Playdom's Social City named 'Best Social Network Game'

At the first-ever Game Developer's Choice Awards ceremony, Playdom's city building game Social City won the Best Social Game Network Game, beating out Zynga's Treasure Isle, FIFA Superstars from Playfish, NanoStar Siege from Digital Chocolate and Nightclub City from Booyah.

Playdom's Eric Todd stepped up to to accept the award with a gloriously short speech saying that Social City gives "the ability for millions of people to make something beautiful, I'd like all of us to aspire to that in the future."

Several Facebook/social games were nominated for other categories, but were largely beat about by online MMOs, namely League of Legends, a game inspired by Warcraft III. FarmVille was also beat out by Eve Online for the Best Live Game.

Overall, social games didn't have the best showing tonight, but the fact that they were recognized in this awards ceremony (or any awards ceremony) is a good start. Below are the winners of the rest of the evening's awards:

Best Online Technology
League of Legends

Best Online Visual Arts
League of Legends

Best Audio for Online Game
Aion

Best Community Relations
World of Warcraft

Best Online Games Design
League of Legends

Best Live Game
Eve Online

Best New Online Game
League of Legends

Hall of Fame
Ultima Online

Online Game Legend
Dr. Richard A. Bartle

Audience Award (out of 120,000 votes)
League of Legends
Wizard 101 -- runner-up

Disney, Playdom look to former OnLive exec as head of social games

Former OnLive VP of games and media John Spinale got traditional game publishers interested in streaming their games, perhaps he has a trick or two up his sleeve for Disney. VentureBeat reports that Spinale has joined Disney as its head of social games, essentially taking over Playdom GM (and Disney Interactive Media Group co-president) John Pleasants's duties.

Spinale, now based in DIMG's Palo Alto-Calif. offices, will cover Playdom's day-to-day activities and report to Pleasants, according to VentureBeat. Before coming to Playdom, Spinale handled bringing dozens of new games and publishers on board to OnLive's video game streaming service--quite the feat, if you ask us.

"Playdom has an exciting road map for 2012 and beyond, and John will play an important role in bringing the magic of Disney to the world's most popular social media platforms," Pleasants said. "Social games are a key part of Disney's digital strategy, and will be a critical driver of DIMG's future success."

This news comes just after Business Insider's scathing report on the state of Disney and Playdom, citing nameless sources. One source even said, "Six top executives at the VP level or above have moved on in the last three months including Playdom's Co-COO." If those statements are to be true, then Spinale has quite a lot of work ahead of him. Spinale will have the golden opportunity to oversee Disney's long-awaited entry into social games ... aside from Gnome Town.

Is this the nudge that Disney and Playdom need to make even bigger waves in the social games space? What Disney franchise do you hope hits Facebook first?