Wargaming.net Revs Up Gas Powered Games

Wargaming.net has acquired developer Gas Powered Games. The developer of Supreme Commander, Demigod and Dungeon Siege was undergoing internal evaluation after its Wildman project failed to reach its funding goal on Kickstarter.

“Gas Powered Games’ heritage and development pedigree shows us just how valuable an addition Chris and his company will make to the Wargaming family,” said Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi. “Gas Powered Games has a long track record of providing incredibly engaging AAA gaming experiences and we can’t wait to start working with them.”

“Being welcomed into the Wargaming family is a truly exciting and defining moment for Gas Powered Games,” added CEO of Gas Powered Games Chris Taylor.  “I founded this company on the idea that we were going to develop truly AAA gaming experiences and we look forward to following this path with our newfound colleagues, who share that same commitment. To everyone in the game industry and to everyone who has been a fan of Gas Powered Games through the years, I truly thank each and every one of you for your support. I can’t quite talk about what we’ll be working on as our first project, but rest assured, once we have more to share, you will all hear about it.”

Wargaming.net also recently acquired Day One Studios.

Tapjoy Adds EA Veteran To Board

Tapjoy has announced that they have added Warren Jenson to their board of directors. Jenson has experience with Amazon, Delta, and NBC and was most prominently CFO of EA from 2002 to 2008; he’s currently executive vice president at marketing services firm Acxiom.

“It’s not very often you have an opportunity to add a proven leader and executive like Warren Jenson to your Board of Directors,” said Tapjoy president and CEO Steve Wadsworth. “Warren has provided invaluable guidance to major companies at important inflection points in their evolution and helped them further defined themselves.”

Zombie Warning Broadcast On Montana TV

Hackers sent a message out on station KRTV in Montana via the emergency alert system that a zombie attack was in process. The prank occurred during an episode of the Steve Wilkos show titled “Teen Cheaters Take Lie Detectors.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/nc60XPCXrh8 {video link no longer active}

“Bodies of the dead are rising from their graves. Follow the messages on screen that will be updated as information becomes available,” said the computerized announcement. “Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are considered extremely dangerous.”

Gawker speculated that the event could be viral marketing for AMC zombie drama The Walking Dead which scored a series-high rating of 12.3 million viewers on Sunday. Considering the outright illegal nature of what was done and the relatively small community that would have originally watched it, that possibility is unlikely though no one has come forth to claim credit.

“Someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System and announced on KRTV and the CW that “dead bodies are rising from their graves” in several Montana counties,” said the station in a statement. “This message did not originate from KRTV, and there is no emergency. Our engineers are investigating to determine what happened and if it affected other media outlets.”

Source: NYDailyNews.com

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Epic Games CTO ‘Looking Forward To Our Digital Future’

Epic Games chief technology officer Tim Sweeney is looking forward to the day when game companies will never have to sell retail copies of their games. He feels the current model is inefficient, with ads on TV promoting that customers go to a store to buy something for a device that can download the game directly anyway.

“I’m looking forward to our digital future,” Sweeney said. “Development budgets are going to be the dominant cost in the industry, and [increasing] the efficiency of building games will directly improve profitability. As we move more sales of games out of retail, that creates a lot more flexibility for developers to make games at different scales and price them differently.”

Source: Edge

The Last of Us Pushed From May To June

Sony has confirmed that The Last of Us is being pushed back from its May 7 release date; it will now ship a little over a month later on June 14 in North America and Europe. Neil Druckmann, Creative Director at Naughty Dog, broke the news to the world online.

“The Last of Us is an ambitious project. In many ways it may be Naughty Dog’s most ambitious project to date — brand new universe and cast of characters, brand new tech, brand new genre, not to mention it’s easily the longest campaign Naughty Dog has ever made,’ writes Druckmann. “As we entered the final phase of development for The Last of Us, we came to realize just how massive Joel and Ellie’s journey is. But instead of cutting corners or compromising our vision, we came to the tough decision that the game deserved a few extra weeks to ensure every detail of The Last of Us was up to Naughty Dog’s internal high standards.”

“As a team we pride ourselves on setting a very high quality bar for every aspect of our games — gameplay, story, art, design, technology and more. We want to make sure The Last of Us raises that bar even further — for ourselves, and most importantly, for you, our fans,” notes Druckmann. “The extra wait will be very short and your patience will be rewarded. Update your calendars. You won’t even have to change seasons. The Last of Us will be available June 14, 2013. Until then, know that we will be working extremely hard to deliver an experience that matches your high expectations.”

