When last we discussed the Settlers of Catan, there were weird rumors from the wilds of a wooden board replacement for the popular board game. Now a young man named Bill Trammel has done that one better by launching the The Official Settlers of Catan Gaming Board, also known as the gaming board that will keep your entire game from falling out of the frame on the floor when you drunkenly slap down… → Read More
How bad is the fight to get more users in mobile apps? Tough enough that TinyCo, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed mobile gaming company, is doing a revenue share with developers that successfully drive them traffic.
The company, which has raised $18 million, says it will give developers a 50 percent split or more if they send them customers that ultimately end up spending inside of their games. → Read More
The Bay Area is the epicentre of a massive disruption which shook the games industry to its foundation. It erupted through what we call social and mobile games, drew huge audiences and changed the fundamental economics of games and introduced a whole new language of play. It even went beyond games into what we now call gamification.
I call it the San Francisco Revolution. And I think it’s over. → Read More
Angry Birds-maker Rovio and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, are to collaborate on developing “fun learning experiences” aimed at getting kids engaged with science. The collaboration is part of a new initiative by Rovio to use the power of the Angry Birds brand as a learning aid. → Read More
Heyzap has added a cool new feature to its social platform for mobile games — the ability to actually start playing games with other users.
The app already allowed users to check-in to games that they were playing (either manually in the Heyzapp app, or automatically through its many SDK integrations), to earn badges, and to find other players and games. However, in order to actually start… → Read More
Zynga and Atari have launched their first game together, under the Zynga Mobile Partner Program — announced this summer. The program allows third party companies to tap into Zynga’s network, while helping Zynga beef up its mobile gaming ecosystem as it looks to grow its non-Facebook business. Back in June Zynga reported having 22 million daily active users on mobile. → Read More
After Rovio last week put out a teaser for its very first book app, with an announcement full of addled-looking pigs, today it’s unveiled the actual product: it’s an app for a cookbook about eggs — which happened to be the subject of Rovio’s first printed book effort, too. Bad Piggies Best Egg Recipes is being put out first as an iPad app, the company announced today at the Frankfurt Book Fair. → Read More
I don’t always play social games, but when I do, I like them to help me pay for my education. If “The Most Interesting Man In The World” were to endorse Grantoo, this might be his conclusion. Grantoo is a social gaming platform that allows college students to compete against each other to win tuition grants and donate to charity in brand-sponsored gaming tournaments. → Read More
To become even more of a destination for casual gamers, AOL overhauled its portal Games.com with new personalization and discovery features today. They also made it cross-platform, with certain titles becoming playable on tablets and mobile phones.
“We saw a lot of growth and movement in the gaming space over the past year,” said Games.com’s general manager John Fox. “We have distribution and… → Read More
Contre Jour, the imaginative mobile physics-based puzzle game launched in 2011, is now available on the web. Just like with Cut the Rope for HTML5, the Pulse web app and the recently launched Atari Arcade, Microsoft and the folks at Clarity Consulting helped the Contre Jour team to bring the mobile gaming experience to the (touch-enabled) web. → Read More
GREE, the $4.4 billion mobile gaming company from Japan that’s trying to break into Western markets, is attempting to grow its gaming platform through a new program for indie developers. Called GREE Loves Indies, it will promote different indie games every month. The Tokyo-based company is inviting indie developers to submit games for a four to six-week launch and marketing campaign, with the… → Read More
Editor’s note: Tadhg Kelly is a game designer with 20 years experience.
Zynga’s misery continues, yet mobile seems a little rosier. Games using broadly the same game design as many of the successful Facebook types are often at the top of the charts. People ask me whether these new games are examples of generation-two. Are they new, safe, the new frontier? Answer: Nope. → Read More
The year was 2008 and Zynga had it all figured out. Facebook became a portal to games for those who had never played. Viral growth there was unchecked. Facebook ad rates were low, so buying traffic was cheap. And most games were played on the desktop. But soon everything changed, and Zynga never recovered.
Here’s a look at four big shifts that caused Zynga’s power and share price to plummet. → Read More
It’s about that time. No longer just the source of hacking experiments for hobbyists, the Kinect is becoming a platform for real, venture-backed companies. 3Gear Systems is a new startup among this wave of companies. The company is building a platform that uses the Kinect or other 3D cameras to detect hand movements and gestures for use with
The battle for gender equality is played out on many levels, from the workplace to the playground — and, as it turns out, the world of TV viewing: a new study out from Nielsen indicates that when it comes to TV, women watch significantly more than men, but it’s also finding that the rise of connected (seventh-generation) gaming consoles like the Xbox is changing that. → Read More
DEMO Fall 2012 wrapped up in Santa Clara today, where 77 startups took the stage to show off their apps, services and products. The young companies were given six minutes to pitch their ideas and impress the audience, collectively competing for the $1 million advertising prize that went to the idea with the most promise. → Read More
After cutting its full-year projections for bookings and earnings, Zynga’s shares fell more than 20 percent to an all-time low in after-hours trading. The company’s shares are trading at $2.22, down more than 21 percent from today’s close of $2.82.
