Want proof that the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game industry is in a state of extreme flux? Look no further than ostensible World of WarCraft-challenger Star Wars: The Old Republic, which lasted all of seven months before going free-to-play. The times are certainly changing.

Profound disruption, however, can have its advantages. More than ever, underdog MMORPGs and other online games are finding niches in which they can survive and thrives for years. Even apparent busts can right the ship with some smart content and a good free-to-play model.

With that in mind, here are five great MMOs from 2012.

Planetside 2

Welcome to the future. That’s pretty much all we need to say about Sony Online Entertainment’s Planetside 2, which marries a free-to-play model with a full-scale shooter that’s nearly on par with big-budget games like Call of Duty. Sony Online obviously spent a lot of money on this game. That it’s free-to-play says a lot about where online gaming is headed.

More impressively, Planetside 2 really is free, which is more than can be said for many F2P titles. Free players and premium players are more or less on equal footing, with the main differences being in weapon efficiency. It’s a smart move on the part of Sony Online, since skewed balance tends to be felt rather keenly in games such as these.

Apart from being a free-to-play shooter, Planetside 2 is worth experiencing simply because it’s so huge. True, it’s bewildering at first. You’ll spend your first few minutes flailing around, desperately trying to figure out what all the icons mean and what you’re supposed to even being doing. But once you get your feet under you, the firefights that form and dissipate across the massive battlefield are consistently impressive.

At this early juncture, Planetside 2 is certainly still experiencing its share of growing pains, and it feels a touch floaty compared to other shooters. But nevertheless, Sony Online has found a standard-bearer for both its own offerings and free-to-play at large.

World of WarCraft: Mists of Pandaria

The decision to add in the Pandaren race is a transparent attempt to bring in new players and perhaps appeal to a younger demographic. But in practice, Mists of Pandaria has turned out to be very much for longtime fans of the series.

Mists of Pandaria’s feature list is familiar — a new continent, a new race, and a new class. But Pandaria seems less interested in introducing a world-destroying bad guy like Cataclysm’s Deathwing than reigniting the spark of what made the World of WarCraft so appealing in the first place. The continent of Pandaria is everything we’ve come to expect from the series over the years — lavishly detailed and full of nods to games of the past, all rendered with a winking sense of humor.

The actual content is likewise meant to recapture the attention of the old-guard. Aside from a host of challenging new dungeons, Mists of Pandaria brings with it a pet battling system much like that of Pokémon. For longtime players, it’s a great opportunity to dust off all those pets from BlizzCons gone by.

In general, you can say the same for the rest of the game. It’s not an expansion that’s apt to win many new fans, but World of WarCraft seems to be past that point. For those players who have been collecting pets and following the lore from the beginning, Mists of Pandaria is delightful.

The Secret World

At first blush, The Secret World seems like a pretty traditional MMORPG with a modern setting. In this case, it’s set in a world where every myth is essentially true — Lovecraftian demons, vampires, the Illuminati, and all the rest of it. But from there, it goes in some very interesting directions.

One way in which The Secret World shakes things up is in its open-ended battle system. In essence, The Secret World is something of a card game, with your deck of skills determining your role in a party. The goal is to allow players to avoid being pigeonholed into one role, and it’s rather successful in that regard.

The other way The Secret World stands apart is in its approach to its world. Some of have called it a “puzzle MMO,” and that description isn’t far off. Even before The Secret World came out, its marketing was placing riddles around the Internet. The resulting collaboration has been rather interesting to watch.

Unfortunately, like many Funcom titles such as The Age of Conan, The Secret World has been dogged by issues of content and various bugs. Having recently dropped its subscription requirement, however, the hope is that The Secret World will soon be able to reach its considerable potential.

Rift: Storm Legion

Along with World of WarCraft, Rift is one of the very few subscription-based MMORPGs still kicking around. Newcomers Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World shifted away to new models rather quickly, while Rift has managed to hold on. Storm Legion offers a hint as to why.

Simply put, Storm Legion is more proof that Rift is run by one of the best teams in the business. Extremely polished for an MMORPG release, it roughly doubles the size of the world while further building upon the dynamic content that helped define the game early on. Events take place on a grand scale, occasionally overwhelming entire zones. It’s a spectacle certainly worth seeing for yourself.

Also worth noting is the way in which Storm Legion addresses replayabiilty, which was an issue in the original game. Storm Legion’s expansion areas include a rather substantial route split, meaning a whole different set of content depending on which you choose. For those who aren’t extremely interested in traditional raids, the added replayability is a nice plus.

Like Mists of Pandaria, Storm Legion has flown under the radar a bit. The very fact that Rift has managed to last this long as a subscription-based MMO, however, suggests that Trion is doing something very right. The high quality content of Storm Legion is proof.

Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet intended Guild Wars to be the embodiment of disruption in the MMO space — an RPG that broke all the rules and redefined the genre. You can argue whether they have succeeded; but either way, Guild Wars 2 is still a terrific MMORPG.

