ZZ Top & Jeremiah Weed

Jeremiah Weed filmed rockers ZZ Top hiding in a refrigerator and ambushing curious strangers with music. Watch as strangers get surprised and ZZ Top plays I Got to Get Paid!

Dragon Age Legends Execution Scheduled By EA

Electronic Arts has announced that Dragon Age Legends is shutting down June 18, 2012. Users can no longer purchase currency in the game, a downloadable version will be available at  www.dragonagelegends.com after this version shuts down and they are pushing users towards Age of Champions, where Dragon Age Legends users will featuring a DAL-inspired Champion weapon, a Viscount Ravi army unit, in-game currency, and an exclusive medal for a profile page.

“This is by no means a reflection on the quality of the game; the awesome team who created it; or the incredible, passionate community who has supported it,” read the game’s blog. “The unfortunate reality is that DAL doesn’t make enough revenue to sustain itself. This is by no means a reflection on the quality of the game; the awesome team who created it; or the incredible, passionate community who has supported it. The unfortunate reality is that DAL doesn’t make enough revenue to sustain itself.”

“Thank you to everyone who played Dragon Age Legends over the past year — in particular those of you who took part in the vibrant communities that sprung up around it on Facebook and the BioWare Social Network,” it continued. “We’ve learned so much over the past year, and most of it is due to you. We consider you all family.”

Source: dragonagelegends.com

Machinima Raises $35 Million

Machinima has received $35 million in funding from Google and existing venture partners. The video gaming content site will look to use the money to work better over multiple channels, to create more original content and to expand more internationally and across mobile.

“With this latest round of funding, Machinima is well-positioned to make the next evolutionary step in the world of multi-channel video programming and distribution by expanding into original content, international territories, and new platforms and devices,” said Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise. “Our tremendous growth as one of the world’s largest online video communities, with innovative social metrics and attributes and massive mobile viewership, positions us well to lead the third wave of original video programing brands.”

“Machinima has built a brand and an audience that rivals some of the biggest channels on TV,” added David Lawee, Vice President of Corporate Development at Google. “The success and uniqueness of their business makes this a smart investment opportunity.”

Windows Phone Passes IPhone In China

According to Microsoft, Windows Phone has already picked up a market share of 7 percent in China, higher than the 6 percent share owned by Apple’s iPhone. The company employs around 2,500 people in its R&D department in China and plans to invest heavily in the country.

“We’ve only just begun,” said Michel van der Bel, Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer for the Greater China Region.

Still, Microsoft is still far behind Google’s Android, which owns a 69 percent market share in China.

Cource: Cnet

Sims Social Veteran Joins King.com

King.com has announced that it has hired Catharina Mallet, who recently left EA’s Sims Social team, to be will be responsible for development of casual games. The European casual/social gaming publisher is the second largest mobile developer in the world, recently surpassing EA.

“We have the leading bubble shooter on Facebook. While there are a fair number of copycats popping up, we’re pleased with the continued audience engagement that we get with Bubble Witch Saga,” said King.com chief marketing officer Alex Dale. “We think that will improve further when we launch the game on mobile.”

Game Of Thrones Ascends To Facebook

Disruptor Beam has announced that they have licensed the TV series Game of Thrones to make a new social game. Called Game of Thrones Ascent, the story-driven game will let you control a lord or lady from one of seven noble families in the land of Westeros and develop lands, assign quests to men-at-arms and forge alliances with friends.

“Everyone at Disruptor Beam was a huge fan of Game of Thrones long before we began working on the game, so we recognize that other fans expect character-driven conflict and intrigue to take center stage in our new game. Westeros is the perfect setting to deliver on our vision of weaving stories through decisions and social interactions,” said Jon Radoff, CEO of Disruptor Beam. “Game of Thrones Ascent will bring the world of Westeros to the over 500 million social game players in the market today, featuring original artwork in a highly engaging game experience that is, most importantly, fun for fans and their friends!”

“We recognize that one of the reasons Game of Thrones has been so successful is because of its large and ever-supportive fan community,” said James Costos, VP of HBO Global Licensing. “For this reason, we are delighted to give our fans the opportunity to dive even further into the world of Westeros and live out tales of intrigue, sacrifice and deception inspired by the stories they love.”

