You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t know who Mario is. Due to his iconic red hat, blue overalls, and a fluffy mustache, Nintendo’s mascot is instantly recognizable. But after appearing in many new games, sequels, and remakes over the past 30 years, I’m beginning to grow weary of the Italian plumber.

Last week, the GamesBeat staff shared their thoughts on the state of the Wii U, and the consensus wasn’t very positive. At this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, Nintendo proved once again that it’s relying on heavy hitters like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. to keep 3DS and Wii U players happy. And not surprisingly, Mario plays a prominent part in many of those games.

I kept this fatigue in mind when I spoke with Koichi Hayashida and Yoshiaki Koizumi at E3. Hayashida is the director of the upcoming co-op platformer Super Mario 3D World, and Koizumi is a producer in Nintendo’s Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD) division in Tokyo. Both men have worked at Nintendo since the ’90s, with résumés filed with games like Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy (as well as its sequel). They work closely with Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, making them the ideal candidates to talk about Mario’s role in video games today.

A hardware-driven philosophy

As a hobby, Hayashida keeps a book full of quotes from Miyamoto, where he writes down interesting things that the legendary designer says about game development. One of those quotes explains the central philosophy behind each new Mario game.

“There is one thing from my quote book that Miyamoto is fond of saying: Mario games are easy to make in the sense that they’re always based on the way that hardware has evolved,” said Hayashida. “So you have to look at what the new capability of hardware is. You think about a specific, fun, new experience based on the capabilities of that hardware. That’s really what influences the outcome of the software. And so, we see Mario games changing all the time. And it’s very much based on what each new iteration of hardware can do.”

Though Nintendo finds a way to reinvent Mario with each new console it makes, the changes are never too dramatic — arguably, the last big leap was the advent of the 3D platformer in Super Mario 64. But since then, the changes usually come in the form of new worlds to explore, new powers to wield, or the addition of cooperative multiplayer. And with similarly sounding titles like New Super Mario Bros., Super Paper Mario, Mario and Luigi, and Super Mario 3D Land, it’s hard to keep track of them all.

Source: Giancarlo Valdes/GamesBeat

Yoshiaki Koizumi (left) and Koichi Hayashida.

With enough Mario games out in the wild to last a lifetime, I asked Hayashida and Koizumi if Nintendo is ever afraid that gamers will eventually lose interest in its chubby hero. As expected, I didn’t get a direct yes or no on the matter, but Hayashida did bring up some insight to how the company views Mario: He’s a status symbol for “quality.”

“I guess I should really turn that idea around,” said Hayashida. “Rather than getting worried about people getting tired of Mario, I like to think of Mario as being a reliable character, in the sense that people can be relieved knowing that they’re buying a game that represents a really high level of quality and a certain amount of [thought] that goes into the design.

“And certainly, that’s the case with Super Mario 3D World. We are presenting a lot of interesting new elements that really change the gameplay experience. Certainly the Mario character is familiar to everyone, but the cat suit is entirely new. And the ability to have multiplayer in a 3D Mario game for the first time I think feels very fresh and different. So it’s the same Mario character of course, but with each new hardware iteration — as I’ve said — we’re trying to bring different, new, fun experiences. So I usually don’t worry about it from that perspective.”

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Nobody ever asked Zen Studios to stop making games that star silver balls.

The developer of the successful Zen Pinball and Pinball FX titles, which are available on pretty much every device capable of playing video games, has decided to branch out anyway. Its latest game, CastleStorm, launches today on Xbox Live Arcade. The studio describes it as “a super genre mashup of 2D physics destruction mashed with tower-defense brawler,” but another way of putting it is that it’s like playing Angry Birds and a real-time strategy game simultaneously.

The plot involves a knight’s humorously epic quest to steal back an ancient crystal from an evil Viking plotting to rule the world, but really, the heart of this game is in building a castle and then using its standard-issue giant ballista to fling projectiles — like exploding apples and boulders that split into three boulders — to bring your opponent’s fortifications crashing down. (See? Angry Birds.) At the same time, you have ground units you can send out to try to weaken the enemy’s defenses.

So those are the basics, but the question remains: Should Zen just stick to pinball?

Absolutely not.

What you’ll like

The physics

Zen is famous for its physics engine; everything in its pinball tables rolls and bounces exactly the way it would in real life. And this system is a great fit for a game about knocking things down. It’s really satisfying to hurl an exploding projectile into your foe’s precious stronghold and watch the walls fly apart, especially when you set off a chain reaction that causes a huge section of the structure to buckle and crumble into rubble.

And it’s triple-awesome when some of that rubble falls down and crushes some of your opponent’s soldiers; in fact, you unlock an Achievement for killing an enemy this way. But that’s exactly what you’d expect to happen when giant chunks of stone and wood fall from the sky. Other games might make the debris insubstantial once it’s separated from the building, but Zen keeps the realism going all the way to the ground.

The same is true of flying enemies. In what is easily one of the greatest moments of my gaming career, I once used my ballista to shoot a dragon out of the sky. The massive lizard corpse fell to the ground, killing three of my opponent’s soldiers.

Thank you for making that moment possible, Zen Studios.

Building and destroying castles is endlessly fun

You typically have two ways to beat a level in CastleStorm. You can either destroy every room in your opponent’s castle or send your ground troops across the battlefield to knock down their gate and capture their flag. One of these is far more satisfying than the other, as I’ve said above.

But CastleStorm also includes an editor that you can use to design your ideal castle. You unlock new rooms by playing through the 12 levels of the campaign; in addition to barracks for your ground units and aeries for your flying beasts, you can also slot in special chambers that do things like make your troops do more damage or grant you bonuses to the gold you collect for taking out your opponent’s forces.

Your ballista will always be in the same place, but other than that, the design is up to you. Building a castle feels a lot like playing with building blocks — Zen’s designers are not afraid to proclaim their love of Lego — and it doesn’t take long to make something worth keeping. Once your masterpiece is complete, you can enter Test Mode to make sure that it will stand on its own and also to blast it into dust. You can pretend that this is to see how difficult it will be for your adversary to destroy the thing, but let’s be honest: Careless destruction is a stark inevitability with all building-block constructs.

The co-op multiplayer

Multiplayer is inevitable in a game like this, and Zen has made some interesting decisions with it. You have three modes to choose from, the most obvious of which is a head-to-head fight in which you and your opponent race to destroy each other’s castles or, less interestingly, capture one another’s flags. But CastleStorm also includes two cooperative game types that are actually more fun than their single-player counterparts.

Last Stand is a 2D brawler mode in which you and your partner each control one of the Hero characters. These are superpowerful melee fighters who are typically only available for a limited time in the campaign. You and your partner work together to fight off increasingly difficult waves of enemies to protect your flag in the middle of the arena. You lose if the bad guys carry your banner away or both Heroes are down at the same time (after “dying,” you have a brief cooldown period before respawning).

It’s a lot of fun standing back-to-back with your partner and picking off distant enemies with your ranged attacks before switching to your sword when they get too close, and this game type is way more manageable with a buddy, since single-handedly trying to hold off waves of foes that approach from both sides gets frustrating pretty quickly.

But the most interesting of the three is Survival, in which one member of your two-person team controls the castle’s ballista and sends out troops while the other controls a Hero character on the ground. Co-op Survival is a fun exercise in coordination and communication that gives both parties plenty of interesting and useful things to do.

You can play multiplayer both online and with someone sitting on the other end of your couch. I only played locally for this review, and the individual screens seemed like they would be way too small at first, but the ability to zoom in solved a lot of those issues.

The music

CastleStorm features a soundtrack from composer Christian M. Krogsvold (known on the Internet as Waterflame), whose work you might recognize from 2008′s Castle Crashers. The  music is immediately memorable and fits its “farcical medieval combat” vibe perfectly. In particular, an earlier piece that Krogsvold reworked for  CastleStorm will likely be stuck in your head long after you’ve stopped playing. I’ve been humming it this whole time.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

This weekend Amazon launched its Appstore in China, beating Google itself to the punch. Amazon’s AppStore is based on Android, but Google’s own app store only provides free apps to China, not paid apps.

This is the latest move in Amazon’s worldwide expansion. In April the Amazon Appstore hit more than 200 new countries, including Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. It also arrived in India, China’s parallel in population growth. China has more than 1.3 billion people.

Amazon is eager to expand its audience, but the growing Chinese market is now too large to ignore. According to Flurry, China just became the world’s largest smartphone market, having an estimated 246 million smartphone devices compared to the U.S.’s 230 million. In comparison, India has only 19 million active smartphone devices.

Amazon’s Appstore expansion also gives it a bigger platform for its Kindle Fire Amazon Coins currency, its rumored Kindle TV set-top box, and future Kindle Fire HD devices.

The Amazon Appstore launched two years ago with about 4,000 apps including a free version of Angry Birds Rio. It now has only about 75,000 apps, which, according to some developers, is one of its advantages.

Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr

Rovio Entertainment, whose Angry Birds games have been download more than billion times, has appointed Jami Laes as its new executive vice president of games.

That’s a critical job for the Espoo, Finland-based company because Rovio needs to find more hits to support the momentum that Angry Birds has given the company over the last three years.

Source: Rovio

Jami Laes is Rovio’s new executive vice president of games. He worked previously for EA and Digital Chocolate.

Laes will run the game division, while others will handle toys, movies and other merchandise. Previously, Laes worked at Electronic Arts and Digital Chocolate.

For the past six years, Laes has built global studios that deliver high-end social and mobile games. He has experience working with studios in China and Japan.

“Thinking back, this was a natural next step in my career,” Laes said in a statement. “I have always been a huge fan of Angry Birds, and it has been great to see the phenomenal success that Rovio has already achieved.

“Even so, we’ve only seen a fraction of what can be achieved with great brands like Angry Birds and Bad Piggies, and I wanted to be a part of building that story.”

Petri Järvilehto, who previously ran games, has decided to move on in his career.

“With their excellent past track records, I have full confidence in our games management and studio heads to work together with Jami to do amazing work also in the future,” said Järvilehto in a statement. “This is a good time to hand over the reins.”

Rovio claims that it doubled its revenue last year. It reported revenues of nearly $195 million on the strength of its games and consumer products. That’s up 101 percent from $97 million in 2011. Earnings before interest and taxes are up 50 percent from $60.2 million in 2011 to $98.5 million in 2012.

But in recent months, Rovio’s games have sunk in the app stores sales charts.

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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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GungHo Online Entertainment has moved from obscurity to becoming one of the major players in mobile games this year thanks to the enormous success of its free-to-play Puzzle & Dragons game, which has dominated the top-grossing app store charts on a worldwide basis for months. It’s generating $2.5 million in revenue a day, with downloads above 11 million. It combines casual Bejeweled-like gameplay with a hardcore role-playing game.

Five months ago, GungHo’s stock was worth $280 million. Now its value is $4.5 billion, or more than Zynga ($2.8 billion). The company is about to become a majority-owned subsidiary of Japan’s telecommunications giant SoftBank, headed by Masayoshi Son, whose brother, Taizo, is chairman of GungHo. To players, that success isn’t a surprise. One woman, who shall remain nameless, told me she had spent more than $300 on the game.

A game built by just six people.

Puzzle & Dragons launched in the spring of last year, and it hit No. 1 on the Apple iTunes App Store in Japan on the top-grossing chart within a few days. It has been there ever since. It has also dominated the charts on Android, though the number of actual downloads has been small. A well-timed television commercial helped push it into the stratosphere in Japan. It’s not an overnight success story, as the company has been in business for more than a decade and it has created hits such as the Ragnarok Online game. The company operates multiple studios, and it now has more than 40 working on updates for Puzzle & Dragons.

In the U.S., however, Puzzle & Dragons isn’t as popular. Launched in November, the U.S. version is ranked at No. 53 on the Apple iTunes App Store in terms of top-grossing apps, and it is No. 874 in terms of downloads, according to App Annie. Morishita said the company hasn’t spent any money on marketing in the U.S., and it will wait to do so until it has higher average ratings for the game.

Meanwhile, GungHo acquired Grasshopper Manufacture, the maker of Lollipop Chainsaw. That company was founded by legendary game designer Goichi Suda, also known as Suda51. He made acclaimed games such as No More Heroes and Killer7. Such investments could improve the odds that GungHo will be more than a one-hit wonder.

We looked up Kazuki Morishita, the chief executive of GungHo, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week. Here’s our edited transcript of our interview with Morishita, who spoke through a translator.