Pretty much everything Guild Wars 2 has done has been to thumb its nose at the likes of World of WarCraft. Dedicated healers? Gone. Traditional loot distribution? That’s gone, too. Guild Wars 2 ends up sacrificing some depth for being as free and organic as possible; but in that, it ends up being far more welcoming to new players than many of its ilk.

Thanks in no small part to these changes, a vigorous marketing campaign, and strong word-of-mouth, Guild Wars 2 has arguably received more attention than even Mists of Pandeira. Though perhaps not the revolution that ArenaNet was hoping for — it’s still very much a classical MMORPG in form and substance if not in style — it is still strikingly beautiful and well executed. It is the perfect MMO for a genre in flux.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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As one of Sony’s most popular franchises, Uncharted hardly needs validation these days. But if you need a reminder, then look no further than the repeated references through the media and elsewhere to Tomb Raider as an “Uncharted clone.”

Tomb Raider, obviously, has been around much longer than Uncharted, but it’s also had a checkered past. Once a critical darling, it slowly but surely degenerated into an also-ran franchise, joining the likes of Sonic as one more ’90s video game series that had definitely seen better days. In that light, taking a page from its more popular spiritual successor might not be a bad idea.

But while the similarities to Uncharted are definitely there — the set pieces, the art style — Tomb Raider seems ready to move in its own direction. This is a good thing because when it tries to emulate Uncharted, it tends to fall flat.

The differences begin with the setting. Unlike the globetrotting Uncharted, which generally takes it cues from Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider keeps to one island. It’s more like Lost than any Republic movie serial from the 1930s. The disaster that lands Lara Croft and her crew on the island, the ancient civilization that once inhabited the island, the interlopers trying to plunder its secrets — all are reminiscent of J.J. Abrams’ popular television series.

The decision to put Lara Croft on an island, however, has less to do with emulating Lost than turning the lens on Lara Croft and giving her a chance to grow, says Crystal Dynamics global brand director Karl Stewart. The development team tends to think in terms of Cast Away with Tom Hanks — an odd fit for an action franchise like Tomb Raider maybe, but its influence can nevertheless be felt in the overall tone.

“Lost was just a great canvas,” said Stewart. “When you look at that island and the mystery that’s going on with that island, it’s just a setting. But when you look at Cast Away and what Tom Hanks is doing, it’s more inside his head and how he was reacting to situations. So for us, it was a great opportunity to be able to position Lara in a place where she could grow and evolve with the people around her, but she also spends a lot of time alone. So what does she think? How does she overcome these situations?”

Cast Away’s influence is felt most acutely when Lara is huddled around a campfire trying to keep warm, logging entries in her journal, and upgrading the equipment she needs to stay alive against the island’s myriad threats. Tomb Raider has sense of loneliness and vulnerability that’s usually absent in games like these. It’s kind of a shame that Tomb Raider mostly downplays the actual business of eating, dressing wounds, and building fires, because it feels like a kernel of a really interesting survival game is here.

Regardless, tying Lara down to one island has a variety of interesting consequences for Tomb Raider, the most tantalizing being the additional freedom it affords. If Uncharted has a weakness, it’s the franchise’s love of the cinematic. Naughty Dog is out to tell a story, and they have no intention of allowing the player to interfere with the way that the story plays out. By contrast, Stewart utters a very interesting word in connection with Tomb Raider: Metroidvania.

A mashup of Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the term “Metroidvania” describes games with sprawling worlds, lots of freedom to explore, and areas that can only be opened up with certain items. They are, as it happens, the complete opposite of a game like Uncharted. So when someone like Stewart throws out a term like Metroidvania in connection with Tomb Raider without prompting, it’s worth taking note.

Stewart cautions that Tomb Raider is not a true open-world game, but it does feature its share of backtracking. It encourages players to return to areas they’ve previously explored and open up new locations with the items they’ve found elsewhere — hence the term “Metroidvania.” The island is a vivid, persistent world, and Lara Croft is meant to feel like a part of it.

“It’s Metroidvania in the sense that you can go back and become an explorer,” said Stewart. “When I was in the night hub, I didn’t care about exploring. I just cared about getting to the radio tower. But now that I’m further into the game, I care more about the intrigue and what’s going on. I want to unlock the mystery. And in order to do that, we’ve given you the ability to go back in and re-explore.”

The point where the world begins to open up lies somewhere beyond the first three hours of the story, which constituted the extent of the Tomb Raider demo. Much of the early going is spent picking up weapons like the bow, avoiding Russians, and trying to ascertain the whereabouts of Lara’s fellow crew members. Even in the opening hours, however, there’s some exploration to be found. At one point, Lara gets an opportunity to put her climbing axe to good use in uncovering a hidden tomb.

Such scenarios represent Tomb Raider at its strongest: those Cast Away-like moments when Lara Croft is huddled around a fire alone or else exploring the ruins of some abandoned village. It’s a game that holds out as long as possible before finally giving you a gun, and in those quieter, more considered times, it’s easy to buy into Crystal Dynamics’ assertion that Lara Croft is an explorer and a survivor.

