Nintendo Of America Watching Xenoblade Euro Release ‘Very Closely’

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Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower are three Japanese Wii games that Nintendo of America has infamously said they have no plans to localize, despite their impending release by Nintendo of Europe. For what it’s worth, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime was unwilling to go into any release details but did give an open ended response about the games.

“We will be watching very closely what happens in Europe,” said Fils-Aime. “Certainly if there are business opportunities and positive consumer uptake from some of those titles, that will be great data for us to consider as we look at what to do with these titles.”

It might be false hope, but for some Wii RPG fans in the U.S., it’s the only hope they’ve got.

Source: IGN

Resident Evil Director Says He Loves The Games

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The Resident Evil movies have taken a lot of heat from some fans for their divergences from the canon of the video games. However, director Paul W.S. Anderson (who also directed the first Mortal Kombat movie) is a big fan of the game franchise, and thinks that they’ve made four successful movies (with a fifth in the making) because of that respect for the source material.

“Despite what a lot of haters on the internet might say, I love the Resident Evil games. And these movies are made with a huge knowledge and real passion for the games,” said Anderson. “A lot of video game movies are made by directors who don t know the video games they are based on from a hole in the head. They don t do justice to the games, they don t immerse themselves in the games, they don t understand what people liked from the games. And that is the wrong approach and clearly those movies don t work. You can fool people once, you know. I was excited to see the Tomb Raider movie the first time it came out. I saw it, it wasn’t very good, I wasn t very excited to go and see the second film. I think with Resident Evil it is very telling that each movie has done better than the one before.”

“You are also dealing with substantially different timelines, he said. You can make a good movie in a year. You can t make a good video game in a year. So it is very difficult for movie and game companies to really work together, especially when you can t even guarantee that the game is going to come out when you say it is going to.”

Source: MCV {link no longer active}

Google Moves Up With Motorola Mobility

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Google has announced that they have signed an agreement to purchase Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share in cash or a total of about $12.5 billion. This will enhance Google’s standing in the mobile sphere and give Google access to thousands of Motorola patents.

“Motorola Mobility s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

“This transaction offers significant value for Motorola Mobility’s stockholders and provides compelling new opportunities for our employees, customers, and partners around the world,” said Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility. “We have shared a productive partnership with Google to advance the Android platform, and now through this combination we will be able to do even more to innovate and deliver outstanding mobility solutions across our mobile devices and home businesses.”

MapleStory Adventures Sees Over One Million Players

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Nexon announced that over one million players have logged on to play MapleStory Adventures, according to AppData.com. This comes within two weeks of its open beta period.

“Reaching one million users within just two weeks is an excellent milestone for MapleStory Adventures as it has spread mostly via word-of-mouth,” said Nexon America’s CEO Daniel Kim. “Our players have used Facebook to its full potential to get in on the action that MapleStory Adventures offers. To see its popularity rise so fast represents a huge victory for us.”

Find out more at apps.facebook.com/maplestoryadventures {link no longer active}.

Carbine’s Game Has All The Right Influences

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Carbine Entertainment was founded by veterans who worked on franchises like Asheron’s Call, Fallout, World of Warcraft, EverQuest, City of Heroes and Diablo 2 and they’re prepping the game for debut at Gamescom. Their first game since being founded in 2007 will be published by NCsoft and art director Matt Mocarski recently commented on how the game will look on the company’s blog.

“We knew we were a future fantasy game – players will see both fantasy and sci-fi elements in our world and our gameplay,”said Mocarski. “We also knew we’d need to be able to tell a huge variety of stories, everything from intense drama to mind-blowing action to humorous tales. There were a few influences that we really focused on. Animated films such as Atlantis, The Secret of Nimh, and Princess Mononoke really nailed the overall look of the style. We know that our game was for adults so we studied shows like Naruto and Full Metal Alchemist to see how they balanced a unique visual style with stories that had both humor and drama. Lastly we looked at comics such as Hellboy, Battle Chasers, and Tank Girl to influence our balance of technology and fantasy.”

