When you think of the Google Play store, it’s easy to conjure images of piracy, poorly performing apps, and clumsy microtransactions. Google is keenly aware of these faults and — with its new dedication to cross-platform Google Play support — wants to help developers get the most out of their products and allow players to share their successes with friends.

“Leveling up” your Android game seems ludicrously simple: Focus on quality, support various screen resolutions, and strive to give your users a hassle-free experience. This year’s developer talk focused on urging gamemakers to put more thought into their products and take advantage of the various services Google is rolling out in the coming months.

In an attempt to bolster app quality and developer support, Google now has an in-depth list dedicated to what it takes for a game to reach the vital “featured” status in the Play store. Unsurprisingly, having your game advertised across a multitude of Android devices requires you to thoroughly test your product on various versions of the Android OS, adequately implement common features across all devices, and simply make your creation usable. A large part of Google’s developer talk harped on the fact that the company does vet applications submitted to its service and that software found buggy, exploitative, or generally lacking in polish will not succeed.

Designers looking to polish their apps can use the company’s revised requirements. Developers can even provide a features checklist (found on the design website) to testers so they can focus on what does and doesn’t work with a title before they publish it. If an app launches on the store having overcome common problems with resolution and simple Android interface options, it has a higher chance of reaching “featured” status.

And getting featured can make or break apps on Google Play. In some instances, the week-long feature period can account for nearly 55 percent of a game’s total revenue. Ideally, products are strong enough to remain profitable after this advertising period, but it still behooves developers to play along with Google’s testing procedures and expedite the process. Paying attention to how in-app purchases work and incorporating social functionality can push a good title into the realm of greatness through player connectivity.

Additionally, localization is an increasingly vital force for making software more profitable. Developers like Gameloft, who localize and style its products for foreign markets, see much more installs than companies that simply release the same English app worldwide. Google is now actively trying to help gamemakers retool their products to succeed in non-English-speaking countries.

Beyond paying more attention to how games perform and global marketing, Google is also urging developers to take advantage of new social features coming to the Play store. Soon, whenever players create accounts, they will have direct access to Google Plus, the slowly growing social network. From here, they can create challenges for their friends and recommend content. They can even share certain moments in games online with others.

Google wants to fight the reputation that its game service is a scary, unregulated place. Through simple revenue incentives and opening up how it selects items for its weekly featured app services, Google wants to inspire developers to reach out to customers and improve the service’s image from within. Motivating developers to triple-check apps and giving dedicated Google users an easier way to share content with each other will do a great deal to present Google Play Services as a less foreboding and confusing store.

---

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!

---

Unity Technologies is teaming up with everybody these days. Today, the San Francisco-based game development engine maker is partnering with Facebook to enable developers to create better games on the social network.

The deal will enable Facebook to hang on to its gamers by giving them a better overall visual experience with games based on Unity 3D, a cross-platform game engine. Facebook has historically been good for two-dimensional casual games, but it hasn’t been great at displaying 3D ones. Some specialty titles do work well on Facebook, but the goal with the Unity alliance is to make it much easier to create better hardcore games using the Unity Web Player.

David Helgason (pictured), the chief executive of Unity Technologies, told GamesBeat that both companies are working on features that allow players to engage in social functions such as sharing without popping out of the gaming experience in a Unity-based game. Normally, when that happens, the game issues a pop-up screen created by Facebook. On top of that, Unity-based titles will deliver a better installation process for players on Facebook.

It will be easier for developers to make cross-platform games that include Facebook. For instance, if a developer creates a Unity-based game, it will run easily on the web, Android, and iOS. Now it will also run easily on Facebook.

The alliance with Facebook is the third major deal in a week for Unity. The company has also announced partnerships with Sony for getting Unity games on the PlayStation 4 and a support partnership with Qualcomm for its Snapdragon processors.

“We are moving from strength to strength,” Helgason said. “Everybody wants to work with us.”

The reason this is happening is that every platform owner sees that the big hits are coming from developers on small teams, Helgason said. Hits like Supercell’s Clash of Clans (the top-grossing game on iOS) are paying off big, and platform owners want to be positioned to get those hits. Since Unity is used by so many small developers, the alliances make sense.

Unity has more than 200 million installations for its Unity Web Player, which can display games with cool 3D graphics. It is building a new social-network applications programming interface in the player to enable full-screen and full canvas experiences on Facebook. So far, 75 million active Facebook users have installed the Unity Web Player by playing games.

