash. Other rewards will probably be added later on and the program will probably eventually include more games too.

Zynga’s chief marketing and revenue officer Jeff Karp says whatever revenues the American Express deal brings will fall in under advertising. He didn’t say how much revenue the Amex deal might represent. About 8.7 percent of Zynga’s $321 million in revenue last quarter came from advertising. The rest came from virtual goods.

“This deal highlights how we can bring brands to life,” he said. “We’re blurring the lines between real world and virtual world.”

This isn’t the first time the two companies have worked together. Two years ago, Amex allowed Zynga players to earn exclusive virtual goods through their rewards program like purple cows, manx cats and virtual outdoor fountains. 

Is this Zynga’s next cash cow? It looks like FarmVille 2.0 is already in beta testing under the name ‘Big Harvest’ in the Philippines, a tipster tells us.

As you can see from the screenshot below, the game is way more three-dimensional, the crops are really lush and the graphics are just of a different quality level. There are several tweaks to the game play. Crops that are harvested can be turned into feed. Animals jump around after being fed. Players can take the milk and eggs from their animals and make pies.

Zynga declined to comment. “We don’t comment on what we may or may not be working on. What we can tell you is that we’re always looking for ways to bring players the best experience by listening to their feedback and continuously innovating on our games,” the company said in a statement.

Zynga has to be super, crazy careful with FarmVille. This game is the company’s crown jewel and still makes more money than any other Zynga game. Last quarter, FarmVille still produced 29 percent of Zynga’s online game revenue, according to an SEC filing this week. That’s $84.9 million in one quarter alone from Farmville.

Tinkering with the company’s biggest home run is a huge deal. There are risks to sequels so Zynga needs to pull this launch off perfectly. In the same SEC filing this week, Zynga revealed that Mafia Wars’ revenue declined by $26.5 million in the first quarter compared to the year before. This was partly because the game’s sequel Mafia Wars 2 apparently drew many of the “whales” (the people who actually pay a lot of money in these games) away from the original. But Mafia Wars 2 didn’t ended up retaining them.

However, if they are successful, Zynga will prove that it has truly enduring franchises. Earlier today, I wrote about another freemium gaming company called Nexon that has made some of its earlier hits produce more than $1 billion in revenue over several years. One of its earlier hits, Dungeon Fighter, has made more than $2 billion since it launched in 2005.

This is the big test to see if Zynga can do the same.

Draw Something, the game that could do no wrong now seems like it can do little right, at least according to the blogosphere. There’s been a string of stories from virtually everyone saying that the OMGPOP acquisition is “haunting” Zynga because Draw Something’s daily active usage is down to 9.1 million daily active users from its peak of 14.6 million daily active users.

It’s funny how the press turns (and we know this too well). On the day we broke the story that Zynga was about to buy OMGPOP for what turned out to be $180 million, Business Insider said that our rumored price range was way too low. When the company sold, they then wrote a story citing Flurry’s CEO that OMGPOP had left $800 million on the table.

But now, the story is totally opposite! “Interest is fading!” The deal was a debacle! This chart below from AppData is getting rehashed over and over again.

It looks dismal. But while Draw Something’s decline seems a little scary (as it should be), there’s a lot of context to keep in mind –

1) Zynga raised its bookings guidance by around $50 to 75 million for the year, mostly on OMGPOP. Zynga said late last month that bookings for the year would come in at between $1.425 billion to $1.5 billion, up from $1.35 to $1.45 billion. They said on the earnings call that the $50 to 75 million bump was mostly because of Draw Something. While that seems high, it’s not out of line if you look at other comparable company monthly revenues. Funzio was making $5 million a month at the time of its sale to GREE. Glu Mobile, a publicly-traded company, did $17 million in Android and iOS gaming revenues in the first quarter.

2) Games usually peak and then taper off in usage. But revenue sometimes goes in the opposite direction with optimization and improvement (like with Farmville). Zynga probably knows the natural lifecycle of freemium game better than most other companies. Games peak early and then taper down over long stretches of time.

Even hit games often contribute the majority of their revenue to the company after they peak. Farmville was still Zynga’s top game by revenue last quarter even though it’s several years old. It made up 29 percent of the company’s online game revenue, followed by Cityville which had a 17 percent share, according to an SEC filing today.

Here’s the life cycle of Cityville, Zynga’s top game on the Facebook canvas by monthly active users:

Here’s what Farmville looked like:

If you zoom out, here’s what Draw Something’s life cycle looks like. Kinda familiar?

True, mobile is a little bit different. The titles that were first to market like Angry Birds and Zeptolab’s Cut The Rope, have managed to last longer than your typical social game on the Facebook. There are also exceptions like Words With Friends, which has a very unusual curve and Zynga Poker. But life cycles for mobile games are getting shorter every quarter.

3) OMGPOP’s price may seem high, but the deal was far from the most aggressively priced one in recent social gaming memory.

Remember when Disney paid up to $763.2 million for social gaming startup Playdom in 2010? At Playdom’s peak, the company had 7.3 million daily active users. When the deal finally closed, they had about 5 million. Even if you exclude the $200 million earnout, Disney paid more than three times as much as Zynga did for one-half of the daily active users. And that’s factoring in Draw Something’s recent declines. (Note: We used to have a chart of Playdom’s aggregate daily active users in this story, but we had to take it out per requests from AppData’s owner Inside Network).

Or how about the time when DeNA paid up to $403 million for Ngmoco in 2010?  When DeNA won the bidding war against Zynga for this company led by former EA execs, they got 12 million registered users. That’s registered, as in people who touched Ngmoco’s Plus+ gaming network maybe one or two times (not people who used it every month or every day).

OMGPOP had peak usage of 14.6 million users every day. Up until now, Ngmoco has mostly been a source of costs for its Japanese parent as it only launched its Android-based mobile gaming network last fall. If they start materially adding to revenues, it won’t be until now or later in the year, two years after they were acquired.

Or how about the time when GREE paid $104 million for mobile-social gaming network OpenFeint even though it lost more than $6 million on $282,500 in revenue the year before? OMGPOP made about that much revenue per day when it sold to Zynga.

4) There are a lot of other conflating factors that have driven the stock downward over the past few months:

The lock-up period for Zynga’s employees ended a week ago, so now the company’s rank-and-file can sell their holdings. Pincus himself sold close to $200 million in stock at the beginning of last month through a secondary offering. Both Pandora and LinkedIn, which went public last year, matched or found new lows when they hit their critical lock-up dates.

