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Zynga.com launched with CastleVille, Words With Friends, CityVille, Hidden Chronicles and Zynga Poker, along with a promise of lots more social games by the San Francisco-based firm and outside developers.

“Zynga.com is designed to make it easier for you to play with friends,” Zynga founder Mark Pincus said in a blog post.

“We’ve invested heavily to build a network and infrastructure tuned for delivering social gaming at scale.”

Zynga played up its online games community as an expansion of its partnership with Facebook rather than a quest for more independence.

Zynga rose to success on the popularity of it titles at Facebook, where millions of users enlist friends in either collaborative or competitive online play ranging from poker to growing virtual crops or building cartoon cities.

Zynga.com is connected to the Facebook “social graph” so game play and the actions of friends involved will follow users between the online venues, Zynga general manager Manuel Bronstein told AFP.

“I see this as a great manifestation of our relationship with Facebook that goes deeper into gaming,” Bronstein said.

“In the morning you may check your news or social feeds on Facebook and then play games, but late in the afternoon you might just want to play, so you go to Zynga.com”

Along with keeping people connected with Facebook play companions, the Zynga website features ways to speed up progress in games and find “zFriends” who share one’s passion for certain titles.

Zynga.com was also crafted as a platform on which third-party developers could make titles available to the 240 million people who play the company’s games each month.

Zynga jumped into the stock market with a billion-dollar listing in December.

Offering 100 million shares — one seventh of the company’s total — at $10 each, the maker of Facebook games FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Words With Friends was valued at a whopping $7 billion.

Zynga’s stock price rose slightly to $14 a share on the NASDAQ in after-hours trading that followed the launch of the online games community.

Zynga games are free to play but the company makes money by selling virtual in-game goods to players and serving up advertising. The company sees the potential for revenue to grow if players flock to zynga.com.

The man, 32, met a woman on a phone chat line Sunday afternoon, and after speaking, she gave him her personal cellphone number, police said.

He called her and they arranged to meet to “hang out” at what she said was her apartment about 11 p.m., said Arlington police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck. When the victim arrived at the apartment building, in the 5200 block of South Eighth Road, he was met by the woman and a friend of hers, Sternbeck said.

He followed them into a courtyard of the apartment, where three armed men wearing hoodies were waiting. The women left, and one of the robbers hit the victim over the head and told him to empty his pockets. They stole $300, his phone, jacket, shoes and car keys, Sternbeck said.

He sustained minor injuries from being hit on the head. Police have not made any arrests in the case.

Once the dough is mixed, it’s just a matter of scooping it onto the baking sheet and pressing it flat with the bottom of a glass or measuring cup. It’s an ideal cookie to make with the kids.

For a nice variation (that adds almost no extra work) add 1/3 cup sliced toasted almonds (slightly crushed) and 1/4 cup diced candied citrus peel.

Because there are so few ingredients, make sure to use the best quality you can find. When possible, use European (or European-style) butter, which is creamier. If you can’t find vanilla bean paste, use pure vanilla extract.

Vanilla shortbread

14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) butter, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar, plus extra for pressing the cookies

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract

Pinch fine sea salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the butter, sugar, vanilla bean paste and salt. Beat on medium until creamy and well combined.

Add the flour and beat until the mixture resembles wet sandy crumbs that start to stick together. The dough should not clump together as a ball.

Using a tablespoon-size measuring spoon, scoop out balls of dough and arrange them on the prepared baking sheet, leaving about 2 inches all around. Use the bottom of a glass dipped in a bit of granulated sugar to flatten the rounds to about 1/3 inch thick. The sugar may not stick to the glass the first time, but will afterward. Using a glass with a decoratively or distinctly shaped bottom will leave an attractive imprint on the surface of the cookie.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until light-golden blond and firm. The cookies should remain very light in color and still be tender. They will finish crisping as they cool. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack. Store in an airtight container.

Makes 24 cookies. Per cookie: 107 calories; 60 calories from fat (56 percent of total calories); 7 g fat (4 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 18 mg cholesterol; 11 g carbohydrate; 1 g protein; 0 g fiber; 11 mg sodium.

As cookies go, this one is certainly substantial enough to do double duty as a dessert building block. So treat it like a brownie: Serve it in a small bowl, topped with ice cream. Dial up the sweetness factor with a drizzle of fudge or caramel sauce. Or go the lighter, more colorful berry sorbet route. My favorite? Calling upon fresh berries, whipped cream and a sprig of mint.

Timing is everything, right?

On the day when a colleague showered my cubicle with a few boxes of my personal dietary Kryptonite — Girl Scouts Thin Mints cookies — a cookbook landed in my mailbox.

Wouldn’t you know it? “The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook,” by bakers Cheryl Day and Griffith Day of Savannah, Ga., contains a recipe for a soft, buttery and deeply chocolatey homage to my beloved Thin Mints. “Just like the Girl Scouts bake,” promised the recipe. (The book will be available next week.)