By the same token though, the de facto set piece moments seem to represent the new Tomb Raider at its weakest. Once again, Uncharted is an inevitable point of comparison here, and Tomb Raider’s action generally pales in comparison to its descendant. Lara doesn’t animate quite as well as Nathan Drake, the action feels a bit clumsier, and the set pieces aren’t quite as creative. It has any number of stealth sequences, all of which feature wooden enemies that are easily avoided. One sequence that involves escaping a room full of gas and then tossing fiery debris back through the vent to ignite the gas and cause it to explode is typical. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done a million times before.

It seems a little like Crystal Dynamics is overly conscious of the competition — as if it absolutely has to have a certain ratio of action to exploration. At one point, Stewart mentions that 90 minutes was the longest they felt they could go before giving the player a gun. This idea that Lara absolutely has to spend a certain amount of time shooting bad guys — that there absolutely has to be Uncharted-style set pieces — may be what holds Tomb Raider back in the end.

That said, Tomb Raider has potential. If Crystal Dynamics really does follow through on the exploration — the Metroidvania aspects — and tells a decent story in the process, it could end up being a very good game indeed. At this point, the best thing Crystal Dynamics can do is downplay the Uncharted-style action and continue working to give Tomb Raider its own identity. After all, who needs Nathan Drake when you’ve got the original Lara Croft?

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It’s a feat worthy of Solid Snake that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance should be so wildly inventive and yet so wildly conventional. It brings to mind Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which features a tremendously powerful physics engine but was ultimately let down by an overall lack of good ideas and terrible scenario design (like the battle with the Star Destroyer).

You can distill both to fairly simple conceit. In The Force Unleashed, the goal was to make it fun to fling around Stormtroopers with the Force. In Metal Gear Rising, according to Kojima Productions producer Yuji Korekado, the core concept is that “when you cut something, it feels good.”

The concept stems from a scene from Metal Gear Solid 4. Once vilified for as a puerile Solid Snake-wannabe, Metal Gear Solid 2′s Raiden officially graduated into the Metal Gear universe as a member in full standing when he massacred a host of Geckkos — biomechanical infantry assault vehicles — with a katana.

“For Raiden, we wanted to move forward because of that action scene he had,” Korekado says. “We feel he can step up and become [as important as Solid Snake]. Snake is a wonderful character for the franchise, and we want Raiden to be that for us as well.”

Being a cyborg, Raiden brings a few special qualities into any action role. He’s incredibly fast, so much so that he can enter a bullet time-like mode in which he can slice foes at his leisure. As with the first time you lifted a Stormtrooper with the Force and watched him grapple for dear life with his buddy, it’s these moments that stand out most in the Metal Gear Rising demo. Enter sword mode and the game automatically draws a line like a butcher’s diagram down the center of an enemy. One flick of the right stick and you slice the hapless opponent in two. Then into quarters. Then into eighths.

Raiden’s primary foes in the demo are regular soldiers and Gekkos. A typical sequence sees Raiden entering a large open area full of patrolling foes, none of whom are aware of his presence. Such moments are reminiscent of the classic Metal Gear games that Rising is based on, but with one important difference. Where Snake sneaks to avoid unnecessary fights, Raiden is only really interested in avoiding crowds of enemies. As a ninja cyborg, the only way he will ever be overwhelmed is if the soldiers and Gekkos can gang up on him.

If the purpose of the demo is to communicate the joy of slicing up enemies, it succeeds admirably. The action has the fingerprints of Platinum, the action studio that jumped in to save Metal Gear Rising when the project was all but dead, all over it. And being a demo, we’re probably not seeing the full extent of what Platinum’s work. Korekado hints as much when he says, “Something I learned working with Platinum is the potential of the Metal Gear world. One thing about Platinum is that their unique specialties have allowed them to come up with many scenarios that Kojima Productions cannot.”

The hope is that Platinum will indeed make good on some of the game’s franchise, because as solid as it is right now, Metal Gear Rising feels like it’s in danger of being a single-note action game. Nowhere is that more evident than in the demo’s final encounter–a strangely conventional battle with a panther-like cyborg.

In the early going, it’s easy for the beast’s speed to overwhelm and terrify you. Sword mode isn’t helpful, and simply attacking it only gets Raiden hurt. Instead, the main strategy is simply to be patient and block. Eventually, this stuns the pantherbot, and Raiden can get his licks in. After taking some damage, the panther leaps away and summons some minions. It’s the kind of fight that brings back the good old days of the NES — not exactly the image one would associate with a cutting-edge action game like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

One wonders if Raiden’s abilities are actually a hindrance in this instance. Being a supercyborg, is he actually so strong that boss battles have to neuter his all-powerful sword mode in some way? Korekado dismisses such concerns: “Of course, Raiden being a cyborg, he has many superpowers and is incredibly strong. In the end, this is a battle between cyborgs and a battle between superpowers. That has allowed us to kind of go wild with our brainstorm. It’s funny because each stage and boss provides something different. The stages, the battles, the bosses … they all have something you won’t expect. For that reason, [Raiden's abilities] have never been a restriction for us.”