GamesBeat: I had never heard of you guys until I started looking at some of the worldwide results of the top-grossing games. How did your success happen? How did your games become so popular?

Kazuki Morishita: GungHo was established back in 2002. It’s been more than 10 years. We specialized in PC and console games, so mobile was a later step. We only started there two years ago, and we’ve gone from there to lead the mobile space.

GamesBeat: How many mobile games had you done before Puzzle & Dragons?

Morishita: We’ve published a total of 10 mobile games so far. Five of those were in the past year.

GamesBeat: Why did this one become so popular?

Morishita: Good luck. [Laughs] I established the company when I was in my mid-20s, and back then I had a very hands-on approach. The company was smaller, so I could oversee all of the creative direction and production and development. We had a very big title in Ragnarok Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and as the company grew from there, I focused more on the business aspect.

A couple of years into that, the quality of our games started slowly declining. They weren’t as well received by the public. Three years ago, I decided to change our business style and go back to taking charge of the creative direction. I’m president and CEO of GungHo, but at the same time I’m also executive producer of all games. I’m very hands-on with all these releases. If I have to push back certain games because they’re not up to standards, I can do that. That helped with Puzzle & Dragons when it came to controlling the level of quality.

GamesBeat: What was it like to begin that project and see it through to completion? How much time and how many people did it take? Was there a time when you knew you had a hit?

Morishita: The concept stage for Puzzle & Dragons started in August 2011 or September 2011. At the time, card battle games were really popular in Japan, so I thought we could come up with a new type of game in that genre. I personally thought most of the games there were crap. I couldn’t understand why they were such a big deal. I thought we could turn the genre upside-down and come up with something very innovative. A month after the concept stage got going, I knew we had something pretty special. It was a lot of fun.

Altogether it took a little less than half a year to make. The first month after release, the team was only six or seven people, not counting the illustrators. Right now we’re up to about 40.

Originally, the game was designed so that you could play the puzzle sideways. You held the screen horizontally. Then, two or three weeks later, I had the idea of moving it this way and making this part the puzzle, so we could focus more on the dungeon-RPG elements. By doing that, we were able to merge more genres together. That was a turning point, where we realized this was going somewhere. It was almost by chance, but that’s what I mean about good luck.

To be honest, I wasn’t anticipating the sales to be so high. Even though I knew we had something fun to play, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a moneymaker. But I’m confident now that Puzzle & Dragons is the most addictive and fun game in the world right now.

GamesBeat: What day did it launch in Japan? How quickly did it take off from there?

Morishita: The iOS version launched on February 20, 2012, and it was only two or three days before it became a top-grossing game in Japan. Seven months later we released the Android version. Originally, we wanted to do a simultaneous launch for all platforms, but at the time we were a little short-staffed and our people were more used to developing for iOS. We developed on the native platform first, and when we had more people who were comfortable working in Unity, that’s when we started on the Android version. Android took about a week and a half to reach No. 1.

When we launched the Android version, since the game was now available on both platforms, we did a new marketing push. We aired a TV spot in Japan, which isn’t very common for mobile games, but we were confident that we had something very strong. Up until that point, it was all word of mouth spreading the game.

GamesBeat: Is your team all working on continuous updates for the game now?

Morishita: Right now, about half of those people – around 20 – are working on updates and ongoing operations.

GamesBeat: Most games that hit No. 1 only stay there for a few weeks. This one has been there for how long? What are some of the other records you’ve set?

Morishita: From day two until now, we’ve stayed at number one on iOS. We’ve never dropped out. It’s the same with Android.

GamesBeat: When did the bigger companies start paying attention, like SoftBank? When did bigger things start to happen?

Morishita: SoftBank was actually one of the first investors in GungHo. They had 33 percent of stock in the company in 2002. When they bought an added 7 percent that just brought their share up. As far as the operation of GungHo, nothing has really changed. Some people just sold their shares and Softbank picked them up.

GamesBeat: Are you surprised at how successful you’ve become?

Morishita: I’m not shocked or surprised, and some people find that kind of strange. [Laughs] We’re just so focused on creating and developing the next new fun game. I’m very calm about all this media interest. It’s not going to change our philosophy about making games.

GamesBeat: Puzzle & Dragons hasn’t done quite as well here in the United States. Are there any reasons you think might explain that difference? Do you think there’s something you can do to make it more successful here?

Morishita: In Japan, the game came out in February. In the U.S., it didn’t come out until November. There’s that lead time that Japan had. Since we reached the top of the charts there in a matter of days, it was very easy to get started on marketing quickly. If we’re going to do any major marketing push, first the user reviews and ratings have to be high. Otherwise people aren’t going to be interested when they go to see the product. Our thinking is that we’ll wait a while – however long it may take – for the reviews to be very positive. The game is already up to a 4.5 average on the App Store, and we’re at 4.1 or 4.2 on Google Play, so we’ll be ready to start soon.

Geography is another factor in play. The size of the country is so different. Something spreads through the media much quicker in a country like Japan. There’s a lot more lag from the time difference and the size difference over here.

Another important thing that we focus on before we spend a lot of money on marketing is to make sure that the operation is very smooth. When users review the game, I want the fun aspects of the game to be part of what they talk about, but also the online support and customer service. For mobile games that are constantly updating and doing events, we have to make sure the operations are perfect. It’s not like a console game that’s a one-time purchase.

At GungHo, we had 10 years of providing that kind of online customer service and operations on the PC side in our online games. We’re very familiar with what customers appreciate, and I think that’s part of why we were able to do so well in that regard with Puzzle & Dragons.

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Android microconsoles like GameStick and Ouya may not pose much of a threat to the PlayStation 4 or the next Xbox, but set-top boxes like Roku better look out.

Developer PlayJam, the company behind GameStick, announced it is working with technology company Pivos to bring the XBMC media software to the thumb drive-sized gaming device. XBMC is an open-source video platform that enables users to stream media from their computers or from websites like Hulu and YouTube.

“We are delighted to partner with PlayJam, the visionaries behind the Android micro-gaming console, GameStick,” XBMC project director Cory Fields said in a statement. “This unique partnership provides us the opportunity to extend our XBMC development beyond its world-leading media-management capability with an established gaming platform.”

This XBMC functionality, along with access to Netflix and more, turns the $79 GameStick into a competitor to the Roku, which is a puck-sized box that streams Internet video.

The latest product from Roku, which features some motion games like Angry Birds, starts at $100. GameStick and Ouya could make a compelling case for anyone in the market for a dedicated streaming box to go with the hardware that can also download Android apps and play real games.

“Working with Pivos and the XBMC community to integrate a world-class media center into GameStick is a major step forward in our ambitions,” PlayJam chief executive Jasper Smith said. “Likewise, extending the reach of our games platform via XBMC fulfills our underlying goal of accelerating the affordable TV games market. Combining the two is very much the holy grail.”

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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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If you can’t get enough of Angry Birds, you might want to check it out on an arcade machine. That’s right. Dream Arcades, the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of arcade machines for the home, just announced that you will be able to play Angry Birds and Cut the Rope — two of the most successful mobile games in history — on its coin-op hardware.

Dream Arcades distributes games on its arcade cabinets, which can be refitted with different titles easily. Each Dream Arcade machine has 145 classic video games. But users can also buy them in packs. The company targets families, particularly those who are nostalgic for the bygone era.

The four-player Dreamcade 2.0 Cocktail is a tabletop machine with 145 titles, a 19-inch monitor, and a three-quarter-inch computer-routed Melamine cabinet. It sells for $1,999. The Cabaret Dreamcade 2.0 is a stand-up machine that has pinball flippers on the side, a 19-inch monitor, and 145 games. It sells for $1,899.

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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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Rovio Entertainment said today it would take advantage of its huge mobile game network to distribute its new Angry Birds video cartoon series.

The Espoo, Finland-based company has seen a decline of playtime — and thus a decline in revenue — of its Angry Birds games, which have been downloaded more than 1.7 billion times, according to market analyst App Annie. So the new cartoon series, Angry Birds Toons, is a way to increase engagement in those games. In an industry first, Rovio will launch the animated cartoon series in a video distribution channel in all of its Angry Birds games on smartphones and tablets. Starting this weekend (March 16-March 17), fans can watch the adventures of the zany birds and bad pigs through a dedicated Rovio channel inside the games.

The videos will also be available on select video-on-demand providers, smart TVs, and connected devices. The cartoon series will also air on TV networks around the worlds.

In other words, Angry Birds will be inescapable and ubiquitous.

“We’ve long wanted to tell our fans the story of the Angry Birds and the Bad Piggies, to introduce their personalities and their world in detail.” said Mikael Hed, the CEO of Rovio, in a statement. “We’re delighted to introduce all this through our new channel, with easy and instant access to the stories in the palm of your hand. With over 1.7 billion downloads, we can reach a far wider and more engaged global audience than traditional distribution would allow. Launching the channel, and partnering up with some of the best video-on-demand providers and TV networks, is an important milestone for us on our journey towards becoming a fully fledged entertainment powerhouse.”

Angry Birds Toons will have 52 weekly episodes starting Saturday on TV and the next day in Angry Birds apps and video-on-demand platforms.

“We want to combine the feel of cartoon classics with modern twists on an unprecedented scale. Our team has been working tremendously hard to once again delight our fans with a new way to experience these loveable characters,” said Nick Dorra, the head of animation at Rovio.

Rovio said it has partnered with third-party video distributors including Comcast’s Xfinity, Samsung Smart TVs, Roku boxes and other platforms. On TV, Angry Birds Toons will air on FOX8 in Australia, JEI TV in Korea, ANTV in Indonesia, Cartoon Network in India, MTV3 Juniori and MTV3 in Finland, the Children’s Channel in Israel, 1+1 networks in Ukraine, Gulli and Canal J in France, SUPER RTL in Germany, TV2 in Norway, Canal 13 in Chile, and Gloob in Brazil.

In addition, Activision, Paramount Pictures, BlackBerry, and Sony Pictures are partnering with Rovio at the launch of the Angry Birds Toons channel.

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

AppSurfer, the online demo site for Android smartphone apps that launched last October, is now letting developers offer tablet apps, too.

While buying an app for a couple of bucks may not be a big deal, no one wants to waste money. So try-before-you-buy is a great idea, especially for those apps that you can’t fully evaluate within the 15-minute Google Play refund period.

Site users have already run over 100,000 demo sessions, according to cofounder Amit Yadav, and over 4,000 developers have signed up to feature their apps on the platform — including Rovio, which makes the ultrapopular Angry Birds franchise of games. Registration is free.

“With this, users can try apps from any device and any platform before making a download decision,” Yadav told me via email from Mumbai, India, where the company is based. “AppSurfer helps users to decide faster and decide better … now instead shifting through pile of reviews and screenshots and videos, you can just try five or six apps in a few simple clicks. If you like it, you download it — as simple as that.”

To enable this technically, AppSurfer runs a customized version of Android that is optimized for cloud, Yadav said. It runs multiple instances as needed and streams graphics to users via HTML5 or Flash.

Once users try an app and decid to buy it, they can simply click through to Google Play and download it.

For developers, it’s almost seamless.

“Developers just need to put their application apk [the Android app file format] onto AppSurfer,” Yada said. “There is no code integration or changes in the app. It is free for developers.”

Once an app is live on AppSurfer, app marketers can then feature the app on websites and blogs via a simple embed, the same way you would embed a YouTube video.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a piece on how a consumer-first company like Del Monte can learn from a mobile-first company like Fruit Ninja. Clearly, mobile developers have cracked the code on install-driven metrics around mobile marketing, but the reverse is still true – one needs to look no further than Rovio.

Rovio’s success with Angry Birds, the fastest growing game in history, is a great example of how app developers are applying some ‘traditional’ marketing lessons to drive more revenue. Since Angry Birds flew onto iPhones in 2009, Rovio has leveraged every aspect of the game’s iconic imagery via apparel, accessories, small amusement parks and a soon-to-be released animated series for the big screen. The studio even announced plans to delve into the credit card business with its launch of Angry Birds prepaid debit cards.

So Rovio, once on the brink of bankruptcy, learned from its past failures and acted like a consumer brand, not just a game studio, to reach new heights – with or without a slingshot.

Other game developers have picked up on the clue that in order to become a hit, it pays to think like the agencies on Madison Avenue. Here are three concrete actions to do just that:

1. Pursue a Cross-Screen Approach

Digital media ranges from TV to PC; it’s not limited to your smartphone or tablet. Since many users aren’t tied down to one device, it’s important to realize how they use each one in distinct ways. Someone itching for a cruise vacation may see an ad for a Royal Caribbean cruise package as a banner ad on his iPhone, but the chances of him finalizing the package purchase with this same device are slim.