I needed to find out. The recipe was a little putzy (in the annals of cookie-baking jargon, that’s one of my favorite words) but worth the effort. The critical reception among my cookie-loving co-workers fell almost uniformly along the lines of “better than Thin Mints.” I don’t know that I’d go that far — sacrilege! — but the recipe is a keeper.

As is the book. It’s beautifully photographed and charmingly conversational, and full of recipes I’m dying to try: ham and cheese pastry puffs, buttermilk-cornmeal pancakes, plum tartlets, bacon-jam empanadas and rosemary-pecorino crackers, for starters.

But first, chocolate. The Days’ recipe calls for Dutch process cocoa, a darker, more fragrant variant of its unsweetened counterpart. Dutch process cocoa has been altered with alkali, which assists in neutralizing cocoa’s natural acidity. It’s not widely available, but most major supermarkets stock at least one brand; I found the Van Cortlandt label at my neighborhood Lunds.

I tweaked the recipe in a few places. After sampling both pre- and post-chocolate-coating versions, I preferred the former. The latter, while closer in spirit to the Thin Mints ideal, becomes the very definition of overkill, although the coating’s semisweet chocolate is a nice foil to the cookie’s sharper cocoa bite. The coating was also taking forever to set, so I transferred the coated cookies to the refrigerator, and that did the trick. It also reminded me: Aren’t Thin Mints better when swiped from the freezer?

Also, when preparing the filling, the recipe requires four cups of powdered sugar. But as I was making it, the mixture became almost too thick to spread after the addition of just three cups, so this recipe reflects that; even after that third cup, I added a teaspoon of cream to coax the filling into a more spreadable consistency. I skipped the suggested green food coloring; too Keebler.

Another discovery: It’s important to roll the dough as thinly as possible. Once refrigerated, the dough holds its shape and cuts easily and cleanly. The recipe calls for a 2- to 3-inch cookie cutter, but I went smaller, 1 ½ inches.

Because this is an extremely rich cookie — it requires, yes, four sticks of butter — less is definitely more. Even at that reduced size, I could barely finish one without hitting the butter-sugar wall.

Well, emphasis on the word barely.

CHOCOLATE MINT COOKIES

Makes about 2 dozen sandwich cookies.

Note: Adapted from “The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook,” by Cheryl Day and Griffith Day. “I was always the queen of sales during during Girl Scout cookie season,” writes Cheryl Day. “My dad would take me to the back lot of Desilu Studios, where he worked, and I would go to town writing up orders. As it is for so many other people, my favorite Girl Scout cookie is the Thin Mint. Here’s a grown-up version.”

For cookies:

2 ¾ cup flour
1 ¼ cup Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa powder
½ tsp. fine sea salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
2 cup powdered sugar
½ cup packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs

For cream filling:

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tsp. peppermint extract
3 cup powdered sugar
For chocolate coating:
1 ¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

Rick Nelson, Minneapolis Star Tribune (MCT)

In making homemade “Thin Mint” cookies, cut the chocolate cookie dough with a 2- or 3-inch round cookie cutter or even smaller.

Directions:

To prepare cookies: Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder and salt and reserve.

In bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed, cream together butter, vanilla extract, powdered sugar and dark brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add eggs, one at a time, beating until combined. Add flour mixture in thirds, beating until just combined and scraping down sides and bottom of bowl as necessary.

Divide dough in half and place half on each prepared cookie sheet. Place a piece of plastic wrap or another sheet of parchment paper on top of each one. Use a rolling pin to roll out dough to ¼ -inch thickness. Wrap baking sheets in plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator at least 30 minutes.

When ready to bake, position a rack in lower third of oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Remove one sheet of dough at a time from refrigerator and transfer cookie dough and parchment paper to kitchen counter. Cut out cookies with a 2- to 3-inch round cookie cutter (even smaller is recommended, given the cookie’s richness).

Line baking sheet with fresh parchment paper and place cutout cookies, about 1 inch apart, on prepared baking sheet. Refrigerate cutout cookies for at least 15 minutes, while you cut out second sheet of cookies. Re-roll scraps of dough, re-refrigerate for at least 15 minutes and cut dough.

Bake cookies, one sheet at a time, until firm to the touch and the smell of chocolate has begun to fill the kitchen, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from oven and cool for 2 minutes before transferring cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

To prepare cream filling: In bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed, cream together butter and peppermint extract until smooth. Gradually add powdered sugar, mixing until light and fluffy. Place a dollop of filling (about 1 tablespoon) on bottom of one cookie and place another cookie, right side up, on top. Repeat with remaining cookies.

To coat cookies: Using a double boiler over gently simmering water, combine chocolate chips and butter and stir frequently until they have completely melted. Remove bowl from heat. Set a wire rack on a baking sheet lined with wax or parchment paper.

Using 2 forks, quickly dip each cookie into warm chocolate-butter mixture, turning to coat, then gently place the cookie on the wire rack (if chocolate begins to harden, return it to double boiler over simmering water and stir until it melts again). Let cookies stand until set, and store in an airtight container for up to 3 days at room temperature.