The demo gives some reasons to be optimistic when Korekado refers to the team’s capability to “go wild.” With games like Bayonetta in its catalog, Platinum has established itself as one of the best action studios in the business. The Metal Gear franchise is known for having some of the best boss battles in the history of the medium. With so much talent on the job, one imagines that Metal Gear Rising will be anything but conventional.

But Metal Gear Rising has had a troubled development to this point, and Platinum has had to work hard to get the project to a point where it can actually be released. With so many issues, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Metal Gear’s creativity suffer. One would hope that the panther battle an exception to the franchise’s past quality.

At this point, Metal Gear Rising has a lot of potential as an action game. The talent behind it is considerable. But Platinum and Kojima Productions may want to look to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed as a warning that great graphics and great intentions mean little in a game with bad design.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The 2010 reboot of Medal of Honor certainly had its share of controversy. Billed as a gritty look at the lives of so-called Tier 1 Operators — the elite of the elite in the American special forces — it caught flak from the real-world military for putting players in the roles of the terrorists. The terrorists are gone from the multiplayer, but for better or worse, the single-player campaign is intent as ever on ripping its story straight from the headlines.

In real-world hot spots in the Middle East and Somalia, the Tier 1 Operators encounter both pirates and local terrorists in their hunt for PETN — the same stuff used by “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid. It’s an approach meant to set the series apart from the more fanciful stories of Call of Duty, with their secret numbers and Russian conspiracies. The story also goes out of its way to add depth to its eclectic cast of super soldiers. The main character, a man code-named Preacher, is shown dealing with both the fallout of the fighting and a broken family.

Single-player producer Luke Thai talks at some length about the need to get a “soldier’s perspective.” He feels that it’s a sense of personal engagement with the soldiers that helps set the series apart. With Call of Duty having quite a bit in common with the television show 24, Thai identified shows and movies that are similar to Medal of Honor, and he isn’t shy about employing a bit of hyperbole: “It is a little bit Hurt Locker meets Saving Private Ryan.”

Neither film, of course, needs any introduction. Thai laughs off suggestions that Medal of Honor’s story is on the same level as these Best Picture nominees, but he feels fans have a genuine connection to the franchise and to the “soldiers who have sacrificed so much for their country.” It says as much as anything about how developer Danger Close wants its franchise to be viewed by general audiences.

Such sentiments, however, can’t help but bring Medal of Honor into sticky territory. Unlike Call of Duty, which defaults to classic Red Dawn-like scenarios that are rarely meant to be taken serious (save for the still-chilling “No Russian”), Medal of Honor rips its missions from the headlines. The Bin Laden raid took place after development had already started, for example, but given a chance, one gets the feeling that Danger Close would have tried to work it in.

What’s troubling about Medal of Honor: Warfighter is how nonchalant it sometimes seems about the issue of war. The recently-released Spec Ops: The Line, for example, has been lauded for its deconstruction of the modern military shooter and its uncomfortable depiction of war as hell that blurs the line between friend and foe. Medal of Honor’s outlook is a bit more black and white.

“It’s important to call out the fact that the conflicts that are occurring are versus forces that are considered bad guys in the world,” says Thai. “So it’s not really about race or nationality. It’s really about fighting the bad forces in those particular regions that we depict in the single-player. And approached that way, it’s not really that sensitive.”

That outlook is reinforced with missions that feel arcade-like at times. Danger Close showed two levels at their recent event: a conventional stage that culminates with a sniper battle on the rooftops and a driving chase. With a few exceptions — moments that Thai refers to as “nuggets of realism,” such as working together to break down a door — it feels much like any other military shooter. The action takes place around discrete set-pieces and involves mowing down dozens upon dozens of enemies — not exactly the stuff of a film like Hurt Locker.

Never is that more apparent than the car chase section, which the Need for Speed: The Run team at EA Black Box developed in part. It’s actually the strongest part of the demo, featuring challenges like navigating narrow alleyways, a crowded marketplace, and a surprise traffic jam. When you finally catch your prey with a well-timed sideswipe, the resulting collision is straight out of Burnout.

“What ended up working really well is that, if we’re going to do a driving level, we’d better do it right,” says Thai. “That’s what’s going to set our driving level apart from any other. And that’s where the idea came into play to interface with and collaborate with some of the Need for Speed folks and get their expertise to really make that driving experience super compelling.”

It’s perfect for Medal of Honor, which may be part of the problem. With a few exceptions, Need for Speed has generally been content to leave the sim aspects to the competition in face of a more arcade-like experience. That feeling is certainly present in Warfighter. It feels good, but it’s definitely at odds with the franchise’s attempts to present itself as a realistic military shooter. It seems that Medal of Honor wants to have it both ways: gritty realism and arcade shooting.

