Gamer Numbers Double Since 2008, Says Parks Associates

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According to Parks Associates indicates that the U.S. gaming population has more than doubled in the last three years, increasing from 56 million in 2008 to over 135 million in 2011. Most of this is due to the increased gaming mobile devices; 57 percent of smartphone owners game, along with 75 percent of U.S. tablet owners play games on the device, increasing to 79 percent of teenage tablet owners.

“The increase in the number of gamers is impressive because it crosses almost all demographics,” said Pietro Macchiarella, Research Analyst, Parks Associates. “Most of this growth is due to increases in the casual gamer segments, with tablets and smartphones usurping PlayStation, Wii, and Xbox as popular gaming devices.”

“These changes have significant implications for the gaming industry,” Macchiarella said. “This new majority of casual gamers is looking for games with low entry barriers, with limited investments required in terms of dollars and time necessary to learn the game. In addition, the ubiquity of portable devices and Internet access allows more people to play on-the-go, putting pressure on the gaming industry to design games that can deliver a satisfactory experience within these specific conditions.”

Zynga CEO Wants Stock Giveback From Early Employees

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Reports are that Zynga CEO Marcus Pincus is looking for certain early employees to give back their stock of the company ahead of the IPO. The executive apparently developed “giver’s remorse” after giving out stock so freely early on.

A large part of the stated “giver’s remorse” is that Pincus doesn’t feel some early employees contributed as much as later employees did, though due to their seniority they ended up with more stock in the company. Zynga had no official comment, since they were in their federally mandated quiet period ahead of its IPO.

Source: Washington Post

Steam Suffers Breach, Information Stolen

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Valve founder Gabe Newell has issued a statement confirming that Valve’s Steam was hacked in a November 6 raid that resulted in the Steam forums being defaced. User information was obtained and the system’s entire database has maybe been exposed.

“We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums,” stated Newell. “This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.”

“We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely,” added Newell. “While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well. We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.”

L.A. Noire Creator Talks Pressured Development, Why The Studio Closed

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L.A. Noire released to critical praise earlier this year, but it was followed by a dark cloud of controversy due to working conditions in the weeks that followed. Brendan McNamara, who was head of the now dissolved Team Bondi, indicates that the post-release controversy prevented the studio from signing a new contract.

“Mainly, I’d say because we got a lot of bad press about what it was like to work with us and our conditions,” said McNamara. “That, obviously, didn’t come at the right time. To do a deal for a major video game probably takes about a year. We didn’t start running around doing that stuff until well after the game was finished. That’s the problem when a game is all consuming and you need to get out there and do whatever you need to do to get people to know it and interested.”

Rumors floated about that Team Bondi existed in a state of extreme “crunch mode” all of the time. With 110 hour work weeks, unpaid overtime and enmity between the staff and the management. For his part, McNamara defended the development process.

“Yeah, 110 hour weeks are tough,” said McNamara. “But not many people worked 110 hour weeks making L.A. Noire, I can tell you that. And it wasn’t mandatory. It was just, yeah, it was hard, and it was brutal, but I would say, most of those triple-A games, when you aren’t sure of what the technology is, and you aren’t sure what the process is, it’s going to be pretty difficult. Time’s a finite thing. You can’t extend it forever. We certainly had plenty of time.”

As for what he and former members of Team Bondi are doing, McNamara said, “A lot of people who were working on L.A. Noire have gone across to KMM, some of them to be working on some of the film projects. A lot of the art and animation guys went across. Some of the people have gone to work in different Rockstar studios. I’m personally just writing some new stuff now, which I’ve been pitching around for the last couple of weeks. Hopefully I’ll have something to announce on that pretty soon.”

Source: Eurogamer

Legend of Zelda: Link To The Past May Go 3D

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There’s a lot on the table for Nintendo and the Legend of Zelda series, with releases on 3DS and Wii this year. While a brand new game seems to be in the works for 3DS, a remake of a classic 2D title might come out as well.

“Well actually, even Mr. Miyamoto himself has been talking recently about going back to the 2D Zelda games,” said Skyward Sword producer Eiji Aonuma, “in particular the ones that were designed with multiple levels to the world like A Link to the Past, and taking those 2D graphics and recreating them in 3D so that you could get a sense for the depth of those worlds. That’s something that might be interesting to do, so I would say there might be a possibility of something like that in the future.”

Source: GamesRadar

Battlefield 3: Fight For Karkand Begins

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Battlefield 3 is one of the hottest multiplayer games on the planet now, and this first trailer does a good job of conveying why. The second trailer offers a glimpse at the first map pack of the game: “Return to Karkand.”