“We decided to really embrace our traditional animation influences and push the art further than we ever tried before. Once we did our first proof of concept, we knew we really had something. The team really latched on to the style and we started developing tech to specifically play to its strengths,” he added. “We believe our art style has an element that is missing from a lot of games on the market, and that’s a sense of fun. I love looking at our art. It tells a story. It screams ‘Come out and play!’ I’m happy when I run around our world. It feels magical – like anything is possible. I often find myself running around the world for hours just to be there.”

Source: carbinestudios.com  {link no longer active}

Feature: AdventureQuest Puts Ads In The Afterlife

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In-game advertising has had some ups and downs over the years as marketers have struggled to adapt to the new medium. A large issue is that ads can potentially disrupt the gameplay experience, so timing is as important as placement. AdventureQuest Worlds is taking a unique tact by having ads running when the player dies; it’s a natural pause during gameplay and its a novel opportunity. We talked with Adam Bohn, the CEO of Artix, about the death ads and more about the game.

[a]list: There was a bit of a cheeky tone to the original release announcing the death ads – was it purposeful to make the announcement a bit light-hearted?

Adam Bohn: We’re very cheeky, I think. It’s part of our core competency! A lot of our games really punned based, so we’ve been linking together things we think are funny that nobody else does.

[a]list: Where did the idea for the death ads come from?

Adam Bohn: Back in 2007, we started doing an optional in game advertising. Back then, the games were a one-time payment to play. We made an optional area where players could watch optional ads and receive an item. I got into quite a few arguments with our business folks… needles to say I won’t going into the idea of “Sellout Island,” but there were ongoing discussions about ads.

AdventureQuest was our first MMO, and by 2010 what ads marketers were willing to do had changed and they were moving away from in game promotions, so we looked into other types of ads and we thought we could bring the joy of optional ads to players. So we took on the idea of the death ads; we started it with just our stuff and we have a lot of stuff to promote. We run six of our own games and have Heromart with plenty of cheeky products to sell and we have mini-games on our site. We recently released a card game at Toys R Us and this holiday season we’re releasing two expansions, and were going to release a Death Ads card in the expansion. It’s a trap card that can send an armor or pet to graveyard.

[a]list: What has been the response to the death ads so far been from users?

Adam Bohn: When we first released it, they laughed and then they died and for those who died saw it and said “How come we see the ads if we pay?” I put in a toggle switch; it’s not automatically turned off because some people were like, “What if I want to see it?”

It’s very rare to die in the game. I think it would be better if there was more funny ads because then it will be a pleasure to die! I know because I talk to players in game all the time.

[a]list: So you’re personally involved with the community?

Adam Bohn: They look at the character online, with the shiny armor and they imagine a 6 ft tall German guy in the armor making the game. I know, because parents say that to me all the time is what their kids imagine.

I did hear online early on that I was prodigy genus. The funny part is I’ve been trying to build a game for most of my life. I was doing things in Silicon Valley and I found a way to do a game in a browser. Runescape came out around about the right time. It always felt like I built something after it was hip. I was trying to build something for lunchbreak-sized engagement. I love the players, I don’t know if this comes across clearly enough, but it’s all due to the players… the reason we’re here is due to the players. Everyone once in a while we, get a player that loves us TOO much.

We were taking payments from Paypal so I was latched onto our computers 24/7. I sort of felt like if we didn’t upgrade every few hours I was irresponsible. We had this one player around Christmas. He was writing me under different accounts; he claimed he was FBI and I had to give the FTP info. He later claimed to be our ISP. Then he offered a shiny diamond for the FTP info, and I got multiple emails offering that. Then my ISP said they were getting the diamond offer and I was like, “Are you going to miss your chance to get the diamond?”  I didn’t realize it was a younger fellow at the time and my girlfriend was so freaked out because he did things like call us and hang up. I called the real FBI and I found out it was some kid. I called up the house and somehow managed to get his father on the line; I have a feeling he did not sit down for Christmas!

So there’s cases like that, but then there’s also phenomenal fans as well. One guy from Japan buys everything we make. On a day that we original made we did rats of unusual size and we got shirts from him based on that.

[a]list: What’s the click through looked like on the death ads so far?

