Facebook Likes Organ Donors

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Facebook announced that they will let 161 million members in the U.S. and 30 million U.K. members share their organ donor status. It is hoped that in doing so, it will push more people to become organ donors and to connect potential donors and recipients.

“What we hope will happen is that by just having this simple tool, we think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “That can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.”

“I think it’s possible that we will see an impact over the next couple of years, where we would imagine eliminating the transplant waiting list,” said Dr. Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “We’ve got 100,000 people waiting. Each donor can help three or four of those waiting. If we could do twice as well as we’re doing now, if we could get another 10,000 donors a year, I think we could have that transplant waiting list down to almost nothing in three or four years. That would be a spectacular moment in medical history and in the history of public health.”

Source: Brand Channel

Red 5 CEO Says He ‘Couldn’t Care Less’ About Publishers

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With digital sales and Kickstarter, it’s getting easier for smaller game developers to sell their own games. To Mark Kern, CEO of Red 5 Studios, this spells trouble for publishers.

“Who needs publishers any more I certainly don’t. I couldn’t care less about them at this stage,” said Kern. “You’re either an indie game or you’re a massive AAA, IP-backed sequel with derivative game play that’s rehashed over and over again as it’s the only safe bet you can make when you’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars. The failure is that there’s no middle ground. All the games in the middle that could have been made but have been squeezed out and we’ve seen all these independent studios get closed down over the last few years.”

The rapid hiring/firing process of the industry also drew fire from Kern. “In Hollywood they work on contract – it’s very different. They expect only to work from A to B. In games, these big publishers are hiring swathes of people expecting to have jobs long-term but then lay them off at the end of a project because it doesn’t quite deliver. This is unsustainable.”

Kern also said that the current state of console gaming doesn’t encourage innovation. “It takes billions of dollars of investment to create a console and then you have to milk it for five to seven years in order to get your money back,” he explained. “So something has to change. Consoles, I believe, are dead. There’s no incentive for me to be on console. I’m more interested in getting onto the Mac OS or even iOS in some form. That’s what’s more interesting to me.”

Source: Eurogamer

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 Manages High Buzz On Announcement

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According to Nielsen, the buzz for the new Call of Duty game jumped from 4,911 messages on April 30, to 21,454 messages on May 2 after the official announcement. Interestingly, the Xbox 360 only had a slight lead in the conversations over the PS3 version.

“Historically, buzz has been at its highest around launch time for Call of Duty, generating up to 69,942 messages on a single day,” said NM Incite analyst Mickey Campione. “As far as pre-launch buzz goes, today’s buzz total of 21,454 is second highest, only to 5/31/2011’s 21,728 messages. The buzz on 5/31/2011 came after Activision announced their Call of Duty: Elite online community.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Lego Builders Of Sound – Making-Of

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As part of the promotion for the release of Star Wars: Episode I in 3D, Lego had a barrel organ made out of 20,000 Lego bricks. Anyone could turn the barrel to play the Star Wars theme music, and many did as it toured Germany earlier this year.

Time To Battle For Everything

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Battle for Everything is a “tower defense” experience inspired by Battleship the movie. You play as Lieutenant Alex Hopper who fights to defeat aliens and defend our planet. At the beginning of each level, you receive a briefing from Admiral Kowalski, telling you the latest news and what you need to do. At the end of every level, the Admiral tells you the results of your actions. You’ll also get a chance for an instant win prize or to enter one of our sweepstakes. (But you only get this chance the first time you play a level. If you skip your chance, you won’t get it again!)

While playing a level, your brother, Commanding Officer Stone Hopper, gives you instructions. You control an inflatable speedboat called a RHIB (pronounce “rib”) or a helicopter. Maneuver your vessel using your WASD keys or arrow keys. Move your RHIB or helicopter next to an alien unit to shoot down enemies with autofire. On some levels you won’t have the RHIB or helicopter and will solely need to place weapons to destroy the aliens. You can do this by dragging and dropping weapons from the left-side weapons menu onto the level’s ocean or land. A green or red marker tells you where units can and cannot be placed. The unit menu also tells you the cost, damage, fire range and health of each unit.

At the end of every level, you will have an opportunity to play for an instant-win prize or to enter a sweepstakes. You only get this chance the first time you play a level. If you skip your chance, you won’t get it again!

Prizes include coupons for money off any Coke Zero product, Battleship movie swag and Concert Cash from Live Nation. Sweepstakes include incredible trips to Universal Orlando Resort, Los Angeles and Hawaii. For more information about the prizes and sweepstakes, see the prize and sweepstake panels in the “Want Everything” section of the Battle for Everything homepage.

Pocket Ninjas Hits 500k Downloads

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Cocky Culture has announced that Pocket Ninjas has seen a half million downloads since switching to free-to-play. The update to version 1.2 which added free-to-play resulted in 100,000 downloads the first week.

“My wife and I literally checked every hour to see if its rank was going up almost as if it was a stock or something,” said Cocky Culture head Tony Dimovski. “As it climbed the charts I started getting email after email from various companies wanting to advertise with me, for me, and through me. It was the weirdest thing getting that kind of attention and response because I really thought the days of an independent, solo developer getting a hit at the App Store were gone with all the competition and marketing from major studios.”

“What’s made it even sweeter is that it really hasn’t gotten any pub from the ‘big-name’ app blogs or from the App Store,” he adds. “It just kept climbing on its own. When I look at this past week and realize that almost a half million people have downloaded a game I made, with the majority of reviews being so positive, it’s such a gratifying, motivating, and mind-blowing experience.”

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Perfect World Hires Bigpoint Veteran

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Perfect World Europe has hired Gabriel Hacker as the new general manager located in the headquarters in Amsterdam. He was formerly a product manager with Take-Two Interactive, the manager of Bigpoint’s San Francisco office and the deputy managing director for 49Games.

“It’s an exciting time to be in games and I believe Perfect World is leading the industry in the online free-to-play games space with the quality of its titles, customer service and thought leadership,” said Hacker. “I’m thrilled to join the team at Perfect World and I look forward to working closely with the company’s developers and partners to advance the European business.

“We’re excited to welcome Gabriel Hacker to the company,” added Perfect World Europe CEO Dr. Alan Chen. “We’re confident that his depth of expertise and insight into emerging market trends will bring our European business to the next level.”

Mobile Game Funding Platform AppStori Established

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A new funding site for mobile developers has been founded in AppStori. Designed to be a Kickstarter of sorts for mobile games, it will be designed to help backers provide feedback and to find new talent.

“With the increased use of community funding and crowd-sourcing solutions, and the explosive growth of the mobile market over the last few years, we felt it fitting to offer innovative minds a dedicated resource to help bring their amazing ideas to life,” said co-founders Michael Semegran and Arie Abecassis. “There’s still much innovation to be unlocked in mobile technology, and we wanted to create a robust, market-driven platform to improve app discovery and development.”

Source: AppStori