Google recently released a series of case studies demonstrating the significant lift achieved by brands using a cross screen approach. Delta Airlines achieved a 105% increase in brand awareness and a 103% increase in brand favorability by extending their campaign from TV only to TV plus mobile. Similarly, Volvo observed 74% brand recall for users exposed to multiple screens vs. 50% for TV alone. Both examples point to the importance of targeting audiences and their behavior across all screens.

Successful brands understand this — and are pursuing a multi-screen approach. They use some screens for creating awareness of their product, and others for influencing the user to complete the product purchase or download. Since certain devices elicit certain behaviors, developers must start tailoring their message according to the screen that displays it.

Let’s reference our main mobile example, Fruit Ninja.

The game’s studio, Halfbrick, made marketing a top priority from the get-go, despite not having many resources to do so at the time. Clearly not made for TV, the Fruit Ninja’s web video advertisement, featuring two actors dressed as fruit being chased through a park by another actor dressed as a ninja, quickly went viral on the desktop web. Rather than viewing every screen as an acquisition opportunity, developers should learn how certain screens both complement and contrast each other in order to deliver an effective campaign.

2. Channel Your Inner Nielsen

Ten years ago, it would have been costly and difficult for a developer to target a highly educated, married female scientist who also happens to actively play its game. Traditional brands accomplished this goal using approximations on television audiences provided by Nielsen, the leading global information measurement company. They would further commission brand loyalty studies by firms such as Insight Express and Dynamic Logic to track customer lifetime value to a particular brand. Such studies are expensive and time-consuming, but are the lifeblood of brand management.

Developers, in contrast, have had to work through a tangled web of anonymous Android mobile web cookies, UDIDs, IMEI numbers, SHA-1 hashes and now Apple’s IFAs (“Identifier for Advertisers”), with little specificity about audience or intent.

Finally, there are tools available for developers to leapfrog brands in their use of audience data and insights to find the right users. This is particularly important to any developer who is looking to establish a long-term relationship with its users.

The most obvious examples are commerce (like eBay, Amazon, Groupon), travel (Expedia, Kayak, HotelTonight) and streamed media (Netflix, Hulu, Spotify), where a loyal user may generate $5-$20/month for several years. A high percentage of users, however, download the app, and then do not activate (ie. add a credit card and make a purchase), and in many cases, more than 80% of users neveractivate at all.

Groupon’s financial filings are instructive: from their Q3 2012 earnings report, only around 7.9% of users are active; they are earning $5.33/month from active subscribers vs. $0.38 from all subscribers. Assuming an 18-month lifetime value calculation, their value per average subscriber is $6.78, while their value per active subscriber is $95.94. Clearly, the ability to identify an active user is worth more than an order of magnitude greater to Groupon. Now, marketers are able to not only target audiences, but they can also monitor post install behavior (ie. did users activate or become frequent purchasers?) to inform acquisition strategies. These are tried-and-true methods that brands have employed, and are now in the hands of developers.

The top brands of today would be lost without data, add-ins, insights and analytics to measure brand performance. And that’s how most game developers are today: stuck using unsophisticated tools for targeting rather than taking advantage of the tools at their disposal to build loyal, lifelong relationships with their users. With post-install metrics, developers can build a performance strategy that goes far beyond install.

3. Extend Your Brand Beyond Screens and Into New Products

Apps similar to Fruit Ninja are also beginning to learn from global brands and following the Rovio model.

Fruit Ninja released its game for Kinect on Xbox this past summer (in addition to already being available on iPhone, Android, tablet and PC). The game was already familiar to more than 25 million people who play on mobile phones and tablets, but expansion to Xbox continued to strengthen the product’s recognition by honing in on a specific audience segment: highly active male players aged 12 – 17.

Halfbrick went a step further by reeling in an even younger demographic of players who may not even have access to mobile devices or play consoles yet: in June of this year, Halfbrick rolled out a partnership with several leading international consumer product companies to bring Fruit Ninja toys, apparel, shoes and more to the marketplace.

Similar to Del Monte’s variety of food offerings, Fruit Ninja’s new product partnerships are great steps forward in brand extension. Audiences buy brands, not operating systems and OEM specs. In order for games to become real brands, they must focus on expanding an audience profile, rather than just attracting more mobile consumers.

And there we have it. Cross-screen marketing, granular analytics and brand extensions are just three steps for taking a fun, mobile game and turning it into a household name. Any other ideas are welcome in the comments section of this story below. What else can games learn from brands?

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan left her position as lead scientist at Google-acquired Admob in 2010 to create and found cross-screen mobile ad network Drawbridge. Named one of Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Women in Mobile Advertising (Meet the Most Powerful Women in Mobile Advertising: 2012),” she is an expert on advertiser-buyer connections in today’s mobile environment. Kamakshi attended Stanford University and received a PhD in Information Theory and Algorithms.

photo credit: blakespot via photopin cc

Rovio Entertainment’s Angry Birds franchise is huge — it sold 8 million copies on Christmas day alone. You can find the games on phones, tablets, and even consoles. And you can barely walk outside without seeing its brightly colored mascots plastered on all sorts of merchandise. So who in their right mind would leave that all behind?

Last year, we found three of them: Tuomas Erikoinen, Ilkka Halila, and Antti Stén. They all left their jobs at Rovio to form Boomlagoon, a new independent mobile-game studio based in Helsinki, Finland. Its first title, Noble Nutlings, is out now for free for iOS devices.

So what’s the biggest difference between working on a game at Rovio versus at a startup like Boomlagoon?

“Now we added a ‘chief’ to the beginning of our titles, so that makes a huge difference,” joked chief creative officer Tuomas Erikoinen to GamesBeat. “I was one of the lead artists in Rovio, and I’m basically handling the art and also the audio part and much of the design [for Boomlagoon].”

Chief technical officer Ilkka Halila chimed in. “It’s a lot of the same: I was programmer then, and I’m still programming,” he said. “But obviously, there’s so much more to do as well. We all take part in designing and just generally running a company. And there’s a lot of stuff. It’s a really good learning experience, though. I like it this way.”

Source: Boomlagoon

CEO Antti Stén (left) and CCO Tuomas Erikoinen (right)

Building from experience

“I was [at Rovio] from the beginning, so it was really valuable to see the growth from 10 people to 300 or so,” said Erikoinen. “And to kind of see how it affects the company, the people within the company, and how the bigger corporate [culture] works.”

For Erikoinen, one of the hardest parts of working in a smaller studio was breaking the development habits he formed at Rovio.

“[It was things] like following certain types of standards when it comes to creating art — whether you need to keep it in a necessary format, have them always in a certain place for the marketing department or the merchandising department or whatever,” he said. “I still do that, but I basically do it just for me at this point.”

The team is careful of how many more people it plans to bring on board, hoping to expand to a total of five or six employees in the near future and perhaps as much as 10 by the year’s end. They just have to find the right people.

“When the company is growing really fast, you pretty much have to have clear hierarchies and probably get some bureaucracy in between there, and [this] kind of … stagnates things and makes things more formal,” said Halila. “But I think you can dodge that if you’re more sort of careful of hiring and only hire really excellent people who fit into the culture, instead of going for some kind of hyper expansion quickly.”

Source: Boomlagoon

CTO Ilkka Halila

With its current three-man roster, Boomlagoon developed Noble Nutlings in a span of around two-and-a-half months. It doesn’t stray too far from many other mobiles games: Levels take only seconds to complete, and it grades you at the end with either a one-, two-, or three-star rating. It even has its own cast of animal mascots known as “nutlings.” Unlike their previous work at Rovio, however, Noble Nutlings is free with optional in-app purchases.

“We had some arguments with each other whether it should be premium or freemium,” said Erikoinen. “But we decided to go with freemium because that’s kind of our business plan. And we really need to learn about the whole freemium thing. Our background comes from Rovio, so basically we’ve done only premium stuff, and now we need to learn about the freemium [model].”

Creating the first game

The squirrel-like “nutlings” weren’t always destined to build carts and race through scenic routes. The trio scratched its original proposal of developing with HTML5 (citing some “issues”) and switched to Unity to specifically target mobile devices. At one point, Boomlagoon’s first project resembled more of a role-playing game where the animals carried swords made of carrots and wore “funny hats.”

“But that was almost too hardcore of a game to start out with,” said Erikoinen. “We didn’t really have a team for that, so we needed to come up with yet another type of game, and we just kind of sat down one evening at the office and brainstormed our ideas. And then we just came up with [Noble Nutlings]. And we still wanted to use the same characters.”

The nutlings lost some of their personality during this phase. In earlier prototypes, each animal had specific attributes: Sydney (the blue one) was quick but didn’t do a lot of damage, Lemmy (yellow) could use his bouncing abilities to attack enemies, and Abe (brown) was the strongest fighter of them all. None of this is present in Noble Nutlings. But if the game is successful, the team hopes to flesh out its characters in future releases.

“I’d like to see it as a big family of games — not just one game and we move on to something completely different,” said Erikoinen. “But that’s pretty much up to gamers themselves, whether they like the characters and all the environment and that kind of stuff. If they don’t, then we just kind of have to scrap it and figure out why they didn’t like it and make new ones.”

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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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With furry critters and a three-star rating system, Noble Nutlings (available now for free in the iOS App Store) shares some similarities with other mobile games. But it has one thing behind it the others might not have: a prestigious pedigree.

It’s the first game from Boomlagoon, an independent studio founded by ex-Angry Birds developers in April 2012. Antti Stén, Tuomas Erikoinen, and Ilkka Halila are all former employees of the Finland-based Rovio Entertainment, where they were instrumental in the success of its blockbuster birds-versus-pigs franchise.

Angry Birds is a tough act to follow — no other mobile game has been able to reach the same sort of mass market appeal and lucrative merchandising deals it has so far. But Boomlagoon has crafted a solid game with Noble Nutlings even if the squirrel-like creatures are not as memorable as their avian predecessors.

What you’ll like

Drag-and-drop customization
Instead of flying through the air, the “nutlings” prefer to drive their way through a level. You start with a small wooden cart, but eventually, you can customize it with new parts in the form of apples, bananas, shoes, beach balls, stop signs, and other objects that don’t really belong on the road. Each of these items slightly affects the performance of your vehicle: wheels have different rates of acceleration, and swapping out different bodies will add more to (or subtract from) the weight of the cart.

You can purchase these parts using the gold coins you earn (usually by smashing into something). Alternatively, you can buy stacks of them with real-world dollars. But chances are you won’t ever need to since you can easily collect a couple hundred coins after playing for around 20 minutes. With the exception of two items that cost 50,000 coins each, everything else is attainable if you just put in enough time to get it.

All you have to do is drag and drop your purchases to equip them on the cart right before starting a new level. It’s a simple but elegant interface that doesn’t get in the way of your true goal.

Going for the gold
You have to make it from one end of a stage to another in the fastest time possible to receive the coveted three-star rating. Steep hills, winding tree trunks, rotating platforms, and other obstacles will slow you down along the way, so it’s important to find the right combination of bodies and wheels to overcome them. A boost mechanism powered by chili peppers can help you, but it’s a finite resource that you have to replenish using gold coins.

The key to winning is balance. By using either the virtual buttons or your iOS device’s tilt functionality (my preferred method), you have to make sure your cart doesn’t suddenly flip over and crash. All it takes is one bad landing for the nutlings to spill out of the vehicle and lose precious seconds as you wait for it to respawn.

Noble Nutlings feels exhilarating when you soar through the air at impossible speeds and (after some practice) deftly navigate its unpredictable terrain. I actually wanted to go back and replay levels for a higher score because I knew that I could do better — that I could shave just a few more seconds off the clock if I swapped one type of wheel out for another. Though I had no one else to compare my scores to — a handy column reminds you of how well your friends did in each level — chasing and surpassing my previous times was enough to keep me addicted.

What you won’t like

You might want to mute it 
Prepare to listen to the same two songs over and over especially if you end up replaying the levels for more coins and a better star rating. The first song, which you can hear in the trailer above, quickly turns from catchy to annoying after only a handful of times. The other track, which is featured in levels that take place in a forest, is thankfully a little more soothing to the ears.