Maybe there are some underlying concerns about where Zynga will find new growth as the company’s business on Facebook seems mature. Draw Something might tie a little bit into that as it’s part of Zynga’s mobile strategy, but it’s not just the game itself. It’s hard to envision a gaming business on iOS or Android that has the market share that Zynga has on Facebook. Furthermore, many standalone Android or iOS gaming companies trade or have been sold at somewhere between $200 million and 400 million.

At a $5.89 billion market cap, Zynga is aggressively priced for growth and is worth about four times its projected revenues this year. Meanwhile, Electronic Arts trades at not much more than what it will bring in revenue for this year. Zynga is also changing a lot internally as early employees, many of whom didn’t have a genuine gaming background, phase out. The company is now pulling in a lot of EA’s middle management. That could bring some creative firepower but it could also create internal culture clash.

But OMGPOP? That’s just one game. And the title’s decline, while fast, mirrors what you see with other hit games.

Zynga is taking yet another step away from its long line of casual sim “-Ville” games today with the launch of Bubble Safari. It’s an arcade game where a monkey named “Bubbles” has to shoot down pieces of fruit hanging above him to save his friends from poachers. If he matches several of the same kinds of fruit in a row, they’ll tumble down and get sorted into baskets by hummingbirds.

These bubble shooter games are not new to the Facebook platform. With the rapid rise of Europe’s King.com and Germany’s Wooga on the back of games like Bubble Witch Saga and Bubble Island, it’s not surprising that Zynga would eventually launch its own take on the genre. Notably, it’s also the first time Zynga is simultaneously launching a game to Facebook and its own destination site (in a sign that the company is really trying to diversify off the social network).

Like in Bubble Witch Saga and Bubble Island, there’s a map the player has to traverse as they level up. Zynga’s Bubble Safari has little touches here and there that try to differentiate it from the other games. There’s an “On Fire Mode,” where if the player successfully knocks out three matches in a row, they’ll get an explosive fire cannon that can clear out hazards like bee hives.

“None of the Match 3 games have this kind of explosive action and strategy that the ‘On Fire’ mode and boost bubbles bring,” said Mark Turmell, who is a senior creative director at Zynga San Diego and joined the company from EA last summer.

There’s also a lightning cannon that zaps gaps between bubbles, a sticky bomb that makes explosions from bomb bubbles last longer, a paint splat that repaints bubbles into the same color, a steel crush bubble that also eliminates hazards. There’s even a double rainbow bubble that connects colored bubbles together with “magical” rainbow bubbles. A “gravity” bubble is coming soon too. It will be able to take a curved path instead of a straight one. There’s a social element where friends can share bubbles with each other and weekly tournaments.

Then to make the game more challenging there are also hazards like beehives. If you accidentally hit them, a swarm will come after you. There are also “spawners” or special bubbles that can create more bubbles if you accidentally hit them.

Stepping back, Bubble Safari along with Zynga’s recent launches Hidden Chronicles, a hidden object game, and Slingo, a casino-style game, show how the style of gameplay on the Facebook platform has diversified over the last year and a half.

Draw Something has been a hot topic of late. About a month ago, OMGPOP, the company behind the hit game, was acquired by Zynga as the web gaming company attempts the migration over to mobile. The $180 million deal took Zynga’s daily user traffic up 25 percent, and even though Draw Something has been bleeding users, the motivation behind the acquisition circles back to Zynga’s transition to mobile. They bought talent, instead of trying to mimic it.

That, dear readers, is a Fly. But what about the game itself?

John and I sat down in the studio to discuss the merits of the game, if you can even call it a game. What is there to win? Sure, you and your friend could get to the 100-turn mark, and you may get enough currency to buy some colors or a bomb or two, but do you want to?

There’s no reward in Draw Something. As Josh Constine pointed out, people like to draw and people like to guess. That is the driver of success for games like Pictionary. But people who play games like to compete, as well, which is where Draw Something loses big time.

Not only am I not rewarded for what can end up being hours of game-play, but I find that most of my friends cheat. Maybe I have an abnormally unethical group of friends, but the temptation is there to simply write out words you can’t properly draw and cash in on all three coins, especially when there is no winner or loser.

As I said during Fly or Die, the game feels empty, which is why both John and I give it a die. Just wait and see — Zynga will use the OMGPOP talent to push out addictive game after addictive game, but Draw Something will be long forgotten.

Stepping back from remarks a few weeks ago that suggested that Zynga was about to go on a shopping spree, Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus said the $180 million acquisition of Draw Something-maker OMGPOP was a “rare instance.”

Although OMGPOP was certainly a step up from anything Zynga has ever done before, Pincus said it didn’t represent a change in strategy from last year. He said Zynga will continue to be “prudent and bottom line-oriented” in its decisions today during the first-quarter earnings call. That’s a change in tone from an interview with Bloomberg a few weeks ago when he said that he expected to do “a few” OMGPOP-sized deals in the next three to five years. His remarks helped send shares tumbling 13.9 percent from the day the story appeared.

Mostly because of the OMGPOP deal, Zynga raised its annual guidance to  $1.425 billion to $1.5 billion in bookings, up from $1.35 to $1.45 billion before. The company didn’t comment on how much OMGPOP will exactly contribute to Zynga’s bottom-line, but one might be able to infer from the guidance change that it’s anywhere from $50 to 75 million in bookings. Keep in mind though that this increase might include revenue not only from “Draw Something,” but other titles Zynga might be able to launch and cross-promote through the game.

Before OMGPOP, Zynga had mostly bought small teams in the $5 to 20 million range. In late 2010, however, Zynga bought a company called Newtoy, that was behind the hit game “Words With Friends” for $53.3 million in cash and stock. They were able to in turn increase their mobile users tenfold through the deal by the time they filed for an initial public offering. The OMGPOP deal helped Zynga raises its daily active users on mobile to 21 million in the first quarter, up from 12 million in the fourth.

Zynga has about $1.5 billion in cash and securities that it could use to buy companies, down from $1.9 billion at the end of last year because of the OMGPOP deal plus the $228 million it spent to buy its headquarters in San Francisco.

Here are Pincus’ full comments from the earnings call:

“We are happy to provide accurate expectations about our M&A strategy. The strategy hasn’t changed since the roadshow and as we’ve spoken to all of you – our primary focus — and the way we’ve built this business has been about organic development and growth of games that have led to a network that we have further leveraged to bring more successful games to market. That’s what you should expect to continue to drive growth.

Draw Something was the second major product line that we went out and acquired. It was a rare instance for us. We believed it was not just accretive financially, but we were excited about its growth and what this game meant for mobile-social gaming. It was a new experience that had a level of sharing that’s never seen before in gaming. It was setting new boundaries in social media and viral growth that hadn’t been seen before.

We saw a whole new phenomenon that is not only more exciting for mobile-social gaming, but we saw a property that very quickly becoming mainstream. We thought it would be synergistic to our network and infrastructure. We thought it would be more valuable to Zynga and that we could organically build from it.