Admittedly, walking the line between realism and fun isn’t easy, especially when it comes to shooters. Even Spec Ops is ultimately pretty arcade-like in its approach to shooting. But that said, Spec Ops is pretty fanciful itself in its depiction of a Dubai buried to its waist in a vicious sandstorm. Medal of Honor wants you to believe that the scenarios it’s presenting could be playing out as we speak.

In that, it displays a certain lack of self-awareness. Danger Closes’ attempt to make its soldiers more than action figures is laudable, but in the end, the gameplay has to match the tone of the story. Based on what has been shown thus far, the gulf between the two in Medal of Honor is as wide as ever.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Thunder Wolves has no time for drama or pathos. As the debut trailer makes abundantly clear, Ubisoft’s upcoming shooter is mainly looking to mix its distinct sense of humor in with a healthy amount of explosions.

Announced today for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and PC, the helicopter shooter wastes no time trotting out old standbys like, “Get to the ‘choppa!” But it’s fairly extensive list of features suggests that it may have some appeal beyond action diehards.

Among the promised features are a large range of offensive and defensive weapons, multiple mission types, and two-player co-op. Also included are recon, support, and attack-type helicopters, with eight machines available in all.

Hungary-based studio Most Wanted, which is mainly known for its tower-defense title Defenders of Ardania, is developing Thunder Wolves. Up until this point, it has mostly stuck with strategy and puzzle games. The Nintendo DS title B Team: Metal Cartoon Squad is one of the company’s few pure action titles.

Most Wanted’s game joins a selection of Ubisoft titles that includes a new Call of Juarez and Spartacus Legends (which Dean previews here), all of which look to push the traditional bounds of digital platforms with advanced 3D graphics and a substantial number of features. All three are slated for release in Q1 2013.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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SimCity and The Sims creator Will Wright is not only one of the video game industry’s most successful and fascinating developers but is one of its most insightful speakers as well.

Over the years, Wright has developed a reputation for his wide-ranging presentations, which he delivers with his trademark rapid-fire clip. Among the topics covered at Wright’s GamesBeat 2012 keynote Tuesday were the evolution of writing, the tabletop wargame Panzer Blitz, the diversification of gaming, and Star Wars‘ Admiral Ackbar, all of which ties into his point that games are rapidly becoming more personal.

To illustrate his points, Wright put together a PowerPoint presentation consisting of some 120 slides, which makes for an often humorous visual aid. To give you an idea of what the press is treated to every year, we’ve posted the slides from Wright’s GamesBeat 2012 presentation, which you can see below.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Spanish startup Akamon’s capability to market local, traditional, and casino-type games to both Latin America and Southern Europe with very little additional overhead impressed the judges enough to win our GamesBeat 2012 “Who’s Got Game” competition.

Its secret? Akamon adapts games with rules that are 80 percent similar between regions. Thus far, it has 38 games, which are accessible from a variety of portals, including “white label” rebranding sites, social networks, and mobile platforms.

“We believe in a type of game and regions that are being underserved,” said Akamon CEO Vicenc Marti (pictured above), “and that is the social and mobile games for Southern Europe and Latin America.”

He joked that his native Spain happened to receive a bailout on the day he was presenting.

The judges — Game Dojos Accelerator CEO Ann Burkett, IDGA executive director Gordon Bellamy, Crossover Technologies managing director Eric Golberg, and senior director for corporate development for Electronic Arts Michael Chang — agreed with Marti, awarding his company the top prize.

As part of its prize, Akamon enjoys complimentary acceptance into Game Dojos Accelator’s next class session round. It also receives 10,000 Business ExtrAA point from American Airlines, which translates to up to five domestic round-trip tickets. The remaining finalists each receive a Nokia Lumia 800 phone and 1,000 Business ExtrAA points.

The finalists included Loki Studios and its mobile title GeoMon, which impressed with its use of location data to determine which monsters appear in the game. Playmous provided an intriguing glimpse into a service offering behavioral metric data and anti-cheating software. A complete listing of the finalists can be found here.

“Akamon identified an untapped market opportunity spanning two geographies, and then applied a rare combination of distribution innovation, discipline in attacking the opportunity, and execution,” said Goldberg, one of the judges. “The initial commercial results suggest that the company can become a big fish in a pond with defensible barriers to entry — provided, of course, the company retains the extraordinary focus that makes Akamon our 2012 GamesBeat champion.”

Burkett said, “Akamon was given the nudge in a strong GamesBeat finalist field due to it’s focus on a strong low cost business model and excellent presentation. It was a pleasure to see them and the other talented teams strutting some great ideas.”

The fourth annual “Who’s Got Game” contest highlights the best startups, with representatives from six of the most intriguing presenting onstage in front of a large crowd.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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As social and browser games to grow, companies like Zynga are drifting away from Facebook in an effort to branch out. Backyard Monsters developer Kixeye hopes to do the same for one  specific reason: Some dedicated gamers simply won’t play games on Facebook.