Adam Bohn: It’s done some good numbers so far. We’re happy with it. In all we have about 12-13 million players a month on the Artix Network and AdventureQuest Worlds has an average amount of concurent users at about 20,000. Between our free and paid online accounts, there’s over 138 million, about 30 million are from AQ.com.

[a]list: Right now I know the death ads are just for other Artix products. Would you ever consider put in ads for outside companies?

Adam Bohn: Right now we’re only running our own stuff. I’m really protective of our player base. Our demographic runs around 13. This wasn’t on purpose – we just built games we wanted to play. We weren’t trying for a specific audience. We have older and younger gamers but we try to keep [our content] clean.

We did stuff for movies like Legend of the Seeker and the Chipmunks movies, where we’d integrate the content in the game and there’d be an area dedicated to that. But for some reason people don’t want to do that anymore.

We’ll get a musical guest star occasionally. Voice actor George Lowe was on, and we had people fight Space Ghost in a game. We had Voltaire and our fanbase seemed to like it and it’s like, “Wow aren’t they to young to do this?” We were running a promotion for a band call Architect and I’ll do play by play no matter how embarrassing. We’re pretty close to our fans; we’re on Facebook and Twitter and our forums and we started this back before everyone did it. We did everything, if not first, before things became mainstream. We got an offer to buy the company; we’re talking tens of millions of dollars, even if you account for bank fees.

Voltaire

If you’re going to buy a a top web company, don’t sent send offers by regular mail! 2002 nobody cared about us, by 2005 people started to notice. We went to a road show because we wanted to be a big boy some day. We got a lot of offers, but the largest was $84 million. There’s all sorts of rules and nothing’s ever as pretty as it seems.

[a]list: So how’d you come to make games in the first place?

Adam Bohn: I won’t bore you with the full story how it originally started; around 2002, I made this project just built around wanting to make a video game. When it started expanding, we had to ask players for help because we couldn’t afford the cost of the servers. We found a talented artist from Canada and the team grew and we have 16 employees – like, real ones that get paid! We have two office buildings here, and we’re going to get a fancy place around the way in a bit.

When I was in elementary school, I knew a little bit of basic and was excited to try and make a game when the first Castlevania came out. Me and my friends were talking about Castlevania and we loved fighting the undead and my father suggested “Why don’t you make your own games?” We shoveled some snow, bought some books for programming.

[a]list: Adam, thanks for all the details.

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Played AdventureQuest? Think death ads are a neat idea? Join the discussion on Facebook.

London Riots Show Need For Government Adaptation To Social Media

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British Prime Minister David Cameron recently threatened to block social networks to those who were found to be the cause of looting and unrest. However, the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt tried to block out internet access, it only served to stoke the fire of uprising.

“The use of social media in the unrest looks like a game changer but any attempt to exert state control… looks likely to fail,” said John Bassett, a former senior official at British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute. “Ultimately those governments that try to operate old-style control models are likely to fail, losing legitimacy and respect in the eyes of their populations.”

Most security experts say that instead of shutting out access, governments should use platforms like Twitter and Facebook to engage with their constituency. Monitoring and encouraging citizens to report others is key too.

“These days, crises of all types unravel and gain momentum at light speed,” said Caroline Sapriel, a specialist consultant based in Brussels. “There is no longer any question that to tell your side of the story… social media is the way — not reactively but proactively, strategically planned and handled by specialists around the clock. This is not a part-time job.”

For some negative reactions to social networks, there were some positive opinions as well. “Twitter is really proving itself to be key here,” said David Lea, Western Europe analyst at Control Risks. “It’s a way of being seen to do something, if nothing else. There are MPs building reputations and careers with it.”

Northeast London lawmaker Stella Creasy used Twitter to coordinating community relief efforts and report what was really happening. “If you want to help the police, ask the police how you can help,” she wrote in a public message to one constituent. “Running about with baseball bats and hype isn’t helpful.”

Not everyone in government agreed that Twitter was to blame, including in Cameron’s own Conservative party. Some think that threatening censorship would be a huge mistake and could frame his time in office. “Platforms like Twitter helped residents and police track the problems and maintain contact with services,” said one Conservative aide. “This could be either his Katrina or his Falklands.”

Source: Reuters