It does not represent a change in our strategy or our approach to large investments in our data, analytics and hosting infrastructure.

At every point, we’ve been very careful, prudent and bottom-line oriented to make investments where we could connect the dots to an accretive return.”

Zynga’s revenues rose 32 percent to $321 million in the first quarter, beating analysts’ estimates of $316.8 million in revenue and earnings of 5 cents a share excluding stock-based expenses. Overall, Zynga posted a net loss of $85.4 million, mostly because of stock-based expenses. Excluding those expenses of $133.9 million, Zynga would have had earnings per share of 6 cents or $47 million. That would be down 38 percent from the year before, as Facebook’s 30 percent revenue share and infrastructure investment ate into the company’s margins.

The company said revenue growth was driven by the launch of games like Hidden Chronicles and Castleville and its increasing footprint on mobile platforms. Bookings* came in at a record $329 million, up 15 percent over the year before, and up 7 percent compared to the previous quarter — meaning Zynga didn’t see that seasonal decline in revenues that Facebook did. The company also raised its annual guidance to $1.425 billion to $1.5 billion in bookings, up from $1.35 to $1.45 billion, largely because of what OMGPOP will contribute to the company’s bottom line. Shares are down 1 percent in after-hours trading to $9.33.

What’s notable is how Zynga has gotten its user numbers up on a quarterly basis, even though gaming companies usually see seasonal trends that help them during the holiday season.

The $180 million acquisition of New York-based OMGPOP and maker of “Draw Something” helped. Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus said the game helped the company grow its mobile userbase to 21 million daily active users from 12 million in the fourth quarter. This makes Zynga the “largest mobile gaming” network on iOS and Android, according to Pincus.

Monthly unique users, which doesn’t double count consumers who play more than one game, rose slightly to 182 million from 153 million in the fourth quarter. Zynga’s number of daily active users rose to 65 million from 54 million in the holiday season. Monthly active users got a huge tick up to 292 million from 240 million in the fourth quarter.

In one other positive sign, Zynga’s number of monthly unique payers rose 21 percent quarter-over-quarter to 3.5 million. Most of the company’s bookings growth is coming from mobile platforms now, not Facebook. The iOS and Android platforms, along with Zynga’s recent launch of a new gaming destination, will help it decrease its dependence on Facebook. Facebook said yesterday that Zynga accounted for 15 percent of its revenues in the first quarter, including virtual currency purchases and advertising, down from 19 percent the year before.

The downside though is that average bookings per user are down on quarter-over-quarter basis to $0.051 from last quarter’s record high of $0.061. So like Facebook, user growth has compensated for stagnant quarterly growth in revenue per user.

Like for Google and Facebook, mobile usage is a mixed bag in the short-term. It converted more users into paying, but it’s also driving down some key financial metrics for Zynga. The company said the decline in average bookings per user was because mobile bookings per user is actually lower than it is on the web. That’s partially because of the game mix Zynga has with very casual, more advertising-dependent titles like Words With Friends and Draw Something. But the company added that its “Dream” games like Dream Zoo and Dream Heights monetize at similar levels to Zynga’s canvas games. Plus, Words With Friends has had a long lifespan, and continues to post record bookings every quarter even though its three years old.

“We think mobile is in the same place as where we saw the web in terms of business opportunities several years ago,” Pincus said. “We’re focused on getting the product right… and getting to where we can repeatably produce successful games. We’re excited about monetization opportunities on mobile, but with the advertising experience, it’s still very early days.”

One other thing to watch out for is the fact that Zynga’s lock-up period for employees will end about a week from now. That’s when the companies rank-and-file will be able to offload their shares. Zynga executives including chief executive Mark Pincus and chief operating officer John Schappert already liquidated some of their holdings earlier this month in a secondary offering. Pincus sold about $192 million in stock in the offering.

*Just to note: Bookings measure what users pay for upfront and revenues measure how they might consume that virtual currency or those virtual goods over time, especially if they play a game for months or years.

Here’s the release. We’ll be analyzing it as we go so stay tuned for updates:

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – April 26, 2012 – Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA), the world’s leading provider of social game services, today announced financial results for the quarter ending March 31, 2012.

•          Q1 record bookings of $329 million, up 15% year-over-year
•          Q1 revenue of $321 million, up 32% year-over-year
•          Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $87 million, down 23% year-over-year driven primarily by increased investment in new game development
•          Q1 non-GAAP EPS of $0.06 and GAAP EPS of ($0.12) 

Business Highlights

• Daily active users (DAUs) increased from 62 million in the first quarter of 2011 to 65 million in the first quarter of 2012, up 6% year-over-year.
• Monthly active users (MAUs) increased from 236 million in the first quarter of 2011 to 292 million in the first quarter of 2012, up 24% year-over-year.
• Monthly unique users (MUUs) increased from 146 million in the first quarter of 2011 to 182 million in the first quarter of 2012, up 25% year-over-year.
• Average daily bookings per average DAU (ABPU) increased from $0.051 in the first quarter of 2011 to $0.055 in the first quarter of 2012, up 8% year-over-year.
• Monthly Unique Payers (MUPs) increased from 2.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 3.5 million in the first quarter of 2012, up 21% sequentially.
• Zynga experienced growth in both mobile and web bookings year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, with the majority of bookings growth coming from mobile.
• Zynga added six games during the first quarter of 2012, including two titles on web-based platforms: Hidden Chronicles, our first game in the hidden object category, and Zynga Slingo, our first game in the arcade category. Zynga added four titles on mobile platforms: Scramble with Friends, Dream PetHouse, Dream Heights, and Draw Something, which we acquired in March 2012.
• As of March 31, 2012, Zynga held eight of the top ten games on Facebook, based on DAUs, including CastleVille, launched in the fourth quarter of 2011, and Hidden Chronicles, launched in the first quarter of 2012.
• In March, we launched the Zynga Platform, which includes Zynga.com (beta release), a new destination for social games, and Zynga Platform Partners, a program that enables third-party developers to publish their games through Zynga.

First Quarter 2012 Financial Summary

• Bookings: Bookings were $329.2 million for the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 15% compared to the first quarter of 2011 and an increase of 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011.

• Revenue: Revenue was $321.0 million for the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 32% compared to the first quarter of 2011 and an increase of 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011. Online game revenue was $292.8 million, an increase of 27% compared to the first quarter of 2011 and an increase of 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011. Advertising revenue was $28.2 million, an increase of 117% compared to the first quarter of 2011 and an increase of 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011.

