Japan Might Crack Down On Certain Virtual Items Sales

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Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency has concluded that social games that use “kompu gacha” (complete gacha) to be in violation of the law. The system basically lets players try and win a virtual item by getting a certain set of virtual cards. Companies like Gree and Mobage have made hundreds of millions of dollars off of these games, but if they become illegal than it would severely affect their business, worth in the neighborhood of 250 billion yen.

“The kompu gacha games have often been criticized for taking advantage of users’ gambling spirit. Some parents complained their children had become addicted and were billed for exorbitant charges,” notes the Yomiuri Shimbun. “The original gacha games were inspired by automatic vending machines that sell capsules containing toys. However, instead of buying real items, online gacha players purchase virtual items for hundreds of yen, which they then use for various purposes. The players do not know in advance which item they will get, giving the game the feel of a lottery.”

Source: Yomiuri

Google Play Hits 15 Billion Downloads

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Google Play has reached the milestone of 15 billion apps downloaded. A Google spokesperson has confirmed that the milestone was passed “a few weeks ago.”

By contrast, Apple reached 15 billion app downloads in July 2011 and the company reached 25 billion downloads in March 2012. Google is seeing about 1 billion downloads of Android apps per month, while Apple is seeing about 1.25 billion app downloads per month and currently Google Play has some 500,000 apps, while Apple has 600,000 apps in its app store.

Revenue, however, is vastly disproportional to iOS platforms. Google has paid developers $320 million compared to $4 billion from Apple.

Source: TechCrunch

Family Guy Comes To Consoles

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Activision and 20th Century Fox have announced that they will be teaming up to produce a new console game called Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse. The Family Guy series reaches over 33.5 million viewers weekly in the U.S., is the number one TV show on Facebook with more than 40 million ‘likes’ and is the number one TV franchise on DVD with more than 25 million copies sold.

“Fans of Family Guy will love that we’ve taken some of the series’ most iconic and memorable moments and built them into an impressive and uncensored video game,” said David Oxford, Executive Vice President, Activision.  “Anyone who watches the show will appreciate how much we have adhered to its rich and twisted universe and characters.”

“With Activision at the helm, we’ve found a world class partner for a Family Guy console video game,” said Jeffrey Godsick, President of Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products. “Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse will utilize the source material, including the talented voice cast and writers, authentic humor and subversive spirit of the series, giving fans a whole new way to interact with their favorite show.”

Political Ads Skewing More Negative, Says Study

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Many people have observed that political ads have taken a turn for the more negative this year, and now there’s some analytical evidence to back this up. The Wesleyan Media Project analyzed data from Kantar Media and found that 70 percent of the TV ad messages were negative, while at this point in the 2008 election, 91 percent of TV ads were positive.

This trend is spearheaded by the heavily financed superPACs supporting the candidates. At this point in the 2008 cycle, 97 percent of the ads came from candidates. But this cycle, “60 percent of all ads are sponsored by interest groups, which is really, truly a historic number,” says Erika Franklin Fowler, a political scientist at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

This follows the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling allowing outside groups to receive almost unlimited funding, It could be argued that the candidates have benefited greatly from this trend.

“As candidates, you do want to outsource some of the negativity, if you believe that there’s going to be a backlash for going negative,” Fowler says. “And there is some evidence in political science to suggest that the backlash will be a little less if the negative ad is sponsored by an interest group as opposed to being sponsored by a candidate.”

The superPACs, which have to disclose their donors, accounted for 83,000 primary-campaign ads, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. But in the general-election campaign, groups that don’t disclose their donors have already run more than 35,000 ads.

Bowdoin College government professor Michael Franz, another co-director of the Wesleyan project, says that while superPACs tend to get their money from people close to the candidate, donors to the non-disclosing groups are different. “They are not as explicitly tied to a candidate per se as they are to a particular party winning the White House,” Franz says. “The stakes are a little higher, so not having to disclose donors becomes more valuable.”

So far in the general election, the top advertisers are President Obama’s re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee and two conservative groups, Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity. The pro-Obama operation, which discloses its donors, has aired more than 20,000 ads so far, while the two conservative groups, whose donors are anonymous, have run about 24,000.

 

Source: NPR

Your Lego Masterpiece Awaits

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Bridging the gap between physical and digital, Lego’s new new mobile application enables users to create their own stop animation movies using Lego blocks and mini-figures. The Lego DC Super Heroes Movie maker app includes simple tools and guides for shooting, editing and scoring a movie, making it easy for anyone who plays with Lego blocks and mini-figures to create their own movies. The app joins several others from Lego including Lego Photo and Lego Duplo Jams. The new app was designed to be used with Lego DC Universe Super Heroes mini-figures.

With the app, users can plan, create and shoot a stop action video on a smartphone using a kid-friendly interface. To create videos, users set up their phone and Lego blocks and then snap a shot. After taking one photo, they can then move the blocks slightly and snap another photo, repeating the process until their movie is complete. Users can also add a customizable title card and share their videos online. Lego has included 11 title cards with images from Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and more. Finished movies can be saved to the phone and uploaded to YouTube. The Lego Super Hero Movie Maker is compatible with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The app can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store.

BioShock Movie Still Possible, Says Ken Levine

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Given the state of development on the BioShock film, many consider it to be dead in the water. However, Irrational Games creative director Ken Levine says that fans shouldn’t count it out.

“The thing with Gore [Verbinski] didn’t work out, but there’s no such thing as ‘it’s finished’ when it comes to making a movie out of something,” said Levine. “It’s always about the stars aligning. We’re still focusing on it, but it hasn’t consumed us so much. Right now, we’re choosing our battles and focusing on making BioShock Infinite.”

Source: Edge Magazine

BlackBerry Getting Game Discovery App

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RIM has announced that it will be doing its own version of Apple’s Game Center that will be called Games. The company is hoping that its secure platform will be appealing to developers when they launch BlackBerry 10.

Games will be a standalone app that acts as a social hub and a discovery tool, with BlackBerry Messenger and the Scoreloop social gaming network integrated, allowing users to add friends who can see what they’re playing, and show achievements and offer challenges. Multiplayer gaming support, both synchronous and asynchronous, is also planned.

Source: Pocket Gamer