Bland characters
You wouldn’t know it from playing Noble Nutlings, but the creatures actually have their own names and personalities (shown in the gallery below). We have the cranky-looking Abe (the brown one), the “loony” Lemmy (yellow), and their leader, Sydney (blue). Aside from their facial expressions and skin color, however, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

With Angry Birds, the animals at least had unique abilities and animations to show how different they are from one another. But since all the nutlings ride in the same vehicle, their personalities and differences doesn’t affect the gameplay in any meaningful way.

Conclusion

Noble Nutlings is a good but safe debut from the three-man team at Boomlagoon. Aside from its cute premise and racing-inspired gameplay, everything else feels like something we’ve seen dozens of times before on the App Store. Hopefully, the team will flex their creative muscles a little more in future titles.

Score: 77/100

Noble Nutlings is available now for free on iOS devices. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a download code for the purpose of this review. I played and tested it on an iPhone 4S. 

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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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Welcome to the new year in games. I made my predictions about the game industry last week, but this week I’m thinking about what will happen in 2013 on a month-by-month basis. The pattern of the game industry is somewhat predictable, based on the major events that happen every year. But social, mobile, and online game companies have changed the business and the patterns of the year as well.

If you’re used to the old annual cycle, what follows below is more like what you can expect from the disrupted game business. As you can see, 2013 promises to be a very different kind of year. No longer is the cycle driven simply by the announcement of new games and their launch in the fall. Call it the drumbeat of disruption. But the cadence of news will be steady all year long.

January

Next week, we’ll make our way to the Consumer Electronics Show. Sony will have a press conference, but don’t expect it to announce the PlayStation 4. We’ll see all sorts of game peripherals from companies like Mad Catz Interactive (launching its GameSmart devices), but CES is losing its luster as a big event for the game business.

Still, there is a huge amount happening behind the scenes. If the console companies really want to release new consoles this year, the major chips have to be shipping from the chip manufacturer already, according to Charlie Demerjian at the chip blog SemiAccurate. The debugging process and the subsequent creation of launch titles happens so far in advance that the chip makers have much earlier deadlines than anyone else making components for the consoles.

The new game release schedule for the month is light, with smaller titles such as DmC: Devil May Cry coming out. In mid January, market researcher NPD Group will release sales figures for the full calendar year of retail video game sales, and we’ll find out just how weak a year it was for the core business in the U.S. That will coincide with earnings season for the major U.S. publicly traded game companies.

February

We’ll be delighted to see the release of some major titles such as Sony’s Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Konami’s Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Electronic Arts’ Dead Space 3, and EA-Crytek’s Crysis 3. We’ll be traveling to events such as Casual Connect in Hamburg, Germany, and the Dice Summit in Las Vegas to capture the pulse of the industry. At Dice, we’ll see major talks from David Cage, head of Quantic Dream, whose major game Beyond: Two Souls should be one of the big titles of the year. The Dice Summit is a great place for game industry leaders to stir up a lot of news and focus the world’s attention on the big issues.

This year, many of the speakers will hail from tablet and mobile game makers. One of the speakers is Gabe Newell, head of Valve and a man who supposedly has his own Linux-based game console in the works.

Yet the game business is spilling over into different industries. Titles such as Skylanders, which offer both toy and game products, have seen their debut at the Toy Fair show in New York. As toys go digital, they’re becoming much more game like.

March

The Game Developers Conference will keep us busy for a whole week in San Francisco. And we’ll finally see a gigantic month for core games with the scheduled releases of Tomb Raider, God of War: Ascension, SimCity, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Gears of War Judgement, and BioShock Infinite. Apple will probably try to upstage the game companies at the GDC by holding a launch of its own, either a new iPad or a new iPhone. Ouya also promises that its Android-based $99 game console will launch during March. The company is hoping to disrupt the traditional consoles with free-to-play games that were born on mobile devices.

April

Disrupt the disruptors! PlayJam hopes to disrupt the likes of Ouya with its own GameStick, a game console that sells for $79 and fits on a universal serial bus stick. For some reason, there aren’t many big games coming out, except for the Dead Island Riptide sequel. If you’re thinking about delaying a major game release, April is a good time for it to launch on a revised schedule. The Gamification Summit may offer a nice distraction for those who believe that making work more game-like can make people more productive. The Neuro Gaming Conference and Expo might also be cool for folks who want to see the mind and body meet through game play. Meanwhile, the Global iGaming Summit & Expo will highlight the intersection of social casino games and online gambling — a big growth area for games.

May

The industry will be full of next-generation rumors as it approaches E3. But the blockbuster titles expected this month include Sony’s The Last of Us and Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V. Gamers will be in a state of heaven. Rockstar and its parent Take-Two Interactive have consistently launched big games during May in recent years. For all other developers, beware the Ides of May.

June

At the E3 show in Los Angeles, we’ll probably see Sony and Microsoft unveil their new game consoles. Sony’s PlayStation 4 will hopefully make use of cloud gaming technology acquired with the $380 million purchase of Gaikai. Microsoft’s Major Nelson, aka Larry Hyrb, has a timer showing that the event is only 158 days and some fraction of a day away. Some folks took that to mean that Microsoft will introduce a new game console at that moment, but Major Nelson does that every year. E3 will still be huge, but the changes wrought by new business models and distribution systems will be evident.

July

This is a quiet month, but Zynga sometimes holds its Unleashed event to describe the big new games coming on social and mobile platforms. Our own MobileBeat event will highlight the growth of mobile platforms and the app economy. And in Shanghai, the ChinaJoy conference takes place to highlight all things gaming in one of the fastest-growing markets for free-to-play games.

August

The Gamescom event in Cologne, Germany, has become Europe’s biggest game fest. And the Pax Prime event in Seattle is another show where the fans will come out by the tens of thousands.

September

The first games of the fall will start hitting the market, and the game developers who managed to get their games out on time will see the benefit of a longer selling cycle up through the holidays. This month is also home to the Tokyo Game Show. With the rise of mobile social game companies Gree and DeNA, don’t be surprised if the Japanese companies start making a lot more money from mobile games compared to what they make on the traditional consoles. Apple usually unveils its new fall platform launches in this month.

October

Super hero games will debut at the New York Comic-Con. But social and mobile games are likely to account for a bigger slice of these titles in contrast to superhero console games in the past. And this year, our GamesBeat 2013 conference will take place during October. We’ll line up dozens of speakers for this event. And we don’t know what they are, but there will be lots of games launching this month.

November

This is still the big month for blockbuster game launches. You can expect to see Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (or something like it) debut this month. Ubisoft typically releases a new Assassin’s Creed game, Microsoft cranks out a Halo, and other big titles typically hit just before Black Friday. But this month will also likely see the debut of the Sony PlayStation 4 or the Microsoft Xbox 720 (as it has been nicknamed). In Korea, you can expect another Gstar conference to take place.

December

The Spike TV VGA game awards have distorted the calendar so that many new games that were once announced at CES are now revealed in December instead, after all the big games have already launched for the holiday season.

The industry will feel the impact of smartphones and tablets as game activity peaks in the last week of the year. But chances are that some of the biggest game playing will happen on mobile devices, as consumers cash in their gift cards and download mobile titles on their new devices. That was how Angry Birds saw more than 8 million downloads on Christmas Day in 2012. The days after Christmas may actually turn out to be the biggest days for game sales for the whole year one of these days.

[Image credits: Mike_fleming on Flickr Creative Commons, Major Nelson]

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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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On Christmas Day, people activated approximately 17.4 million new iOS, Android, and other mobile devices.

That day, gamers downloaded over 8 million copies of Angry Birds games.

“Angry Birds Star Wars and Bad Piggies in particular have dominated the app charts, with Angry Birds Star Wars holding the No. 1 position on the U.S. iPhone chart ever since its release,” read a statement on the Rovio blog. “To top it all off, we had 30 million download during Christmas week.”

That’s a lot of people sling-shotting a ton of grumpy fowls.

We’ve covered the importance of the gift-giving holidays for developers previously, and Rovio is one of the biggest examples of just how big Dec. 25 is for mobile-game developers. As Rovio’s infographic points out, the 8 million downloads for 17.4 million new devices is just about one Angry Bird download for every two phones or tablets.

While finding new games and apps is still a problem on the iOS App Store, the established publishers are having no trouble building on their past success.

Via Polygon

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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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There’s no such thing as bad press. It’s a cliché, and — even worse than that — it’s not even true.

If you want evidence that the public spotlight is a bad thing on occasion, you should acquaint yourself with the story of Ocean Marketing. As our article points out, an angry customer asked someone mildly famous to publicize a few emails he exchanged with the owner of Ocean Marketing, and it destroyed the company. Or how about this advertisement Sony ran for the PlayStation Portable, where a white woman is holding a black woman by the throat with the caption, “White is coming”?

Yeah, that was ill-conceived.

Now that it’s the end of the year, we are gonna take a few minutes to reflect on the terrible examples of game-related advertising, marketing, and public relations in 2012.

Sony says the PlayStation Vita is like a woman with two extra breasts on her back

Oh, Sony, you poor darling. You don’t know what is edgy, what is offensive, and what is just damned stupid.

Let’s recap: Sony — or its marketing partners — ran an ad in a French magazine that had a picture of a woman from the neck down with two large breasts on her chest and two more on her back. The caption on the ad, in French, reads, “Twice the touch screens, twice the sensation.” The idea is that since the PS Vita has a touch screen on the front and the back, it’s as much fun as a deformed lady with growths on her shoulder blades.

Where to begin?

Let’s ignore that this offensively compares a woman’s body to a piece of consumer electronics. Let’s ignore the juvenile stance on the touching of boobies. Let’s ignore that touch screens actually aren’t nearly as fun as this comparison suggests. But I can’t ignore that this advert promotes the idea that a woman’s back is somehow boring because it lacks bosoms. I’ve been to France. The women in that country have just as nice backs as anywhere else. I would suggest that if you feel like a woman’s back is useless because it doesn’t have breasts, then you have a bigger problem than deciding whether or not to buy a new gaming device.

Most things related to promoting Hitman: Absolution

Edgy gone wrong describes everything about Hitman.

Publisher Square Enix started off the marketing campaign for its assassination title with a trailer showing the titular hitman punching a cadre of “naughty nuns” in the face. A loud chorus of confused fans wondered why the publisher would glorify sexualized violence. When I watch the video, the parts of my brain that react to “sexy nuns” and the parts that react to bloody noses don’t intermingle in the slightest, but I also wouldn’t use the punching of women in lingerie as a main selling point for a game.

Then, earlier this month, Square Enix unveiled a new marketing website for Hitman: Absolution that invited fans to put make-believe hits out on their friends on Facebook. The fake hitman would ask for a distinguishing feature of the “target” and would present the user with a drop-down menu that included things like “her hairy legs,” “her small tits,” and “his tiny penis.”

Since you could only send the messages to your confirmed friends on Facebook, this might not offend everybody. But the marketing team was obviously going for shock value, and it did shock people. Square Enix removed the website hours after introducing it.

“Have you heard about my Kickstarter?”

A big part of marketing involves PR people pitching products to the press. They try to get the media to cover the product in an attempt to create excitement. This means we get a lot of emails about boring stuff that no one wants to read about — and nothing epitomizes that kind of email like the “Hey, have you heard about our Kickstarter?” press release.

I am all for Kickstarter. I think it’s a viable alternative to the established publisher system, but it’s not good for Kickstarter when my main interaction with it is to groan while I archive an email that pretends like a developer asking for money is news.

Now, I wouldn’t include this on a list of terrible marketing ideas if the problem only affected my inbox. Internet forums like Reddit and NeoGAF have established rules against “Kickstarter reminder posts.” That’s because developers bombard everywhere they can think of when they have a campaign. It’s understandable to a degree. They’re trying to fund their work, but annoying people isn’t going to help.

The problem is that when Kickstarter first hit the big time, the concept itself was news. That’s not true anymore. Now, if developers want to grab attention for their crowd-funding campaigns, they need a deeper hook than the fact that they’re asking for money.

The War Z debacle

As much effort as publishers and developers put into marketing their games before they release them, it doesn’t matter if something goes wrong when the game launches.

Or in the case of developer Hammerpoint Interactive’s The War Z, if everything goes wrong when the game launches.

GamesBeat extensively covered this catastrophe, but let’s recap the major events:

When the studio released the open-world zombie game on Valve’s Steam digital-distribution service, its store page noted a handful of features that simply weren’t in the game. When irate players began to demand refunds, Hammerpoint said it couldn’t do anything to help them.

This only enraged gamers further. Those customers raised hell until Valve could only respond by removing the game from its store and granting refunds to anyone who wanted them.

Now, the developer is deep in a public-relations hole that will be nearly impossible to climb out of when it’s time to rerelease the game.