The building has about 670,000 square feet (62,000 square
meters) of space, Zynga said in a regulatory filing. The company
has deposited $25 million in escrow for the transaction, which
is expected to close by the end of the second quarter.

Zynga moved into its new home base in the city’s South of
Market district last year, seeking to house a workforce that now
tops 2,800 (ZNGA). The building features a large central atrium, and
its lobby is decorated with a 1970s Winnebago motor home and a
tunnel lit with color-pulsing LED tubes.

The company now leases about 65 percent of the building’s
space, with the rest vacant or occupied by other tenants,
according to the filing.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Douglas Macmillan in San Francisco at
dmacmillan3@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

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SAN FRANCISCO, March 5 (UPI) — Internet gaming company Zynga says it will start its own site for its games to allow users to play them without need to be on social networks such as Facebook.

Zynga said a beta version of what it calls the Zynga Platform will allow customers to play five of its popular titles — CityVille, Hidden Chronicles, Zynga Poker, CastleVille and Words With Friends — from its Web site Zynga.com, The Wall Street Journal reported.

More of its games would become available on the Web site over time, Zynga said.

“We built Zynga.com to give our players more ways to connect with each other and play great social games whether built by Zynga or other talented developers,” Mark Pincus, Zynga’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The company announced it would also be creating its own social network for gaming called “zFriends,”

The move should make the gaming company less reliant on Facebook for its business as an aggregator of users, one analyst said.

“Zynga building out its own platform is key to its own success,” Edward Williams, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said.

Zynga said it would also open its Web site to third-party developers to create and publish games.

Graeme Devine, the lead writer on Ensemble Studios’ Halo Wars, who is now focused on mobile titles, has sworn off video chat features after implementing them in two games and finding out they just don’t work for his audience.

At GDC 2012 on Monday, he explained how two of his games released in 2011, Word Chat — later renamed Full Deck Word Games — and Full Deck Poker Hold ‘Em both integrated FaceTime video chat features on iOS, and neither was successful, for different reasons.

For the presentation “Designing a game your teenage daughter will actually play,” Devine co-presented with his 17 year old daughter, Roque Devine.

She explained why the FaceTime chat features of Full Deck Word Games don’t work for her:

“The chat feature is a cool concept, but it’s awkward,” she says. “When I’m playing a game I’m not going to hold my device right in front of my face.”

She also prefers the asynchronous play of titles such as Words with Friends, rather than playing a live multiplayer match. “It’s on my own schedule,” she says.

“On mobile, playing peer-to-peer in real time is not something that teenagers, especially, want to do,” says Devine.

He also pointed out major flaws in the idea of a Texas Hold ‘Em game that has video chat.

For Full Deck Poker Hold ‘Em, it was a misunderstanding of the poker audience’s preferences — which are quite different from his daughter’s, but just as important.

Though he envisioned the game as a title people would play together with people they know and chat together, “It really turns out that nobody likes to play poker with their friends; they like to play poker with other people who are good at playing poker,” he says.

And those players “don’t like playing on video, because it gives away their competitive advantage,” says Graeme Devine.

He put a lot of effort into implementing these features for both games, he reveals, but neither of them helped sales. In fact, his original description for Word Chat mostly upsold its FaceTime support, but de-emphasizing the term “chat” for the word game and re-branding it with his Full Deck name helped it become more successful.

“No more video chat games,” he says, is his new rule moving forward.

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Drummer John Densmore and the other surviving members of the Doors, Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, team with Skrillex on Re:Generation Music Project.

Doors drummer John Densmore was part of the psychedelic revolution in rock. Now as part of the Re:Generation Music Project, Densmore and bandmates Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger are redefining music again with Grammy-lauded dancenik Skrillex. Densmore, 67, discussed the 24-year-old Skrillex, early electronic music and the Doors’ first gig in San Francisco with Pop Hiss.

Why did you want to get involved with Skrillex in the Re:Generation Music Project?

I told my son, “I’ve never heard of a Skrillex, what the hell is that?” And he said, “Dad, you’ve got to do that, you’ve got to get his autograph, and if you don’t I won’t speak to you.”

What was your first meeting like?

I thought he was a strange-looking little, cute guy. I asked him for his autograph, and he said, “My dad would like yours.” That was an interesting exchange.

What did you think of his music?

I was into Stockhausen electronic classical music in the ’50s so I get the electronic scene.

Skrillex’s innovative sound is pretty divisive in the music world. Was that a similar reaction to the Doors’ first shows?

We went to play the Fillmore in San Francisco for the first time, and the audience up there, even though they were our peers, they just stared at us. They didn’t even applaud. It was like we landed from Mars.

Do you feel that electronic music has any similarities to jazz or punk or any other iconoclastic music?

It’s pushing the boundaries. Time will tell, but it’s not going to take over.

ALSO:

Doors release new ‘L.A. Woman’ outtake ‘She Smells So Nice’

Quick chat: Oscar-nominated composer Alberto Iglesias

Quick chat: Butch Walker on avoiding rock ‘n’ roll ‘comfort food’

–Drew Tewksbury

Photo:John Densmore of the Doors.  Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times