Exclusive: Social/Mobile MMOs Tale Dark Turn

Mobile MMOs and social games are both nascent fields, but the upside for both is very high. Still, both types of games have mostly remained separate, but Spacetime Studios has changed all that with Dark Legends. The game combines MMO trappings with social elements to make for a new breed of game, all in a sexy, more violent package. We talked with Spacetime Studios CEO Gary Gattis about his company’s third mobile MMO.

Give a general overview of the Dark Legends project.

It’s a another evolution in mobile MMOs. With Pocket Legends, we took MMO mechanics and put them into mobiles. With Star Legends, we took environmental gameplay and added cross platform play. With Dark Legends, we took some social mechanics and incorporated them as something that would encourage players to come back and engage beyond merely wanting to play more. There’s energy that recharges over times and there’s also a progress bar; what it does is integrate it with a 3D scene and it shows where you are in the story. Essentially we’ve got a strong string of storytelling in the product. We’ve got a strong story and we’ve got actions where we play a cut scene and players unlock content and are rewarded for reaching those moments. They pace the user through the content.

The thing that struck me the most about this new game was the incorporation of social gaming mechanics.

It was a challenge to work that out, but I think it’s done well. It monetizes and retains better than Pocket Legends or Star Legends and it’s a new way to play mobile MMOs together so we’re happy with it and we’re working on another game and we’re iterating on it.

They can buy energy and when they’re out, we send them back to town where there’s free PvP and that’s also where all the services are and the vendors, so it’s pretty easily paced between spending their energy points and socializing.

Why did you decide to make the move to add more social game mechanics in Dark Legends?

We like to innovate, and we weren’t really content with re-skinning Pocket Legends; we wanted to push the boundaries of what mobile multiplayer is. It’s interesting to consider the retention mechanics of these social games and try to work them in.

There’s almost certainly cross over between the type of people playing social games and playing your games.

That’s exactly right. Our games are mid-core and there are a lot of people playing mid-core games. They can’t play many hours per day, but they’re still passionate and were getting more exposure with them. We got a good promotion with the demographic and it’s an effort on our part to broaden the mobile base. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t exist – things are changing in the mobile sphere.

Dark Legends seems to be a much more mature game in its content than Star Legends and Pocket legends with violence, blood and the like. Was that a purposeful move by SpaceTime?

Yeah, very much. It was a done as much as part of our own desires as to contrast with our other projects. With Pocket Legends, we want to go after the young teen user base. We also noticed a lot of adults played our games and we wanted to appeal to an adult audience and make it sexier than before.

We positioned Pocket Legends with a younger audience and when we came to Dark Legends, we wanted to make it the most violent game we’ve played on mobile. Were’ mid-core hardcore guys so this one really came from our heart.

Stay tuned for part 2 soon!

 

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Ubisoft Touts Internally Developed Social Game Talent

Electronic Arts and Zynga have bought up a number of studios with the purposes of picking up the talent contained therein. Ubisoft’s vice president of digital publishing Chris Early takes pride that his company has taken the opposite route and promoted from within.

“We’ve taken a route with Ubisoft of building our talents from within. We haven’t gone out and spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying a company or something along those lines. We’ve used our 26 studios around the world that we have; we’ve found out who’s interested in making these kinds of games. Some were interested at one point but aren’t anymore because they realize it takes a different mentality making a console game than it is making a game that’s a service, like a Facebook game should be,” said Early. “Yet there are some studios that are doing it well – that like it. They’ve helped us move forward with that. It’s been a learning process for us, both from a development standpoint and from the operational side of things.”

“About half of the games we make are made internally and about half of them are made with external partners,” Early continued. “What that really brings us is the ability to develop the talents internally – from a development standpoint and certainly from an operational standpoint – and still get the freshest amount of influx that we can from people who are experts in the field. In the case of Loot Drop, I think we’re very fortunate because we have a company that has solid social gaming skills and has a deep background in hardcore games. For us, they were the perfect match.”

Source: Venturebeat