Most in-game ads on mobile

Free is dope.

I love not paying for games on my phone. It means I can try out a bunch of different titles without wasting my very limited funds, but I also understand that developers need to make money.

The most common monetization solution for mobile studios is to implement in-game advertising. Many developers have generated a great deal of revenue using these ads, so it works — but it’s usually done terribly from the player’s perspective.

Let’s take the very last game that I played on my phone before I got out of bed this morning: Family Feud.

I didn’t pay for the adaptation of the long-running television game show. In between each full play session, the game halts and throws up an empty screen while it loads an ad. When the ad finally appears, it is invariably oriented incorrectly. If I have the phone in landscape mode, the ad loads vertically, and vice versa. These commercials are also ugly as Web 1.0. The advertising people don’t put a lot of effort into designing ad spots for mobile devices. Instead, they just repurpose banners built for websites and slap those into places they don’t really belong.

You end up with an ugly and confusing mess that interrupts gameplay, and then, you’re lucky if the “skip ad” button works the first 20 times that you tap it.

No one has really figured out how to do in-games ad well. Some of the Angry Birds titles place a small ad unit over a portion of the screen during gameplay, which naturally leads to users inadvertently clicking the ad. That’s good for the developer, but it’s annoying for the gamer and costly to the advertiser.

Maybe this issue doesn’t have a neat solution, but it would be nice to see developers and advertisers working together a bit harder to improve the user experience.

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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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Those gifted with new mobile devices this holiday season have a world of fun awaiting their fingertips — maybe too much fun. Thousands of games have been made available over the years, especially since iOS and Android have increased in popularity, making the selection process frustrating for those navigating Google Play, the App Store, or the Amazon App Store for the first time. Well, consider this list of the best mobile games your saving grace. We’ve compiled a source for mobile gaming based on user friendliness, accessibility, and more importantly, fun factor. Whether you have an iPhone, iPad, Galaxy device, or Kindle Fire, these games are waiting for your attention. Think of this list as a beginner’s guide to gaming on your mobile device.

Plants vs. Zombies

Developer: PopCap Games
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Plants vs. Zombies still stands as one of the more addictive games I’ve played. Ever. The object of PvZ is to protect your home from a hoard of zombies that hungrily make their way across your yard. All that stands in their way are plants curiously armed for your war against the living dead.

Specifically, the plants are equipped with a variety of weapons, such as projectile peas. Other plants eat zombies while cherry bombs blow them to deader than dead bits. The more plants you create, the better your chance at survival. You must position your plants strategically, or the game will end rather quickly.

Cut the Rope

Developer: Chillingo Ltd.
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Cut the Rope is disgustingly cute. How so? A piece of candy hangs on a rope over an adorable little monster, and the player must swipe to break the candy free and drop it into the creature’s mouth. His smile is priceless. He’s a happy, goofy-looking little beast named Om Nom.

Cut the Rope’s puzzles are mostly based on physics and timing. For instance, the candy may be hanging from two or three ropes. The order in which you cut them becomes a strategic decision, and timing a cut perfectly so that the treat lands in Om Nom’s mouth can prove tricky. Some of the tougher parts incorporate elements such as hungry spiders that also want the treat, forcing the player to act quickly while still trying to carefully plan moves. More often than not, you’ll retry a level in the hope of feeding the little guy a candy so you don’t have to see his pouty face. It’s heartbreaking, and you can’t help but feel overwhelmed with guilt every time you fail.

Infinity Blade and Infinity Blade II

Developer: Chair Entertainment
Platform: Apple App Store

Infinity Blade is the first iOS game developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, and it looks beautiful. It’s truly a showcase of what can be accomplished visually on a mobile device with the right resources, and it’s not far from what current consoles are capable of.

You walk through a castle fighting monsters using simple left, right, and swipe gestures to dodge, block, or attack your enemy. These controls work well with touch screens because they don’t rely on precision finger movements. Instead, the player must focus on timing and pattern recognition to win. It’s Punch-Out!! with shields, swords, ogres, and knights.

Angry Birds series

Developer: Rovio
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

I admit that every time a new Angry Birds game hits the download market, I pretend I’m too cool to be interested. How many times can Rovio reskin the same game? Then I pick it up, and I’m hooked. Angry Birds is arguably the most popular mobile game around right now, and for good reason. It’s no wonder the developers keep releasing sequels and making Angry Birds available on every thinkable platform because even when you want to hate it, you have to admit it’s fun.

The object of the birds’ anger are evil green pigs that have stolen their eggs. The player’s job is to slingshot the birds into said pigs’ fortresses, rendering them dead and bacon. You have a limited number of birds per level, and you must find clever ways to efficiently eliminate all the pigs before advancing. The puzzles are physics-based, so players have to calculate distance and trajectory to win. You’ll often find that what was supposed to be a few minutes of playtime can become an hour or more of slaughtering hogs and cursing at the touch screen.

Draw Something

Developer: Omgpop
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Draw Something was one of the first mobile games to bring a social element to the general public thanks to its Facebook integration. In fact, the social network is very likely the reason Draw Something became so huge. It’s easy to sign up for because most of us have a Facebook account. It’s also very accessible to nongamer types since drawing is a basic skill, which eliminates the need to learn complicated control schemes or rules to enjoy the game.

One player is given a word and must do his best to represent it in a drawing by using his device’s touch screen. Then, he sends it to the other person, who must guess the word based on his (usually horrible) illustration. You can be playing against several friends at once, and it’s not unusual to have 10 or more games going at any given time. Keep in mind that it may be hours or even days before a friend gets back to you with a reply. The only downside to any of these social games is that you are forced to rely on others if you want to play. Once the initial popularity dwindles, it’s a little harder to find opponents.

Rayman Jungle Run

Developer: Ubisoft
Platform: Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore

Ubisoft is one of those top-tier gaming companies that wasn’t afraid even early on to invest in development and publishing for mobile platforms. Rayman Jungle Run was picked by Apple as its best game of 2012. Luckily, Rayman is multiplatform, so Android users don’t have to sit this one out.

Rayman Jungle Run is what’s called an autorun game. The character — in this case, Rayman — continuously runs through the levels. The movement is out of your control. It’s the player’s job to jump, glide,, or attack at the right moment. This genre has grown in popularity on mobile devices because it brings elements of traditional run and jump games (often called platformers) yet keeps gameplay simple enough so that users aren’t annoyed by sloppy touch-screen controls.

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2012 saw the continued evolution of three consumer technologies — autostereoscopy, touch-sensing, and motion sense – with direct application in the gaming world.

As an analyst in the tech industry (I do this gaming stuff for fun and occasional profit), I’ve witnessed these burgeoning advancements spread from the fevered dreams of OEM engineers to vertical-market trade shows, the Consumer Electronics Show, and finally E3 and the games industry.

None of these technologies debuted in 2012, but they’ve each matured and become an indispensable part of gaming. For perspective, here’s a link to last year’s article.

Seeing in three dimensions without goofy eye wear

For those who don’t know, “autostereoscopy” is an informal term in the tech industry for glasses-free 3D – “stereoscopy” refers to the process by which combining two offset images gives the illusion of depth (three dimensions), and “auto” denotes the glasses-free component.

Autostereoscopy uses a parallax barrier to create 3D images without the need for special glasses. This differs from an active shutter system (like Nvidia 3D Vision), which, through special driver software and glasses that present alternating left- and right-eye images, presents the illusion of depth.

Most consumers are familiar with polarized 3D systems, by far the oldest and most mature of these technologies. These are the sort most often found in theaters and theme parks.

Of the three techniques, autostereoscopy shows the most promise, but the tech is inherently limiting, as the 3DS amply demonstrates. The biggest downside to glasses-free 3D is its highly restrictive viewing angles. In my own experience, it ranges anywhere from 45 degrees to 60 degrees. Move too far in any direction and it breaks the illusion. In that way, the 3DS – and its parent technology – are not dissimilar to a hologram.

When the 3D revival began in recent years, the consumer electronics industry threw all their weight behind this oft-maligned gimmick.  CES became saturated with 3D TVs, 3D movies, 3D projectors, 3D laptops, 3D gaming, and more than enough 3D to turn off consumers — which it did. Whereas the leap from cathode ray tube (CRT) to flat-screen was monumental, 3D wasn’t nearly enough to convince most people to abandon their “obsolete” LED TVs. Most consumers apparently saw it as a stop-gap solution.

OEMs lay the groundwork for autostereoscopy

I saw the foundation of the 3DS’s glasses-free 3D tech at optoelectronics events (essentially, anything having to do with displays and lighting), and a large manufacturer – rhymes with “Carp” – demoed a small form-factor display long before it did (or didn’t … shhhh) become part of a certain Nintendo handheld.

And yet, Nintendo’s autostereoscopic handheld system – which may or may not have utilized display technology from Japanese manufacturer, Sharp – faced an uphill battle due to inherent limitations with the tech, itself.

The 3DS was hobbled from the start – health reports loudly trumpeted claims that 3D was unhealthy for children, while many viewers (myself includes) get headaches and/or nausea from observing stereoscopy for too long. And up to 12 percent of the population suffers from “stereoblindness,” which prevents the individual from seeing 3D images.

But the 3DS’ biggest handicap was its restrictive viewing angles, given that its claim-to-fame was its autostereoscopy technology. On July 28, Nintendo partially mitigated this problem with the release of the 3DS XL, which increased the screen size by more than 90 percent — (top: 4.88 in [124 mm], bottom: 4.18 in [106 mm]). But was it too little, too late?

GamesBeat writer Jasmine Maleficent Rea noted that “The 3DS XL is what the 3DS should have started as.”

But she also addressed the system’s improved capabilities: “A wider viewing area enhances the 3D effect, making some games that were too blurry in 3D a joy to play. For those of us with horrible vision, larger screens are a must, and because of this advancement, the 3DS XL is a great step toward people accepting a ‘gimmicky’ feature as a viable gameplay tool.”

Most consumers still do see 3D as a gimmick, and autostereoscopy is but a fancier gimmick. But for stereoscopy to ever become part of mainstream entertainment, it must shed the clunky glasses and develop into a mature, glasses-free technology.

Pinching, swiping, and styli

Capacitive touch – which underpins your iPhones, Samsung Galaxys, Droids, and countless smartphones – has become more prominent as the platforms supporting it have eked out a bigger piece of the pie. And resistive touch – the passive cousin of capacitive – has done even better for itself, featuring prominently in the Wii U gamepad (not to mention countless commercial applications like ATMs and credit card payment machines).

Resistive touch sensing – which registers pressure via fingers, styli, and other objects – is hardly a new technology. Because of its versatility compared to competing systems (like capacitive touch), resistive touch is popular in commercial applications like ATMs.

Nintendo utilized this relatively primitive touchscreen technology for its DS and 3DS systems, presumably to save a buck and to enable the use of styli.

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, the voice of GLaDOS from the Portal series shows up in the trailer for the movie Pacific Rim, Disney buys South Korean game developer Studio Ex, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II gets more zombies, now on the Nuketown map.

You’ll also find reviews for Uncharted: Fight for Fortune and Guardians of Middle-Earth.