Some of the biggest Unity-based games on Facebook include Offensive Combat, Robot Rising, Wizard of Oz, Uberstrike, Kings Bounty, and I Am Playr. The new integrations will help make these existing titles better.

Helgason showed a demo for beautiful sci-fi racer The Chase that showed that Unity games are marching upward in quality. It has a large environment, atmospheric effects, and other cool 3D graphics features. A few years ago, Unity-based games on social and mobile platforms were unimpressive when it came to graphics. Now it is getting hard to tell them apart from triple-A console titles, Helgason said.

“Our customers are doing very impressive work,” Helgason said. “The mobile devices are becoming ridiculously powerful. I haven’t seen game that are more advanced than Unity on mobile. It has taken awhile as we have been doing this for 10 years.”

Unity has more than 250 employees, about half of them engineers.

“The Unity Web Player is an incredible browser-based platform for core games,” said Sean Ryan, the director of games partnerships at Facebook, in a statement. “People on Facebook are looking for the type of immersive games that have traditionally existed on consoles and desktop PCs. This collaboration will drive discovery of the Unity Web Player for Facebook users, make it easier for Unity games to integrate with Facebook, improve the full-screen experience on our games platform, and make it easier for these developers to build cross-platform games across desktop and mobile.”

At Facebook’s briefing at the GDC, Ryan said that core and mid-core games are priorities for Facebook, which believes in both the mobile and desktop markets for games as a service. He said Facebook’s share of the worldwide games-as-a-service market is $3 billion out of a total of $15 billion. Most of the rest of the market is hardcore and mid-core games, and Unity could help Facebook capture more of that share, Ryan said.

Unity has 1.5 million game developers using its tools. Rivals include Epic Games and Crytek on the high end and Game Salad, Corona, and others on the low end on mobile.

---

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!

---

Making games isn’t easy even when everyone is in one place. And when development teams are spread out across the U.S. and Europe, it’s even harder. That’s where Huddle comes in. On the Sonic the Hedgehog series, Sega of America’s internal teams stayed in touch using Huddle, a web-based collaboration environment.

Prior to using Huddle, the teams struggled to keep a global view of a marketing campaign or a game development project. They tried to do it through the Internet data transfer method FTP. They also use shared network drives and emails. But London- and San Francisco-based Huddle customized its cloud platform so the U.S. and United Kingdom branches of Sega’s digital business team could share work together on projects. Sega’s teams can access a central knowledge base and communicate across distances more easily.

Conversations and feedback on content are stored in one place, where everyone can access data that is updated in real-time. Producers can manage milestones on games and decision makers have full visibility into the status of projects. Marketers can access a central database for market research and other info.

“Huddle has transformed the way the team works and enabled us to move away from the cumbersome and complex tools that often made working together such a challenge,” said Chris Olson, the vice president of digital business at Sega. “With all relevant content and conversations stored in one place, Huddle has significantly reduced our dependency on email and the need for face-to-face meetings, which is fantastic. Huddle is simple to manage and flexible, and the easy-to-use interface means that people didn’t find it daunting or need hours of training. As well as enabling the team to get work done quickly, we could customize the platform to give it a familiar Sega flavour for workers.”

Huddle’s investors include DAG Ventures, Eden Ventures, Matrix Partners and Jafco Ventures. Other customers include 80 percent of the Fortune 500 and 80 percent of the U.K. central government as well as Unilever and Kia Motors.

“Sega’s digital business team presents a great example of how complex technology systems no longer support the new ways of working,” said Alastair Mitchell, the chief executive of Huddle. “Today’s workforce has to work effectively with people inside and outside of the firewall and it’s great to see such a renowned brand using Huddle to bring teams across the globe together to streamline projects and work on valuable content in a secure cloud environment. ”

---

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!

---

Jennifer Schulz is the global head of commerce at Visa.

Nearly one in 10 Americans has purchased a digital good in the past year. Today’s gamers have an unprecedented range of platforms, payment options and preferences to choose from, and there is little doubt that the digital goods economy will continue to grow.

If you’re an online game developer or publisher, there are a lot of questions to answer to determine how to best monetize game content — what platform is best suited to the game environment, how to attract and convert players in different countries, what types of goods will gamers purchase and what fee should be charged for these items? While there’s no single answer, the recent growth of global and local payment options have at least made transactions easier to facilitate.

With this in mind, PlaySpan took a deeper look at four key payment trends that will have a positive impact on the future of game development.