While Kixeye isn’t abandoning Facebook, it is establishing a dedicated browser-based platform by the end of August. For the social and browser-based developer founded on the original Casual Collective infrastructure, it’s a chance not just to grow but to take advantage of new opportunities.

Unlike many other social game developers, Kixeye wears its connection to hardcore gaming with pride. CEO Will Harbin is a fan of real-time strategy titles like Command & Conquer, and the studio’s slate includes games like Battle Pirates, where players attempt to dominate a persistent world map in synchronous player-versus-player battle. Simply put, this isn’t Farmville.

For Kixeye, there are plenty of advantages in leveraging dedicated gamers. Among them, Kixeye’s users are far more likely to spend money on virtual goods, said Harbin. Kixeye monetizes 20 times to 40 times better than the competition.

In developing a new platform separate from Facebook, Harbin said Kixeye can cast off some of the social network’s constraints.

“[Our platform] will be finely tuned to balance the needs of our games,” Harbin said. “Facebook’s about optimizing for photos, events, as well as games. We just have to worry about optimizing for gamers.”

For Kixeye, that means better graphics and better synchronous play, among other things. Going forward, the Kixeye game War Commander should be fully synchronous by the end of the month. The company also plans to use newer tools like Flash 11, which “opens a lot of doors,” said Harbin, including a very important one: hardware acceleration. But if need be, Kixeye can “turn on a dime” and embrace HTML 5.

Such tools are valuable in the middle of a massive disruption, such what the game industry is going through right now, Harbin said.

“If you look at the history of disuption, accessibility has always trumped fidelity,” he said, noting that digital distribution ultimately beat better sound quality with consumers in the music industry. “The good news is that we’ve always nailed physical accessbility, but our fidelity has been lacking. With Flash 11, we’ll be able to absolutely rival downloadable games, PC games, and console titles.”

But all of this comes down to one thing: Kixeye just wants to make great games. But the company also sees an opportunity to muscle into the traditional gaming market.

“Some of the old guard has been resting on their laurels and haven’t really had the same eye on passion and quality,” Harbin said. “We’re going to set ourselves up so we have a platform to produce new and exciting games, and we don’t want anything in our way.”

Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo: Consider yourself on notice.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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And if anyone can change the status quo, it’s Béhar, who has shaken up everything from laptops to speakers over the past six years.

“In many ways we’ve seen dramatic changes to other industries,” Béhar told VentureBeat today in an exclusive interview. “We’ve seen dramatic change in the mobile industry: connectivity, the personalization of small devices with apps. We haven’t seen a lot of change to the console world, though.”

Béhar (pictured right) wants to push these changes with Ouya, the new console his studio Fuseproject is helping to design. Ouya has raised more than $3 million on Kickstarter since going live Tuesday. The project actually hit that milestone during his interview with VentureBeat, right after his appearance onstage at MobileBeat 2012. (He was eagerly checking the Kickstarter total via his iPhone backstage.) Gamers have embraced what they hope will be a game-changer — a completely open console built upon Android that costs a mere $99.

Béhar was approached only three months ago by the team lead by Ouya founder Julie Uhrman to work on the project. He was immediately impressed. “I saw the energy. I saw the passion. I saw the credentials,” he said.

Fuseproject quickly jumped into what Béhar termed a “partnership,” in turn giving the studio a major share of both the risks and the incentives. For his part, Béhar believes the time is ripe to jump into the established industry, with a small company like Ouya’s only advantage being that it’s a “180 degree turn” from established trends.

So far, so good. The console has received overwhelming support, which Béhar believes is a reaction to the “frustration” that both fans and developers feel toward the limitations of existing consoles. “In a world where makers are kings, [being open] seemed like the right approach,”

Béhar gained notoriety in the tech industry in 2005 when he set out to create the $100 laptop for the One Laptop Per Child project. He sees many similarities between these projects, noting that PC development used to be entirely focused on “raw power” but has since seen the rise of netbooks and other inexpensive devices. By the same token, he said, consoles are more dependent on having great content than the latest power.

“I don’t want [the Ouya] to be a gilded, velveted salon that overpowers what gamers and creators are doing. We’re taking a counterstep to the current trends,” he said.

Building a completely open platform comes with its own set of challenges. It is a natural haven for piracy, which has bedeviled both large publishers and independent developers alike. Many of the moves by companies like Nintendo in recent years, such as region locking the Nintendo 3DS handheld console, have been in reaction to limiting such piracy.

Béhar shrugged off such concerns. “It’s like any ecosystem. You’re going to have to establish who are the players. Who is your crowd in that ecosystem? Who is going to be fair, and who isn’t?

“My sense is that we can do both. We can both have an open attitude and a stimulating platform to engage creativity.”

Béhar also welcomed the challenge of designing a console that some critics have derided as an unattainable fantasy. “I love these comments. I’m titillated and always excited to hear those comments,” he said. “Naysayers are a great source of conversation. We love to go out and prove that something can be done. That’s exactly the kind of challenge that lights our fire, so to speak.”