Source: PlayStation Blog

Take-Two Locks In WWE License

Reports are that Take-Two has agreed to acquire the development license of World Wrestling Entertainment video games from THQ for an unknown price. The publisher will reportedly enter into new agreements with the WWE and developer Yuke’s and hire around 20 employees from THQ’s WWE production staff.

“We can confirm that we have entered into an agreement to publish the WWE video game series that is developed by Yukes [sic],” said Take-Two in a statement. “At this time, the agreement is pending court approval and we anticipate that it will be finalized shortly. We are very excited about the potential of this agreement and will have more to share at the appropriate time.”

This agreement nulls THQ’s existing contracts with WWE and Yuke’s, while Yuke’s claim against THQ for $15 to $20 million and WWE’s claim against THQ for an estimate $45 million have been waived. THQ will cease in selling existing WWE titles and pay the WWE around $650,000 in royalties for sales of titles during bankruptcy proceedings and will also transfer development equipment, software, and assets related to the franchise to Take-Two.

Source: Polygon

Exclusive: Defining Change, And Not Scaring Investors

By Meelad Sadat

Investments in games from outside the game industry dropped by half last year compared to 2011, according to Newzoo.  Peter Warman, who heads the firm, believes it’s because investors are lost in hyped up terminology as the industry struggles to define changes.  He also blames press headlines about company failures and category declines that can be misinterpreted as broad consumer flight from games.

Speaking at Ayzenberg’s [a]list summit New York, Warman said chasing away investors is one of three reasons it’s time step back and look at the game industry differently.  The other two — where the industry is headed with the growth in digital and mobile games, and how companies need to approach the market differently because of gamers’ divided attention.

“We’re scaring away investors a little bit because we use a lot of jargon, and our market is changing so fast,” said Warman.

Newzoo data shows a robust and growing global market for games, but it is shifting.  Games brought in $68 billion in revenue in 2012, which Newzoo estimates came from nearly 900 million game consumers worldwide.  Console and PC games still make up the bulk of revenues yet market growth is being driven by multiple screens.  On mobile alone, Newzoo estimates the category attributed $9 billion to game sales last year and will grow by 32 percent this year.  Even as packaged game sales decline, the growth in the mobile category is helping overall growth for the industry.  Newzoo forecasts seven percent year-over-year growth for the industry as a whole.

It spells opportunity.  Warman sees difficulty in taking advantage of it without profound realizations within and outside the game industry that the way people spend money on games has changed.

Newzoo estimates that 37 percent of paying gamers in the U.S. are spending their money across different platforms, divided between console, PC, mobile and tablet games.  Warman calls UK “even more multi-screen crazy,’ with 40 percent there spreading their money and attention to at least one other screen, and where more than a quarter of all gamers are playing on all screens.  These two major markets point to a continuing shift worldwide.

“Even if you have a paying gamer, you’re only getting a portion of his wallet,” he said.

Warman guessed that a single screen game is chasing less than a third of a game buyer’s budget.  While that should affect product strategy for games that can live on multiple platforms, the bigger test might be for marketers.

“Everyone involved in marketing of games and monetizing games is now facing the challenge – to get the same share of wallet of a consumer, they need to follow a consumer across screens,” said Warman.

“The good news is game companies have terrific content,”he added.  “What’s better to engage consumers across screens than content, because content travels across all screens.”

Turning back to investments, Warman put part of the blame for last year’s decline in investor capital from outside the industry on how press covers the games business.  He pointed to recent attention grabbing headlines about category declines in social games and game retail sales.  The industry is good at making for great news reading with fantastic fits and failures, recently with Zynga, 38 Studios and THQ for instance.  For an outsider, it can be easy to overlook how these are fallouts from an industry in flux, one that’s always been cyclical, and ignore that it’s still growing in spite of it.

Warman said that seeing outside investments in games cut in half between 2011 and 2012 is worrying, but at the same time those familiar with the industry are reading through the lines.

“Mergers and acquisitions are still on the rise, so we still understand our industry, we know where to invest in, who to acquire,” said Warman.  “But from an [outsider] investment standpoint, Zynga, Facebook stocks go down, and they run away, and they’re scared of anything related to gaming.  And now you can see that in hard figures, and now is the time to work together to do something about it, I think.  Otherwise we’re in trouble.”

Old Spice — Answer The Smell Of The Wild

We can’t do any justice to the copy written for these ads so we’re just going to post the descriptions in full above both of the videos.

“’There is nothing more romantic to a woman than the smell of a man who is covered in hawks’. No woman has ever said this but it is common sense.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/iV28ZEJOZfQ {video no longer available – marked “private”}

http://www.youtube.com/v/PUusEBRHgfo {video no longer available – marked “private”}