Humble Indie Bundle 3 Hits $1 Million Mark

BY

The third Humble Indie Bundle is off to a great start so far, with over a million dollars in donations made. There’s still roughly a week until it concludes, but there are still well over 220,000 people that have donated.

Minecraft creator Markus Notch Persson stands as the second-highest contributor with a donation of $4,048, while bitcoin exchange site MTGox.com has donated slightly more with of $4,096. Linux users are by far the more generous on average at $11.63, with Mac OS X users having given $6.60 on average and average Windows users having only donated $3.80 on average.

Source: humblebundle.com

GamesAnalytics Working On Social Network Analysis Project For Games

BY

GamesAnalytics has announced that they will start working with Edinburgh Napier University. The data mining and monetization company will work on a new Social Network Analysis project supported by the Scottish Funding Council.

“Within online social games, viral growth is extremely important,” said Mark Robinson, Chief Operating Officer at GamesAnalytics. “For a social game to succeed, it needs its players to be extremely active in terms of inviting friends, notifying them of recent in-game events, or providing them with game-related gifts. These social players may not be spending any actual money in the game, but they are extremely valuable in terms of their ability to bring in other players and provide cohesion to an online social group. The industry has often talked about the importance of nurturing the big spending Whales , but it is actually these highly social players who are the lifeblood of any social game.”

“By using Social Network Analysis we can map virtual social networks and rank players in terms of their social influence. Building positive interactions between players, especially highly influential players, results in a dramatically positive effect on the success of an online game,” added Robinson. “In order to really understand the gaming experience and increase player loyalty, satisfaction and ultimately revenue, the games industry needs to move away from low resolution global game metrics to highly detailed individual player focused methodologies, such as Social Network Analysis.”

“Social Network Analysis looks at how people people fit in social networks and how individuals influence social groups. While it’s been used in the past for such esoteric things like contraception as a means for family planning and health reasons in rural Bangladeshi communities, this time the methodology will be applied to virtual worlds through the study of social networks within Facebook and other online games.”

“To our knowledge, Social Network Analysis has rarely been used to understand virtual, rather than real world, social interaction,” adds Professor Robert Raeside (PhD), Professor in Applied Statistics at Edinburgh Napier University. “This is a very important development as more and more interaction takes place online it is crucial to understand how this differs from interaction in the real world. This has ramifications beyond the gaming world and will be important in understanding the impact of virtual interaction in all areas of society.”

“At Edinburgh Napier we are keen to promote the transfer of knowledge between academia and business,” added Raeside. “We are extremely excited to be working with GamesAnalytics on this project. The academic input will be to develop analytical capacity by the application of statistical methods and methods of data visualization which will involve collaboration between statistics researchers in the Employment Research Institute and researchers in the Institute of Informatics and Digital Information at Edinburgh Napier University.”

Portal 2 Actress Hints At More Valve Work

BY

Ellen McLain is better known to gamers as the voice of GlaDOS from the Portal series and may have tipped Valve’s hand on a new game. She recently tweeted (before it was deleted) that she “is going in Tuesday for a new game and more Portal work.”

Along with GlaDOS, she’s also worked for Valve as the voice of the Overwatch in Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two along with the announcer in Team Fortress 2. It could be that the game she’s referring to is the upcoming DoTA 2, or it could be one of the numerous projects Valve has hinted at in the past.

Source: Twitter

Foursquare Looks To Monetize Merchants

BY

Foursquare has over 10 million members that have checked in more than 750 million times to about 15 million venues worldwide, and was recently valued at $600 million after its recent $50 million round of financing. However, the social network lacks in revenue and reportedly will start charging the 500,000 registered merchants on the site a fee to access the Foursquare services suite.

The ability to check in is benefiting both store owners and consumers. “Now we’re able to close that circle,” said Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai. “[The check-in] comes back to me in forms of recommendations. It goes back to [users] in interesting ways.”