It’s been a hard road for the company since its IPO last December. Not only have numerous executives left (many of them brought over from EA), but… → Read More
Barnes & Noble has been aiming to spin off their Nook business since last April and now the ink is dry on a new partnership between Nook Media, a subsidiary of B&N, and Microsoft. Microsoft invested $300 million along with $305 million in payments to own 17% of the new company which has a $1.7 billion post money valuation. → Read More
Angry Birds has become such a mobile institution, and its maker, Rovio, has gone so far in its extension of that brand — toys, books, t-shirts, cereal, theme parks, films and more games – that this morning’s invitation to a launch of Rovio’s first ever book app came as something of a surprise. But it’s true: despite all the work Rovio (and others that Rovio seems to tolerate happily) has put… → Read More
Mobile and social game developer Crowdstar is at it again with a new CEO at the helm. The company is promoting from within and giving Jeffrey Tseng, the general manager of products, the top slot.
Peter Relan, who co-founded the company and has served as CEO for the past year and nine months, moves into an executive chairman role. This is a marked change from two years ago when the company… → Read More
Mojang, the creator of Minecraft, has signed a deal with specialist children’s publisher, Egmont Publishing, for book and magazine publishing rights for the virtual world block-building game that has amassed almost 43 million registered users. The publishing rights are for territories excluding the U.S.
There are currently no details on exactly what kind of Minecraft-related publications the… → Read More
Canada’s Amaya Gaming is to buy bwin.party’s B2B poker network Ongame in a deal worth up to €25 million ($32.2 million). An initial payment of €15 million ($19.3 million) is payable in cash on completion — expected during the fourth quarter of 2012 but subject to standard conditions including regulatory approval. Additional payments of up to €10 million ($12.9 million) become payable if… → Read More
Korean free-to-play online games giant Nexon, which has been quietly outperforming Zynga since its IPO last December, has announced it’s acquired all outstanding common shares of gloops, a developer of mobile games for Japanese games developer DeNA’s social gaming platform Mobage. Nexon paid ¥36.5 billion ($468.4 million) in cash to acquire gloops. The transaction closed today. → Read More
Game startups have long struggled to find funding (especially in Europe) because of a tension between being perceived to be hit-driven (like movies) while actually needing to be funded like technology companies. However this year, crowdfunding has changed much about how we think of games and their fans, and hopefully will help us find a better way. → Read More
You’ve probably already heard, but just in case you forgot to wear your Angry Birds merchandise, Bad Piggies has just hit the scene. It’s Rovio’s latest and greatest, and it brings something slightly different to the mix.
Instead of flinging birds through the sky, or space, you’re actually much more concerned with the Pigs. The goal is to reach the finish line of a map by constructing vehicles… → Read More
In another sign that mobile games are challenging or usurping other mediums like cartoons for creating powerful childrens’ brands, Russia’s Zeptolab just signed a deal with Burger King to bring their Om Nom character from Cut The Rope into kids’ meals next March.
Cut The Rope will have six toys in kids’ meals next year. For its part, Zeptolab is creating a new game with six levels that goes… → Read More
FarmVille 2 is Zynga’s second go at milking as much filthy lucre from its farm-based social gaming franchise as possible. There’s no mystery to its existence. The franchise has been a runaway hit for years, and continues to be the top revenue-generating game for the company — despite being more weather-beaten cockerel than spring chicken these days (user numbers have certainly declined since its… → Read More
And just like that, Rovio is back to number 1. The Finnish gaming company today launched Bad Piggies, an entirely new game that features some of the same characters from the smash hit, Angry Birds.
In this iteration, however, you play the game from the pigs’ point of view, building vehicle-style contraptions to get you through the map.
The game only launched a few hours ago, at 3am ET, yet… → Read More
Angry Birds is now a household name. Even Rovio (the company responsible for the ultra-successful bird-flinging app) is a logo as familiar as EA’s. But today we’ll have to add another bit of vocabulary to our lexicon. Prepare yourselves: Bad Piggies has arrived.
We’ve known about Bad Piggies for a while, but only a lucky few have actually played the game. Quite a bit hinges on it. As you… → Read More
Electronic Arts continues to beef up its cloud-based gaming offerings. Today it was announced that it is buying ESN, developers of the Planet web-based games framework, for an undisclosed sum. The two companies had already been working together, namely on Battlelog, an online social-web component for EA’s Battlefield 3. The news was announced on ESN’s blog. → Read More
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