Game Trust, the leading infrastructure provider for casual games, today announced the release of universal chat, free instant messenger, buddy lists, and social networking links for 65 integrated games distributed across prominent online brands, including MiniClip.com and Shockwave.com. The new enhancements, as part of the Game Frame Version 4.8 release, create a Community Gaming experience for players worldwide.

Game Frame Version 4.8 now unites two of the most popular online entertainment activities, social networking and casual games. Every player can extend their Game Frame profile with a link to their personal site, allowing players to learn more about members of the community. All single player games now include the full suite of community features traditionally reserved for multiplayer titles, a number of single player integrated games have seen a 250% increase in concurrent players, both playing and chatting at the same time. Since release in beta, there has been a 175% increase in the amount of time that players are spending in the Game Frame system across the entire Game Trust licensing network as they engage in more community activities.

"The merger between casual games and social networking is inevitable, and Game Trust has taken the first important step in defining this 'Community Gaming' marketplace," states Adeo Ressi, CEO of Game Trust. "More than 50% of the Game Frame players have blogs, personal web sites, or social networking profiles. Community has always been an important part of the Game Frame player experience. Game Trust is advancing the state of the art with respect to games, community, and the online player identity."

Game Frame Version 4.8 includes a number of general platform enhancements and bug fixes in addition to Community Gaming. Various applications within Game Fame have been extended to support hundreds of thousands of concurrent players, allowing Game Frame to scale to the demands of the largest online portals. The licensing methodology has been simplified, allowing publishers greater flexibility for deploying games and community, decreasing release time. Re-word A new real-time "Performance Dashboard" has been released, allowing publishers to track platform usage and revenue generation with powerful charts and graphs. Game Trust is now working on Version 4.9 and Version 5.0, both of which are slated for release in 2006.