Lab Rat Tells The Story Of Portal 2 No One Dared To Ask

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Valve has launched a Portal comic drawn in a graphic novel style that explains more about the Portal universe and bridges the gap between the first game and its upcoming sequel. Lab Rat is produced in-house with Michael Avon Oeming who is the co-creator of popular series Powers. Art is by Andrea Wicklund in collaboration with Oeming, Ted Kosmatka, Erik Wolpaw, Jay Pinkerton and Half-Life 2 / Portal co-writer Chet Faliszek. Released in parts, Lab Rat fans can share a link to the comic to Facebook to drive conversation within their fans and followers.

Patapon 3 Mini-Game Unlocks In-Game Items

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On the official site for Patapon, two engagements both unlock exclusive in-game items in the latest iteration of the tribal cartoony rhythm and God game for the PSP. A Flash-based mini game {link no longer active} requires the user to use their identical rhythm skills using arrows on the keyboard to battle through three missions. At each level, the user must see how many Patapon 3 shareable stickers they can unlock and design a downloadable wallpaper {link no longer active} to receive their exclusive in-game item. Don’t forget to listen for a response from the Patapon before giving them their next marching orders!

L.A. Noire Developer Talks Future Of Technology

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Quantic Dream’s David Cage recently cast doubts on the viability the system implemented into L.A. Noire used to motion capture the various faces, citing the cost and inability to record the body and head simultaneously. However, developer Team Bondi and technology creator DepthAnalysis indicates this limitation will soon be overcome.

“MotionScan embodies the future on a few levels,” said Team Bondi founder Brendan McNamara. “Firstly, when this technology can capture full body performances, the level of realism will be hard to differentiate between game, film and television. That will make the gameplay experience pretty seamless from exposition to action.”

“Secondly, for film makers it will mean they can create whole scenes from capture data on the desktop the way they currently edit films, he added. They will be able to adjust the action, move characters, change cameras and relight the scene until their heart’s content. Overall, for filmmakers that’s pretty exciting. And for games creators, it means we can compete with films and TV on a pure storytelling and performance level, along with leveraging all of the other interactive strengths that will pave the way for more exciting games.”

McNamara noted that they are working with DepthAnalysis to improve the technology and that it is still just starting out. “We want to be able to use shaders more cleverly, take a look at subsurface scattering and also computer generated hair too, which we see a lot of our film customers are working with,” he added. “We are also looking at retargeting so that you could take an actor’s performance from MotionScan and apply it to various non-human characters. We are already doing initial research for full body capture in costume for phase two – it’s exciting times for Depth Analysis and MotionScan for sure.”

“We have had people saying ‘I don’t like this character, he’s a snob. You should replace him with this actor because I think he’d do a better job,” commented DepthAnalysis R&D manager Oliver Bao. “People are treating it like TV. They are getting so much more into it, I’ve had people come up and say ‘Why’d you replace that guy, he was doing such a good job’, and you have to explain about script changes or actor’s availability. People become so attached to their favorite characters that its no longer like playing a video game to them.”

Source: Develop

Facebook Lawsuit Appeal Rejected

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A U.S. appeals court has ruled that the $65 million settlement between Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Facebook will stand. The settlement came in 2008 about a suit that asserts that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea of a social network, and they’re trying to increase the settlement amount by claiming that Facebook is guilty of securities fraud.

The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in today’s ruling. And the courts might have obliged, had the Winklevosses not settled their dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook.

For whatever reason, they (the Winklevosses) now want to back out. Like the district court, we see no basis for allowing them to do so, Kozinski wrote. At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached.

Source: Mashable

Social Game Revenue Expected To Quintuple By 2015

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Park Associates estimates that the social gaming market will increase from the 250 million people and $1 billion in revenue in 2010 to $5 billion in 2015. More people and increasing monetization through micro-transactions and virtual items are expected to lead to the increases.

“The abilities to measure the efficacy of different gameplay mechanisms, to tweak game design in near-real time, and to test new models are advantages that traditional gaming companies will never have,” says Park Associates. “Zynga’s huge market share is the best proof of the competitive advantage made possible by properly leveraging consumer data.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Mobile Game Achievements = Real Rewards For Kiip

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Brian Wong has revealed the business plan behind his start-up Kiip. His company will offer real world rewards from companies like Popchips, Sephora or Vitaminwater for players who reach certain achievements in games.

“There will be built in limitations for the number of rewards advertisers can give and early results are encouraging, with over half of gamers offered rewards opening the email. We want the focus to be on you playing the game, not going out to get rewards,” Wong noted.

Source: AdWeek {link no longer active}

Twilight Game Latest Facebook Scam

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While Facebook games are inherently social, there can sometimes be a danger in something that viral.   Such is the case in one of the more recent scams is for an ad for a Twilight: Breaking Dawn game.

The game will ask you to shut down some security measures if you have them on, put a “like” of it up on your wall and will ask that you fill out a questionnaire with some personal data. Anyone who has fallen prey to the app should adjust their security settings and revoke any access for apps you didn’t sign up for.

Source: Mashable

Ubisoft Shooting For Number One

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Ubisoft s fortunes have been soaring over the past decade, and they think they can reach the very top of the publishing industry. EA did own a stake in the company, but they sold it last year, which Ubisoft founder and CEO Yves Guillemot says opens possibilities.

“When they left it changed lots of things for us. We had a competitor owning a share of the company and we were always wary that they could decide they would go for the company and that wouldn’t have been welcome,” said Guillemot. “The problem is that when you have the number one player in your company, you can t buy another company that would be in conflict with them or their strategy. So now we are totally independent again, we feel a lot better, we are number three and our goal is to beat those guys, EA and Activision, at some point.”

Ubisoft made $1.4 billion in revenue last year, which is impressive but still a far way behind the $5 billion of EA and $6.5 billion of Activsion. Still, Ubisoft is undaunted by the task of taking on the industry s biggest powers.

“We got from number 25 to number three, so we think that we can continue and that it is possible to be number one. It’s not certain, but we are taking the steps that we think will get us there,” said Guillemot. “It has to be by creating or finding products that will make the difference and will be recognized as the best products in the industry. We have to create the products that will fuel the growth. I m not saying we won t do acquisitions, but the focus is on creating products.”

Source: MCV

Mass Effect Multiplayer Discussed By Producer

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Mass Effect 3 was widely rumored to have multiplayer of some sort incorporated, though BioWare eventually shot that possibility down. Mass Effect executive producer Casey Hudson, however, is open to multiplayer in the future.

“We haven’t yet come up with a way to do that, so we don’t have anything to announce at this time,” said Hudson. “But, obviously, multiplayer is something we want to do more of in the future as a company.”

As for the possibility of a Mass Effect MMO, “A lot of people say that they want to see an MMO, I think that kind of makes sense for this universe. I think Mass Effect has that quality to it. If you get rid of the Reapers and win that, wouldn’t it be amazing to just live on the Citadel or just take a ship to Omega That makes sense.”

Source: GameInformer

EyePet Has Brought Friends

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Sony has revealed that the EyePet series will be returning in a new title called EyePet & Friends. Users can now play with each other’s EyePets at the same time, as the title suggests.

The PlayStation Move will be the primary controller input and the game will come with a Creativity Center for designing in-game objects. Users can share their adventures with each other online and they can complete challenge to unlock EyePet Tokens and get new content at the in-game Pet Store.

Source: PlayStation Blog