1) Gamers are using multiple channels to make payments

In a recent Magid survey sponsored by PlaySpan, gamers purchasing virtual goods indicated using a wide variety of payment methods. Traditional payment options like credit or debit cards continue to be popular, but alternative payments have increased in popularity and are now being used by a much wider audience of gamers. It’s not surprising considering how “global” online games have become and the myriad of payment options that people are comfortable with around the world.

In the survey, closed loop prepaid game cards, smartphone payment apps, and electronic transfers from personal bank accounts proved to be equally popular to traditional payment methods with more than 10 percent of respondents. In-game credits and virtual currency were also popular payment methods, ahead of services like PayPal.

The data shows there’s no single alternative payment method that stands above the rest. With such broad payment preferences among gamers, developers should be careful not to limit themselves to a single currency type. Without multiple payment options, publishers risk turning away gamers who might not have access, the means or desire to pay with a particular tool.

2) Alternative payments offer appealing features and benefits to gamers

There is already a significant number of gamers who are using alternative payment options, but that number is expected to increase sharply.

The survey data indicates gamers prefer to use alternative payment methods that allow them to pay without entering credit card information each time they make a purchase. Some of the advantages uncovered in the survey results include: alternative payments gave gamers easy access to perks such as loyalty points and rewards, they eliminated the risk of lost or stolen cards and offered easy access to tickets for things like movies, buses and airlines.

More than half of all respondents to the survey revealed they were either “interested,” or “very interested” in these features, which bodes well for greater adoption among mainstream consumers.

3) In-app purchases dominate the growing mobile platform

When smartphone and tablet games began to move into the mainstream, mobile apps fundamentally changed the pricing structure of the gaming industry. In many cases developers could earn more charging $1.99 for a single game than they had charging $10 in the past. However, this model is quickly eroding.

Currently, on the iPhone App Store, of the top 10 highest-grossing games, only one (Angry Birds) is not free to play. And according to Newzoo, a gaming industry market research firm, in-app purchases make up a staggering 91 percent of Android and iOS game revenue (not counting advertising).

Thanks to the growth of the mobile games market, it’s projected that revenue from in-game purchases will increase from the 2011 global total of $2 billion to almost $5 billion by 2016. By then, integrating in-app purchases will be a necessity for any developer wanting their game to succeed financially.

4) Digital wallets gain acceptance, but there are strong differences between genders

Along with other forms of alternative payments, gamers are showing a growing acceptance towards digital wallets and payments made by smartphones. In fact, research shows that 77 percent of gamers are now open to the idea of using digital wallets like V.me by Visa, whether for purchases online or at the point-of-sale.

There are notable differences however when it come to the sexes and the appeal of digital wallets. Awareness of digital wallet payments is almost 50 percent higher among men, and among non-digital wallet users, men showed that they were much more likely (41 percent) than women (31 percent) to adopt them in the future.

What do these trends signify for game developers?

Mobile, PC and console platforms are converging, and there’s no longer a single, one-size-fits-all solution. As consumers move between games, devices and environments, they need their payments to move seamlessly with them and work reliably from any device. Preferred methods of payments are as divergent as players’ interests and tastes in games themselves. As player behavior evolves, so too must developers tailor their games to target these users. In the adoption of new technologies, gamers have historically offered a fertile testing ground for developers. Now developers have the power to capitalize on this trend and provide the choices necessary to help more effectively monetize game content.

With alternative payment methods and digital wallets growing in acceptance, especially for those games with a global appeal, it’s important for game developers and publishers to consider adapting an open payment platform approach.

Jennifer Schulz is the global head of eCommerce for Visa, responsible for the strategic direction and management of Visa’s global eCommerce business and driving Visa’s product innovation strategy.   

---

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!

---

No console is perfect from a developer’s perspective. Each has its limitations, and each has its strengths. When Reddit user El_dorito asked game makers to describe what working with each major console is like, Cory Bloyd chimed in to share his interesting experiences. Bloyd currently works with MunkyFun but is sure to reiterate that everything he’s said here reflects only his own opinions and not those of his current or past employers.

Below is Bloyd’s post in its entirety:

PlayStation 1: Everything is simple and straightforward. With a few years of dedication, one person could understand the entire PS1 down to the bit level. Compared to what you could do on PCs of the time, it was amazing. But, every step of the way you said “Really? I gotta do it that way? God damn. OK, I guess… Give me a couple weeks.” There was effectively no debugger. You launched your build and watched what happened.

N64: Everything just kinda works. For the most part, it was fast and flexible. You never felt like you were utilizing it well. But, it was OK because your half-assed efforts usually looked better than most PS1 games. Each megabyte on the cartridge cost serious money. There was a debugger, but the debugger would sometimes have completely random bugs such as off-by-one-errors in the type determination of the watch window (displaying your variables by reinterpreting the the bits as the type that was declared just prior to the actual type of the variable –true story).

Dreamcast: The CPU was weird (Hitatchi [sic] SH-4). The GPU was weird (a predecessor to the PowerVR chips in modern iPhones). There were a bunch of features you didn’t know how to use. Microsoft kinda, almost talked about setting it up as a PC-like DirectX box, but didn’t follow through. That’s [sic] wouldn’t have worked out anyway. It seemed like it could be really cool. But man, the PS2 is gonna be so much better!

PS2: You are handed a 10-inch thick stack of manuals written by Japanese hardware engineers. The first time you read the stack, nothing makes any sense at all. The second time your read the stack, the 3rd book makes a bit more sense because of what you learned in the 8th book. The machine has 10 different processors (IOP, SPU1&2, MDEC, R5900, VU0&1, GIF, VIF, GS) and 6 different memory spaces (IOP, SPU, CPU, GS, VU0&1) that all work in completely different ways. There are so many amazing things you can do, but everything requires backflips through invisible blades of segfault. Getting the first triangle to appear on the screen took some teams over a month because it involved routing commands through R5900->VIF->VU1->GIF->GS oddities with no feedback about what your were doing wrong until you got every step along the way to be correct. If you were willing to do [sic] twist your game to fit the machine, you could get awesome results. There was a debugger for the main CPU (R5900). It worked pretty OK. For the rest of the processors, you just had to write code without bugs.

GameCube: I didn’t work with the GC much. It seems really flexible. Like you could do anything, but nothing would be terribly bad or great. The GPU wasn’t very fast, but it’s [sic] features were tragically underutilized compared to the Xbox. The CPU had incredibly low-latency RAM. Any messy, pointer-chasing, complicated data structure you could imagine should be just fine (in theory). Just do it. But, more than half of the RAM was split off behind an amazingly high-latency barrier. So, you had to manually organize your data in to active vs bulk. It had a half-assed SIMD that would do 2 floats at a time instead of 1 or 4.

PSP: Didn’t do much here either. It was played up as a trimmed-down PS2, but from the inside it felt more like a bulked-up PS1. They tried to bolt-on some parts to make it less of a pain to work with, but those parts felt clumsy compared to the original design. Having pretty much the full-speed PS2 rasterizer for a smaller resolution display meant you didn’t worry about blending pixels.

Xbox: Smells like a PC. There were a few tricks you could dig into to push the machine. But, for the most part it was enough of a blessing to have a single, consistent PC spec to develop against. The debugger worked! It really, really worked! PIX was hand-delivered by angels.

Xbox 360: Other than the big-endian thing, it really smells like a PC –until you dug into it. The GPU is great –except that the limited EDRAM means that your have to draw your scene twice to comply with the anti-aliasing requirement? WTF! Holy Crap there are a lot of SIMD registers! 4 floats x 128 registers x 6 registers banks = 12K of registers! You are handed DX9 and everything works out of the box. But, if you dig in, you find better ways to do things. Deeper and deeper. Eventually, your code looks nothing like PC-DX9 and it works soooo much better than it did before! The debugger is awesome! PIX! PIX! I Kiss You!

PS3: A 95 pound box shows up on your desk with a printout of the 24-step instructions for how to turn it on for the first time. Everyone tries, most people fail to turn it on. Eventually, one guy goes around and sets up everyone else’s machine. There’s only one CPU. It seems like it might be able to do everything, but it can’t. The SPUs seem like they should be really awesome, but not for anything you or anyone else is doing. The CPU debugger works pretty OK. There is no SPU debugger. There was nothing like PIX at first. Eventually some Sony 1st-party devs got fed up and made their own PIX-like GPU debugger. The GPU is very, very disappointing… Most people try to stick to working with the CPU, but it can’t handle the workload. A few people dig deep into the SPUs and, Dear God, they are fast! Unfortunately, they eventually figure out that the SPUs need to be devoted almost full time making up for the weaknesses of the GPU.

He later edited the post to add the following:

This has picked up a lot more attention than I expected when I tossed it together! I’ll add that even though I give Sony a hard time, I really do enjoy pounding on their machines. Sony consoles have always been a challenge. But, if you are willing to work with them instead of against them, they love you back tenfold.

GamesBeat reached out to Bloyd to confirm that he is a developer and for specifics on some of the studios he’s worked for.

His work began as an intern at High Voltage Software where he handled his first PlayStation dev kit. After eight years there, Bloyd moved to LucasArts where he was the senior graphics engineer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. His work included three years of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 development.

Things became rough for LucasArts, and many of the employees left with a handful of them forming MunkyFun. Bloyd has been at the developer for the last three years. While the company’s original goal was to create Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network games, it found that the mobile market offered opportunities more suited for the small team.

According to Bloyd, “all of the platforms have their issues and oddities.” If he had to choose the easiest console to develop for, however, it would be the original Xbox while the PlayStation 2 was the most difficult.

“Developers like to complain about the PS3, but we know it’s actually a breeze compared to what the PS2 demanded,” he says, but, “in the end, what it really comes down to is how well positioned you are to devote yourself to a platform.”

Porting a game from one console to another can be a headache for developers, too. “If your plan is to pop in and get something pre-existing to just ‘run there, too,’ you’re going to have a bad time. However, if your company can have the focus and flexibility to design for the platform’s constraints instead of around them, beautiful things can happen,” says Bloyd.

He concludes by stating, “Focusing simultaneously on multiple platforms is difficult and often frustrating. But, it’s what I’ve always done, and I find it very rewarding.”

---

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!

---

Happy Facebook IPO eve! Check out the companies getting funded today below. Click the links in each paragraph to learn more about the day’s funding news.

If you’re hankering for more funding news throughout the day, you can subscribe to our Deals Channel RSS feed by either clicking the red RSS icon at the top of this page or adding the Deals Channel feed link to your favorite reader. And as always, send funding news our way at tips@venturebeat.com.

Spotify said to be seeking $220M investment

Music streaming service Spotify is seeking a whopping $220 million in funding. Previous estimates had Spotify at a $1 billion valuation after closing a $100 million round in June 2011. The new funding round could end up bring its valuation to $4 billion. The social-focused music service uses a freemium model to earn its revenue. Read more on VentureBeat: Spotify is pressing play on a new $220M round at a $4B valuation.

Pinterest grabs $100M at $1.5 billion valuation

Uber-popular pinboard site Pinterest has raised $100 million at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. The photo-focused social bookmarking site has gained overwhelming popularity in the last year and sparked many sites to use its design. Japanese web retailer Rakuten announced a $50 million contribution to the round. Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital, along with several angel investors made up the other $50 million. Read more on VentureBeat: Pinterest joins the billion dollar club: Gets $100M in round led by Rakuten.

Crowdtilt pulls in funds for money-pooling site

Crowdtilt, a site that helps groups of friends pool money for a common goal, has raised its first round of funding for $2.1 million. Crowdtilt helps smaller groups of people who want to raise money for a trip or buying a wedding gift collect cash through crowdfunding. SV Angel, Crunch Fund, Y-Combinator, Felicis Ventures, DCM and other angel investors contributed to the round.

No joke, Serious Parody grabs some cash

Scotland-based game development studio Serious Parody has raised £1 million (approx $1.6 million) in funding to develop more games for its portfolio. Private, unnamed investors were behind the funding round. Read more on VentureBeat: Scottish gaming studio Serious Parody raises funding for iOS games.

Fire up those data centers, NextIO just got funded

NextIO, builder of processors and virtualization software for data center servers, has raised $12.3 million in its fifth round of funding. The company builds software to create virtual servers, provide high-performance data storage, and connect servers to Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks. Adams Capital Management Inc., Crescendo Ventures LLP, and an unnamed investor participated in the round. Read more on VentureBeat: Server and data center software company NextIO grabs late-stage investment.

Gen110 nabs cash to put a power plant on your roof

Gen110, a company that provides distributed energy so people can cut the cord from a utility, has raised an undisclosed investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Qualified homeowners get power-generating equipment for their rooftops and they only pay for the electricity they produce. Read more on VentureBeat: Gen110 grabs funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Tiger Pistol raises funding for social media marketing in Asia

Australian startup Tiger Pistol has raised $1.15 million in funding for its social media marketing platform. Tiger Pistol helps businesses beef up their Facebook pages with apps and tab pages with a focus on businesses in the Asia Pacific market. Australian investor David Solomon provided the angel round. Read more on VentureBeat: Social media marketing startup Tiger Pistol raises angel funding.

The company’s first offering is an iOS game called Wrestling Manager. The company will immediately start hiring at least 18 new developers for its new Dundee, Scotland-based studio with its funding.

Private, unnamed investors were behind the funding round. The full press release is below.

SERIOUS INVESTMENT FOR SERIOUS PARODY

Serious Parody to establish office and create 18 new jobs in Scotland.

DUNDEE, Scotland – May 16, 2012 –

Scottish Development International has backed Serious Parody’s plans to spend approximately one million pounds building out the company’s games portfolio. The money raised largely through the company’s private investors along with £230,000 from Scottish Enterprise’s Regional Selective Assistance grant, will go towards establishing a Dundee based office and the creation of 18 new jobs.

The investment means the company has immediately opened up a number of vacancies and is currently welcoming applicants to a number of positions, including Software Engineers of all levels, Animators, and Artists.

C.E.O, Dan Hinkles, said of the investment “We need a number of highly skilled and highly motivated games professionals to lead the company to success, and we’re delighted that these investments allow us to make such hires.”

He added “The company has a very clear roadmap to success, taking advantage of the transformational changes that have occurred with in the games industry of recent years. We have a number of highly ambitious new projects underway and we already have a ton of talent at the spine of the company with award winning artists and programmers on board. Now we’re looking for talented developers who can really help ‘raise the bar’ for the genre’s we’re working on.”

Applicants to the new studio can submit their cv to careers@serious-parody.com

Lena Wilson, chief executive, Scottish Enterprise, said: “The Scottish gaming industry continues to be one of the most recognised in the world and is ranked third in Europe’s top 50 games developer locations. This announcement is very encouraging and testament to our increasing reputation as the partner of choice in major projects.

“Regional Selective Assistance is a key source of funding we use to assist home-grown companies stay and grow in Scotland and equally, to help foreign investors view Scotland as the ideal place to locate and expand their businesses. These new jobs are a welcome boost for the local economy of Dundee and for the wider Scottish economy and we look forward to working with Serious Parody to help them realise their ambitious growth plans in Scotland.”

The new lip synching technology uses just audio input to automatically make a 3D character speak. Since it uses a universal physics model, the company says it will work across all languages, saving game development time and resources.

An award-winning team from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics and the Centre for Speech Technology Research, Speech Graphics co-founders Michael Berger and Dr. Gregor Hofer have a combined 20 years of experience in speech technology and animation. They say they created their new software in response to the rising quantity and cost of spoken dialogue in today’s story-driven video games, such as BioWare’s recently released massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic (SW:TOR). SW:TOR, which contains 260,000 lines of voiced dialogue in three languages, reportedly cost nearly $200 million to develop.

“With our technology, we’re aiming for robust high quality, even better than what you can achieve with motion capture. And because it’s audio-driven, it’s at a price point that makes it scalable to huge amounts of speech,” said Berger.

Berger says capturing the fluidity and accuracy in natural speech is one of the most difficult things to do convincingly in facial animation. ”People are very sensitive to this when you get it wrong because we are all focused on faces,” he said.

While the company’s lip synch service has not been used in any released games, Dr. Hofer told VentureBeat through email that a motion capture studio and an unnamed triple-A developer have both integrated the technology into their production pipelines.

Speech Graphics will showcase its new technology in seven languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Russian) at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Calif. next month.

---

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!

---

OneMoreLevel.com has crafted a side-by-side comparison of the two. There’s a lot of interesting data to be found, and it’s all sourced down at the bottom, but it is fair to note that OneMoreLevel is a Flash gaming site. We’ll let the data speak for itself:

For an even more detailed analysis (and more pictures!) from a neutral party, check out this breakdown from technology-specialist firm Periscopic.

Normally, I don’t shamelessly solicit comments, but as a budding game developer myself, I’d genuinely like to know if any of our readers have had an experience one way or the other. Does this data all ring true?

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---

It has happened with Rovio, maker of Angry Birds; Outfit7, maker of Talking Tom Cat; Lima Sky, maker of Doodle Jump; Halfbrick, maker of Fruit Ninja; Bolt Creative, maker of Pocket God; and Andreas Illiger, creator of Tiny Wings. So the question isn’t why were two Russian brothers so successful with their iPhone game, Cut the Rope, which has been downloaded more than 60 million times in just a year. It’s more, ‘Why not?’

Semyon (pictured above left) and Efim Voinov (above right), two twin brothers in Moscow in their 20s, have been making games since they were ten. They have put in their time, making dozens of games for the old feature phones and a handful for iPhones too. So it’s only right that, finally, one of their games has paid off with blockbuster results.

Efim got his first iPhone in 2008 and decided to work on games for the device. He created  ZeptoLab, a game development company where he serves as technical director and his brother Semyon works as creative director. Misha Lyalin (pictured middle) is the chairman of the company. With a team of just four people, they created a zany game called Parachute Ninja. The game, which stars a ninja with a ball-like body that bounces and floats, debuted in February 2010.

Parachute Ninja was almost based on the rope mechanic that’s in Cut the Rope. Efim spent a lot of time getting the physics right by creating a custom engine that could simulate the behavior of the rope. There were other open-source physics engines available, but Efim liked the challenge of creating his own. He wanted to create a rope engine that worked well even on a device with a weak processing brain. To do so, he had to dust off his old physics books.

At the last minute, the developers decided to substitute a parachute for the rope. Parachute Ninja was downloaded 3 million times — a solid hit, but not as spectacular as some of the other mega-hit games on the iPhone.

“We found that there were no barriers for small developers,” said Efim Voinov, in an interview. “It is possible to be successful without a huge team on the iOS platform.”

The game gave the small team some good experience with its core development tools. After the first iPhone game shipped, the brothers decided to make use of their rope engine with another creation. They studied their first game and felt like the combination of touch and tilt controls made Parachute Ninja tricky to understand for players. Other games used rope physics.

“We experimented with different ideas,” Semyon Voinov said. “One of them was Cut the Rope.”

The concept phase was in the spring of 2010 and the prototyping took place in the summer. The team settled upon a mechanic where the player can draw a rope on the screen to solve various puzzles. Playing with a rope was pretty universal. The game play involved predicting the behavior of different objects in the rope environment.

It turned out that the visual element of how the rope looked wasn’t the key. The game play was the secret. It was an arcade-like experience that was simple to learn but players had to think and act fast.

The team also decided to create a funny character since casual gamers enjoy interacting with animated characters more than blocks or geometric shapes. They decided to use the rope to deliver food to Om Nom, the little green monster with a big appetite. Semyon thought that the monster should be cute, like a baby or a pet. That would tap into the feeding instincts of the players.

The 99-cent game came out on the iPhone on Oct. 5, published by Chillingo, which is now a part of Electronic Arts. Chillingo helped to get it off the ground and noticed with promotions and marketing. On its first day, the game shot into the top ten on the App Store. On its second day, it hit No. 1 on the App Store charts. Within 10 days, it crossed a million downloads. In June 2011, the game made its debut on Android. The game took off, Efim said, because it makes people smile.

“The monster is like a stress reliever,” Efim said. “They look at the animations and feel better.”

After the runaway success, the fairy tale has continued to play itself out. The team has done six or seven updates of the game, and Zeptolab has now grown to 20 employees in Moscow thanks to profits from Cut the Rope. Zeptolab has no plans to raise fuding, since it already has a lot of money coming in from game sales. The brothers are now mini-celebrities in the mobile game development world.

“I don’t have a lot of girls standing by my house yet,” Efim said. “But we are known in the industry. What we see as a great sign is that Om Nom is liked by people. We see a hunger for something more.”

And, of course, like Angry Birds before them, there are Om Nom plush toys. The toys hit the market in September and they’re selling well. On Nov. 18, they released a free holiday edition with new game content on iOS.

Efim and Semyon have some advice for small developers. “[If you] do what you like,” Semyon said. “You will not waste time doing things you don’t like.”

They suggest developers study games that have been successful and understand the features that made them successful. They also say developers should study games that were duds and understand what people didn’t like. Developers should create games that appeal to as many people as possible and to keep at it. Altogether, the brothers had worked on 30 mobile games before they had a major hit.

“We were mentally prepared to work on many titles, hoping one would be a hit,” Efim said. Semyon added, “It’s very important when you develop games to show it to others. Listen to them. Understand what they like. Show it to non-gamers.”

And what’s next, beyond the plush toys? They are working on a sequel to Cut the Robe that should be released in 2012. They want to keep fans happy with updates and they are working on a new intellectual property (an original title) that should come out next year as well. That’s where the 20 employees come in. The company now has the ability to work on multiple projects at once, including a new digital comic book.

“We want it all, basically” Efim said. “We want to expand the Cut the Rope brand. We plan to offer new titles that are similar. At the same time, as creative people, we have an urge to work on something different.”

The team will expand Cut the Rope to new platforms, but is aware that it can’t pursue all opportunities due to resource constraints. The company continues to hire, but only people who are perceived as the best at what they do. Facebook is intriguing, as is HTML5 for multi-platform games. The growth of the mobile game industry, which is now in the billions of downloads, is surprising them most of all.

“We started working on mobile games a long time ago, when the phones were not powerful and had tiny screens,” Efim said. “There was hype back then, and we expected it to become huge. I had some illusions. It didn’t happen then, but it surprisingly happened with the iPhone.”