• Adjusted EBITDA: Adjusted EBITDA was $86.8 million for the first quarter of 2012, a decrease of 23% compared to the first quarter of 2011 due primarily to increased investment in developing new games.  Adjusted EBITDA was up 28% from the prior quarter. 

• Net income (loss): Net loss was $85.4 million for the first quarter of 2012 compared to net income of $16.8 million for the first quarter of 2011. $133.9 million of stock-based expense was included in the net loss for the first quarter of 2012 compared to $14.5 million of stock-based expense included in the first quarter of 2011.

• Non-GAAP net income:  Non-GAAP net income was $47.0 million for the first quarter of 2012, a decrease of 38% compared to the first quarter of 2011 and an increase of 27% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011.

• EPS:  Diluted EPS was ($0.12) for the first quarter of 2012 compared to $0.00 for the first quarter of 2011.

• Non-GAAP EPS:  Non-GAAP EPS was $0.06 for the first quarter of 2012 compared to $0.11 for the first quarter of 2011 and $0.05 for the fourth quarter of 2011.

• Cash and cash flow: As of March 31, 2012, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $1.5 billion, compared to $995.6 million as of March 31, 2011 and $1.9 billion as of December 31, 2011. Cash flow from operations was $78.8 million for the first quarter of 2012, compared to $103.7 million for the first quarter of 2011.  Free cash flow was $43.8 million for the first quarter of 2012, compared to $53.4 million for the first quarter of 2011.

• Secondary offering: On April 3, 2012 Zynga completed an underwritten public offering of 49,414,526 shares of its Class A common stock. As part of the offering, all selling stockholders, as well as all officers and directors, agreed to lock-up agreements that extend the transfer restrictions on their shares until at least 90 days following the offering.  The principal purposes of the offering were to facilitate an orderly distribution of shares and to increase the company’s public float. Zynga did not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares in the offering.

2012 Outlook

As of today, we’re updating our outlook for 2012 as follows:

• Bookings are projected to be in the range of $1.425 billion to $1.5 billion.  We expect that growth will be weighted towards the second half of the year with slower sequential growth in the first half of the year.
• Adjusted EBITDA is projected to be in the range of $400 million to $450 million.
• Stock-based expense is projected to be in the range of $420 million to $445 million excluding the impact of equity awards that may be granted in connection with potential future acquisitions.
• Capital expenditures are projected to be in the range of $390 million to $410 million which includes the purchase of our corporate headquarters building in April 2012.
• Our effective tax rate for non-GAAP net income is projected to be in the range of 25% to 30%.
• Non-GAAP weighted-average diluted shares outstanding are projected to be approximately 880 million shares in the fourth quarter of 2012.
• Full year 2012 non-GAAP EPS is projected to be in the range of $0.23 to $0.29.

Zynga and Facebook are ever gradually trying to separate from each other. It’s working — sort of?

Facebook said today that 15 percent of its revenue in the first quarter came from either advertising or payments tied to Zynga games.* That’s down from 19 percent during the same time a year earlier.

About 11 of the 15 percent in revenue was from the 30 percent revenue share Facebook takes from transactions in Zynga games on the platform or advertising that Zynga directly paid Facebook for. Another 4 percent comes from advertising shown alongside Zynga content.

Facebook continues to emphasize that any bad blood between the two companies could hurt financial results. Zynga recently overhauled its site as a web destination for gaming that it hopes will attract users away from the Facebook canvas. The social network is still powering payments for the site, however, meaning that Zynga is still paying Facebook its 30 percent share.

“Zynga may choose to try to migrate users from existing Facebook-integrated games to other websites or platforms,” Facebook said in an updated filing for an initial public offering. “We may fail to maintain good relations with Zynga or Zynga may decide to reduce or cease its investments in games on the Facebook Platform. If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines for these or other reasons, our financial results may be adversely affected.”

Overall, Facebook’s payments and fees revenue is pretty much double what it was a year ago at $186 million, up from $94 million. It makes up 17.6 percent of Facebook’s overall revenue, up from 12.9 percent in the first quarter of last year. But this isn’t a perfect comparison since Facebook’s 30 percent revenue share for transactions on the canvas only became mandatory last July. Payments and fees revenue is basically flat on the quarter too.

*Note: There was a 12% figure that was widely reported a few months ago when Facebook first filed for an initial public offering. But that was Zynga’s share of Facebook’s revenue for all of 2011 and it excluded advertising bought by other companies that shows up alongside Zynga games.

Here’s the exact text if you want to read it yourself:

In 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, we estimate that up to 19% and 15% of our revenue, respectively, was derived from Payments processing fees from Zynga, direct advertising from Zynga, and revenue from third parties for ads shown on pages generated by Zynga apps. If Zynga does not maintain its level of engagement with our users or if we are unable to successfully maintain our relationship with Zynga, our financial results could be harmed.

In 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, Zynga directly accounted for approximately 12% and 11%, respectively, of our revenue, which was comprised of revenue derived from Payments processing fees related to Zynga’s sales of virtual goods and from direct advertising purchased by Zynga. Additionally, Zynga’s apps generate pages on which we display ads from other advertisers; for 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, we estimate that an additional approximately 7% and 4%, respectively, of our revenue was generated from the display of these ads. Zynga has recently launched games on its own website and on non-Facebook platforms, and Zynga may choose to try to migrate users from existing Facebook-integrated games to other websites or platforms. We may fail to maintain good relations with Zynga or Zynga may decide to reduce or cease its investments in games on the Facebook Platform. If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines for these or other reasons, our financial results may be adversely affected.

More big Facebook news from today:

Facebook’s Amended S-1: 901 Million Users, 500M Mobile, Paid $300M Cash + 23M Shares For Instagram

Facebook Buys AOL Patents From Microsoft For $550 Million In Cash

Rather Than Pay Off Yahoo, Facebook Built A Fortress 1400 Patents Strong

You Earn Facebook An Average Of $1.21 Per Quarter

Tell your friends to hit the App Store or Android market, there’s a new update for Draw Something out today with some cool new features. Now you can chat with friends while you play, save your drawings to your phone or tablet, and share those drawings straight to Facebook or Twitter. Zynga, who recently acquired Draw Something and its developer OMGPOP for over $180 million, hopes these social and viral improvements will restart growth as the app has started bleeding users over the last few weeks.

Despite Zynga’s notoriety for designing games to maximize addictiveness and the amount users spend, there’s been no tweaks to Draw Something’s virtual goods and uncompetitive style. Instead, former OMGPOP CEO and new Zynga Mobile New York General Manager Dan Porter told The Guardian the game was successful because “it’s very chilled, very zen”.