News:

• The DeanBeat: The accelerated change of the game industry
• Black Ops II keeps players engaged with the start of League Play and more
• Endgame: Syria — a game that explores the nation’s civil war
• Journey composer is fine with winning a VGA on the red carpet
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Crimson Shroud, Batman, and Adventure Time
• How Gears of War toys are being marketed to children
• Contrary to popular belief, Call of Duty multiplayer engagement is still healthy (exclusive)
• Fight monsters, collect loot, and build a castle in Gree’s new role-playing game
• Miniclip and Univision target Spanish speakers with U.S. online game site (exclusive)
• Portal’s GLaDOS is a movie star — we’re not joking
• Funcom removes subscription requirement for The Secret World
• Everyone’s a winner: Zynga’s new Elite Slots Facebook game
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II developer Treyarch unleashes Zombies on its popular Nuketown map
• McDonald’s includes toys of Moshi Monsters’ virtual pets in Happy Meals
• Historic epic makes history: Assassin’s Creed III hits 7M sold in a month
• It’s dangerous for developers to go alone. Scopely offers help
• Angry Birds animated film to debut in 2016
• How a game design student in California brought Portal to a graphing calculator
• GameLaunched is the new gaming-only crowdfunding platform
• THQ giving away Metro 2033 to promote upcoming Metro: Last Light
• Nokia engineer hacks Windows 8 to get free games (and provides full instructions)
• Xbox 360 to get 40 new entertainment apps on Xbox Live
• The Humble THQ Bundle gets less humble with Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
• Disney pushes into Asia with purchase of South Korea’s Studio Ex
• PopRox Entertainment’s social game might let you pay off your mortgage
• Games Workshop to release video game adaptation of Space Hulk
• Backers successfully fund Sportsfriends — the bundle of JS Joust and other odd multiplayer games
• Meteor Entertainment taps Live Gamer to power virtual economy and payments for Hawken (exclusive)
• Prepare your controller-throwing hands: Dark Souls II is coming

Mobile News: 

• Apple names top free and paid apps of 2012
• Fit Brains expands its mind-training brand to mobile devices
• Corona Labs acquires cloud service provider Game Minion
• Fiksu introduces real-time bidding tracking to its user-acquisition tool
• Flurry says communication and news mobile apps hold our attention the longest
• After five No. 1 hits, Disney Mobile to launch three new holiday games and four big updates
• Test your knowledge: The first fully synchronous multiplayer trivia game for mobile devices
• OpenKit to release open-source social mobile gaming services with no lock-in for developers
• Block-builder Roblox goes mobile in time for the holidays
• Applifier raises $4M to for expansion into mobile game replays
• Jibe raises $8.3M to build rich, real-time communications for games and apps
• Nintendo releases official Pokédex for iOS — and it costs $5.99 apiece for each region
• A company other than Nintendo is launching its own ‘GamePad’ tablet

Previews:

• Dead Space 3 ain’t a walk in the park (hands-on preview)
• Insomniac’s Fuse promises some intense multiplayer co-op battles (hands-on preview)
• With Company of Heroes 2 multiplayer, ‘every battle tells a story’ (preview)
• Resident Evil 6′s new modes put an undead spin on competitive multiplayer (preview)

Interviews:

• Sony Online Entertainment chief says PlanetSide 2 online frag game is a smashing success (interview)
• Insomniac’s Ted Price says the industry’s malaise mandated drastic changes to Fuse sci-fi game (interview)
• How Journey’s composer ended up working on Leisure Suit Larry (exclusive interview)
• Why Company of Heroes 2 could warm the frozen real-time strategy market (interview)

Reviews:

• Uncharted: Fight for Fortune plays its cards right (review)
• Guardians of Middle-earth dispels the difficulty of online battle arenas (review)

Pieces of flair:

• 10 gorgeous custom game covers (gallery)
• BioShock Infinite’s generic protagonist fits into every game (gallery)
• Here are just the trailers from Spike’s Video Game Awards (you’re welcome)
• How a family of four remade the first Grand Theft Auto V trailer with Lego

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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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Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, and Super Mario Bros. have all inspired Hollywood movie adaptations. Now we can add Rovio Entertainment’s popular physics-based, avian-flinging Angry Birds to that list.

The developer announced today that it hired John Cohen to produce the 3D computer-generated animated film, which debuts in theaters in 2016. Cohen previously worked in the same role on Despicable Me, and he joins the former chairman of Marvel Studios, David Maisel, who will act as executive producer on the Angry Birds movie.

“John’s an exceptionally talented producer, and we’re delighted to have him join the flock,” said Rovio chief executive officer Mikael Hed. “With John’s hands-on producer background and David’s expertise in establishing and running his own successful studio, these two are the dream team for making a movie outside the studio system. Both professionals have the ideal skills and vision to achieve incredible things.”

Rovio is about as far outside of the studio system as you can get. The Finnish company will produce and finance the film completely on its own. That’s a rare move although it’s a solution we’re seeing more game publishers adopt.

“I’m so excited and honored to be working on this film with Mikael, David, and Rovio’s incredibly talented game developers and artists,” said Cohen. “From both an entertainment and strategic perspective, Rovio is at the forefront of game innovation and is trailblazing terrific new ways for Angry Birds fans to interact with these characters. I’ve personally spent countless hours playing the Angry Birds games over the last few years, which I can now happily justify as research for the movie.”

Rovio released the first Angry Birds three years ago. It’s done an excellent job of updating the game and introducing new variations, like Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Space, to keep the franchise relevant. Maintaining that relevancy is important now that the gamemaker plans to spend another three years and millions in company funds to create a film.

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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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Adobe is announcing today a set of cloud-based tools for game developers.

The tools take advantage of the new cloud-computing trend, where web-connected data centers host subscription-based software. Hosted in the Adobe Creative Cloud service, the tools enable developers to access a centrally located suite of tools for making their titles. The aim is to streamline the game-development process from creation to final deployment.

Adobe says that developers who use its tools can access an audience of 1.3 billion worldwide on PCs and more than 500 million on smartphones and tablets, 20 times the reach of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console.

Among the new tools is Adobe Scout (pictured below), a tool for profiling that “uncovers granular internal information in ActionScript-based mobile and browser content to unlock significant performance optimization opportunities.” In other words, it helps games run faster. Adobe Scout will be available for free to members of the Adobe Creative Cloud, a subscription service. Other tools include the Adobe Gaming SDK, Adobe Flash C++ Compiler, and trial versions of Flash Professional CS6 and Flash Builder 4.7 Premium.

A year ago, Adobe acknowledged that it would give up on a Web version of Flash for mobile devices. But Adobe allows developers to create native versions of their releases for those devices instead. More than 25,000 mobile versions of Adobe Air apps exist, and the majority are games.

In the past nine months, Adobe launched version 11 of its Flash Player, making the leap from 2D games to hardware-accelerated 3D games and its Stage 3D applications programming interface.

Diana Helander, group product marketing manager for Gaming Solutions at Adobe, said that 600 million people have chosen to opt in to a feature that updates Flash in the background. That means a game developer can issue an update for a title and get it to 600 million people within 48 hours.

“With these new tools, we’ve got a single work flow for game developers,” Helander said in an interview with GamesBeat. “The costs of developing games and acquiring new users are rising. We’re helping developers to deal with that.”

The Adobe Gaming SDK lets studios create and monetize both 2D and 3D ActionScript games on Web browsers and mobile devices.

The Adobe Flash C++ Compiler is a new tool that lets developers take a native game and recompile it for the Web. That is, it takes offerings coded for game engines on the PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and iOS and then converts them to run directly online across browsers using the Adobe Flash Player.

Meanwhile, Adobe Flash Professional CS6 is an authoring tool to create animations and games, and it includes support for delivering animated assets ready for use with the open-source framework Starling. Adobe Flash Builder 4.7 Premium adds support for the new ASC 2.0 compiler and the ability to test and debug apps directly on Apple iOS devices.

Those who pay for Creative Cloud memberships can use full versions of Flash Professional and Flash Builder, and they can use future versions of Scout following the introductory promotion.

Adobe argues that using Flash makes developers more productive when it comes to cross-platform experiences. Helander said that Flash has powered popular games on Facebook including SongPop, FarmVille 2, and Diamond Dash. Some of the top Flash implementors include Zynga, Wooga, Kixeye, Ubisoft, Northway, and Damp Gnat. Rivals (and occasional partners) include Unity Technologies, Epic Games, Microsoft’s Silverlight, and a variety of other game-development platforms.

Helander said some cool new users of Starling and Stage 3D include Incredipede and Smart Aliens. She said that Zynga used Adobe Flash and Air for its mobile version of Ruby Blast, and Rovio used Flash for the Facebook version of Angry Birds. Square Enix also released Crystal Conquest using Flash. Helander said Adobe is doing a series of game jams in different cities to support game developers.

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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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I enjoy Angry Birds, but it only takes a half hour with Nintendo’s latest 3DS puzzle game Crashmo (known as Fallblox in other territories) to realize how flawed Rovio’s feathered physics-based title is.

Both games have a three-star-based system that indicates difficulty. Only Angry Birds rewards players with stars for completing every level in the most difficult way. Where as Crashmo tells the player before the level starts whether it is a one-, two-, or three-star challenge.

This difference might as well be a chasm that separates the style of game you’ll find in the Apple iOS App Store versus something you’ll find in the Nintendo 3DS’s eShop — and Crashmo is the best example of why it’s wonderful that we have the eShop.

Crashmo is a 3D puzzle game where players push, pull, and move blocks in a thoughtful manner with the purpose of ascending said blocks to capture a bird that sits at the top of the level. Unlike this title’s predecessor, Pushmo, the blocks support each other in this installment and therefore come crashing down if nothing holds them up. Developer Intelligent Systems developed dozens of these levels, and players can create their own and share them using QR codes.

What you’ll like

The challenge and the reward

Crashmo is a challenging experience. After a lengthy tutorial, the difficulty ramps up at a rocket’s pace. That, however, is where the delight lies. You can spend a minute or 20 in one of these stages depending on whether you can figure out the required trick to solve the obstacle that is stumping you.

As with any great puzzle game — or anything really — once I learned a trick, it remained learned. I quickly built up an arsenal of ideas and possible solutions that I could throw at just about any of the game’s many structures. Of course, nothing beats that moment when the game incepts your brain with a new helpful thought while making you feel like it was your idea all along.

You’ve made a mistake, but the title won’t punish you

Crashmo is essentially Pushmo, only more fully realized as a puzzle game. That means it brought along its best feature: the ability to rewind a mistake with the push of a button.

Holding down the L button will rewind the in-game action in a TV-DVR-like manner. It only works for a finite amount of time, but it’s usually long enough to fix the last few moves. Don’t worry about missed jumps or an accidental pull that makes your structure unscalable. Nothing is irreversible. Just punch that L button and put everything back as it was, and try your next best idea.

It’s an agreeable mechanic that allows the player to focus on solving puzzles. You’re never fighting the game beyond where it’s fun to fight it.

What you won’t like

The learning curve

I’m hesitant to put this in the “what you won’t like” section, but I think it’s possible that the first round of obtuse challenges could scare off some players. Things get difficult fast. I found this enjoyable, but many people won’t.

If you prefer twitch-based puzzles like Tetris or something where you stumble upon the answer like Angry Birds, then perhaps you should hold on to your nine bucks.

Conclusion

Crashmo is a fine example of what a talented developer can do with a solid gameplay mechanic. It’s also a great argument for separating business from play.

The reason Angry Birds wants you playing the levels again and again — at least on Android — is because it is ad-supported. You struggle to get three-stars and every time you reload a level, they rack up another ad impression. For me, it sucks the fun out of the experience, and you can see the business model seeping through the mechanics in most smartphone games.

With Crashmo, the business is in the past. You’ve paid the price of admission, now Nintendo and Intelligent Systems want to make sure you have fun. They don’t have to obsess with squeezing that next dollar out of you and instead can feed you supremely designed puzzles.

Maybe others aren’t so sensitive to these issues — but I am. And for that, I’m ecstatic that a game as expertly crafted as Crashmo is available and that a market for more expensive downloadable games, like the 3DS eShop, exists for it to thrive in.

Score: 89/100

Crashmo is available now for the 3DS in the eShop for $8.99. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a 3DS eShop download code for the purpose of this review.

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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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Angry Birds is a model of critical and financial success in the smartphone gaming market, and three of the Fins who helped make it that have left developer Rovio to start something of their own.

Developers Antti Stén, Tuomas Erikoinen and Ilkka Halila co-founded Boomlagoon in April 2012, and today they are announcing the official launch of the company after securing funding from investor Jari Ovaskainen and London Venture Partners.

“Boomlagoon has the skills, knowledge and industry experience required to develop world-class games,” Ovaskainen said in a statement. “They are on track for building a massive business franchise with a compelling pipeline of upcoming titles.”

Boomlagoon hasn’t announced its first title, but promises that the first release is “launching soon.”

“The Boomlagoon guys have a sense of style and an effortless understanding of what is fun in a game,” general partner with LVP David Gardner said. “When I first met with the team in Finland I knew they were onto something great, and immediately wanted to help them realize their creative dreams.”

Stén is responsible for building Rovio’s cloud infrastructure from scratch. Erikoinen designed Angry Bird’s visuals and graphic elements. Halila worked as Rovio’s lead programmer prior to joining Boomlagoon.

It’s not shocking that a portion of the Angry Birds team was able to secure funding. The franchise is a household name, and its success is equally well known.

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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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That’s when I said to myself, “Who is going to save Nintendo?”

New IP the lifeblood of kids media

Be it games, films, cartoons, or characters, a kids’ media company needs to continuously create new IP to connect with each new generation. What no one ever brings up when discussing Nintendo is that they have not created a breakout IP or character in over 20 years. Their hit games are rehashes and different variations of Mario Bros, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda. This appeals to people like me who grew up on these titles. We fanboys, turned fan-parents, endlessly debate about which Zelda is the best and argue how Nintendo messed up with Metroid: Other M. We anxiously await  each new release as everyone now does for Apple products.

