Who said the venture capital industry is sucking wind lately?

Well, it is–but not today, and especially, not Accel Partners, which sold two of its portfolio start-ups to large public companies for a total of $1.5 billion.

That would be the sale of AdMob to search behemoth Google (GOOG) for $750 million in stock and the acquisition of Playfish by gaming giant Electronic Arts (ERTS) for about $300 million (plus an earn-out of up to $100 million for Playfish staff).

While Accel shared the AdMob largess with Sequoia Capital and others with a stake in AdMob, which focuses on mobile advertising, and shared its social-gaming winnings from Playfish with Index Ventures, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based VC firm can surely afford to choose the pricier bottle of wine this week.

(Also, apropos of nothing, Accel Partner and Facebook board member Jim Breyer is now officially paying for the lunch he still owes me!)

Playfish had raised a total of $21 million in funding, while AdMob had pulled in about $47 million.

“I think you can imagine we are very pleased,” said Rich Wong, the Accel partner involved with AdMob, in an interview this morning. But he would not give any specifics about what Accel hauled in for its portion of the two companies.

Still, Wong said the venture market in Silicon Valley and elsewhere was definitely “stabilizing,” noting that there has been an increasing number of exits for investors via big companies scooping up strong start-ups.

“AdMob and Playfish are strong players in their respective spaces and in leading categories,” said Wong. “Their sale is a sign that this kind of innovation is important to major companies.”

And, apparently, to Accel.

Former Yahoo COO and current Quadrangle Group partner Dan Rosensweig (pictured here) will take over as CEO and president of Activision Blizzard’s powerful Guitar Hero franchise, according to sources close to the situation.

Rosensweig will run the hot gaming company’s division, which is located in Silicon Valley, the result of its purchase of RedOctane in 2006, source said.

He is well known to Activision (ATVI) Chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick, who served on the Yahoo board for many years when Rosensweig was a key exec there. Both Rosensweig and Kotick have since left Yahoo.

It’s an interesting move for Rosensweig, who has been working in private equity since his departure from Yahoo (YHOO) in late 2006.

His name has been bandied about for several high-profile Web positions of late, and many thought he might take a political job, given that he was one of many digital execs involved in helping elect President Barack Obama.

But the weak market for investments and Rosensweig’s longtime experience and interest in eventually returning to operations–along with his well-known passion for music–are the likeliest motivators for the move to Guitar Hero.

Sources said Rosensweig will start his new job at Guitar Hero–which Activision could announce as early as tomorrow–in several weeks.

Running a major consumer brand like Guitar Hero seems tailor-made for Rosensweig, who worked at CNET Networks and Ziff-Davis before Yahoo. In addition, the jovial exec is well-respected in Silicon Valley, giving Activision a much more prominent presence here.

And the energetic Kotick (pictured below with me and, yes, Paula Abdul of “American Idol”–don’t ask) has long talked about turbocharging the largely retail Guitar Hero business online, as a way to further grow the music phenom.

User-generated music, as well as a plethora of online transactions and social networking, have been promising new revenue opportunities, Kotick has said.

(See video highlights of my interview with Kotick below on that topic and more at last year’s D: All Things Digital conference.)

Overall, despite the weak economy and a cautious forecast going forward, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Activision is growing, with revenues up in the last quarter, due in large part to the popularity of its Guitar Hero and Call of Duty videogames.

Its fast pace, in contrast to rival Electronic Arts (ERTS), has been helped by its merger with Vivendi SA’s Blizzard Entertainment last summer. Blizzard’s World of Warcraft online game is also one of the most popular multiplayer games in the world.

Here’s a highlights video from my interview with Kotick at D6:

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Activision Chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick about the state of the gaming business.

The video of the interview is in three parts.

It’s a good week to focus on the gaming industry since Electronic Arts (ERTS) abandoned its hostile acquisition bid for Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) over the weekend.

EA’s effort was motivated, in part, by Activision’s recent merger with Vivendi Games, which includes Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft,” one the most popular multi-player games.

The merger has made Activision (ATVI), with its own well-known franchises–especially the hugely popular “Guitar Hero,” which debuted version IV at D6–one of the gaming industry’s largest companies.

In this third video, Kotick publicly demos “Guitar Hero IV” for the first time, with the help of special guest stars Paula Abdul of “American Idol” and skateboarding star Tony Hawk.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Activision Chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick about the state of the gaming business.