Chill and zen is nice, don’t get me wrong, but it can also get boring. Today’s update should liven things up. When you finish drawing or guessing you can send a comment to your partner. That’ll be great for cluing people into inside jokes or funny stories associated with your little masterpiece. Sadly you can also use it to just tell your partner “It’s Beyonce”. Zynga should probably scan comments for the word you’re drawing and not let you mention it.

Previously to share your drawings you had to screenshot and upload them through Facebook or Twitter’s apps. Now to make sharing easier and also get your friends to install the app, Draw Somethings lets you post directly to social networks, and your masterpiece will be accompanied by a http://drawso.me URL leading to the Draw Something app download page. Other new features let you pull down on your current games screen to refresh and see if it’s your turn yet, and let you undo the last line you drew.

While more social and viral is good, I still think it needs to make the game more challenging or interesting to regain the 2.5 million daily users it lost in the last two weeks according to AppData, which brought it from 14.6 million to 12.1 million DAU. Some other features Porter hinted at to The Guardian’s Stuart Dredge include limits on how long you get to draw, or creating a Draw Something game show you can participate in from your app. Personally, I think an occasional lightning round where you have to draw three different things in a minute would produce some hilarious sketches.

You can download the updates here: iOS Draw Something Free, iOS Draw Something (paid), Android Draw Something Free, Android Draw Something (paid)

Zynga is bolstering its brand advertising efforts by bringing on Julie Shumaker from RockYou as the company’s new vice president of North American sales. She’ll report to Jeff Karp, Zynga’s chief marketing and revenue officer.

The move should help cover at least one recent vacancy. The company’s global director of brand advertising, Manny Anekal, recently defected to mobile advertising startup Kiip to serve as chief operating officer.

Shumaker comes with several years of experience. She was a senior vice president and general manager at RockYou, one of the Facebook platform’s very earliest and notable social gaming companies. Before that, Shumaker ran sales and marketing for 4INFO and she was a general manager at Double Fusion, a gaming advertising startup. She also handled ad sales for EA in consumer products, automobiles, entertainment and beverages.

Even though RockYou was successful very early on, it was later eclipsed by Zynga and oscillated between being a social game developer and an ad platform. Despite RockYou’s shortcomings, Shumaker hopefully will be able to put her seven years of working in gaming and advertising to use at Zynga.

It’s a key time as Zynga is putting its weight behind a gaming destination off Facebook. With its own gaming platform, Zynga should be able to earn a greater revenue share from ads than it has historically. Last year, Zynga earned just $47.1 million or 5.7 percent of its total revenues from advertising. The lion’s share came from virtual currency sales.

Zynga has just released a new S-1 in connection with its secondary offering. Among the details: a confirmation of the $180 million sale price for OMGPOP that we’d heard earlier this week, and new details about how the company is planning to let employees sell shares bit by bit.

First, about those shares. The company is looking to sell up to 43 million shares (42,969,153 shares to be exact). Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus will sell 15 percent of his shares, which is worth around $227 million based on yesterday’s stock price. Pincus’ voting power post-sale will go from 36.5 percent to 35.9 percent, according to the filing.

Investors IVP, SilverLake, Union Square Ventures, Google, Reid Hoffman are also selling in the offering, as is board member Jeffrey Katzenberg. Owen Van Natta, General Counsel Reggis Davis, COO John Schappert and CFO Dave Wehner are selling shares as well (see chart below).

Other employees (larger shareholders) who hold an aggregate of approximately 114,000,000 shares will be released from lock-ups to allow them to sell shares, on closing of the offering. But these employees will still be subject to a blackout period and won’t be able to sell until after the company’s first quarter earnings release in the last week of April.

As we reported a few weeks ago, Zynga is trying to manage the lock-up period for employees that could negatively affect the company’s share price. The company says it’s doing this to “facilitate an orderly distribution of shares and to increase the company’s public float,” basically trying to avoid a situation that has happened to other companies with recent initial public offerings. Employees would dump stock all at the same time, and share prices would plummet as a result.

While Zynga’s plan gives investors and executives a way to liquidate relatively early, the fact that it locks them up for so long will also make it easier for employees to sell at higher prices.

Another interesting tidbit from the filing: we know Zynga bought OMGPOP, the maker of massive Pictionary-like hit Draw Something, as the company announced this week. In the filing, Zynga states that it bought the game developer for a “purchase consideration of approximately $180 million in cash.” On Wednesday, we’d heard that OMGPOP was sold for $180 million plus $30 million in earnout. It’s possible that the $30 million may be just be retention for the startup’s employees, which is why it is not mentioned in the filing.

The company also said that its top three games accounted for 83%, 78% and 57% of its online game revenue in 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively.

Zynga’s share price closed at $13.74 in yesterday’s trading.

In September, social game developer Idle Games launched on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, declaring that they were on a mission to become “the Pixar of casual games.” In other words, they want to make games that not only look good, but have an interesting narrative. The startup’s first title, Idle Worship, is a throw-back to Peter Molyneux and EA’s Black & White, except, instead of finding it on a PC, Idle Worship will make its home on that social network everyone’s talking about.

Like Black & White, gamers get to play the role of a god, lording over villagers on an island in whatever way you choose — you can be a vengeful god, or a forgiving one. Both in its first title, and in the games it plans in the future, Idle Games is looking to provide a better alternative to the stale social games already out there produced by the bigs like Zynga.

Idle Games was founded by Co-founder of Playdom Rick Thompson and COG1 Founder Jeffrey Hyman, who bring their collective gaming experience to a space sorely in need of some re-focusing on quality design and actual entertainment value. As social games mature, there is increasingly plenty of room for social game developers to target not only the casual games fans, but the MMO audience as well.

Since launching at Disrupt, Idle Games has been testing and tweaking Idle Worship to get it into fighting shape, and we’ve learned today that the Disrupt alum will officially be launching its flagship game into the wild on March 14th, after giving a sneak-preview of the game next week at GDC. Idle Games CEO Jeff Hyman told us that early engagement for its beta has been better than expected, with players logging an average of 20 minutes per session, with nearly four sessions per day.

What sets Idle Worship apart from other social games is that it offers synchronous gameplay, in which players can interact in realtime, collaborating with millions of other players. The team has also done away with the “friends bar,” so that players can connect with people they actually want to play with, instead of spamming friends with requests.

In anticipation of the launch of Idle Worship, the startup is also announcing today that it has hired Michael McCormick as Director of Game Design. Idle Games was able to steal McCormick away from Zynga, where he was Lead Game Designer for CityVille, which currently ranks second among social games, with nearly 47 million monthly active users (according to AppData).

It’s a big score for the young startup, as McCormick has more than 20 years of experience in game design, having previously worked at EA, Backbone Entertainment, Playfirst, and HumaNature Studios (where he was Design Director on MMOs based on DreamWorks movies).