$50 million investment the company recently received will be put towards a dashboard designed for businesses to use. “The [merchant] tools allow you to claim your venue and start running specials and see the dashboard,” said Erin Gleason, Foursquare’s media liaison. “That’s all free right now, but it’s obviously very valuable data. So in the future when it’s a little more robust we see the potential to monetize that.”

This maturation leading to a real revenue stream is something many social sites (like Facebook and Twitter) have struggled with. Switching over to paid services can be tricky when businesses are used to getting those items for free, but eMarketer analyst Noah Elkin notes that “there is value in the analytics they can provide a merchant.

Source: NY Post

Apple iCloud Rolling Out Pricing Services

BY

Some more details have come out for Apple’s iCloud service, though right now it is only available to developers. Apple iCloud users get 5GB of free storage, and it is believed that an extra 10GB will run you $20 per year, while 20GB will cost $40 per year and 50GB will be $100.

Further more, reports are that they have expanded its cloud service abilities, allowing users to store their television shows remotely and access them on-demand across multiple gadgets, including Apple TV. This major TV providers signed onto the deal because storing purchased shows in the cloud helps avoid piracy and now customers no longer have to worry about filling up their own hard-drive.

Source: PC Mag

Batman: Arkham City Gets Steel Book Limited Edition

BY

EB Games has revealed the Batman: Arkham City Limited Steel Book Edition available exclusively for pre-order. Right now, the limited edition collectors package is only coming to Australia and New Zealand.

The bonuses include the Joker Carnival Challenge map DLC, a very slick looking Batsuit Skin DLC emulating the Neal Adam’s look from the 1970’s and the Batman Under the Red Hood animated movie, available on Blu-ray for PS3 and DVD for Xbox 360 and PC. The whole thing is packaged together in a limited edition Steel Book Case.

The 1970’s Batman skin will also be available for pre-order from Toys ‘R’ Us in the U.S.  Other pre-order offers include Batman Beyond skin from GameStop.co.uk or MightyApe, the Dark Knight Returns skin in any Collector’s Edition, the Animated Series Batman again from New Zealand’s MightyApe, which is also offering a skin of Earth One Batman for any purchase.  Finally, the “Red Robin” skin will be offered for Robin for every Batman: Arkham City pre-order from Best-Buy, GamesMania.be or JB Hi-Fi.

 

World Of Tanks Publisher Sponsoring EGAs

BY

Wargaming.net has announced that it is will be the main sponsor of this year’s European Games Awards (EGA). The public award ceremony will take place August 12, 2011 on the event ship Pure Liner 1 on the Rhine in Cologne.

“A games-award, which allows players from all over Europe not only to nominate games and companies, but to choose the winner themselves, is a fantastic idea, said Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.net. This way, not only do developers get a feedback from regions they usually have little or no contact to, but also do games and companies, which might not have been on everybody’s regional radar before, receive public attention. We are happy we can commit to this idea with our support.”

HoN Goes Free-To-Play

BY

Heroes of Newerth (HoN) has switched over to a free-to-play model in order to expand the action-RPG’s user base. There will be Basic accounts for users that have just signed up, Verified accounts that are produced by purchasing Goblin Coins or playing a certain period of time, or Legacy accounts for users that played before the free-to-play model; each of the different accounts has different levels of access.

“With the transition to free-to-play we re opening HoN up to new audiences as our players can now easily introduce the game to their friends,” said S2 Games CEO and co-founder Marc DeForest. “S2 has a serious level of commitment to our players to continuously improve both the game and their experience.  With the new account types and match-making standards in place, both novice and existing players will benefit from the upgraded structure.”

“In just over a year s time we ve grown to be a community of 460,000 unique active players and over 90 percent of all accounts are active, which is a direct testament to the game s quality,” said DeForest.  “We have gone to great lengths to ensure that the superior experience HoN delivers will remain untouched for our loyal fan base during and after the free to play transition.”