However, our kids could care less. They have no connection or legacy to Mario and Luigi. This was reinforced on a recent trip through Times Square. Kids were lining up to take pics of someone in an Angry Birds costume while Mario and Luigi dejectedly looked on.

Games can no longer live on one system

Nintendo’s adamant stance on only allowing their characters on its own hardware is just making it dig its own grave. Who cares how good the Nintendo 3DS is if the new generation has no exposure to Nintendo’s IP. Kids 2 to 8 aren’t playing the Wii or DS; they are on iPods, iPhones, and iPads. If you want to attract users to your hardware, you need more software from third-party developers. Game developers have ditched Nintendo and gone for more open mobile platforms like iOS and Android. The only draw for Nintendo’s hardware is its own games based on its own characters. Again, this only appeals to Nintendo fans who are 35 and up, hardly the group to build a kids brand around.

Generational evolutions of WWE and Disney

This strategy of Nintendo targeting fan boys who grew up on its product is interesting because it actually relates to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), who came to prominence at the same time as Nintendo in the mid 1980s. The 10-year-olds back then grew up on Hulk Hogan and the cartoonish side of wrestling (it was also called the World Wrestling Federation then). But in the 90s, these kids got into their 20s, and the WWF started faltering. Vince McMahon and co. took notice and made their product appeal to a young adult audience by introducing them to Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. The Attitude Era essentially saved the WWE. Then that audience entered their 30s, had their own kids, and got too busy to watch WWE. Once again, WWE took notice, toned down their product and went PG to get the new generation of 10-year-olds.

Disney Animation is also a good example of what could happen to Nintendo. In the late 90s, Disney’s films became stagnant and failed to produce lasting breakout IP. Fortunately, Pixar came along and created new, refreshing characters everyone loved. Disney’s own IP became so dated that 5 year olds today are surprised when they see Mickey Mouse in a cartoon. They just see him as a logo. Go to any Disney store or theme park and it’s Pixar’s IP that the kids are latching on to. If Disney hadn’t bought Pixar, its entire Animation division could very well be closed. And without new IP, it can’t sell merchandise, books, and clothes that really keep the House of Mouse growing. Its stock prices tell a great story. Since Disney’s purchase of Pixar in 2006, its stock has gone from $30 to over $50. Since the peak of the Wii and DS in 2008, Nintendo’s stock price has gone from $71 to $15.

Can Nintendo find its own Pixar?

But Nintendo is stubborn and will not acknowledge their weaknesses. If it did, it would have gone and bought up some of the studios that were creating hits on the mobile platforms. Everyone knows how hard it is to find and nurture talent, so when it comes available, you should grab it.

Nintendo needs to sell more hardware in order to keep selling the old IP that made it rich. But you need new IP to grow and attract new kids to buy the hardware you sell. But without new IP, your hardware and old IP becomes irrelevant. It’s going to be interesting to see the consumer response to Nintendo’s new console, the Wii U. If it fails to connect, Nintendo may need to find its own Pixar or reinvent itself as the WWE did.

Pavel Bains is a former chief financial officer/chief operating officer with 10 years of experience delivering top games for Disney, EA, Activision, and Atari. He now is the CEO of Storypanda, a 500 Startups-backed iPad publishing platform for children’s books. 

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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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Angry Birds Star Wars. What?

That was my initial reaction when I first heard about this unusual crossover for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. Those two brands seemingly have nothing in common, with the possible exception of their massive market appeal. I feared this would be another lazy cash-grab exploiting the beloved characters from George Lucas’s expansive universe.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that Angry Birds Star Wars is one of the more fun and charming Star Wars game in some time.

What you’ll like

Best of two worlds
Developer Rovio splits the levels in Angry Birds Star Wars between traditional ones and stages based on the more recent Angry Birds Space. You catapult your miffed poultry at buildings and enemies all in the hopes of clearing the screen of your foes while causing as much damage as possible. The space levels work with the same concept, but gravity (or the lack of) plays a more important role.

Using both types of gameplay gives Angry Birds Star Wars levels more variety than its predecessors, and it’s a fitting design decision since the famous movies take place both in space and on more solid ground.

Use the force, birds
Every colored bird from past games in the series has their own special ability. This is still the case here, but instead of dropping exploding eggs or slightly increasing your speed you’ll be swinging lightsabers and shooting blasters.

These powers are appropriate, fun, and offer a few surprise twists. Luke Skywalker can swing his lightsaber around him with a tap of the screen, but you can also use this move to reflect enemy blaster shots. Han Solo can shoot his own gun in any direction you tap on the screen, but you can also use metallic surfaces to bounce his shot around the area.

Clever level design brings out the best in these abilities, with many of them forcing to think of clever strategies outside of just shooting your birds toward your targets. Sometimes you’ll have to use Obi Wan’s force push to topple a stack of crates onto a group of enemies, for instance.

Great use of the setting
Some fans get upset whenever their beloved Star Wars isn’t taken with total seriousness (remember all the fuss made about the dancing game in Star Wars Kinect?) I have no problem seeing sillier takes on the series, so I’m more than happy to laugh along with Angry Birds Star Wars. It’s hard not to smile when see you all of these iconic characters reimagined as limbless poultry and pork.

The game even manages to cleverly re-create some iconic moments from Episode IV, like the trash compactor scene (which you can use in a level to efficiently squish some Imperial piggies) and the famous trench run from the movie’s climax.

I have to give equal credit for what is not in the game, specifically anything from the terrible prequel trilogy. All of the initial levels take place during the classic, original film. You can also buy an additional set of levels focusing on Luke’s Jedi training on swampy Dagobah during The Empire Strikes Back, and a free update promises to add stages set on snowy Hoth from that same movie. This means you’ll be flinging around Luke, Han, and Chewie without a single Jar Jar Binks or Anakin in sight.

What you won’t like

Franchise fatigue
After Angry Birds, Angry Birds Season, Angry Birds Rio, and Angry Birds Space we’ve had a lot of this series in a relatively short time. If the Angry Birds bug bit you in the past, it’s likely that you, like me, have already played hundreds of levels of this relatively simple game.

Angry Birds Star Wars is clever enough to still feel fresh most of the time you’re playing it, but the game can’t escape the fact that this is all familiar territory, even with the nice Star Wars dressing. The franchise fatigue is likely to hit you much harder if you aren’t a fan of Star Wars, which deprives you of the ability to enjoy the game’s many nods at the classic movies.

Conclusion

Is Angry Birds Star Wars an easy cross promotion between two hugely popular properties? Sure. But who cares when it’s this much fun to play? Angry Birds Star Wars is far from the most original game you’ll play, but the addicting formula still works great, and fans of the classic movies will love seeing this silly take on Luke Skywalker’s adventures.

Clever design and fun powers make this a great place for newbies to see why the series has become a cultural phenomenon if they haven’t experienced Angry Birds before. If you are a Star Wars fan, then this will be your favorite take on poultry-flinging yet.

Score:  85/100

Angry Birds Star Wars is out now for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac.

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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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Mobile-game juggernaut Angry Birds has been downloaded more than a billion times, and publisher Rovio isn’t done with it yet. The company launched Angry Birds Star Wars on mobile devices last Friday, and it also debuted a whole line of Hasbro-made toys featuring mash-ups of Angry Birds and Star Wars characters. The double-barreled launch shows that the feathered franchise’s slingshot gameplay can be applied to just about any theme, and Rovio could very well have an endless series on its hands — as long as fans don’t get tired of it.

Rovio launched its fourth Angry Birds title this year as part of its ambition to turn its characters into the next Mickey Mouse. Peter Vesterbacka, chief marketing officer of the Helsinki-based outfit, said in an interview with GamesBeat that Rovio hasn’t hit a wall yet when it comes to growth. In fact, he said the company no longer thinks of itself as just a game maker. Like Disney, Rovio is shooting to become a broad entertainment organization. Here’s a transcript of our edited interview.

GamesBeat: So how long has this been in the making for you?

Peter Vesterbacka: The contract was finalized in March. We work pretty fast. We got the physical products out in record time. When we first talked to Hasbro, they said it was impossible, but then they surprised us and themselves. We got them out sooner and in much bigger volume than we thought. It’s been a great experience from that perspective. It was very fast. We’ve been working on the game about a year.

GamesBeat: What’s unique about the design of this game?

Vesterbacka: We’ve taken the best of Angry Birds with the best of Star Wars and merged it in a very organic way. If you have your Luke bird, it’s like the traditional red bird, but now it has a lightsaber. Or Han Solo meets the yellow bird with lasers. One thing we used, as an example, now the pigs also shoot lasers in some levels. When you then use the lightsaber, you can deflect the lasers. It’s these funny little details from the movies that [make it fun]. In the Star Wars movies, you always see the lasers bouncing left and right and going everywhere. We made sure you can see that in the game. There’s an amazing attention to detail. We worked very closely with Lucas.

GamesBeat: I like the stormtrooper piggies.

Vesterbacka: Yeah! They’re funny. That’s what we loved about the collaboration. It’s peanut butter and jelly. It works. Everything fits. You see a lot of very forced collaborations, but this is just fun.

GamesBeat: Now you have four games a year coming out. Do you think you’re going to maintain that pace?

Vesterbacka: Yeah. It’s a good pace. Next year we’ll probably do four, maybe five.

GamesBeat: Amazing Alex was a new intellectual property that you launched. Are you encouraged by the sales results, or does it suggest you should do more Angry Birds-all-the-time stuff?

Vesterbacka: I’d say it’s a bit of both. On one side, we’re very happy with the numbers for Alex. If you look at it as a new franchise, totally new everything, from that perspective it’s very good. But if you compare it to when we do a new Angry Birds game, those numbers are … a bit bigger.

Still, we always have to think about when we launched Angry Birds. We have flyers saying something like, “Angry Birds: 500,000 downloads!” Now it’s like, “Really? How could we have thought that was anything?” But, at the time, it was a big deal. When I first talked about how we were going to get 100 million downloads, everyone at the company thought I was crazy. Outside the company too. One-hundred million? Only Tetris had done that. Now it’s like a footnote.

Look at our Bad Piggies launch. We launched on the 27th [of September]. It’s been number one until now, when we bumped it down with Angry Birds Star Wars. The amazing launch is part of the Angry Birds universe — it piggybacks on that — but it’s off to a much faster start than Angry Birds. That’s also true for Amazing Alex. We have more downloads than we did for the original Angry Birds at this point. So everything is relative.

With Alex, we don’t have 100 million downloads yet, but we need to keep our history in mind. We made 51 games before Angry Birds. Not all of them were Angry Birds. On the one hand, we’re happy, but on the other hand, we’re always hungry for more. We need to keep that hunger.

We’ll continue doing more Angry Birds, more Bad Piggies, more Amazing Alex, more other things. If you look at Rovio, you could say Angry Birds is our Coke, but we’ll keep doing Sprite and Fanta. Angry Birds is our main brand, but it’s OK to do smaller things. Smaller for us can still be tens of millions.

GamesBeat: So what’s different about how Rovio can launch new titles?

Vesterbacka: We’re learning new things every day. At the same time, we’ve grown a bit. We’re now 500 people. With more people, that always introduces new challenges. But we’re happy with how fast we can move. If you look at last year, we launched one game, Angry Birds Rio. This year, we launched Angry Birds Space, Amazing Alex, Bad Piggies, and Angry Birds Star Wars. We had four big launches, and that’s just the games side. We’ve done tons on the animation side. Merchandising is seeing explosive growth. Everything is growing constantly.

GamesBeat: How do you keep this going? Media people are starting to like the angle of, “Well, this fad has to die out soon.”

Vesterbacka: Well, look at Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse has been around since 1928, and he seems to be still alive and kicking. Hello Kitty, since 1974. Mario, quite a while. Star Wars, 1977, still going strong. There’s always people who speculate about when we’ll do this or that thing. We’re not worried about it. It’s our job to keep it fresh. We’re working closely with Sanrio in Japan, the Hello Kitty guys, and now of course with Lucas. You could also have looked at Star Wars as a fad and argued it wasn’t going anywhere….

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Rovio Entertainment and Kaiku Finance have teamed up to bring you your very own Angry Birds Visa debit card.