McCormick will take the lead ahead of Idle Worship’s launch in two weeks, overseeing further development of the game, which has created its own proprietary social mechanics to connect gamers with both friends and strangers, enabling them to battle swaths of opposing (or friendly) gods in realtime.

As the team puts it, they are trying to encourage others to wage a “holy war agains social games that suck and/or aren’t actually social,” basing that on their proprietary distributed simulation platform that endeavors to combine an “unsharded” game world with synchronous and asynchronous mechanics. (Idle Games already has five patents pending.)

For more, check out Idle Games at home here, and stay tuned for more on Idle Worship.

Is Zynga going to leave Facebook to start its own site for gamers? Whispers about such an attempt have circulated for years, and today we have an answer: yes and no. Yes, Zynga is starting its own site for games. But no, it’s not leaving Facebook.

At least not for the foreseeable future. Instead, it’s launching a new platform designed to house both its own games and ones from other developers. And, you log in with your Facebook identity, and you pay using Facebook Credits.

The site, available at Zynga.com, is a social gamer’s dream. The types of social channels that Zynga has been testing and refining are all in place. And then some. Instead of just pulling in your Facebook friends, it includes ways to become friends with other people on the site who you’re not connected to on Facebook. People who you want to play with, anyway, that it calls zFriends.

All of your gaming friends appear in the social channels. The social stream shows all of the activity of your friends on these games. User profiles expand on Facebook ones to let people see which games you play, how you rank on various leaderboards, your recent activity and other standard features tailored for games. Live chat lets you talk to other players.

And, more subtly, Zynga sorts through all of your activity on your games and figures out the most meaningful ones to share back to Facebook.

The first five games launching on the site are its biggest and newest hits from social and mobile: CastleVille, Words With Friends, CityVille, Hidden Chronicles and Zynga Poker. Progress comes with you. It’s not just Zynga games, though. It will soon begin adding games from other developers, starting with titles from Mob Science, Row Sham Bow and Ca Va. These games will appear exactly the same as Zynga’s.

Which leads to an obvious question for any social game developer. What’s the revenue split? Facebook is already taking a 30 percent cut via Credits. I asked chief operating officer John Schappert about terms with the third party developers (or is that fourth parties?), and he only said that they’re negotiated and private. So, what you’re looking at is a publishing model where Zynga gets an additional cut. That might make some developers think twice about bringing their games on, but Zynga has some carrots to lure them in anyway.

One is simply its size. The company now has 56.6 million daily active users and 246.9 million monthly active users, according to AppData, and it can push them all toward this site. And with all of these users on the site, other parties could have a much better shot at breaking through to them. Right now, developers have to try to cut through the photos, videos, links and other information on Facebook.

Zynga goes further to make the user-developer relationship meaningful, by pairing the right users with each other. It looks at data about each user, like what types of games they play — FarmVille or Words With Friends or what have you — and suggest that they become zFriends. What the company has discovered, chief technology officer Cadir Lee tells me, is that users don’t really care about the total size of a game. They just want to find the right people to play with. He says that based on the data they’ve compiled over the years of building their own games, the more people any one user is connected to, the more likely they are to engage more.

“You get some impact from one-way interaction, but much much higher with reciprocal actions. You establish a pattern of interacting.” Citing FarmVille, he notes that “if I came to your farm and fertilized your crops, you’re more likely to come and fertilize mine.” For some reason, he says, six seems to be a particularly golden number of connections — more people than that and you’re still getting engagement increases, but just not as much.

The basic idea of this site is not surprising. But the Facebook integration and the inclusion of third parties makes this unique. Going forward, there are two big things to think about. Mobile — Zynga could push its own network to mobile devices and create something far better than, say, Apple’s Game Center. The other, of course, is about Facebook. Zynga is locked into exclusively using it as the core identity and payment service, because of a deal that Facebook forced Zynga to sign years ago. But that won’t last forever. Zynga could one day introduce identity services from any number of other platforms, like Twitter, Google+, and anything else. This launch, then, could be a step in that direction.

As mentioned in yesterday’s earnings call, Zynga revealed that the company’s zCloud, its private cloud infrastructure has been scaling significantly in the past year. At the start of 2011, only 20% of Zynga’s daily active users (DAU) were in the zCloud. A year later, nearly 80% of Zynga games’ DAU reside in zCloud, and 20% in the public cloud (powered by AWS). Today the company is revealing additional information about the zCloud and how much data is being transmitted through its infrastructure.

Zynga has been quietly investing in powering up the zCloud over the past few years, explains Allan Leinwand, Zynga’s CTO of Infrastructure. As Leinwand explains, the infrastructure looks, feels, and operates similar to the AWS public cloud, but allows for greater performance, scale and reliability. zCloud physically resides in Zynga’s private datacenters and is designed specifically for social games in terms of availability and performance. And Zynga has created tailored automation tools for large server environments and built custom monitoring and management tools.

As GigaOm reported last year, xCloud was built using Cloud.com’s CloudStack software. And startup RightScale provides a management console for Zynga’s public cloud (powered by AWS) and the private cloud.

Between 2009 and 2011, Zynga says that it doubled down on increasing physical server capacity in order to move games over to the private cloud. For Zynga, this increased not only the ability to scale but also reliability. For social games specifically, zCloud offers 3x the efficiency of standard public cloud infrastructure. For example, games in the public cloud would require three physical servers, zCloud only uses one.

Last year, Zynga began to launch games directly in zCloud instead of in the public cloud. The first new Zynga game to launch in zCloud was CityVille Hometown in June 2011. Since then, every Zynga game has launched in zCloud. For example, CastleVille, which holds the record for the fastest growing Zynga game was launched and scaled in zCloud.

Currently, Zynga stores 1.4 Petabytes of data at any time and has the ability to deploy up to 1,000 servers in a 24 hour period. The company says the power they deployed for zCloud alone during the second half of 2011 could’ve kept 166 international space stations in orbit. 36 billion gifts were gifted during the holiday season in 2011, and Zynga has increased its server capacity by a 100 times over the past year (see infographic below).

For now, Zynga has no plans to eliminate public cloud powered by AWS. But clearly, this infrastructure is being used sparingly.

After announcing a licensing deal with Hasbro last week, Zynga is debuting another licensing agreement. The social gaming giant is teaming up with game developer Slingo to license casual game Slingo; and launch a social Facebook title Zynga Slingo today. This is the first time Zynga has licensed a game title to date, as the company has been churning out original titles over the past few years.

