‘Real-Life Animations’ Wanted For Next-Generation Consoles By CD Projekt

The Witcher 2 is one of the most impressive displays of graphics from a technical perspective ever, but it’s still far from completely realistic. If CD Projekt lead level artist Marek Ziemak had his way, the next generation of consoles would be able to bridge the uncanny valley.

“Sure, I’m a level artist so for me, it’s all about the visual quality,” he said. “I want more creative freedom and more great graphics, that’s what really makes me want to create games.”

“I’m looking for like real-life animations. It’s like pushing the limit again and again, creating bigger and greater stuff,” he said. “I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I want to see this, these great graphics being there on the screen. I hope its time comes soon and we won’t have to fight about pixels on the screen but worry more about delivering a true experience, the real emotion we can deliver through the game.”

Source: CVG {link no longer active}

Social Gambling Company Takes On New CTO

Zen Entertainment has announced that it has hired Nora Ryan to be chief technology officer. Ryan has worked with Apple and Yahoo! and was most recently president and CPO of an unannounced stealth company specializing in smartphones, browsers, fantasy and social games.

“Nora is a valuable addition to the Zen team. Her broad product and technology experience will allow Zen to deliver innovative gaming products more quickly and to further enhance our network’s breadth and scalability,” said Zen CEO Craig S. Billings. “The increasing convergence of social, free-play and wager-based gaming requires forward-thinking product architecture and nimble product development. Nora brings the experience and skills to drive our technology forward.”

Angry Birds Has Admirer In Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto has developed a reputation for helping to push simple yet compelling gameplay experiences onto a wide audience. It’s not too surprising then that the maker of Mario really likes Angry Birds.

“There aren’t many games that I’ve played recently that have been truly convincing to me. But that said, I have very much enjoyed Angry Birds, especially the way in which it combines traditional and new game elements in exciting ways,” said Miyamoto. “Angry Birds is a very simple idea but it’s one of those games that I immediately appreciated when I first started playing, before wishing that I had been the one to come up with the idea first. I mean, obviously I want to be the one creating the most convincing, surprising game ideas.”

“In particular the control scheme is excellent. When you analyze it, the controls are actually quite fuzzy in terms of the way that it works. It takes a little while to get used to the controls, I think, but once you’ve mastered them, you have a lot of precision. To make it the interface and controls work that well and intuitively… well, I think a lot of work went into getting that right,” he said, adding, “Obviously, if the developer had created the game for Nintendo DS the controls would have been even better, but what can you do ”

Source: Hookshot Inc

 

Master Recruiter

With the Tribes:Ascend referral program, fans can earn rewards for getting their friends in the game. Start by creating an account and getting your own personalized referral link and send it via e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. Friends that sign-up with that referral link and play Tribes:Ascend to level 6 will count as a referral. On the “My Referrals” page, fans can track their progress. The more friends referred, the bigger the reward. For every successful referral, fans will earn an additional 5000XP in their account. In addition, players will be eligible to win in-game badges and additional rewards at increasing levels.

Currently, John “TotalBiscuit” Bain {link no longer active} has become the first player to achieve celebrity in-game status by achieving 500 qualified player referrals.

Out Of The Game

Become a part of the Out Of The Game Instagram Lyric Mosaic project {link no longer active} by posting photos on Instagram that represent words from the lyrics in Rufus Wainwright’s new single, Out Of The Game. All photos posted to Instagram with the correct hashtags will automatically become part of the lyric mosaic. To participate, take a photo with Instagram that represents a word in the lyrics and make sure your account isn’t set to Private. Add the hashtag #OutOfTheGame to the caption. Add a second hashtag to the caption related to the lyric the photo represents (i.e. #out for “out” or #game for “game”) and watch your photo fade into the lyric mosaic! The best photos will be selected to become part of a special lyric video for Out Of The Game, and will be included in a special limited edition photo book!

Tablet Sales Expected To Double In 2012

According to Gartner Research, tablet sales will increase from 60 million units in 2011 to 118.9 million units in 2012. iOS is expected to have 61.4 percent of all tablet sales, with 170 million tablets total sold by 2016.

“Despite PC vendors and phone manufacturers wanting a piece of the pie and launching themselves into the media tablet market, so far, we have seen very limited success outside of Apple with its iPad,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “As vendors struggled to compete on price and differentiate enough on either the hardware or ecosystem, inventories were built and only 60 million units actually reached the hands of consumers across the world. The situation has not improved in early 2012, when the arrival of the new iPad has reset the benchmark for the product to beat.”

Gartner expects iOS to reach nearly 73 million units compared to just 38 million for Android (31 percent of the market) in 2012. They expect that more than 369 million tablets will be in the market by 2016.

Zynga Designer Talks Challenge With Truly Social Games

Zynga has gotten a lot of criticism for the past couple of years that it’s not a good place to work. However, industry veteran Bob Bates finds the atmosphere of the social gaming giant quite liberating.

“The great thing about Zynga that people don’t get is our values are up on the wall, and the top one, which I take really, really seriously, is ‘Be the CEO.’ That pervades the entire Zynga culture,” says Bates. “For me in particular, all the things that I have done at Zynga have been because I said to my boss ‘I think I can help out there,’ and he said ‘Okay.’ ‘I think that game could use a lot more of me… what’s the best use of Bob ‘ In every case, he said ‘okay’, and in some cases he said ‘I was hoping you would ask.'”

To Bates, he thinks there is a lot to learn about social games personally and that the industry needs to evolve a lot still. “It’s an amazing education,” he says. “It has been like drinking from a firehose. This social gaming business is so radically different than anything we’ve ever known; it’s been really interesting. And it really is just the beginning.”

“The thing that makes this different from everything we’ve done before really is the social element. We’re still in the infancy of understanding what’s possible and what it really means for a game to be social. Right now we’re viral, but true social, where you feel like you’re actually playing with your friends, not ‘I’m playing here, he’s playing there’ is still ahead,” he added. “The sense of actually playing together, that’s a real challenge, and I’d like to be in a position where I can attack that challenge. I don’t feel like I know enough yet to pull that off; I’m still learning the space. Finding ways to do those kinds of things would be very, very cool.”

Source: GI.biz