The video of the interview is in three parts.

It’s a good week to focus on the gaming industry since Electronic Arts (ERTS) abandoned its hostile acquisition bid for Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) over the weekend.

EA’s effort was motivated, in part, by Activision’s recent merger with Vivendi Games, which includes Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft,” one the most popular multi-player games.

The merger has made Activision (AVTI), with its own well-known franchises–especially the hugely popular “Guitar Hero,” which debuted version IV at D6–one of the gaming industry’s largest companies.

In this first video, Kotick talks about the merger with Vivendi–which aims to inject social gaming DNA into Activision–the popularity of Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox; better graphical, storytelling and character development in games; gaming on social networks; business models in the industry; and the EA attempt to acquire Take-Two.

So far.

Although the popular Facebook widget was supposed to be taken down two weeks ago and then last week–pretty much because it obviously infringed on the rights of the owners of the popular word game Scrabble–it is still up and working on the service and allowing new downloads (I did it last night, for example).

And sources with knowledge of the situation say that it is not likely to go–for now at least–as the parties involved attempt to come to some sort of agreement about its ownership and future. In fact, those sources expect a settlement soon between the many sides involved.

There are many sides, including its developers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla (pictured here) of Calcutta, India; Hasbro and Mattel, the toy and game giants who co-own the rights to Scrabble; and even Electronic Arts, which has the online rights to Scrabble.

Oh, yes, and Facebook, which hosts the offending application, and which has been curiously silent despite its important role here.

Hasbro and Mattel had asked the hot social-networking site to pull it, and had also sent a cease-and-desist order to the Scrabulous creators.

Cue the quiet, behind-the-scenes negotiating.

Of course, there has been a lot of noisier wrangling with “Save Scrabulous” groups going up on Facebook created by its loyal users–there are more than 600,000 active daily ones on Facebook.

And, of course, they love Scrabulous (a game is pictured above). Why not? It’s fun, interactive and there is a real community that has been formed around it that is passionate.

That’s exactly what social networking should be about.

But, while I might sound like a skunk at a garden party, it’s also pretty amazing that Scrabulous’s creators had the audacity to just steal the famous concept and trademark and run with it. Worse still, its proponents think that’s just great.

It’s not, because it is out-and-out stealing of a well-known brand and that shoplifting should not be the way businesses are formed in the Web 2.0 economy.

Moreover, Facebook should be among the first to crack down on this kind of juvenile behavior (curiously, Scrabulous is an actually useful app, unlike others I have derided on Facebook as more suited for toddlers) all over the service, whether it relates to music, videos or anything else its third-party developers take without asking.

Can you imagine the hue and cry if The Wall Street Journal suddenly debuted a widget called “Monopolicious!”–a rip-off of Monopoly, complete with Park Place–on Facebook?

We’ll see if Facebook will truly do the kind of house-cleaning it needs. I hope so, because it would show a real step in the growth of its corporate culture and would go a long way in creating the kind of mature platform it has the potential to be.

During an interview yesterday, he even got a few good ones off about the funny foibles of Activision, the gaming company he runs, even though it has suddenly become a much more serious business after a recent merger with Vivendi Universal’s gaming division.

Here’s a video chat with Kotick, who also serves on the board of Yahoo, which I made after we had lunch at–like I said, he’s funny–Google’s cafeteria (and, of course, he also gets a good one in about Electronic Arts’ competitive Rock Band game at the end):

Activision, which makes the popular Guitar Hero video game series (its Guitar Hero III is expected to be one of the best-selling this holiday season), has vaunted itself to be about equal in size to EA, the longtime dominant video game company.

Perhaps most importantly for Activision, the move puts the business squarely into the Web space. Vivendi’s Blizzard Entertainment unit makes the hugely popular World of Warcraft multiplayer game, where users compete on the Internet.

Kotick will be CEO of the merged company, even though Vivendi will get a 52% stake. It will be called Activision Blizzard with combined revenues of $3.7 billion.

But even together, the pair face the challenge of churning out more hits and keeping their franchises fresh.

This one is about the recent hookup between Vivendi and Activision, in a big deal that has shaken up the scene:

And this one is an interview with Electronic Arts’ John Riccitiello by WSJ’s Nick Wingfield: