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Xbox One troubles University of Michigan’s video game archivist

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 24 May 2013 14:13:59 +0000

Earlier this week, Microsoft introduced the next generation of its Xbox gaming platform. The Xbox One is a powerful PC-like box that taps into the company’s cloud infrastructure to help run its games. Microsoft claims the cloud will make the system better over time as it moves more of the processing load to remote servers, but it may also cause a headache for gaming historians.

That cloud functionality may eventually cause nearly every game on Xbox One to stop working correctly if (or when) Microsoft shuts down its servers. This jeopardizes the preservation of every game on the new hardware, according to University of Michigan video game archivist David Carter.

“While we don’t have many details yet, what I’ve read so far gives me cause for concern as to how we’ll be able to work with the new system in the Computer & Video Game Archive,” Carter wrote in a blog. “As far as offloading gameplay to the cloud and requiring an Internet connection to function, this offers a challenge that is in many ways similar to dealing with massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft.”

Archivists like Carter have long struggled to replicate the online aspects of games like WOW and even Microsoft first-person-shooter Halo 2.

“There is a history of manufacturers not supporting their old gaming platforms,” said Carter. “[Like] in 2010, when Microsoft stopped supporting the original Xbox on Xbox Live. If you want to play Halo 2 online multiplayer on your Xbox — sorry, you can’t. And that’s for a game that’s less than 10 years old.”

Carter points out that gamers can grab any system from 30 years ago and plug them into a compatible television and start playing without issue.

“[That's true] even for companies that are long defunct,” said Carter. “Will the same be true in even 10 years for games for Xbox One?”

The archivist also expressed concern regarding Microsoft’s plans for digital-rights management. Xbox One may have the capability to restrict used-game sales, but the company isn’t providing details at this time.

“We’ve been dealing with this sort of thing with PC-based games for several years now, and I’m sure we’ll deal with it,” said Carter. “But it doesn’t fill me with warm, fuzzy feelings.”

Carter wrote that he’ll wait to get more information from Microsoft before deciding how to handle Xbox One games. As of now, it seems clear that Xbox One will make his job a lot more difficult than when he was just responsible for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Filed under: Games

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Trion Worlds’ Rift MMO goes free-to-play in June

Jeffrey Grubb — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:30:06 +0000

Paying a monthly subscription fee for one title is the parachute pants of out-of-date game conventions. Even the biggest massively multiplayer online game on the market, World of Warcraft, is shedding subscribers. Developer Trion Worlds is finally responding to the shifting landscape by making one of its MMOs free-to-play.

The company revealed that Rift, its fantasy-themed MMO, will drop the premium pay-to-play model on June 12. Every dungeon, every zone, and every level will then open up to anyone who signs up for an account.

“We have been listening to feedback from our players and watching the continuously developing MMO community, and we are now ready to launch Rift as a premium free-to-play experience,” Rift creative director Bill Fisher said in a statement. “After taking our time and planning a careful transition, we are very excited to bring an enhanced game experience to everyone.”

To generate revenue, Trion Worlds will expand its in-game Rift store with a completely revamped roster of items. That includes new mounts, wardrobe items, and consumable boosts.

Players can still subscribe to a Patron program that offers benefits like a permanent experience boost.

“As a gamer’s game, a super-fun and fair experience is of the utmost importance to us,” said Fisher. “Players will have the opportunity to buy customizations and boosts to heighten their play experience; however the best gear in the game will always have to be earned through playing Rift.”

The June 12 switch to F2P will also accompany the game’s 2.3 update. This patch will introduce a new zone and world event.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: WoW loses 1.3M subscribers, Amazon brings paid apps to China, Q1 earnings, and more

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:49:13 +0000

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, Activision reveals strong first quarter earnings while Blizzard loses 1.3 million World of Warcraft subscribers, EA lays off 1,000 but expects to develop Disney’s Star Wars games, indie charity drive Hunble Bundle now accepts the virtual currency Bitcoin, and the Amazon Appstore beats Google to distributing paid apps in China.

We’ve also got a lot of previews for you, including Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Deadpool, and Watch Dogs, and reviews of Star Trek and Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move.

News

Mobile news

Tech

Strange happenings

Fighting words

Developer Warren Spector slams Wolfenstein: The New Order

Fund it

Earnings

Safeguarding the future

Previews

Reviews

Interviews

Watch Dog creators bring the reality of “smart cities” to games (interview)

Pieces of flair

Filed under: Games

Activision Blizzard says Call of Duty: Ghosts will be a huge launch, but stock falls on weak Warcraft numbers

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 08 May 2013 21:54:49 +0000

Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick warned that the industry’s leading video game publisher will face serious competition and possible industry headwinds in the holiday selling season. At the same time, he raised estimates for the company’s financial performance this year based on an outstanding first quarter.

The mixed outlook suggests that the game business is at a more uncertain time now than it has been in years. The industry is in a transition year for consoles, and competition from smartphones and tablets is bigger than ever. At every turn, Activision Blizzard faces more competition. This outlook is different compared to the company’s last comments in February, and it means that Activision will have to spend more on marketing and advertising to hang on to its customers this fall.

Activision plans a major new launch of its Call of Duty: Ghosts first-person military shooter Nov. 5, with a bigger sales and marketing campaign than ever before for a blockbuster Call of Duty game. But the title will face competition from the likes of Electronic Arts upcoming Battlefield 4 and other titles coming for the next-generation consoles.

In a call with analysts today, Kotick didn’t name his competitors, but he said that the weakness of Nintendo’s Wii U game console and the coming competition in the second half is making Activision Blizzard extra cautious about predicting good results. A new version of Activision’s Skylanders is coming this fall. That game, Skylanders: Swap Force, features toys with top and bottom halves. Players can swap those halves to form new creatures for use in the video game. But Skylanders will face huge competition starting in August from Disney Infinity, another game-toy hybrid entertainment product.

Skylanders, another billion-dollar franchise launched just two years ago, is now the No. 1 game franchise of the year, said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. That makes it bigger than the No. 2 Call of Duty: Black Ops II in the U.S. and Europe. He said Skylanders was doing well despite the weakness of Nintendo’s Wii and Wii U.

The company is still the healthiest firm in the video game business, with more than $4.6 billion in cash. Its business is driven by major franchises, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Skylanders, and PC games such as StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. These have helped make the company into the largest publisher of video games, and it has been making more money than rivals such as EA.

But gaming’s No. 1 publisher warned that risks in the second half of 2013 are “more challenging than our earlier view.”

Activision made no mention of major new franchises in the works, such as Blizzard’s new massively multiplayer online game, code-named Titan. But the pressure to launch that game is building.

Kotick said that while World of Warcraft remains the No. 1 fantasy online role-playing game, it lost 1.3 million subscribers in the quarter, leaving the game with 8.3 million players. The company expects that number to fall further by the end of the year. In recognition of competition from free-to-play games, the company is figuring out how to launch updates more frequently. But it does not have big update, like last year’s World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, on the way.

In after-hours trading, Activision Blizzard’s stock price fell 5 percent to $14.49 a share. The fall may be due to the drop in World of Warcraft numbers and the comments about the second half.

“I think WoW numbers are a bigger deal,” said analyst Michael Pachter at Wedbush Securities in an email. “They are not telling us anything we didn’t know before about competition or weak Wii U sales. The surprise is the sequential drop off in WoW subscribers.”

Mike Morhaime, the head of the Blizzard Entertainment division, said in the conference call that his company is working on its first cross-platform free-to-play game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, for the PC, Mac, and iPad. Blizzard’s revenue was up due to sales of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, which sold 1.1 million copies in its first two days. But Blizzard saw a decline in Asian subscribers for World of Warcraft. He said the company will launch new game content at a quicker pace to improve engagement. StarCraft II content is now viewable on Korean TV five days a week (as the Koreans are game fanatics and have a special love for StarCraft).

Morhaime said the company is also working to modify Diablo III so that it will ship on the PlayStation 3 console. BlizzCon is coming to the Anaheim Convention Center in November, and tickets sold out in a matter of minutes. He said the company continues to work on Blizzard All-Stars and the unannounced MMO.

“Regardless of the near-term volatility in the industry, our focus and our disciplined approach to our business, which has served us well in the past, will enable us to continue delivering shareholder value in the long term, as we have for the last 20 years,” Kotick said.

Hirshberg said on the call that Call of Duty: Ghosts is coming Nov. 5. He said that Activision is showing Ghosts at Microsoft’s May 21 event for the debut of the next-generation Xbox in Seattle. Ghosts will have a new story and new characters as well as the biggest sales and marketing campaign ever for a Call of Duty game. That’s saying a lot, since Activision Blizzard makes a lot of noise about Call of Duty every year. Kotick said he would not predict a dramatic shift in the business models for the next-generation game consoles, but he said, “We approach new businsses skeptically.”

Hirshberg said that the current Call of Duty: Black Ops II saw first quarter usage and engagement that was higher than a year ago. The company has launched another map pack, dubbed Uprising, to keep players engaged. Sales for Black Ops II are higher than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from the year before. Hirshberg said that Call of Duty’s new business model of selling microtransactions, such as a bacon-wrapped decoration for a gun, is also doing well.

“We introduced an all new business model of selling micro DLC (downloadable content),” he said. “It delivers extra value for our fans but in no way compromises game play.”

For the year, Activision Blizzard expects non-GAAP revenue of $4.25 billion for the year and earnings per share of 82 cents.

Filed under: Games

World of Warcraft loses 1.3 million subscribers

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:28:59 +0000

World of Warcraft is still the top subscription-based massively multiplayer online game in the world. But it has a bit of a leak.

Publisher Activision Blizzard revealed the fantasy role-playing title lost 1.3 million players in the first quarter of 2013. The game is still at 8 million subscribers, but that is significantly lower than its peak of 10 million subscribers.

“During the quarter, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft remained the No. 1 subscription-based MMORPG in the world, with more than eight million subscribers, although the game saw declines of approximately 1.3 million subscribers, mainly from the East but in the West as well,” Activision chief executive officer Bobby Kotick said to investors during the company’s quarterly financial report.

The World of Warcraft is one of the very few MMOs that’s sustained its subscription model. Even major competition from Electronic Arts in the form of Star Wars: The Old Republic had to shift to a free-to-play model in order to keep people playing. That game has around 1.5 million free players and around 500,000 monthly subscribers.

“The subscriber declines in our World of Warcraft business [raises] concerns, as do continued challenges in the global economy,” said Kotick. “For these reasons, we remain cautious [about Activision's future].”

Filed under: Games

Dota 2 replaces World of Warcraft as Raptr’s third most-played game

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:04:15 +0000

Gamers pour millions of hours into top titles, but we never really had a good way to measure who is playing what across multiple platforms. That is until Raptr, a social network for gaming fans, began tracking play a few years ago.

Raptr just released its list of the 20 most-played games among its users in April. This method isn’t perfect since Raptr doesn’t log every gamer or even every system (it doesn’t log the 3DS or Vita), but it’s good for giving a glimpse at what people are playing.

We’ve embedded the list below:

Call of Duty: Black Ops II and League of Legends continue their stints at the top of the list, but Valve’s multiplayer online battle-arena game Dota 2 is making gains. In April, it jumped from fifth to third. That places it above Blizzard’s World of Warcraft for the first time ever.

Between League of Legends and Dota 2, MOBAs hold 10 percent of the total playtime among all Raptr members.

The only new title on the list is the multiplayer shooter Defiance for the PC, which placed ninth. Recent addition SimCity dropped off the list entirely.

Filed under: Games

Raptr starts releasing its most-played games of the month: Black Ops II is tops for March

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:00:44 +0000

Raptr has begun releasing monthly figures for the most-played Xbox 360 and PC games, and in its first-ever report, Call of Duty: Black Ops II is at the top. Black Ops II came out in November, but the first-person modern combat shooter is still commanding about 7.61 percent of overall gamer time.

Raptr is a gamer social network with 17 million users who share information about their game playing on the Xbox 360 and PC. Since Sony doesn’t allow PlayStation Network members to share game play data, there are no PlayStation 3 games in the rankings. The chart below ranks titles by the percentage of the total time spent on the top 1,000 games played by Raptr users.

While Black Ops II has the lead, it is closely followed by League of Legends on the PC, with 5.9 percent; World of Warcraft for the PC with 3.4 percent, and Gears of War: Judgment for the Xbox 360 at 2.54 percent. Dota 2 (Valve’s battle arena sequel to the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III) is still in beta but it has climbed up the charts recently, with play time up 63 percent from February. Game time for Dota 2 is half the time of its rival battle arena game League of Legends, but in the last week of March, the gap in playtime was just 25 percent under League of Legends.

Battlefield 3 saw a surge from the release of End Game downloadable content (DLC) in the first half of March. Halo 4 on the Xbox 360, meanwhile, continues a slow decline, with game time down 28 percent compared to February. The largest percentage of those Halo 4 players returned to play Mass Effect 3, thanks to the release on March 5 of the Citadel DLC for that game. A smaller group went to play Gears of War: Judgment.

BioShock Infinite launched on March 26, and the Xbox 360 version was the second-most-played game for that week, with the PC version coming in seventh. Meanwhile, Candy Crush Saga is still the top browser game on Raptr, and Marvel: Avengers Alliance is a distant second, with 25 percent of Candy Crush’s play time.

SimCity had severe launch issues, and it came in 20th for the whole month. During the last week of the month, SimCity was the 34th most-played game.

Filed under: Games, Social

League of Legends is crushing World of Warcraft in China’s Internet cafes (exclusive)

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:00:05 +0000

Riot Games’ League of Legends has clearly overtaken World of Warcraft as the most popular game in China’s Internet cafes, according to a new report by market research Niko Partners.

That’s a significant change. Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has dominated the online games market for a long time in China. League of Legends, a fast-and-frenzied multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA), debuted in 2009 and has been gaining on World of Warcraft for a while.

This also show how free-to-play games have supplanted subscription models and other traditional sales methods, especially in Asia.

In March, League of Legends was launched 75,930 times in the cafes monitored by Niko Partners, and gamers played it for 83,307 hours. By comparison, World of Warcraft was launched only 6,463 times and played for 6,027 hours.

Based on data from China’s Internet cafes, Tencent’s Cross Fire shooter game is also popular, with 77,878 launches and 17,889 hours played in March, Niko said. Lisa Cosmas Hanson, the president of Niko Partners, said that first-person shooters and MOBA games are tailor-made for Internet cafes, where players are younger and tend to play for hours at a time.

“Tencent [which owns the majority of Riot Games] is the dominant online game operator, with about 40 percent market share in PC online games,” Cosmas Hanson said. “You can see in that I-cafe data that the fact that Tencent has so many hot non-RPG games is a plus, though MMORPGs are still very popular in China. Many of the highly anticipated PC online games in 2013 are MMORPGs.”

The data is collected from more than 30,000 PCs from more than 400 Internet cafes throughout China. The PCs are monitored 24 hours a day and seven days a week, and they are spread through a variety of cities in China. Niko collects data such as the top MMORPGs, the top casual games, the top web games, and a variety of other information on the Chinese game market.

Filed under: Games

Why your app needs to be real-time

Todd Greene — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:11:10 +0000

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Todd Greene is CEO of PubNub.

Mobile, web, and desktop online apps can be split into two categories: “static” or “real-time.”

Static apps represent the bulk of our online usage today: these are solitary, single-user experiences where content changes only when the user clicks a button, requests a new page, or does a “reload.” New information is presented only when the user asks for it.

Real-time apps are infinitely more engaging.

These apps mimic behaviors we’re used to having in the real world: content is pushed to us “as it happens.” Real-time applications let you edit docs together, battle your online buddies, find the closest taxi, and see when your friend is typing an “iMessage.” They let musicians perform from home and interact with adoring fans. Real-time apps make sure citizens know about critical safety issues as they happen. And real-time technology enables people to follow friends on a map, chat, share, and collaborate in a more natural, real-world, manner.

World of Warcraft, Facetime, WebEx, ETrade’s MarketCaster, and Facebook’s live “Ticker” may seem completely unrelated, but they all represent real-time apps, connecting users instantly with the real world. Another thing they have in common is that each cost tens of millions to design, build, deploy, and scale!

Real-time technology has always been complicated and expensive. But that’s changing.

Real-time networks emerge

New trends in consumer software are almost always driven by a sudden ubiquitous availability of an enabling technology. In the 90s, the launch of app servers moved websites from glossy brochures to destinations for online banking, travel, and commerce. A decade later, open source software stacks help kickstart massive social networks operating on a shoestring budget without writing big checks to Oracle and IBM.

Today, a new enabling technology has emerged that’s driving an explosion of real-time apps. “Real-Time Networks” like PubNub, Pusher, and Firebase offer the core building blocks for real-time, globally distributed, and offered on a pay-as-you-go model. (Full disclosure: I’m the CEO of PubNub, but we’re not alone in pioneering this movement).

The core building blocks of real-time

These real-time networks operate by establishing (and maintaining) a dedicated network socket connection to every device.

Until recently, this was an expensive proposition, roughly analogous to keeping a connected phone line open to all of your users, all the time. Thanks to the elasticity of the cloud and some innovative technologies, the costs of these dedicated connections has now dropped substantially.

But the magic happens once you have that connection. A real-time network offers high-speed delivery of data, targeted to individual devices or broadcast to everyone simultaneously. Presence-as-a-service provides an easy way to detect (and be notified instantly) when users go on/offline. Data streams can be stored for future use, and even played back like a DVR for data. Real-time audience visualization and out-of-the-box encryption comprise more of these core real-time building blocks.

As real-time networks become more commonplace, they are becoming adopted by new MMO games, business collaboration, and telecom companies. But their availability is also driving completely new kinds of real-time apps.

Real life enhanced by real-time data

Transportation is one of the earliest areas where we can see real-time technology changing our day-to-day behaviors. What was once a tedious, horribly unreliable experience, ordering a taxi, is now becoming easy, predictable, and even fun. Companies like GetTaxi, Sidecar, Uber, Lyft, and others let us order cabs with a single tap, and watch online as the cab approaches our location.

But it’s not just transportation that’s getting a facelift.

ClassDojo uses real-time technology to give teachers a way to incentivize classroom behavior, using smart phones to provide instant feedback to the student and his/her parents. Soon, mobile apps will show real-time queue length for each restroom or concession booth.

Digital advertising evolves

Brands are using real-time in digital campaigns to drive audience engagement.

Coca-Cola enhanced the American Music Awards red-carpet show by letting online viewers manipulating the video in real-time for their friends’ enjoyment, and powered live voting during the Superbowl. Louis Vuitton created a global, live, online fashion show with online viewer interaction synchronized with the video. Nike, Honda, Audi, Doritos, and Budwieiser are a few more examples of leading brands invested in their own real-time, user participation campaigns. Real-time in advertising is quickly becoming as popular as CGI was to TV ads in the 90’s.

The emergence of an online audience

Things get really exciting when apps are designed around the “audience experience”, instead of the “user experience.” Companies like TopHatter now offer a true real-time auction e-commerce platform, with avatars representing the bidders and auctioneer, complete with the sound of a gavel ending each auction. Stageit brings the live concert experience online: audience members make requests, cheer (virtually), and even tip the performer online.

Social TV offerings from Viggle, Yahoo!, Applicaster, and others have taken a similar approach to nationwide TV audiences with online voting, predictive games, and real-time trivia.

Real-time goes mainstream

Real-time networks let app developers focus on their core competencies like better UI, richer experiences, and more creative features, instead of worrying about the massive investment and ongoing maintenance required to deliver real-time services. The cloud made massive storage and processing available to everyone. Akamai solved the problem of globally scaling websites with content delivery networks.

Now, real-time networks have democratized real-time, you don’t have to be Facebook or Activision to deliver a real-time experience.

The real-time apps we see today are just the beginning — expect radically new possibilities in the way we shop, communicate, travel, work, educate, and experience the world. The Lego pieces are now all in place; it’s now up to the creative folks to change the way we interact online.

photo credit: Office of Governor Patrick via photopin cc

Filed under: Business, Dev, Media, Mobile, Social

Everybody was kung-fu fighting: Age of Wushu comes to America (preview)

Rus McLaughlin — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:00:26 +0000

Can 10 million Chinese gamers be wrong? That’s the current player base on Age of Wushu, a free-to-play, massively multiplayer online role-playing game that takes place in every kung-fu movie ever made. Add another 100,000 players roaming around a semi-open beta on brand-new North America servers as Wushu is coming to America.

It doesn’t arrive with the same cultural relevance it enjoys in developer Snail Games’ native China. The U.S. team wants to draw Anglo wuxia fans raised on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or classics like Drunken Master and Master of the Flying Guillotine, but they’re banking on core MMO players who want a deeper dive in a richer, more-to-do world. Senior content producer Tyler Rawlins believes a huge chunk of dedicated, online role-players for a game that gives them more. Wushu, he claims, fills that need.

“World of Warcraft was so successful with people who weren’t familiar with MMOs,” says Rawlins. “The mechanics and features are very simple. Age of Wushu offers a lot of sandbox element that World of Warcraft made people want more of.”

“I could explain pretty much everything about World of Warcraft in 25 minutes,” adds QA manager John Lynch. “I’ve been working on this game for three or four months now, and I’m still finding new things.”

Put another way? “It’s cheaper and deeper,” says Rawlins.

After a short tutorial, players select their school of kung fu — including Shaolin monks, artistic Scholars, humble and honorable Beggars, and brutally callous Royal Guards — and step into a lush, 15th century fantasy world. Instead of dragons and minotaurs, your opponents are bandits and gangs of evil Taoist monks. It’s all firmly based in the wuxia film genre, with all the details present and accounted for. Everyone’s running up walls, running across water, and pulling off all manner of wire work, up to and including flight. Just wandering through a quiet marketplace offered demonstrations of the game’s combat, commerce, and depth.

Lynch dropped into a player-vs-player server to wander the enormous, beautiful city of Yanjing — current-day Beijing and a major metropolis during the Ming Dynasty — while Rawlins talked me through the rock-scissors-paper combat mechanics of attacks, feints, and parries. Players level skills, not characters, and skill trees aren’t locked to each school or profession … particularly once you start spying on and stealing from those other outfits.

“If you’re Shaolin, you can eventually learn Wudang skills, and then mix and match those to make your own personal martial art,” says Rawlins. With only a few exceptions, like school-specific internal skills, Wushu has no caps on learning or leveling.

Skills level up through use and internal cultivation — essentially a slower, background increase. “Certain skills were founded in the water or on a mountain,” says Rawlins, “so if you go to those regions, they cultivate a little faster.” Training in groups doesn’t hurt, either. I caught a group of players practicing Tai Chi exercises just off the market square. It wasn’t merely for mental equilibrium.

So it’s helpful that characters are persistent in Wushu; logging out turns your martial arts master into an NPC. Where you log off matters, too. You might take up a temp job as a barker, spend your down time sweeping a garden, or step up for guard duty at your martial-arts school, all of which earn you money and experience points. If another player breaks into your school to steal a few scrolls, your character might engage them. “I can get experience for fighting someone while I’m offline,” says Rawlins.

Naturally, that comes with risks.

Filed under: Games

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‘The Thunder King’ trailer celebrates the imminent arrival of World of Warcraft’s latest patch

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:43:30 +0000

When Blizzard patches a game, especially World of Warcraft, it’s a big deal. It’s no different with the upcoming patch 5.2, which the developer plans to release soon.

To celebrate, Blizzard released a trailer today titled “The Thunder King.” The video teases new content including the titular villain and the Throne of Thunder raid quest.

Check out the video below:

Blizzard detailed many of the changes coming with Patch 5.2 on Battle.net, but here’s a quick overview of the updates:

New daily quest hub: Isle of Thunder
New raid: Throne of Thunder
New world bosses: Nalak, the Storm Lord, and Oondasta
A whole mess of changes to existing classes
Tweaks to the pet battle system

Filed under: Games

House GOP majority leader Eric Cantor calls publicly funded research into video games a ‘waste’

Jeffrey Grubb — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:08:44 +0000

World of Warcraft boosts cognitive functioning in some older adults according to a North Carolina State University study paid for by a $1.2 million federal grant.

Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said today that study was a waste of taxpayer’s money.

Cantor, the majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, released a statement decrying spending as the cause of the country’s debt. The Virginia Republican listed property maintenance, vacations for federal agencies, and the Internal Revenue Service’s TV studio as particularly wasteful uses of taxpayer funds. He also claimed the American government spent $1.2 million to pay senior citizens to play World of Warcraft.

That’s a misrepresentation of the scientific study.

We covered the World of Warcraft study last February. It discovered that many of the seniors ages 60 to 77 who spent two weeks playing the massively multiplayer online game saw improved cognitive skills, including an increase in spatial awareness and focus. The mental boost was especially noticeable in seniors who scored low in those areas previously.

That’s something I’m happy to know. I plan to one day age past 60, and I want hobbies that’ll keep me sharp.

For Cantor, who may plan to employ some sort of magic to remain young forever, that study is a waste.

We’ve contacted Cantor to ask if he is against all grants for research into the effects of video games. We will update with his response.

Cantor is the first politician in some time to call for fewer video game studies. In January, President Barack Obama said Congress should fund research into violent games. Vice President Joe Biden reiterated that stance a week later.

In December, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va) submitted a bill that would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to study violent games.

Of course, all of these studies are looking for the negative effects of video games. Politicians, including Cantor, don’t seem to have much use for studies that reveal the good things games can do.

Filed under: Games

Show some love with GamesBeat’s gaming valentines

Mike Minotti — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:00:53 +0000

You’ve probably seen gaming-themed valentines before (like the digital cards we received from multiple developers and publishers), but the ones in the gallery below are special. Why? Because I made them! I originally drew most of these masterpieces back when I was an intern at Bitmob (which later turned into GamesBeat).

I included all of the old valentines and a few new ones. These lovely cards feature characters from games like Mass Effect, World of Warcraft, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, and more. Please share them with your friends, and let them know how much you care! You must expose the world to my artistic genius!

Filed under: Games

Activision Blizzard beats earnings expectations as Call of Duty and Skylanders blast rivals

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:21:48 +0000

Activision Blizzard reported better-than-expected earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Dec. 31. But it warned that 2013 will be a tougher year.

The success of last fall’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Skylanders: Giants drove sales. On a non-GAAP basis, the earnings per share were 78 cents, compared with 62 cents a year earlier and 6 cents above expectations. Revenue was $2.6 billion on a non-GAAP basis, compared with $2.4 billion a year earlier. For the fourth quarter, analysts expected 72 cents a share on revenue of $2.44 billion.

But in 2013, Activision Blizzard may have tougher comparison, since it is not releasing Diablo III or an equivalent game this year. Diablo III sold 10 million-plus units and generated 20 cents in earnings per share in 2012, according to analyst Ben Schachter.

Activision Blizzrd CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement, “We are very pleased to report that Activision Blizzard delivered the best performance in its history. With better-than expected net revenues, record operating margins and record earnings, and over $1.3 billion in operating cash flow, we continue to set the industry success bar. I would like to thank our incredibly talented employees around the world for their passion, drive, and creativity, which continues to fuel our success.”

Kotick added, “As we look to 2013, we will continue to invest in our established franchises as well as several new properties. We expect these investments to drive our growth over the long term and to enable us to deliver superior returns to our shareholders in the years to come. In the short term, we expect to continue delivering strong profitability, but below our record-setting 2012 performance due to a challenged global economy, the ongoing console transition, and a difficult year-over-year comparison because of Blizzard’s record-shattering Diablo III success in 2012.”

For 2013, Activision Blizzard said its outlook is for 80 cents a share in net income and revenues of $4.2 billion. For the first quarter of 2013, Activision said it expects earnings of 10 cents a share on non-GAAP revenues of $690 million. Analysts expected non-GAAP earnings per share of 98 cents for 2013 on revenue of $4.6 billion.

Retail sales of games fell 21 percent in the U.S. in 2012.

Fourth quarter revenues were $1.77 billion on GAAP basis, compared with $1.41 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per share were 31 cents, compared with 8 cents a share a year earlier.

For the calendar year, GAAP revenues were $4.86 billion, compared with $4.76 billion a year earlier. Non-GAAP revenues were $4.99 billion, compared with $4.49 billion a year earlier. Revenues from digital channels were $1.54 billion, or 32 percent of the total. Non-GAAP Net revenues from digital channels were a record $1.6 billion.

For calendar year 2012, Activision Blizzard said earnings per share were share of $1.01, compared with 92 cents a share for 2011. On a non-GAAP basis, the company said earnings per share were $1.18, compared with 93 cents a share a year earlier.

In a conference call, Kotick said that Skylanders sold more than $1 billion to date and 100 million toys. He said Nintendo Wii U sales were lower than expected and that an industry transition was in the works as the industry awaits the launch of new game consoles.

Chief financial officer Dennis Durkin said that the outlook is lower for 2013 in part because of the console transition and lower predicted sales of Call of Duty for 2013 compared to 2012, and lower revenues for World of Warcraft in 2013 compared to 2012.

Filed under: Games

Warcraft movie officially gets a new director, again

Sebastian Haley — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:46:16 +0000

Spider-Man 3 director Sam Raimi is out, and Source Code director Duncan Jones is in, according to an Hollywood Reporter exclusive that an official Blizzard Entertainment forum post confirmed.

Blizzard may know how to create blockbuster, genre-defining games (perhaps you’ve heard of World of Warcraft?), but it hasn’t fared so well with its first foray onto the silver screen. I suppose “foray” suggests that they actually did something, but the announced Warcraft movie has been stuck in development limbo since 2006, when The Dark Knight studio Legendary Pictures first picked up the rights for a live-action adaptation.

In 2009, Sam Raimi was officially announced as the director, with a budget suggested in the $200M range. But he left the production in 2012 due to “other projects” and probably because no one likes him after the trainwreck that was Spider-Man 3.

Now it looks like David Bowie’s son (Jones) is taking things over. Jones is known for his work on the sci-fi indie flick Moon starring Sam Rockwell, filmed for around $1M, and the 2011 sci-fi thriller Source Code starring Jake Gyllenhaal, made for a reported $35M.

The Warcraft movie, should it ever see the light of day (remember the big live-action Halo film Hollywood was supposed to do?), will share producers with The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel, among others.

Top image: Blizzard Entertainment’s only sneak peek into the Warcraft film.

Filed under: Games

The best MMOs of 2012

Kat Bailey — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:58:46 +0000

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

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

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

Planetside 2

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

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

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

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

World of WarCraft: Mists of Pandaria

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

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

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

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

The Secret World

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

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

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

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

Rift: Storm Legion

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

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

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

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

Guild Wars 2

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

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

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

Filed under: Games

How major MMOs are celebrating Christmas in-game (gallery)

Sebastian Haley — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 19:00:43 +0000

Like Halloween, Christmas is a great time to hop in your favorite massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. Not just because your friends will actually have time to grind rare loot and experience with you but also because developers tend to go a little crazy (and generous) around the holidays. Unique items, characters, monsters, events, and locations — the more the merrier!

GamesBeat has rounded up what some of the biggest MMOs are doing for this year’s Christmas celebrations, but feel free to add in your own in the comments below.

Filed under: Games

The biggest gaming surprises of 2012

Evan Killham — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 18:00:42 +0000

We thought we were so smart back in January with our release lists and RSS feeds. We really believed we knew what was going to happen this year. “I can’t wait to play BioShock Infinite when it releases in 2012!” we said. We were so naïve back then. It doesn’t matter how closely you follow the news or how often you refresh your browser; some companies can still manage to catch the gaming public completely unaware.

Here are some of our picks for the biggest surprises of 2012.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

I hated the first Black Ops. Hated. It. I even went back and replayed parts of it just to refresh every design misstep and weak idea in my mind before its sequel arrived. You’d better believe that I’d sharpened all my knives in anticipation of carving up Black Ops II like a particularly ugly turkey who killed my dog. And then it turned out good … like, really good.

It’s as if developer Treyarch, a company that consistently churned out the worst entries in the franchise for years, suddenly ditched their old playbook and started fresh. The flow and encounters hit a sweet spot that I haven’t felt from the series since the first Modern Warfare, which came out in 2007. The branching storylines — often based on your in-game performance rather than flat yes/no answers — lock in unless you replay the entire mission … and every mission after it.

Very nice. Sure, the real-time strategy chapters don’t hold up as RTS games, and it’s still the bro-tastic Michael Bay of video games, but I can’t deny that I’m actually excited about Call of Duty again right when COD fatigue had fully set in. Can Activision deliver at this level every year? I’m still skeptical, but at least now I know that the possibility exists.

Rediscovering adventure games

Contributing editor Stephanie Carmichael

This was a momentous year for point-and-click adventure games, and Kickstarter played a huge role in that. Fans donated more than $3.3 million to Double Fine Adventure, making it one of the most successful video game campaigns on the crowdfunding service, let alone one of the greatest outpourings for the genre to date. Luminary Jane Jensen raised enough money for her Pinkerton Road Studio and the upcoming adventure game Moebius. And Telltale Games launched one of the hottest titles of 2012 with The Walking Dead. Those are only a few of the promising or excellent titles that found an audience in the past dozen months. Who said adventure games were dead?

Street Fighter X Mega Man

Contributor Samir Torres

Street Fighter and Mega Man turned 25 years old in 2012, and that calls for a celebration. Street Fighter X Mega Man is a free, PC-only, old-fashioned Mega Man adventure game in which you battle Street Fighter characters instead of Robot Masters. When you beat them, you acquire their abilities. It came out on December 17.

The most interesting part is that Capcom is working with die-hard Mega Man fans to make the title — fans whom the developer has neglected in recent years with the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 and Mega Man Universe and the Blue Bomber’s omission in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

The PlayStation Vita

Intern Giancarlo Valdes

Though I only bought the Vita a few weeks ago, I honestly think it’s the best handheld I’ve ever owned — with its gorgeous screen and sleek hardware design, it’s also the prettiest. Games such as Gravity Rush, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, and Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack are great — even when I’m not commuting and just playing on the couch at home. The proprietary memory cards are still ridiculously expensive, and game-wise, the lineup doesn’t look too bright in 2013, but for now, I’m happy with just catching up with all the gems that came out this year.

Guild Wars 2

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

I quit playing World of Warcraft a few years ago because, meh, I thought the third-person fantasy massively multiplayer online genre was over, and I was tired of it. After messing about with Star Wars: The Old Republic and Eve Online, I figured that Guild Wars 2 would just be another WOW clone. Instead, it’s much more interesting and compelling to play, has many different ways to progress in the game, and made me an MMO player yet again. Not having a monthly subscription is a big factor as well.

Warlock: Master of the Arcane

Copy editor Jason Wilson

I hadn’t realized how much I had missed Master of Magic, the fantasy equivalent of Civilization from the 1990s. I didn’t realize that I had been yearning for a game like this until I encountered Warlock: Master of the Arcane. It isn’t as deep as Civilization — the focus is more on combat than in Sid Meier’s legendary turn-based strategy series — but in some ways, it’s more fun. The factions each have their own personality (I love the voices of the goblin units or the flying galleons of the Undead), and Warlock’s A.I. actually knows how to play its game. If you enjoy turn-based strategy that focuses more on combat than on expansion and empire-building — and dig fantasy — check it out.

Guild Wars 2

Intern Mike Minotti

I’m one of those MMO players. You know, the kind who plays World of Warcraft casually, sometimes tries something new, but always returns to the welcoming arms of Azeroth. I never thought I would find an MMO that I would genuinely like better than WOW, but Guild Wars 2 hooked me with its beautiful world and innovative quest systems.

The Phantom Pain/Metal Gear Solid connection

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Every year, the best part of Spike’s Video Game Awards — meaning the good part of Spike’s Video Game Awards — is all the world-premiere trailers for upcoming titles. 2012′s show was no different, and the announcement trailer for developer Moby Dick Studios’ The Phantom Pain was the highlight of the evening.

Even more interesting is the fan-driven speculation that the title is secretly the next installment in Konami’s Metal Gear franchise. The evidence is circumstantial at best, but if you think back on it, this is exactly the sort of thing that we’d expect from the stealth action series.

Dragon’s Dogma

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

Capcom’s underrated action-adventure caught me completely by surprise. I’d heard nothing about it until a few weeks before release when then-Bitmob staff writer (now at PC Gamer) Omri Petitte published his “A Series of Epic Events” preview. Instantly, I saw Monster Hunter- and Dark Souls-style gameplay dancing in my head, and I wasn’t too far off once I got my hands on the disc.

Here’s a game that makes nighttime feel dangerous and isolating, not merely a moonlight-blue hued palette swap. Here’s a game with a detailed, skill-based combat model that encourages creative solutions. Here’s a game that makes exploration feel grand and of consequence such that smart preparation becomes a necessity. Here’s a game that blends asynchronous multiplayer into an experience that’s not turn-based or on a phone. Here’s a game that doesn’t waste your time with bland, boring, and ultimately useless dialogue from cardboard non-player characters. Here’s a game that’s not afraid to challenge modern design conventions and show them to be a poor way forward for the medium.

The PlayStation Vita

Intern Jasmine Rea

I was all prepared to dislike the Vita based on how woefully under-supported it was at launch and Sony’s silly choice to make a 3G-enabled model. Since I really wanted to review Persona 4 Golden, I knew I’d buy one at some point, and boy was I shocked by how much I loved it. The screen is mesmerizing, and the increased size and heft fixed all the problems that I had with the PlayStation Portable’s shape. Most of all, I didn’t mind forking over money for digital versions of PSP games that I already own. They just look so much better on that pretty screen. The Vita deserves more support, and if you like Japanese role-playing games, you’re sure to adore this flashy little handheld. Just don’t buy into the touch panel gimmicks, and I think you’ll love it, too.

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare

Intern Evan Killham

Alan Wake, developer Remedy Entertainment’s Stephen King/Twin Peaks-fusion thriller with a dash of Lovecraft, was one of my favorite games of 2010. I was a little disappointed that the follow-up, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, was a bite-sized Xbox Live Arcade downloadable title, but I checked it out anyway because, hey, more Alan Wake. And you know what? It is glorious.

Remedy drops the first game’s moody tension in favor of a more action-based, grindhouse dynamic, and while such a drastic shift in tone might be the worst thing that could happen to a franchise, somehow it just works for Alan Wake. It could be because this is a series explicitly about storytelling and creativity, and as such, it can include any genre Remedy feels like throwing in there. And seemingly as a test of this hypothesis, American Nightmare is a time-travel story.

The game has three levels, and you play through them three times. You could assume that this is a clever way to reuse assets and keep the game XBLA-sized, and you would be right, but on each time through, the characters around Alan remember bits of information about their experiences in the previous loop. For example, one time through, Alan has to go out to a character’s car to retrieve an item; the next time around, she remembers that someone will need that object and has it with her when you first (second?) meet, saving you the dangerous trip outside.

It’s really clever storytelling that keeps the repetition from feeling, well, repetitive, and it also serves as a fascinating commentary on game mechanics in general. What are checkpoint restarts, after all, but a form of time travel?

Filed under: Games

What sales managers can learn from the four types of online gamers

Mike Smalls — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:30:12 +0000

In the workplace, most employees have been exposed at one point or another to various personality profile tools like Myers-Briggs or DISC assessments to help determine which roles best suit their strengths. People tend to be more engaged and perform better in jobs that are aligned with their interests and personalities. For example, outgoing people might gravitate towards sales, while introverts might focus on more analytical roles.

Interestingly enough, in the world of games, research has been done to analyze the link between a person’s personality and interests and the types of games to which they tend to be drawn. Intuitively, we understand that different personalities are attracted to different types of games. For example, World of Warcraft players tend not to play Farmville and vice versa.

Back in the mid-90s, Richard Bartle, an author, professor, and game researcher, examined the players of Multi-User Dungeon/Domain (MUD) games and defined four types of gamers. He classified them as explorers, socializers, achievers, and killers, based on whether they acted or interacted, and whether they focused on the world of the game or the other players.

Let’s look at each of Bartle’s gamer types in more detail:

The Explorer. These gamers enjoy interacting with the world of the game, seeking to understand how it works.

The Socializer. Most interested in developing inter-player relationships, socializers use games as a means of interacting with others.

The Achiever. This type values action in the world of the game and seeks to rack up points and advance to higher levels of game play.

The Killer. Killers act on other players, seeking to impose themselves on others.

So what does this have to do with work? There has been a lot of buzz lately about how companies can increase employee engagement and performance when processes and systems are gamified. When thinking about applying game mechanics to work, managers must keep their audience in mind in order to develop an effective system. Bartle’s gamer profiles might not apply to every employee, but can provide a general framework for the types of game mechanics that will best motivate workers.

For example, the vast majority of players tend to be socializers and explorers, while fewer are achievers and killers. Salespeople, however, tend to be more achievement- and killer-oriented than most. They like friendly (and not so friendly) competition. They’re more independent and are motivated by rewards, awards, and trophies. So if their job was turned into a game, it would have to look very different from one designed for an accountant.

When designing any product or system, one size does not fit all — There are obviously a number of factors involved in the effective application of game mechanics, but keeping the audience in mind is one of the most important keys to success.

Mike Smalls is the CEO and Founder of Hoopla.net. Hoopla’s platform leverages enterprise data, advanced game mechanics, and sophisticated communication tools to cultivate a high performance culture and drive results.

[Top image credit: Webgrrls]

Filed under: Business, Enterprise, Games

Get physical 3D models of your Minecraft world

Sebastian Haley — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 21:05:08 +0000

Creating and customizing one’s world in Minecraft can provide a great sense of pride. Now those accomplishments can be manifested into a physical model thanks to FigurePrints, the same company that makes 3D models of unique Xbox Live Avatars and World of Warcraft characters.

FigurePrints uses a 3D printer to bring a select portion of your Minecraft world to life via a special exporter program. According the company cost runs roughly one dollar per 500 blocks, so depending on how outrageously intricate your proposed selection is, a model could make for an excellent holiday gift for that special Minecrafter in your life.

More details can be found on the FigurePrints site, and if you’re interested in how the 3D printing process works, FigurePrints has a short video detailing how it makes custom World of Warcraft character models.

Filed under: Games

Game industry pros confess their piles of shame!

Rus McLaughlin — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:00:52 +0000

I have never, ever played a Fable game. I always intended to throw on one of Peter Molyneux’s fantasy epics and take it for a spin, and hey, I still do. Someday. Really.

But the simple fact is this: If you game, you’ve got a pile of shame … that list of titles you haven’t played yet but fully intend to. Someday. Really.

Nobody likes to admit it, but few of us have the money and time to play everything we’re interested in. In fact, the number of missed opportunities just grows and grows as shiny distractions (work, family, newer games that look really cool) come into the picture. So as we come out of the summer doldrums and into a very busy gaming season, we asked some of most influential names in the industry to publicly humiliate themselves by telling us what’s still on their piles of shame.

And they didn’t all answer. But here’s who did.

Cliff Blezinski: former design director, Epic Games (Gears of War)

I’ve yet to go back to Batman: Arkham City because I can’t find the darned disc in my cluttered setup.

Jenova Chen: cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey, Flower)

I haven’t played Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the first boss. It’s the game of the year for our lead engineer, John Edwards, so that means a lot. But I haven’t got time to go back to it yet.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu: editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

Mass Effect 2. I don’t understand what all that hub-bub was about the ending to the Mass Effect storyline. We’re still not even halfway through the trilogy, right? Right?

Sigh … yes, this is my big shame game. I’m not even finished with Mass Effect 2 yet. I know it’s something I need to get through — Mass Effect is a major franchise in gaming, after all — but I just can’t seem to find the time. Actually, that’s not true. I somehow scraped together 188 hours for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I honestly don’t know what it is about this series. I loved the first game, but it took me over a year and a half to beat it because I was constantly leaving it, then coming back, and then leaving it again. For all of 2012, ME2′s been sitting next to my TV, beaming subliminal messages to my brain: “Play me … play me. …” But it hasn’t worked. Now that Borderlands 2 is here, and all the other fall games are arriving soon, I’m afraid part two of this sci-fi trilogy will just have to wait a bit longer.

Morgan Webb: co-host, X-Play

Spec Ops: The Line. Everyone tells me it’s really good. Everyone tells me about the crazy tough choices you have to make. And I even bought it. It is still in the plastic and will likely remain so until about January. It’s not a very large pile. I try really hard to keep up with things. And seriously, Shoe needs to play Mass Effect.

Frank O’Connor: franchise development director, 343 Industries (Halo 4)

Working on Halo is a pretty involved process. There’s the work, of course – story, universe building, endless meetings, travel … most developers know the score there. But you compound that work with home life, raising an angry 3-year-old, taking out the trash, fixing the sewer, making dinner – there just aren’t that many hours in the day. And so when I do play games in my downtime, they tend to be Halo. Take-home tests, matchmaking, just a ton of Halo stuff. So my pile of shame is almost limitless. And to prove that point, my main shameful miss is a couple of years old, and I still haven’t gotten around to it properly. It’s Red Dead Redemption.

Hardly unusual, but when I did finally put it in my drive, I immediately knew this was a place I wanted to inhabit. And I got as far as the first horse race, couldn’t beat Bonnie around her ranch, and that’s where I left it. Right back to Halo stuff. I also have a miserably small completion ratio of Forza, and in fact I have not unlocked the Halo Warthog that’s squirreled away in there. The least dusty, still-shrinkwrapped item on that pile is Borderlands 2.

I still haven’t seen the new Batman, either, and I only saw Cabin in the Woods because it was on my plane. I genuinely feel actual shame because part of my job is to understand why other games are cool and expose myself to new experiences. I feel like I should really just take a couple of months off to reengage and immerse myself in what’s new and what’s awesome.

Filed under: Games

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Epic! World of Warcraft completely re-created in Minecraft

Sebastian Haley — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:48:04 +0000

Back in February we interviewed a 27-year-old U.S. grad student known as “Ramses” about his project that would bring the entire virtual world of Blizzard’s massively multiplayer World of Warcraft to Minecraft. Eight months later, that project has now gone into open beta and Ramses has shared some before and after shots comparing the actual World of Warcraft to its Minecraft counterpart.

Ramses also shared some interesting details on how he approached “Crafting Azeroth”:

How does the conversion process work?

I developed software to convert the continents of World of Warcraft into Minecraft blocks using a process known as voxelization. The software converts everything in the game, including all the buildings and natural details, down to the individual tree stump. Once the parameters for the software have been set, the entire conversion process takes approximately 24 hours and requires no human intervention.

Prior to the conversion process, I needed to match textures from World of Warcraft to the appropriate material in Minecraft. For example, an object with a wooden texture might be converted into wooden planks, while an object with a mossy texture might be converted into mossy cobblestone. I created a special program to help do this assignment, but selecting materials for all 10,000-plus textures in the game still required many hours of work.

How large is the world?

The current version of the map spans approximately 275 square kilometers and contains over 68 billion blocks. The highest part of the world, the peak of Mt. Hyjal, stands more than a kilometer above sea level. Since the map exceeds the Minecraft height limit, the world had to be divided into seven altitude layers, each connected via a server-side plugin that teleports players as they approach the height limit. To be played locally, the map requires 24 gigabytes of hard-drive space.

Does the world include underground areas, like dungeons and caves?

Yes, the map includes all caves and dungeons that are not part of a separate instance. Loosely speaking, this means that if you can only get there by portal, then it’s not part of the map. So areas like Blackrock Mountain are freely accessible, but dungeons like Blackrock Depths or Molten Core are not.

Do you plan to convert any other continents, such as Outland?

Yes, work has already started on Outland and Northrend, and I plan to convert other regions such as Tol Barad and the Lost Isles as well. The conversion process can also be used on instanced dungeons, so they may appear at a later date, but they are not top priority right now.

GamesBeat wants to congratulate Ramses on his epic achievement and impressive methods. You can read more about Crafting Azeroth and download the beta here.

Filed under: Games

What’s in the box?! World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Collector’s Edition (review)

Sebastian Haley — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:50:29 +0000

With the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard continues a long tradition of excellent collector’s edition bundles. Each expansion (along with the highly sought-after original) featured a limited-run collector’s set, containing soundtracks, behind-the-scenes videos, and miscellaneous goodies such as art books and maps of Azeroth — as well as the highly coveted exclusive in-game pets and mounts.

Check out the gallery below for a full breakdown of the new collector’s edition:

Conclusion:

Even at double the price of a standard version of Mists of Pandaria, the Collector’s Edition is easily recommendable to anyone who plans on playing this game. From the high-quality packaging to bonus content and in-game items, it comes with so much added value that it’s an outright steal. I want to make a crack about the servers actually working the day of launch, but I’ll let Blizzard slide just this once since it sexed up this bundle so well.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: More Zynga executives leave, CEO Perlman leaves OnLive, and Bethesda announces new Skyrim DLC

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 17:09:04 +0000

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, Zynga loses more executives, Microsoft announces that its surface tablets will run Unreal Engine 3, and Double Fine reveals its first iOS game, Middle Manager of Justice, that’s all about managing superhero careers.

You’ll also find reviews for Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and the Origin PC Eon11-S gaming laptop as well as previews for Resident Evil 6 and Adventure Time.

News

Mobile news

MMO news

Interviews

After big hit on iPhone, only 30 percent of Kabam’s revenue comes from Facebook (interview)

Reviews

Previews

OnLive

House of Zynga

Windows 8 and Surface tablets

Filed under: Games

The DeanBeat: Being a tortoise isn’t so bad, but the water is choppy, EA’s top game studio boss says

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:00:41 +0000

A few years ago, it was easy to write Electronic Arts off as a dinosaur. Zynga passed it up in social games and held the most successful initial public offering in U.S. gaming history. But Zynga has faltered, and some of the mammals that made EA seem like a dinosaur are having troubles of their own.

“That’s a tortoise and the hare story,” said Frank Gibeau, the president of EA Labels and the head of the company’s game development efforts. “I would never say, ‘I told you so,’ but we’re a multiplatform company. We’re not a single-platform company.”

As others falter, EA has emerged as a broad-based company that is transforming itself from a packaged goods retail gamemaker to a live services firm, he said. In a wide-ranging conversation at Bloomberg’s San Francisco office this week, Gibeau acknowledged that he learned a lot from Zynga in terms of responding quickly to user demand. But he told a group of reporters that social network games are slowing down because mobile games are pulling people away from their desktop computers.

“People have stopped playing FarmVille, and they’re on their phones,” he said. “How that shakes out and those dollars shift will continue to accelerate in the next year.”

And Gibeau likes that because EA has the top position in mobile, in part because it made its major mobile gaming acquisition in 2005. (That’s a frustrating secret, said Gibeau.) And mobile is monetizing much better than Facebook, he said. But Gibeau, like his boss, EA chief executive John Riccitiello, acknowledges that the water is “choppy” in games. Life is far more complicated for game industry leaders than it was when the industry moved from the PlayStation to the PlayStation 2.

“It’s a very dynamic time, and it is really wiping out a lot of conventions that companies have held,” he said. “A lot of new companies have emerged, soared high, and gone back down…. We expect this chop and complexity will continue for the next year.”

Zynga is starting to lose high-profile executives and may be in the same position that EA was a few years ago. The first iteration of OnLive, the cloud gaming service, has gone belly up, says Gibeau, because “they needed to pay more attention to the economics.” (Cloud gaming proved too expensive to implement with current server and broadband technology.)

“They tried to take the hardest games in the world to stream, and your backend economics become difficult,” he said. “I think that cloud gaming is an enabling technology for IPTV [Internet protocol television], for sure,” particularly for those bundling games and video services. “Streaming will be a big part of the gaming sector, but not for a while.” Gibeau believes that Apple and Google will fight it out in IPTV, but there won’t be a large-scale game market for apps on TVs for a while.

The troubles at Zynga and OnLive don’t mean that gamers are simply boomeranging back to EA games. EA has had its share of layoffs, and just last week its PopCap Games division lost 50 jobs.

Console games are slowing down because they are at the end of their long life cycle. And EA’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, which was six years in the making, has lost a considerable number of subscribers. EA launched it in December in the hope of challenging Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, but Gibeau said that the amount of free content in the industry has forced EA to switch to the free-to-play business model (where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods) a lot earlier than Gibeau thought.

“We always knew we would move to free to play, but in all honesty, I didn’t think we would have to pivot this fast,” he said. “We were worried that when we announced that, we would have a lot of subscriber flight. We have not seen that.”

Gibeau admitted that he “coveted Blizzard.” Overall, free to play has become 17 percent of EA’s mobile and PC revenue. The trick is to grow it to a massive scale, he said. EA is making a bet on free to play with the announcement last week that its next Command & Conquer game (pictured right) will follow the model. With consoles, EA may invest $50 million over two years in development and marketing, and then it won’t make a dime until it launches. But with free to play, EA can invest $3 million to get the game to its launch point and then continue to invest after that as users deliver feedback.

Gamers may not start making purchases until they get deeper into a free-to-play game, well after launch. And maybe only 10 to 15 percent of gamers will buy something. (The conversion to paid is higher for hardcore games than it is for social games.) But the profits can be similar to console games in the long run.

“With free to play,” said Gibeau, “you can fail fast and fail cheap, but get back to break even and then build it out slowly over time.”

The new waters are treacherous. But Gibeau counts himself as an optimist because of the growth of gaming platforms and users. In 2005, there might have been 200 million gamers. Now, thanks to new platforms, the number of gamers has grown to 1 billion and is on its way to 2 billion. Mobile gaming is expected to grow for the next five years. Tablet sales are exploding. Russia, Brazil, the Middle East, China, and North Africa are starting to produce real revenues. We’re on the verge of the launch of “Gen 4″ consoles — EA’s name for the next-generation of game machines.

“At no other point in the history of games has there been this many viable platforms, this many addressable markets, or this many gamers,” he said. “I see long-term fundamental growth drivers that don’t stop growing for five years.”

And the free-to-play business model is expanding the market.

“If it wasn’t for free-to-play, Asia would be a black hole of piracy,” said Gibeau. “In the next four years, Russia will probably pass Germany as a game market. You never thought that was possible 10 years ago.”

The core gamers will rally back when the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles launch, he said.

Consoles are “an entertainment form and type that are still resilient even with mobile gaming,” he said. “I read a lot about the demise of the console. I don’t buy it. If you look at the intensity of gamers, we are not losing them to mobile. There is a mass-market slowdown, but it’s natural. In the sixth or seventh year of a hardware cycle, there is fatigue.” In that kind of market, the big will get bigger.

But now EA’s investing in many more platforms beyond consoles, mainly to catch up with users who have limited time with any given platform. In China, browser-based games are starting to take off and challenge the heavy-download online games. EA is also investing in its own ecosystem, so that its gamers can play EA games across any platform and pick up where they left off in their last session.

“The next five years is going to be a war of ecosystems,” said Gibeau.

Production values on mobile will rise, and simultaneous multiplayer sessions will be the norm. The tablet experience will very quickly become like an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 experience, and that kind of change in mobile gaming tastes will play into EA’s hands, said Gibeau. At the same time, he says, the mobile market will be diverse enough to accommodate both hardcore and casual games.

“As I look at tablets and mobile, it will be the largest platform, bar none,” said Gibeau.

“Mobile is complimentary to your console experience,” he said. “A lot of the long-range trend lines are positive for engagement.”

Gibeau said that EA doesn’t really need to acquire more companies to fulfill its vision. Last year’s $750 million-plus acquisition of PopCap Games gave it more talent in casual games.

“I feel I have all the talent and development capacity we need right now,” he said. “Acquisition is not in my top five priorities right now.”

Neither is the upcoming Wii U, he said. EA is developing some games for the new Nintendo game console coming this fall, but it is not heavily investing.

“I don’t know how their platform is going to do,” he said. “The Wii U is not in my top five priorities.” He said it is “not as breakthrough as the Wii was.”

The path through the choppy waters to the good times is still visible. But hopefully EA won’t be a tortoise in getting there.

“I can definitely see a path through the turbulence, and that is the one I’m betting the company on,” he said.

Filed under: Games, Mobile

Blizzard counterprograms its latest World of Warcraft patch against Guild Wars 2′s debut

Jeffrey Grubb — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 23:30:35 +0000

Time to snap on the adult diapers and pre-pay Pizza Hut to supply your home with 20-days-worth of pie, because Blizzard rolled out a hefty update to World of Warcraft.

Patch 5.0.4 will add a handful of major features to the successful massively multiplayer role-playing game. The dev upgraded the talent system, the character classes, the glyphs, and the looting mechanic. Additionally, Blizzard added account-wide mounts, pets, and achievements, so players can access that content regardless of the character they are running.

The new Theramore’s Fall Scenario is also available as part of this patch. It features two events, one for the Alliance and one for the Horde. It should lead right into the events of the coming Mists of Pandaria expansion. On the technology side, the dev added cross-realm zones and BattleTag support.

Cross-realm zones will attempt to solve the problem of desolate-feeling level-up zones. It will allow players who would normally be relegated to the high-level areas to team up with players who are still in the thick of the grind.

BattleTag support implements the same pseudonym solution that developer employed in Diablo III. A BattleTag is a player’s permanent Battle.net account name. It’s the account name that users provide when they don’t want to give out their real name.

Blizzard released World of Warcraft in 2004. Since then, the game has led the MMO pack with an astronomical number of subscribers. Other popular franchises, including Star Wars, Star Trek, and DC Comics, have tried and failed to match WOW’s vast appeal and dedicated base of paying customers.

Also launching today is NCSoft’s Guild Wars 2. This is another fantasy MMORPG that distinguishes itself by not charging a monthly subscription fee. Read some of our coverage of GW2′s launch here. Anticipation for this game has been building among restless MMO fans for months.

WOW once had over 12 million subscribers, but that number has dropped to just over 10 million. That’s still more than twice as much as the next closest in the genre, but it’s likely not a coincidence that Activision Blizzard scheduled this content drop on the release day of GW2.

Activision will release the latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, on September 25. Aside from introducing the monk character class and the Pandarian race, this add-on raises the level cap from 85 to 90. Mists of Pandaria retails for $39.99.

Filed under: Games

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria intro brings the focus back to orcs vs. humans…and pandas

Mike Minotti — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:09:00 +0000

Everybody loves pandas. You don’t see entire countries working together to make sure the endangered white abalone sea snails are mating, do you? But the point is that we could all use more of the black-and-white, bamboo-munching bears in our lives. So it is with great joy that I report that Blizzard has revealed the opening cinematic for Mists of Pandaria, the latest expansion to its incredibly popular massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft. It also features plenty of kung fu pandas. Not the Kung Fu Panda, though. Still, I’ll take it.

While the intros for past expansions have centered on menacing and threatening villains, this movie brings the scale back a bit by focusing on the conflict between orcs and humans. Of course, it doesn’t take long for a Pandaren, the upcoming playable race, to make an appearance.

Blizzard has always created impressive CG to accompany its games, and this intro is certainly no exception. I still consider the one they made for The Burning Crusade (the first World of Warcraft expansion released in 2007) as their best. But this new video shows a level of humor that, while always present inside the actual game, we rarely see in an opening cinematic.

As of June 30, World of Warcraft has 9.1 million paying subscribers. That number, once over 10 million, has been decreasing, but WoW is still easily the king of MMOs, especially in a time when so many of its competitors are abandoning the traditional subscription model for free-to-play alternatives.

Blizzard releases Mists of Pandaria for PC on September 25.

Filed under: Games

China’s Perfect World quietly becomes a North American powerhouse in online games (interview)

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Asia’s online gamemakers are churning out the profits, but they aren’t well known on the global stage. Perfect World, based in Beijing, is one of those lesser-known companies. But it has made a fortune in free-to-play massively multiplayer online games.

Over the years, Perfect World has become an expert at monetizing free-to-play games, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. The business model has become fashionable and is helping the company move to the forefront of games. In the past 12 months, Perfect World has had trailing revenues of $429 million. Outside of China, it is closing in on $100 million in annual revenue. In North America, nine of its 10 games are MMOs, and one is a first-person shooter. And the company has 350 employees in the U.S. now, and more than 4,500 worldwide.

Perfect World Entertainment, started in 2008, is the U.S. subsidiary of the Chinese company. Chief executive Alan Chen heads the division, based in Redwood City, Calif. It is on the growth path, having acquired Cryptic Studios in Los Gatos, Calif. Cryptic has made MMOs such as Star Trek Online and City of Heroes. Perfect World Entertainment is readying the launch of its RaiderZ online game (which Korea’s Maiet Entertainment developed) and is preparing to launch the Western-style MMO Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter, which Cryptic Studios is building.

We recently visited Chen at the company’s headquarters. Here is an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: How many years has Perfect World been set up here in the U.S. now?

Alan Chen: We set up the office in June of 2008. So it’s about four years now.

GamesBeat: Perfect World International was the first game that you brought over into the U.S. market?

Chen: Yeah, Perfect World International. It’s a little confusing. The name of the game is also the name of the company. We try to use “PWI” as the official name of the game now.

GamesBeat: What’s the experience been like, as far as expanding in the U.S.?

Chen: We were pretty committed to the market because we believe that there’s great potential. We have a strategy with different phases. For phase one, we just wanted to leverage whatever product we had available in China. We wanted to polish it, localize it, and bring it to a good level of quality. Then we published it here to grow our business from scratch. I still remember having our meetings in a hotel lobby. We didn’t even have an office in the very beginning. Gradually, we published our first game. By the end of 2008, we made our business profitable. That’s quite amazing, in only half a year.

Right after that, we grew the business 100 percent every year, until recently. We’re still enjoying 30 to 40 percent growth. Of course, it’s more difficult when the numbers get bigger and bigger. Doubling the big numbers is more challenging than doubling the smaller numbers. Now we’re in the second phase of the business. We have a different strategy. In the second phase, since we’ve already grown significantly in the past two to four years. Ever since last year, we’ve started to license third-party games. We are not just bringing over projects from the parent company. We’re licensing and codeveloping new projects — western-style games. We want to make sure we provide high quality and the right style of games to gamers here in America and Europe. We licensed a few games from Korea. We also acquired a company, Cryptic Studios. Their Neverwinter MMO has some high anticipation in the market. That’s our second-phase strategy. We wanted to provide more tailor-made products to western gamers.

GamesBeat: The challenge always seems to be to have success crossing over from one market to the other. I wonder how you look at all the opportunities before you now in that way. You can cross over from different types of games to new types of games. You can cross over from China into the U.S., or cross from Asian content into worldwide content. You could also try different platforms, as well, from the downloadable PC games to browser-based to social and mobile content. How do you look at all these different opportunities right now?

Chen: We started with PC massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and I still believe there are tremendous opportunities in the MMORPG market. We’re continuing to invest in MMORPGs. However, I look at different platforms — like iOS, Android, or browser platforms — as new initiatives for us, particularly for the American and European markets. The browser market is not as hot as it is in Asia, I believe, because of the culture and the history of video games in the different markets. A very big chunk of business was taken by console games here, and console games are very well represented in the gaming market. Console games gave you a very high quality of experience here, and that made it very difficult for people to accept less quality from the browser space. If a 3D, good-quality game can be developed in the browser or web game space, I believe that’s going to be the future of the market. We’re paying a lot of attention to this. We’re actively looking around at opportunities, be it for investment or codevelopment or acquisition. We think that’s the way to go when the time is right.

GamesBeat: Technologies like Google’s Native Client or Flash 11.4 are making these browser-based 3D graphics technologies possible. We’re close to having some really good 3D browser games.

Chen: Exactly, right. We’re looking at a new generation of 3D browser games. People here aren’t so interested in 2D, although it’s super hot in China. Whenever I went back, people were always talking about browser games. I don’t see that happening in the U.S. The market perception is totally different.

GamesBeat: Does it make sense to do more U.S.-specific content and fewer imported Asian games for the U.S.? Is there a difference in tastes…?

Chen: There are two points I’d want to make. Number one is when we talk about online games, we consider an online game a service. It’s not a product, where you eventually finish the development of the product — the game. Most important is the continued support of that service. When a game launches, it’s just the beginning. It’s not the end of the development process. It’s the beginning of the business. So we need a developer to be able to continuously drive the business higher and higher. Our first choice would be working with our own teams. With our own team, it’s easier to be involved in the future development.

If we use a developer-publisher deal, like we see on the console side, it’s going to be challenging after the developer finishes up its work. The future support becomes questionable. Of course, like I said, we want to provide more tailor-made games to local players — no matter whether we import them from Asia or we develop them here. But we’d like to move away from the projects that are only suitable for China or Asia. We want to make Western games, regardless of who might be the developer. Because Western games in the Chinese and Asian game markets…. It’s not just the cultural or visual differences. Gameplay-wise, they’re also very different.

GamesBeat: Have you seen some teams in China actually make good games for a worldwide audience yet? I think PopCap, for example, has a team in Shanghai that’s just launched a U.S. game. I think Spicy Horse Games, which American McGee runs, is also making U.S. games out of China. I wonder about that possibility.

Chen: Yeah. That’s the strategy of leveraging the cost factor in the Chinese market. It’s still a question of how you introduce your Western game concepts and how you manage the project to leverage those lower costs there. It’s doable. But it’s different from importing a Chinese game from China. If it’s designed for the Chinese market, it can still be popular in other countries. Like PWI, the game we launched — our first project. It was the most successful international game that was originally developed for the Chinese market in China. That game was licensed to more than 40 countries around the world. I consider it the most successful global game from China. It was developed for China, but it also worked in other countries.

GamesBeat: What about the ability of studios in the West…like, say Cryptic…to develop games that are also popular in China?

Chen: I think, in general, the markets in China and the West are different in terms of demands on gameplay. For example, in the Western market, people are more focused on gameplay. People enjoy the experience of directly playing the game. In China, it’s different. It’s more social; it’s about showing off. “How can I get to the maximum level as fast as possible and then player-kill everyone else in one shot?” That’s what a lot of people enjoy. Different gameplay, different market demands. But if you want to make one game that’s universally popular, then that’s very challenging. Especially if it’s an MMO. It’s easier with eSports-type games. That kind of appeal is more universal. But if you want to do an MMO, that’s more challenging.

With Cryptic, we’re working on a very attractive title, Neverwinter. It’s very attractive to the Chinese market, as well. When we took it to ChinaJoy [game show], we drew a lot of attention from the media and from players. However, in order to make a game very successful, it’s going to be challenging if we don’t have some local adjustment to the content. We need to tailor it for local demand. Not only graphics-wise, but also as far as gameplay. In that regard, we will deploy local development teams in different countries and markets we consider significant. We’ll transfer technology to those places to make sure they can produce content tailored for their local markets.

GamesBeat: It seems like League of Legends and World of Warcraft are some of the only ones from the West that have made it in China.

Chen: Yeah. World of Warcraft is different because of their timing in the market. It’s like our game, PWI. If we published it today, it wouldn’t be as successful as it was when we published it four years ago. At that time, high-quality 3D MMOs were not so common in China. So it hit the market at the right time. We acquired players who would stick to the game. They made so many friends there in the game, and eventually they had so much virtual property in the game, that they didn’t want to abandon it. So that’s the trick, in one way: to enter the market in its early stages, when there’s less competition. That’s also one of the success factors for World of Warcraft in China. For League of Legends, it’s a different genre of game. It’s more geared towards eSports. That appeal is more international.

GamesBeat: It seems like the conclusion could be that companies that succeed in a crossover strategy — that succeed in more than one market or one type of game — are the ones that create the most value. If EA has any particular value right now, it’s that a quarter of their revenue is digital. And if Zynga is considered valuable by anybody still, then it’s because they have so much investment in mobile. Somebody who’s crossing over from their stable base in social games on Facebook, say, and moving into mobile…. If they succeed, then their stock price will go back up. Would you agree with that assessment: that any company that succeeds in a transition like that is going to be one of the more valuable companies?

Chen: Exactly. If you can make your games more appealing to an international market, then by all means you can create value. You might build a special genre like eSports, where you don’t need to localize it too much to make it appeal to all the markets. Or you might have to deploy local resources and make sure you have a local…. I’ve always believed localization will pay off with local demand. Even between the Chinese-speaking markets in China and Taiwan. They’re still different. Either you focus on one market, the original market, and you just make your money there, or you should do your best in every market, which means listening to the requirements of those different markets and making a change — creating different content locally. I believe that’s the way you can succeed, with an MMO or with online games in general.

GamesBeat: It’s interesting to look at which companies can afford to do this now, too. If you look at THQ, they’re a $500 million dollar company still, but they can’t afford to invest in mobile and social anymore. They’re going to invest just in console games.

Chen: Actually, the investment in social and mobile is not something that’s so challenging or difficult. It’s all about strategy. The cost isn’t much. If you look at most of the mobile developers, there’s a lot of them, actually, that are just one, two, three, or five people. For a big company like THQ, which has 100 or 200 employees, they could easily afford to start in this business. So the challenge isn’t the investment. The challenge is does it make sense? You’re jumping into a very crowded pool against a lot of those developers with just two or four people. You’re one of thousands of developers, and there are thousands of new games that queue up in the App Store waiting to be published every week. So that’s the challenge. It’s not coming up with the investment. The challenge is what’s the hook? Your odds of getting in the top 25 are very long.

That’s had us thinking very dynamically in recent days. Where will be the next move? What will be the next booming business in the gaming market? What’s making people think this way is mobile gaming makes the barrier to entry very low. Anyone can get into this kind of gaming now. Because of the popularity of the iPad or mobile phones, people can enjoy kinds of gameplay that weren’t possible on mobile devices. It’s diversified the way people use their time, especially small bits of time. Given that so many people can develop these kinds of games, it makes it difficult for a big company to decide to get into this space. You think of EA, THQ, or us…. How many development teams do you want to establish for mobile projects? Ten? Twenty? Even 50 might not be enough because you’re facing up against hundreds or thousands of other developers. For so many people, it’s so easy to make games now. University students or even high-school students can make a fun game and get a ton of market attention — a lot of market share. For the big guys, it’s challenging. It’s harder for us to move around. Where should we go? That’s why I believe that big companies have to carefully consider what platforms we choose and how we can provide better services. How do we provide something that one or two people can’t? We have to leverage the size of the company to provide a benefit.

GamesBeat: Has that led you to conclude that you should just focus on what you do best?

Chen: Yeah. We’re going to continue to invest in very high-end, high-quality online games. We don’t do everything. If you look at our portfolio recently…. Initially, it was a portfolio of Chinese games only. Then we added licensed Western games. Now we have Neverwinter, as you saw at E3 this year. We’re promoting Neverwinter as our main thing. But we’re thinking, next year, what will be our focus? It has to be something Western-style. We don’t want to go back to just Chinese games. We want to provide a high-quality game and services to local markets everywhere.

GamesBeat: How many people are you at now?

Chen: We have about 180 people here and about 50 people in Amsterdam. And then there are about 70 people providing us with dedicated support in China. Cryptic is about 120 or 140 people. That 180 people doesn’t include Cryptic. So in America alone, we have around 350 people.

GamesBeat: Do you think that’s enough for now? Or do you expect you’re going to have to increase that a lot?

Chen: We’re going to have to do it, like I mentioned. We are considering the next level of strategy. MMOs are one of our cash cows, and we’re going to continue to invest in those, to make sure people can still enjoy playing in virtual worlds. But in the meantime, we’re also looking at new projects, like iOS. That platform is very challenging, but it’s very interesting, and we have a lot of expertise. We’re looking at how to organize our teams and how to invest in this new area. We want to make it into a business, not just a tool to help our publishing. So we’re moving forward in new directions. Very likely, we’re going to expand our investment.

GamesBeat: At some point, once companies expand and they get a hit or two, then they turn it into a third-party platform. Zynga is doing that with Zynga.com, and some other companies are…. Trion is starting to do that, as well. Are you also heading in that direction at some point?

Chen: It’s different. The key factor is what’s your strength? We have to leverage our strength. We don’t just want to do generic stuff, whatever people are doing. I don’t believe in a following strategy. So our strength is free-to-play publishing and know-how and also free-to-play game design and development: virtual money, virtual currency management, and virtual account management.

GamesBeat: Do you believe that free-to-play still has a long way to grow out here?

Chen: Yeah, free-to-play is diversifying in different areas. Initially, when we started our business here, we were kind of the only one: the one company talking about MMO and free to play. But gradually, we’ve seen it expand. There’s Facebook games, browser games, and mobile games. They all offer free to play. So I think free to play is one of the strong growth engines for games in different areas: mobile, Facebook, and online.

GamesBeat: And maybe on the consoles, as well?

Chen: Yeah…. But consoles have a lot of changes there. The key thing for free to play is you need to update very frequently — almost every week. But the current processes with console games — the testing and approval processes — don’t support this. Microsoft, Sony, and all the platform owners need to establish new processes.

GamesBeat: There’s a lot of talk about that now.

Chen: A lot of people talk about it, but it’s very difficult to implement. That’s the reason. They don’t have the ecosystem.

GamesBeat: We’ll see if the next generation of consoles changes things.

Chen: Right, right. Personally, I believe that with the technology involvement…. Eventually, consoles, the PC, and the tablet are all going to consolidate. They’ll be merging together. For gamers and developers, they don’t want to see all these platforms. Gamers want to play the same game on different platforms, wherever they go — no matter when and no matter what device they have. They want easy access to all their games. Developers, meanwhile…their desire is to develop their games for one platform. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but I think there’s a small number of choices. Nobody wants to develop for three or four platforms because of the difficulty involved. So in that regard, when the market becomes open, that’s when the technology becomes open.

GamesBeat: And then you don’t have to pay somebody 30 percent….

Chen: [Laughs] Exactly, exactly.

GamesBeat: You have some news coming later this year. You have more games coming?

Chen: Yeah, we have RaiderZ. It’s our next action-MMO. Gamers can enjoy something like a console action experience in an online space with social features and community — talking and competing with other players online. You can do all kinds of fighting moves, just like in a console action game. It’s very interesting. We have high expectations. The closed beta is going online today or tomorrow, and the commercial launch will be later in the year.

Our strategy is that we want to focus on our key games. We don’t want to have too many at once. By early next year, we’ll have our next big title, which is Neverwinter. After Neverwinter, there’s a couple of very highly anticipated Chinese games on their way, as well as some international projects from companies like C&C in Japan. The IP is from Japan, but we developed the MMO. That’s going to fill out our portfolio very well as far as a variety of styles.

Filed under: Dev, Games

‘Hero Profiles’ adds World of Warcraft-esque Armory to Diablo III

Sebastian Haley — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 23:12:52 +0000

Loot and achievements are at the heart of Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo III, and now players have an expansive new way to track both from anywhere on the game’s website. Hero profiles mirror similar functionality from World of Warcraft’s Armory, allowing anyone to view a Diablo III character’s gear, stats, and skills, as well as in-game accomplishments, including the total number of monsters killed and bosses slain on each difficulty.

“We like that profiles provide for easy sharing, comparing, and refining of your heroes as you pursue monster-slaying mastery,” Blizzard wrote on the profiles announcement page. “In fact, we like profiles so much that we plan to add even more functionality to them as Diablo III evolves, including detailed statistics and tabs for achievements and artisans.”

Although character profiles have been available in-game (naturally), this new feature allows them to be accessed from the web and perhaps most importantly, enables easy examination of a friend’s characters, equipment, and stats.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: MMO troubles, virtual reality, gaming, and slow Vita sales

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 23:11:05 +0000

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

This week, Zynga is in hot water after allegations of insider trading, Diablo III players top 10 million, and a Konami employee won an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.

You’ll also find game reviews for Deadlight and the Dark Knight Rises.

Game news:

The DeanBeat: How fast will the shift to huge growth for mobile games happen?

Papo & Yo and 10 other games that feature graffiti

As Sanctuary beckons, Diablo III players top 10M

Konami employee wins Olympic gold medal in gymnastics

Saban Brands buys Zombie Farm iOS gamemaker The Playforge

New online game from Schell lets fans contribute story lines, artwork, music, and more

Twin Engine Labs launches Pentakill app to not suck at League of Legends

Working on generations of game consoles: a developer’s perspective

Bing Rewards earns you Microsoft Points, but not when you use it on an Xbox 360

Why you’re likely to be playing Grand Theft Auto V by March