Created in 1995, Slingo is played by over 55 million people across free online games, retail, mobile, casino slots and other platforms. Additionally, over 50 million Slingo games have been downloaded and almost five billion games of Slingo have been played online. In case you aren’t familiar with Slingo, players spin and match numbers to fill the card to win the game. The goal, similar to Bingo, is to create Slingos which include five matched numbers in a row, column, or even diagonal.

Available on Facebook, Zynga Slingo is best described as a slots-meets bingo game. When opening Zynga Slingo, you’ll be able to pick the ‘world’ for your game, and then complete a number of stages within each world. Currently, Slingo has 5 worlds with 9 stages each. Once you pick your world, you’ll be presented with what looks like a Bingo card. You simply press the spin button and match the numbers that appear with each spin with the numbers on the card. As mentioned above, the goal is to complete matched numbers in a row, and earn points for each row.

One of the distinctive aspects of the game, says Rich Sawel, Product Manager for Zynga Slingo; is the high production value, animations and sound effects. And as Sawel explains, the game is meant as a recess for adults.

Like most Zynga games, Slingo features a cast of characters to make the game more interactive. This cast was actually taken from the original Slingo game. The Friend Joker will spin up the face of one of your friends on Facebook, and let them make a free match for you. If you spin and land on the Slingo Devil, you’ll lose your points, but if you get the Slingo Cherub, your score will skyrocket.

As you successfully complete the game, you’ll collect medals to complete levels and unlock additional experiences. In terms of social, you see a leaderboard of the scores of your friends in real-time. You can also send your friends power-ups to help them in the game. For example, Slingo Vision will help you find matches and Instant Slingo will explode for more points.

Players will also soon be able to challenge friends and compete to see who can get the highest score in three rounds.

“Slingo has been a leader in the casual game space for over 15 years, and our partnership with Zynga will bring the Slingo brand to a whole new audience in a fresh, new way,” said Rich Roberts, CEO of Slingo, Inc. “We are excited to partner with the world’s leading social game developer to deliver the social experience Slingo fans across the world have asked for.”

The game is available in 14 languages, including: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Japanese and English.

The obvious comparison that I made when hearing about Zynga Slingo is to the social gaming giant’s recent game Zynga Bingo. But Zynga says that the two are quite different and it’s like comparing chess to checkers. Sawel tells me that while both games combine the elements of luck, Zynga Slingo combines the serendipity of slots with bingo, while Zynga Bingo is the more traditional take on the local bingo hall. He says the two games are complimentary.

As for licensing games in the future, Sawel says Zynga will do this when it makes sense. “We are trying to bring quality production and fresh new experiences to the gaming market” he adds. Perhaps licensing could be a good alternative for Zynga, who has been accused of ripping off games. NimbleBit (makers of iOS Game of the Year, Tiny Tower) accused Zynga of copying them with its new game, Dream Heights. And Buffalo Studios says that the gaming giant copied its flagship title Bingo Blitz with its launch of Zynga Bingo.

Zynga also just reported better than expected earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011, the gaming giant’s first quarter as a public company.

As we mentioned in our coverage of Zynga’s fourth quarter earnings, mobile has been one of the fast-growing parts of Zynga’s business. On the company’s earnings call, CEO and founder Marc Pincus revealed that mobile users have grown five-fold to 15 million daily active users in 2011. That’s up from 13 million in December.

That’s an addition of 2 million users in the past month, and an addition of over 5 million users over the course of the quarter. In the third quarter, Zynga had 9.9 million daily active users for its mobile games.

The company launched five mobile games in the fourth quarter, including Mafia Wars and ForestVille. The company’s mobile game titles Dream Zoo, Words with Friends and Zynga Poker were all among the top 10 grossing games on the iOS platform during the quarter (Zynga launched 8 mobile games over the course of the entire year). On average, Zynga’s mobile apps have an average of 4.3 stars in App Store, says the company. Zynga says that the company saw a record amount of mobile bookings (revenue) in the quarter as well and mobile payers (those who are paying during games) are growing.

Zynga CFO Dave Wehner says that while the company is gaining more revenue from advertising online, there has also been healthy growth in ad revenue from mobile as well. In terms of monetization, some mobile games are being monetized at a higher rate than even web games. “As devices become more powerful, this is yet another canvas to grow,” said COO John Schappert on the call. “We’re seeing mobile as a big opportunity…we’re going to see more games coming.”

Considering the growth Zynga is seeing from mobile, it’s a good bet that mobile will be a key focus for Zynga in 2012.

Social gaming giant Zynga just released its fourth quarter earnings, the company’s first earnings release as a public company. Analysts expected earnings of $0.03 per share on revenue of $302 million. Zynga beat the street, with revenue coming in at $311.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2011, an increase of 59% compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. In terms of Diluted EPS, Zynga took s a loss ($1.22) for the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to $0.05 for the fourth quarter of 2010. Non-GAAP EPS was $0.05 for the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to $0.09 for the fourth quarter of 2010.

CEO and Founder Mark Pincus said in a release, “2011 was another milestone year for Zynga’s mission of connecting the world through games. We are seeing social games and more broadly play become one of the most popular pastimes on web and mobile. Zynga set new records in the year in terms of audience size, revenues and bookings. We saw great momentum in mobile and advertising and ended the year with a strong pipeline of new games. We are excited about the opportunities in front of us to continue delighting our current players and to bring play to millions of new people.”

In terms of income, the company took a net loss of $435 million for the fourth quarter of 2011, which included $510 million of stock-based compensation expense for restricted stock units issued to employees that, in accordance with GAAP, was previously unrecognized until triggered by our initial public offering.

Zynga says bookings, which are its non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) measure, were at a record level of $306.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2011, an increase of 26% compared to the fourth quarter of 2010 and an increase of 7% compared to the third quarter of 2011. Online game revenue was $283.9 million, an increase of 51% compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. Advertising revenue was $27.3 million, an increase of 230% compared to the fourth quarter of 2010.

In terms of traffic and user stats, Daily active users increased from 48 million in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 54 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 13%. Monthly active users increased from 195 million in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 240 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 23%.

Monthly unique users increased from 111 million in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 153 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 38%. And average daily bookings per average DAU increased from $0.055 in the fourth quarter of 2010 to $0.061 in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 11%. Monthly unique payers, which is a key stat for revenue, increased marginally from 2.6 million in the third quarter of 2011 to 2.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 13%.

The company also reported a growth in usage of mobile games in Q4 primarily from titles Dream Zoo, Words with Friends and Zynga Poker, which were among the top 10 grossing games on the iOS platform during the quarter.

For the full year, Zynga says bookings were at a record level of $1.16 billion in 2011, an increase of 38% on a year-over-year basis. Revenue came in at $1.14 billion in 2011, an increase of 91% on a year-over-year basis. Online game revenue was $1.07 billion, an increase of 85% on a year-over-year basis. Advertising revenue was $74.5 million, an increase of 226% on a year-over-year basis.

