If the recent Gordon Gecko inspired article regarding why harsh economic times are good for the gaming industry wasn’t enough for you, playfish has recently received a huge vote of confidence from Accel Partners and Index Ventures to the tune of $17 Million.  Their mission?  Simple.  Become the leading company in social games.

Playfish is an industry leader in social gaming, with over 10 million monthly users of their services.  These games allow people to play games with real-world friends across various social networking media platforms.  Playfish is directly responsible for some of the most popular facebook application games including Bowling Buddies, Pet Society, Who Has The Biggest Brain? and Word Challenge.  Not a fan of the facebook, and prefer staying with the good ol’ standby MySpace?  No problem, playfish has got you covered with a select number of apps now available on the MySpace platform as well.  Playfish plans on releasing a number of additional titles for MySpace in the near future.  And if being at the top of the facebook/MySpace social gaming ladder wasn’t enough for you, Playfish has recently made waves via their commitment to in-game advertising as well.  They’ve recently committed to participation in Google’s in-game advertising platform, AdSense for Games.

“This has proven to be an outstanding year for the Playfish team,” said Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of Playfish. “Four of our five games are now on Facebook’s top-10 games list, which is unmatched by competitors. We’ve launched our in-game transactions platform and worked jointly with Google to help define in-game advertising. We’ve opened offices in San Francisco, Beijing and Norway and have now closed a round of funding with two great investors, Accel Partners and Index Ventures. We look forward to expanding our studios, growing our user base and continuing to develop new ways for people to play games together.”

“Social gaming is a significant evolution in gaming and is in some ways a return to the roots of games,” says Segerstrale. “Our games are designed around social emotions — people play our games with the same people that they would play cards, play board games or go bowling with in the real world. Sharing the game experience with friends makes it more compelling and fun and results in more play time, viral distribution and better monetization potential over time.”

Accel partners was founded in 1983 and is dedicated to partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class internet and technology businesses.  Some of their successes include BitTorrent, Brightcove, ComScore, Facebook, Gameforge, Macromedia, and Real Networks.

Index Ventures was founded and 1996, and is a leading European VC firm.  They’re dedicated to helping top entrepreneurial teams in the Information Technology and Life Science sectors build their companies into market defining global leaders.  With offices in London, Geneva, and Jersey, some of their successful ventures have included Skype, MySQL, and Last.fm.

“We are immensely impressed by the creativity of the Playfish team and also by the methodical and disciplined approach to development and commercialization they have adopted,” said Ben Holmes of Index Ventures. “They are clearly focused on building a great company as well as great games and we look forward to work with them on achieving this.”