Nevertheless, there’s still room for what Béhar terms “editing” in the specs. There has already been a great deal of debate among some of the console’s more than 22,000 backers about what changes are needed, such as multiple specs, and more memory (the Ouya has a mere 8GB of internal Flash storage).

Béhar has followed some of the conversation threads, and he noted that there has been an “interesting debate” on what is needed versus what is ultimately superfluous: “Some of them ask, ‘Do we really need all that extra stuff?’ Someone might be asking for three USBs, but someone else might point out that it isn’t central to what we’re [trying] to do. Editing to a reasonable amount of specs is something we know how to do well, rather than just putting in the maximum amount of specs.”

Having raised more than three times their original goal (and counting), the Ouya team is also soliciting feedback on what to do with the extra money. “We’re working with the community to develop stretch goals,” Béhar said. “We want to see what the people want.”

For now, a portion of the money will go toward turning the Ouya into a production-ready model and possibly funding some initial game development. Béhar is focusing on “really delivering a high-quality product and high-quality experience,” with a particular emphasis on getting the controller right.

“The focus on the controller is on playability. On weight,” Béhar said. “The right amount of weight, the right kind of balance. In many ways, the controller is like crafting a great tool.”

Contrary to other reports, the promised trackpad will also be part of the controller. “That will make it possible to play a variety of games. Something like Angry Birds,” he said.

In many ways, Ouya is exactly what publishers and investors have been pining for since the launch of the iPhone app store: a reconciliation of dynamic mobile development and traditional home consoles. In a sense, the Ouya is an especially powerful Android phone that you can plug right into a television.

As for whether larger publishers and developers will embrace the Ouya, Béhar is optimistic given the explosion of interest in the console. “I would be surprised if we didn’t get some interesting phone calls from larger developers,” he said.

Skepticism remains. Ouya will face formidable competition from established platforms like the Xbox 360. During his discussion at GamesBeat 2012, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Bing Gordon complained that developers don’t want to worry about yet another platform.

In a way, Béhar agrees with Gordon. “There is a need for new, more open, easier to access platform, rather than the status quo. In our case, I don’t feel like we’re splitting the developer’s attention one more time. I think we’re adding something that simply wasn’t there.”

Photo credit: Michael O’Donnell

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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In the next three or fours years, the video game industry as we know it may be radically different. The concept of platform-specific games may fade away, giving way to a market in which it’s possible to play one game on many different devices, be they mobile phones or traditional home consoles.

This may sound far-fetched now, but Electronic Arts is convinced that games will soon inhabit the same world as music or television. The megapublisher is so convinced, in fact, that it’s shaken up its studio organization, merging mobile development with its traditional labels. For EA, if this future isn’t now, then it’s not far away.

“We are emerging as a very different company,” said EA Executive Vice President of Digital Kristian Segerstrale at his GamesBeat 2012 discussion Tuesday. “Our digital business is $1.2 billion and growing rapidly, and the fundamentals are changing rapidly as well.”

EA’s digital business is central to its effort to push games as a service all its own. EA’s proof of concept is FIFA 12, which has sold 11 million copies and averages 5 million players weekly. Segerstrale attributes FIFA’s continued popularity to its strong online infrastructure, which has enabled EA to introduce a steady stream of events, content, and updates to keep the experience feeling fresh.

Going forward, EA’s vision will result in games that are less reliant on individual platforms. “Our vision is to create seamless play anywhere, anytime. We want to connect all of our games across all platforms. Whichever games you connect to, your progress will be recognized and remain consistent.”

FIFA 13 is among the next crop of sports games that will retain progress from one iteration to another, while Madden 13 leverages the iPhone with an app that makes it possible to manage the game’s career mode.

“To me, that’s the true next generation of gaming,” Segerstrale said. “Connecting these devices, connecting these consumers, in ways that no one has ever imagined before.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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“At a place like this, you’re hearing the [conventional wisdom] right now,” said Blow, the indie-darling creator of puzzle-platformer Braid during a panel about the present and future of independently developed games at today’s GamesBeat in San Francisco. “If something seems like a good idea, if that’s the theme of the conference, then that’s not what you do. Because if you do that, you’re playing the odds that your game is the one word game that breaks out from 30 crappy word games.”

With this console generation grinding to a close and buzzwords like “mobile” and “social” gaming flying around thick and fast, Blow and SpyParty developer Chris Hecker in particular stood firm in the need to create high-quality content over following current trends.

It was a common thread in a discussion that saw Blow, Hecker, Nicalis’ Tyrone Rodgriguez, and Super Meat Boy’s Tommy Refenes alternately rail against the failure of platforms to properly promote smaller titles, praise those who they believe are getting it right, and expound on the current state of indie development.

Among the platforms the group believes is “getting it right” is Valve’s digital download service, Steam. It received praise for promoting smaller titles and making it easy for indie developers to turn a profit.