---

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!

---

The company sells a suite of tools that let game developers create games with a drag-and-drop user interface. It makes it easy for users to develop their own games even if they don’t know any programming languages. It removes the barrier to entry for developing games for the iPhone, Android-powered mobile devices and now web browsers. HTML5 also works on most mobile browsers, eliminating the need to create a specific app for each mobile operating system.

The web development tools will be optimized for the latest fleet of browsers like Firefox 5 and Chrome. But they will also support Canvas, which means that web surfers on older browsers will still be able to play the games as long as the browsers support HTML5. After a developer creates a game, they can embed the game in any web site with an embed code similar to the way YouTube has embed options.

Google will feature a few games created with GameSalad’s HTML5 tool on the Chrome Store. Like Angry Birds — which also made its debut on the Chrome Store after an HTML5 version came out — the Chrome Store will feature high-resolution versions of the games produced by Game Salad. The performance difference between HTML5 and native applications is also narrowing, which should make HTML5 a more appealing arena for game development, said GameSalad chief executive Steve Felter.

“We’ve seen that performance gap narrow to the point that it’s approaching parity,” he said. “With all the tech companies focusing on developing the standard, the gap will be effectively negated over time.”

GameSalad’s tools can be used to make games for Apple iOS devices, the Mac, and the web. Developers have used GameSalad to create more than 18,000 games to date. The software is free to try to includes all the tools to create a game. GameSalad also has a “professional” version, which gives developers access to iAds and other tools that help them make money off the games, that costs around $500 a year.

The Austin, Texas-based company was founded in 2007 by Michael Agustin, Daniel Treiman and Tan Tran. The company had previously raised at least $1.2 million from Steamboat Ventures (Disney’s investment arm), DFJ Mercury, DFJ Frontier, and ff Asset Management. GameSalad also raised $6 million in March in its second round of funding from those same investors.

---

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!

---

GameSalad

The Austin, Texas-based company has made a suite of tools with a drag-and-drop user interface, making it easy for users to develop their own games even if they don’t know any programming. The technology is another example of how we’re becoming a “creator economy” in which everyone contributes digital content.

The round was led by Disney’s Steamboat Ventures, with participation from Greycroft Partners, DFJ Mercury, DFJ Frontier and ff Asset Management. The company will use the money to grow its technical and product teams and further develop its game creation technology. Steve Felter (pictured), who recently joined as chief executive, said the company will unveil some new technologies this year that bring people together through the creation, sharing and playing of games.

Beau Laskey, managing director at Steamboat Ventures, has joined GameSalad’s board of directors alongside existing director Blair Garrou from DFJ Mercury, who led the company’s initial seed round. Dana Settle, partner at Greycroft Partners, joins as a board observer.

GameSalad’s tools can be used to make games for Apple iOS devices, the Mac, and the web. It has been used to create more than 8,500 games to date.

The market for these tools is heating up just as enthusiasm for mobile game companies is picking up. Disney recently acquired RocketPack, which specializes in making tools and games based on the HTML5 web format. Mobile games are taking off because demand for smartphones and tablet computers is also skyrocketing. More than a third of adults say they now play mobile games.

Felter recently replaced co-founder and former CEO Michael Agustin, who is now chief product officer for GameSalad. So far, the business is going well.

GameSalad appeals to anyone who has ever dreamed of creating a game. Abdulrahman Al-Zanki, a 14-year-old student in Kuwait, accepted a dare from a friend who said he was incapable of building an iPhone game. He downloaded GameSalad, which is available for free in its limited form. Three days later, he submitted his first game to the App Store. Now that game, Doodle Destroy, has been downloaded more than 1 million times and has been featured on CNN.com.

“It’s like a lottery. There’s always the chance of making the next Angry Birds,” Felter recently told us, referring to the Rovio game that has been downloaded more than 100 million times.

Once game makers get the hang of it, they can buy the professional version of GameSalad in order to better monetize the games.

GameSalad was founded in 2007 by Agustin, Daniel Treiman and Tan Tran. The company had previously raised at least $1.2 million from Steamboat Ventures (Disney’s investment arm), DFJ Mercury, DFJ Frontier, and ff Asset Management. Rivals include Unity Technologies, which makes tools for the professional and amateur crowd. While GameSalad focuses on two-dimensional games, Unity’s tools (which require programming knowledge) can be used to make sophisticated 3D games. Other rivals include non-game app makers WidgetBox and Cabana. GameSalad has around 20 employees.

---

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!

---