The venture is aimed at personalizing debit cards for younger card users and further spreading the brand image of Angry Birds, the mobile game that has been downloaded more than a billion times. Angry Birds has spread to multiple titles, a line of clothing, toys, and videos. It is an example of an extremely successful brand in the digital age and merchandising gone amok.

The card is the first co-branded prepaid debit card in the U.S. for Rovio. It will be available in early 2013 and is one more in a whole line of silver and black reloadable Visa prepaid debit cards from Kaiku Finance.

Angry Birds debuted in December 2009, and Rovio says it has become the fastest-growing consumer brand and the most downloaded game of all time. This is Rovio’s first foray into personal finance.

Prepaid cards are also growing fast. In 2011, the prepaid-card industry grew by nearly 20 percent, according to the Mercator Advisory Group. Another study by Aite Group study found that prepaid is no longer a card of last resort. Many people who use this type of payment option earn more than $45,000 annually, have a college degree, a checking account, and a credit card.

“Rovio and Kaiku share a common philosophy in that we love to delight our fans with products that are affordable and packed with great features, that fit today’s lifestyle,” said Andrew Stalbow, Rovio’s executive vice president of strategic partnerships and general manager of North America.

The card will have four designs, including the Red Bird, the Yellow Bird, Bomb Bird, and the Bad Piggies. Individuals can load funds with a credit card, bank account, direct deposit, PayPal, or a transfer from another Kaiku card.

“We launched Kaiku with a commitment to be a next-generation prepaid product for all kinds of consumers,” said Jon Round, chief executive of Kaiku Finance.

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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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Zynga’s stock has been in a freefall since its initial public offering, with tech pundits and press watching with gleeful schadenfreude as it continues to drop. Zynga is now worth essentially nothing: Its market capitalization of $1.82 billion is roughly equal to the value of its cash and real estate holdings, even with yesterday’s announcements of real money gambling and a $200 million stock buyback.

How can a company that brings in $1.2 billion a year, and recently cut costs in order to achieve profitability, be worth nothing?

It doesn’t make sense. Here’s why Zynga is undervalued — provided it does the right thing next.

Zynga is actually sitting on three widely-known and popular potential gaming franchises: Farmville, Poker, and With Friends. Each of these titles is well known, has broad distribution, and an audience at least willing to check out a new iteration on the franchise. For instance, Farmville 2 just garnered 50 million users shortly after its launch. And each of Zynga’s potential franchises targets a different audience: Farmville for middle-aged women, Poker for middle-aged men, and With Friends for the lucrative under-30 market.

What Zynga needs to do is expand its franchise strategy.

The gaming industry, much like Hollywood, is all about franchises. It is easy to churn out another Spiderman movie or Call of Duty title, because there is already an audience for the content, which is a huge part of the hurdle in terms of success. Once you have a guaranteed audience, you can focus on the content.

Rovio, the makers of the Angry Birds franchise, is worth a reported $9 billion. Angry Birds is a great, fun, casual game that has successfully implemented distribution onto emerging smartphone mobile platforms, but in many ways Angry Birds is simply the Tetris of this generation of computing. In effect, Angry Birds is a single-player, traditional game that doesn’t leverage the social graph, multiuser gaming, and advanced graphics. It barely even takes advantage of touch screens.

Still, it’s hugely profitable because Rovio has truly turned Angry Birds into a game franchise. Rovio has leveraged every possible gaming channel from iPhone to Android to even the Google Chrome App Store, added Star Wars editions, and signed cross-industry deals for everything from stuffed toys and lunch boxes to theme parks. Previous to Angry Birds, Rovio had 51 failed titles. It is now promoting Bad Piggies, a new title that is actually a spinoff of its Angry Birds franchise.

Franchises are not necessarily a guaranteed result, as titles can run over budget and fail at the box office. However, from a business perspective, it is a lot better to get a 50 percent headstart than starting fresh and rolling the dice with new content.

It is easy to see Zynga as a pure-play social gaming company that is struggling to shift into mobile, while social gaming becomes increasingly difficult to monetize. Yes, social channels have dried up after Facebook’s shift to Timeline stymied potentially viral newsfeed user acquisition (aka spam). And indeed the Zynga game playbook has gotten tired now that Facebook is no longer a new platform and expectations of game mechanics have matured.

But in reality, Zynga sits on three potential franchises, each of which could be huge.

Right now, Zynga’s most popular titles are stuck in their existing channels. Farmville and Poker are only available for Facebook users. With Friends games are only available on mobile. Each of these titles could easily go cross-channel, to Wii, Xbox and Playstation. Why not play Zynga Poker on Xbox Live?

Building deep, franchise-driven titles for multiple platforms takes time and investment. However, it is a proven monetization model.

In addition, Zynga’s announcement yesterday of real-money gambling is also potentially lucrative, especially in context of its ability to deliver the gambling audience of its Zynga Poker gaming franchise.

The technology industry, particularly its intersection with Wall Street, can be very herdlike, and it is hard to shift the herd perspective on companies like Zynga that are in flux. Still, a herd mentality can be an opportunity for clever investors to make a bet against the crowd.

In the midst of writing this article, I was having dinner with a hedge fund manager in London, who usually invests in things like mines. He had just bought Zynga for his personal portfolio, despite the fact that Piper Jaffray, Credit Suisse, and BMO Capital all downgraded the stock. The pure hedge fund perspective is to bet against the market, especially when the market is not acting on fundamentals.

And while this hedge fund guy usually invests in physical mines, even he has noticed that Zynga is sitting on a potential gold mine — one that is definitely worth a whole lot more than nothing.

Peter Yared is the CTO of CBS Interactive and has founded four e-commerce and marketing infrastructure companies that were acquired by Sun, VMware, Webtrends and TigerLogic. You can follow him at @peteryared. 

This story originally appeared on CNet.

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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 our second Threeview, we get a critic’s, an analyst’s, and an academic’s review of Bad Piggies, the followup to casual gaming king Angry Birds.

Does developer Rovio’s new release (out now for iOS, Google Play, PC, and Mac) have the same addicting qualities and money-cloning potential as the original bird-flinger? It’s a very different game, after all. While both Angry Birds and Bad Piggies are physics-oriented, Bad Piggies is less about knocking over structurally unsound buildings and more about navigating tricky levels with homemade contraptions — like the surely 5-star safety-rated ride pictured above. See the game in action in the video below.

Our critic reviews Bad Piggies for consumers and gamers, while the analyst discusses its business aspects. Our academic wraps up with an analysis of the game design.

Bad Piggies: The critic’s review

• By James Pikover, GamesBeat staff writer

Bad Piggies may seem like a hardcore game from a casual gaming company, but the formula Rovio has implemented is very similar to Angry Birds. The only difference is the scale: A bigger challenge reaps greater rewards. That difficulty spreads too far with no option to skip levels, but a smart save system keeps it great for mobile users. The depth of puzzles and creative building aspect will keep players hungrily coming back for more.

Click here for the full GamesBeat review.

Final critic’s score: 85/100

Bad Piggies: The analyst’s review

• By Jesse Divnich, VP of insights and analysis, EEDAR
• Twitter: @JesseDivnich

Bad Piggies is a valiant extension within the Angry Birds’ universe. With an intellectual property as strong as Angry Birds, it’s essential that Rovio expand its portfolio to create an emotional connection outside of the primary characters. The goal of portfolio expansion, however, is twofold: to exploit loyal users of the primary brand while at the same time bringing new consumers into your ecosystem. Loyal Angry Birds fans will not be disappointed with Bad Piggies, which pushes the physics puzzle genre ever so slightly forward. I do, however, have to question why Rovio remains hesitant to experiment with other genres.

Rovio has achieved one of the greatest accomplishments in entertainment: worldwide brand recognition. Recognition that often takes decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve. With that recognition, however, comes great responsibility, and in the business world that means developing (exploiting) your brand to new consumers.

Bad Piggies is a sign that Rovio is still gun-shy on experimentation, and its lack of aggressiveness into other genres is resulting in missed financial opportunities. While there is always risk of “jumping the shark” with your brand, which often results in consumer alienation, there is also a risk of consumer fatigue. With countless popular genres outside of physical puzzles, I would have preferred to see Rovio bring its Angry Birds brand, along with its cast of characters, into new sectors. Whether that be word puzzle, pinball, or even an action-platform, there are innumerable amounts of opportunities to evolve the Angry Birds brand into newer, and arguably fresher, genres.

If Bad Piggies were released in 2011, I would hold no complaints. The title does introduce new features into the genre, and the mobile market was still too much of a rising tide to make any risky brand plays. If released in 2013, I’d hold serious concerns over management’s ability to capitalize on rising markets (genres). For now, Bad Piggies was a sane business decision, and the title serves its purpose for Rovio’s product portfolio. It keeps loyal consumers engaged, while at the same time raking in millions in revenue.

Final analyst’s score: 75/100

Bad Piggies: The academic’s review

• By Devin Monnens, assistant course director for game history, Full Sail University
• Blog: Desert Hat
  

After staring at the title screen of Bad Piggies for several minutes watching bizarre flying machines go by, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that this game is about the glory days of airplane invention. And just like many flight experiments met with embarrassing disaster, so, too, did my first attempts at self-propelled Piggie-mobiles, which wrecked in mangled heaps or exploded on the launch pad, sending pigs flying. After all, you can’t build a Boeing 747 without first crashing a few wooden contraptions into Midwestern farmland, and if invention is 99 percent inspired failure and one percent success, then Bad Piggies is the perfect sandbox to demonstrate that process, because you’ll keep wanting to try until you get it.

You’ll start off building a rickety soap box derby racer that wouldn’t pass inspection but displays the concept of what a “car” is: three boxes, two wheels, and a pig. Once you’ve understood the basics of slope and weight placement, you start playing around with fans, bellows, soda bottles, and the almighty box of TNT to create odd “vehicles” that can run loops and fly through the air — or more likely, be blown to smithereens. But with each failure, you’ll get closer to the solution, which lies in either a different vehicle configuration or better piloting technique, and with each new success, you’ll earn a new toy and a new arena to test your contraptions in.

This structure illustrates a theory of game design that early levels should teach players skills needed to master the later ones, and that each level teaches the player something new. This keeps players constantly challenged with mastering new mechanics, as skills learned early on build on each other, allowing the player to overcome more complex, interesting challenges. And by having a tight balance between the challenge and skills, the designer can hopefully keep the player in a state of blissful flow.

Only here’s where I run into a problem. I found it difficult to grok the basics of such simple tools as the TNT box and the sandbag weight, even with the helpful notebook of “Oinkville Wright.” Am I just a terrible engineer, or has the game not properly explained these mechanics?

Thankfully, I don’t feel like a complete idiot, because my test pilot, a green, freckled pig with a silly stupid grin and ridiculous laugh, is an even bigger moron than I am. And that’s reassuring.

Final critic’s score: 90/100

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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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If we can tear you away from Angry Birds or whatever you’re doing With Friends right now, we have something that might interest you. It’s the latest episode of Bring Your Own Topic.

This time, we’re talking about mobile gaming: its hopes, its dreams, its turn-ons, and how some of the biggest companies in the world are looking to get in on the rapidly growing action. Our host, GamesBeat editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu, sits down with mobile platform (and BYOT sponsor) Playhaven chief Andy Yang, free-to-play developer Machine Zone (Original Gangstaz) head Gabe Leydon, and GamesBeat head writer Dean Takahashi — and they use a lot of words like “retention,” “monetization,” and “Norm” (from Cheers).

Listen closely because these guests are some of the smartest in the biz when it comes to mobile gaming. You’ll learn a lot from this show, trust us.

This episode’s topics:

• The future of mobile games
• The history and current state of the free-to-play business model
• Amazon vs. Apple vs. Google

BYOT is available in the Stitcher Radio app.

Listen:

Download (right-click and “Save As”): [.mp3]

Subscribe: [iTunes] [RSS]

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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 official: Rovio is taking the Angry Birds to a galaxy far, far away in November.

The Finnish developer and LucasFilm announced today plans for Angry Birds Star Wars. The game comes out on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, PC, and Mac on November 8.

“This is the best Angry Birds game we’ve ever done. It’s the best parts of Angry Birds with all new cutting-edge gameplay set in a galaxy far, far away,” said Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio’s chief marketing officer. “As a big Star Wars fan myself, I’m really excited about this new universe. The Force is definitely strong with this one.”

This partnership encompasses more than just a new mobile game. Rovio also plans to bring Angry Birds Star Wars merchandise to retailers starting Oct. 28. Fans will be able to show their very specific love for Angry Birds Star Wars with apparel, costumes, plush toys, and more.

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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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