Welcome to the Virtual Worlds News Wrap-Up for the week of July 30, 2010. The Wrap-Up is where VWN spotlights stories that we didn't get to cover individually, but still make for interesting reading about the virtual worlds industry.

• Dire Wolf Creating Lego Universe Trading Card Game: The Lego Group has selected recently opened developer Dire Wolf to create a virtual CCG based on the Lego Universe Kids MMO that will come out this fall. Dire Wolf is based in Denver and comprised of former SOE Denver staffers, who previously worked on the Legends of Norrath and Free Realms virtual virtual CCGs. 

The Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communications is restricting public Internet access and banning online game ads, according to the Viet Nam News. The move comes as a response to complaints about increases in juvenile crime and school truancy that citizens believe are caused by letting young people get "addicted" to freemium online games. 

To curb this, the government will shut off all public Internet access between 11 PM and 6 AM. Government officials have also called for a freeze in licensing of new games. The restrictions will remain in place through the end of the year, at which time the government is expected to have drafted new regulations for online games. In Vietnam, 22 licensed game companies operate about 93 games. 

Developer Realtime Worlds is entering the virtual worlds business with its latest project, a 3D world with social features called Project: MyWorld. This world uses map information from GIS services to create 3D renders of entire countries. Users can then edit the procedurally generated data using special in-game tools. The suggested use is to make buildings more closely mimic real world counterparts and Realtime Worlds is actually going to attempt to enforce a sense of realism.

facebook: A World Cup Victory for Fans http://fb.me/CCYrn8VY

enVie Interactive LLC is developing a new 3D virtual world called VIE or Virtual Island of Entertainment. enVie describes VIE as combining the "best features" of social networks, MMOs, and virtual worlds. VIE will launch in beta in the second half of 2010. For now, enVie has announced the executive team that will be responsible for creating its new virtual world. 

enVie's President and co-founder is Philo Northrup, former Executive Producer of Business Development at Foundatiion 9. The Chief Creative Officer and co-founder is Viktor Kalvachev, formerly of Bon Art Studios. The Vice President is Stacey Hirata, a former VP of Marketing at Activision and Red Octane who helped launch the top-selling Guitar Hero franchise. 

Planet Cazmo is going to partner with Fox's Teen Choice 2010 awards and entertainment mogul Tony Mottola to create a custom virtual environment called the Virtual Teen Choice Beach Party. The special virtual environment will be directly accessible from a link on the Teen Choice Website. The Teen Choice 2010 awards will air August 9 at 8 EST on Fox Users will be able to visit the virtual beach party after casting their votes online. 

Social game dev Playdom and Harrah's Interactive Entertainment are partnering to release a new World Series of Poker game to Facebook and other social networks. The deal appears to have been negotiated before Playdom was recently acquired by Disney, since the press release refers to Playdom as "privately held." The game itself will be a rebranded version of Playdom's Poker Palace game, which already serves around 500,000 monthly active users and 60,000 daily active users. 

Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason says that one-third of his company's business comes from licensees for Unity's 3D graphics technology that are not game development firms. Helgason's comments coincide with the release of a branded Gorillaz game built on the Unity engine to the iPhone app store.

"The music, film and advertising industries are broadly adopting games and game technology to reach wildly broad game-loving audiences. These products exemplify the kind of creative uses which now make up a third of our business," said Helgason, in statements made to Develop.

Chinese online game publisher Tencent has signed a deal with Emergent Game Technologies for use of the Gamebryo and Gamebryo Lightspeed engines across multiple SKUs. Emergent's engines can be used for single-player, multiplayer, and online game development in numerous genres on platforms as diverse as PS3, 360, Wii, and PC. Studios can also integrate them with third-party and in-house technologies.  

Tencent is headquartered in Shenzhen, China, and operates a library of over 60 online games. This library includes some of the most popular freemium MMOs in the world, like Dungeon & Fighter (a.k.a. Dungeon Fighter Online) and Cross Fire. Tencent also operates the avatar-based QQ instant message system, which is extremely popular in China and a source of major virtual goods sales. 

Although RealID may be optional on Blizzard's World of Warcraft forums, in the newly-released Starcraft II the RealID system is going to power social network-like features. Using RealID, Starcraft II players can connect with their real life friends playing any Blizzard game on any server. Players will also be able to post status updates to Blizzard's Battle.net online service using a feature called Broadcasting. Any RealID friend will be able to see the status updates.