“It can be a little harder to get on Steam. But once you’re on there, it’s pretty easy to make $50,000 or $75,000 in a weekend sale, and you do that a couple times a year,” Blow said.

Hecker was effusive in his praise for what he sees as a “golden age” in which “triple-A indie games” are rewarded with strong sales on platforms like Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, and PlayStation Network. He used Magicka as an example — a little-known action-adventure game developed by eight Swedish students that managed to sell 200,000 copies in its first two weeks on Steam: “If you make a game that’s high quality, you’re totally set.”

Other platforms took the brunt of the criticism. While Hecker referred to Steam as a “healthy market for a certain kind of game” and included XBLA in his “golden age” statement, he was critical of Microsoft for “being more intent on having car ads than on featuring games that will make them money.”

Hecker was forceful throughout the panel in touting independent development as a new artform, wondering why Microsoft doesn’t do more to help the medium grow. “They have no interest in helping with that. They would rather chase what is popular now,” he said.

Blow had his own criticism for the certification processes of XBLA and PSN. “There’s a long list of rules that you have to follow. It doesn’t look that bad until you try to actually follow them,” he said, adding that they aren’t “testing your game for actual bugs, so you have to do that yourself.”

All four developers cut a wide swath through the industry as the panel went on. While Rodriguez praised Nintendo’s eShop for being a feature-driven system with much larger numbers, he was critical of WiiWare for requiring too many clicks to navigate and failing to highlight all but the latest games. Refenes criticized the PlayStation Vita, Sony’s most recent handheld, for not making it clear that it’s possible to download complete games and being afraid to “step into the new territory [of digital downloads] and take the plunge.”

Hecker and Blow were both harsh in their assessment of free-to-play games.

“Free-to-play is kind of a slum,” Blow said. When Hecker agreed that free-to-play “warps game design” by weaving incentives to buy items into the gameplay, Blow added, “It fundamentally shifts your relationship with the player, and it’s very easy for that to become ugly.”

Nevertheless, Blow said that he wants to do a free-to-play game at some point. However, it won’t have premium items like “hats.” He instead envisions a system in which players pay a dollar for a level to explore with a friend. According to Blow, “That’s a respectful way to treat players. Tweet this game to your friends is not a way to treat players.”

As the discussion ended , the panel examined ways in which to promote independent games to both the press and gamers at large. Blow was blunt: “You don’t want to try and expose [the press] if they aren’t going to care when they play it.”

Braid was a game that got a lot of press despite having a marketing budget of “zero dollars and zero cents” because “enough people that I sent the game to found it interesting…that did the work.”

The press and gamers are “starving for interesting content,” Hecker said. “If you give them something interesting to talk about, they will love it.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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After more than 30 years of steady evolution, gaming has reached its own version of the Cambrian Explosion, SimCity creator and Stupid Fun Club founder Will Wright argued today during his GamesBeat 2012 keynote speech in San Francisco.

“Lately, it feels as if the industry has exploded in a million directions at once,” Wright said, “and I think that’s very healthy.”

Wright is one of the most legendary names in gaming. He’s the creator of the SimCity and The Sims franchises, two of gaming’s cornerstones.

This explosion includes mobile and social platforms, but Wright believes gaming can go still further. “[Video games] should be as personal to us as our dreams,” Wright said.

To illustrate his point, Wright went on a whirlwind tour across 30 years of technology, beginning with how the military uses wargames to map out war plans and continuing through the evolution of writing, the explosion of personal data, and the ways in which technology alters our personal perceptions.

One trend Wright highlighted was the rise of augmented reality through smartphones and other devices, which he argued is conditioning us to a new worldview that effectively blurs the real with the digital. This new perception opens us to possibilities that might have been invisible before, such as “illuminating” something like a gathering of car collectors around the corner that we otherwise would not have known about.

“Gaming technology can be a matchmaking device for the world around me versus very particular things, like what mood I’m in,” Wright said. “I think it could potentially make my life far more interesting.”

Wright also believes in the power of metrics to make experiences more personal, which he highlighted by showing how data from The Sims could be used to uncover roadblocks and other issues, with mechanics being modified to match. Going forward, this data will only get more comprehensive, he said. What Wright described as “little islands of data” are breaking down as we move into the cloud, with the result a growing “wake” of information on social networks. Already, such data influence the design of social games like Farmville, allowing developers to determine what is “sticky” with gamers and what isn’t.

Based on this, Wright believes that the one overriding trend in gaming is personalization. In essence, reality will begin to replace consoles as the platform. “We don’t have these little islands. We are building experiences that are accessible at any time. They will be more like biological experiences.”

The rapid proliferation of sensors such as those in Google Maps and increasingly granular metric analysis will enable such experiences, Wright said. Already, Wright’s Stupid Fun Club has launched a new venture with Warner Digital to explore some of these possibilities, using personal metrics to bring new experiences.

“I believe this is the direction that games are going,” Wright said with confidence. “We want games to be more relevant to the individual. We want them to be more personal to our lives.”

Photo credit: Michael O’Donnell

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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