Non-GAAP net income was $182.5 million in 2011, a decrease of 24% year-over-year, which was due to the increased investment in developing new games.

In terms of projections for the full year, bookings are projected to be in the range of $1.35 billion to $1.45 billion. Zynga also warns that growth will be weighted towards the back-half of the year with slower sequential growth in the first half of the year.

As we’ve reported in the past, Zynga has had a bit of a rough start on the public markets, as investors are a little unsure what to make of the company considering it’s the first Facebook-oriented virtual goods business to be publicly traded. The stock has fluctuated below its $10 initial share price since the company went public in the middle of December amid concerns over a heavy reliance on Facebook for traffic, over the small number of paying users for most of its revenue, as well as its mostly flat traffic.

But in late January, Zynga’s stock rating got a boost, and traffic numbers are up. New game launches such as Hidden Chronicles and Scramble With Friends, as well as a resurgence in usage of older games like Zynga Poker have helped boost traffic numbers for Zynga.

Additionally, the news that Zynga will be introducing legal gambling to its games portfolio also helped drive the stock value up.

And with the release of Facebook’s S-1, we learned that Zynga accounted for 12 percent of the social network’s revenue in 2011, through a combination of virtual goods payments and advertising (you can see more information on Zynga and Facebook’s agreement here). And clearly, Facebook’s payments business is growing. Investors are more bullish on Zynga and these earnings should help.

It’s clear Zynga is looking for other revenue streams and recently struck a big licensing deal with Hasbro to turn games like FarmVille, CityVille, and its other hit titles into real world products and toys.

You can follow the earnings call, which is set to take place at 2 pm PT, below.

Last week, the developers at NimbleBit (makers of iOS Game of the Year, Tiny Tower) accused Zynga of copying them with its new game, Dream Heights. Now, it’s happening again. This time, the accusation comes from Buffalo Studios, which says that the gaming giant copied its flagship title Bingo Blitz with its launch of Zynga Bingo.

The news, reported first by VentureBeat, involves accusations from Buffalo Studios that Zynga’s newest title involves “striking similarities” in terms of its graphics, layout and game play with its own Bingo Blitz. The company also released an infographic which (sarcastically) began: ”Hello Zynga. We are moved that your new game was so inspired by our innovative product, BINGO Blitz…,” before continuing on with a serious of screenshots showing examples of the similarities in question.

However, unlike the situation with NimbleBit, it doesn’t appear that Zynga first attempted to acquire Buffalo Studios prior to the launch of the new title.

Bingo Blitz claims to have over one million daily active users, according to the infographic, and has been “liked” nearly 2.5 million times.

While it’s notable that the high-profile Zynga is the company being targeted here in terms of stealing its “inspiration,” (especially since Zynga itself once targeted its own copycats via lawsuits), game developers ripping off each others’ work seems to be the new normal for the industry. Lawyers, start your engines. If a company as large as Zynga is playing dirty, there’s bound to be lawsuits aplenty ahead.

Image credit: Buffalo Studios, via VentureBeat

There’s been one trend we’ve been noticing over the past few years when it comes to Zynga’s game development strategy. The social gaming giant likes to re-create classic games like Hangman or hidden puzzles and add social elements for gameplay. We saw this with the release of Hanging With Friends, Scramble With Friends, Hidden Chronicles. And As Zynga revealed in October, next up is Bingo. Today, the company is revealing its social take on Bingo via a Facebook game, which will be joining Zynga Poker in Zynga’s newest franchise, Zynga Casino. Currently, the game is in private beta but will be launching to the public soon.

In terms of actual gameplay, Zynga Bingo works similarly to the way an ordinary bingo game works. And if you’ve played Zynga Poker before, the game mechanics and nuances will feel familiar to you as well. As numbers are called out in the game, you cross off those that match on your card, with the winner being the first person who reaches a consecutive pattern on the card from the drawn numbers.

The main difference is the social aspect of Zynga Bingo. When you start the game, you’ll be promoted to enter themed bingo rooms and compete against friends or other random players on Facebook simultaneously, challenging buddies in a race to get B-I-N-G-O faster. Similar to Zynga Poker, players can chat and see which rooms their friends are in.

Each room has a theme. There’s Vegas Lights, which has a Las Vegas Casino theme; Pirate’s Paradise; and a FarmVille-themed Bounty room. And as you collect more tickets from wins, you’ll be able to unlock secret rooms as well.

As you are considering which room to enter, you can also choose how many Bingo cards you’d like to play. Players can compete with up to six cards at once, and you use your tickets to purchase more cards.

Within the game, you can also use what Zynga calls “power-ups” to progress faster, get coins and win collectibles to level-up. One type of power-up relates to friend help, which enabled a friend to automatically daubs a free square on each of your cards and complete your cards faster.

Nicole Opas, Senior Producer for Zynga Bingo, says the gaming company will be considering extending Zynga Bingo to mobile platforms in the future. Zynga Bingo was created by Zynga’s Austin, Texas and New York studios in collaboration with the Zynga Casino team in San Francisco.

It should be interesting to see how the slew of games released in the fourth quarter helped boost both Zynga’s revenue and usership numbers. The company is expected to deliver Q4 earnings on February 14, and Zynga’s stock rating just got a boost, and could see a traffic boost from some of the newly launches game titles.

The guys from NimbleBit (developers of Tiny Tower, the game handpicked by Apple as iOS Game Of The Year) are on a bit of a tweeting spree tonight, blasting out two big ol’ gems of knowledge in as many hours.

First: Zynga just launched a new iOS game, and it looks a lot like Tiny Tower. Second (and this one makes that first bit all the more interesting): Zynga allegedly tried to buy NimbleBit at some point in the past, but NimbleBit turned them down.

The new game, Dream Heights, seems to only be available in Canada thus far. Perhaps Zynga thought those nice folk north of the Border somehow hadn’t heard of Tiny Tower yet? It’s not like it’s a hugely popular game with a massive fan base or anything, right?

As word of Zynga’s latest release got back to them, NimbleBit’s David Marsh hinted at the refused buy-out:

Even when you refuse to go work for Zynga, sometimes you end up doing work for Zynga anyway.

A few minutes later, co-founder Ian Marsh swooped in and nailed out the confirmation:

They did go the honest route and try to acquire us first.

Bringing it all together, the NimbleBit guys blasted out the image below comparing the two.

Inspiration is one thing — but this… is pretty friggin’ blatant. One could argue that Tiny Tower is itself influenced by past games like SimTower, but seriously, just look:

We’ve reached out to Zynga for a comment, but haven’t heard anything back on the matter just yet.