The Last Of Us Development Series Episode 1: Hush

In what promises to be the first in a five part series, Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann and lead character artist Michael Knowland talk about the creation of the Infected for The Last of Us. Find out why the Infected behave the way they do, how difficult it was to come up with the perfect look, and why these deadly creatures are NOT zombies.

Total War: Rome II – The Battle Of Teutoburg Forest

Teutoburg Forest saw an eventful battle where the Roman-trained Arminius led an army of Germanic tribes, betraying Roman general Varus and crushing the Empire’s plans to expand to the North. The battle shown here will be a playable historical battle in Total War: Rome II, showing off new features like a true line-of-sight system, deployable battlefield technology, and “ambush scenarios.”

Coke Mobile Ad In Hong Kong Shakes Things Up

Coca Cola has used an ad called Chok! Chok! Chok! (meaning rapid motion in local slang) to engage local teens in Hong Kong. An ad that ran 10 PM every night had viewers loading up an app and waving around their phones to “catch” falling bottle caps for prizes.

9 million people saw the ad and 380,000 downloaded the Chok! Chok! Chok! app in the first month. This result is causing marketers to think of new ways to engage consumers on mobile phones.

“The consumer is there so we as marketers start to salivate,” said Mike Parker, chief digital officer for McCann, in an interview at the Mobile World Congress. “But people are so underwhelmed by banner ads on tiny screens. We are all still searching for the best way forward.”

It’s believed that mobile advertising will grow by more than 50 percent a year and hit $40 billion in 2016, according to Informa research. Still, TV advertising dominates, with global ad spend at $500 billion last year.

There’s been difficulties connecting with the mobile audience, but with coupons, prizes or free content seems to resonate. Brian Wong, CEO for kiip, helps brands reward consumers.
“The rewards are a pleasant surprise for the user,” Wong said. “It’s like a gift that comes out of the blue.”

An example of a campaign run via kiip by Pepsi: someone logging their morning 5 kilometer jog on a fitness app like MapMyRun sees a grey band pop up on the top of their smartphone screen. If they click on it, a window appears: “What a workout! Refresh yourself with a bottle of Propel Zero” and they are emailed a coupon for the fitness drink to redeem at a local store.

One important development that mobile ads might have is location data and companies are also working on better metrics of ROI. A possibility is linking up a user’s shopping history on their computer with their phone, allowing for better precision in local ads.

“If we see, from the location, that someone has gone to a car showroom then we could send them car ads,” said Dani Cushion, executive at mobile ad platform Millennial Media. “But if we see they go to the showroom every day, then they probably just work there.”

Source: Reuters.com

Sony’s 4K Movie Streaming Service PS4 Bound

Sony showed off 4K television displays running at a resolution of 3840 2160 at CES 2013. To complement this, Sony Electronics president Phil Molyneux says they’re working on a digital service to offer the content on both the PS4 and through the televisions themselves, since there is currently not a standard of physical media that can support a movie with such an advanced resolution.

“The size of a typical movie, depending on the length of the movie, you’re talking a 100 GB plus,” said Molyneux. “Then you come into variables: how fast is your broadband at home or do you have optical broadband like they do in Houston, Texas, where you can get the movie down pretty quickly. So, that is one of the challenges that we have to work through. Looking to the future, we need to develop as an industry new compression ratios and technologies. That dialogue is an active process for us at the moment.”

“Consumers are used to download and streaming,” he added. “I don’t want to discount the good work that’s going into potential physical media distribution, but that’s an industry association and they’re working hard.”

Source: The Verge

Randy Pitchford On Risk, Reward And Ratings

Risk and reward has gotten higher in the AAA game industry, with single releases often determining the fate of large studios. Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford, however, is not worried about the risks of high-level game development moving forward.

“I don’t think about the future with fear. I tend to think about it with excitement and anticipation and on one level, I love the idea of fewer, bigger bets because I’d love to see what’s possible when it makes sense to put more resources than we’ve ever put into something before,” said Pitchford. “As a creator, the idea that our studio can build something with a budget that’s two or three times as large as past efforts – oh my god, can you imagine what we can do then So it excites me.”

“You can look and say – retail, console game business, year-over-year total sales this year is less than last year. Down by 20-25 percent. But then you look at per title sales and it’s up by 20-25 percent. Each game that did appear sold more than it did before; there are just fewer games,” he added. “So it’s like fewer, bigger bets really means something and there’s an actual affect on the market,” he continued. “Is that bad or good I don’t know. I’d rather have fewer things that are awesomer because I can’t play all this stuff anyway. You know what I mean There’s just so much that I can’t keep up and I’m f***ing hard core. I play games all the time! And I can’t keep up so I actually like the idea of fewer, bigger bets. I’m excited by that. And meanwhile, there’s so much vibrancy in the indie world and there are so many more tiny bets. There’s so much more diversity there. It’s really awesome.”

When it comes to violence in games, Pitchford doesn’t believe in “thought crimes” and asserts that the ESRB does a necessary and good job for the industry.

“Think about the world’s relationship and the game industry’s relationship with the ESRB. The ESRB is our self-regulated ratings body; the industry created this body to put labels on games. Most publishers, we pay for the ESRB, but we also have this high tension relationship,” Pitchford asserted. “They’re really good at their jobs – they hold the industry accountable to fitting within the guidelines of whatever the label is and they will label appropriately. If you cross a line they will put you in a different spot, whether you want to be in that spot or not. And compared to the movie rating system, they have the best awareness and understanding of what their rating system is, and they have the best enforcement. Retail participates. That’s awesome.”

“Imagine if the NRA was actually advocating for gun laws; imagine if the NRA had the same relationship with the gun industry that the ESRB has with the game industry,” he continued. “Instead of the NRA saying don’t make any laws, now it would be like, ‘F**k, the NRA’s making me do all this so my guns are safer, and I get why they’re doing it but it’s kind of a pain in my ass.’ That’s how the game industry’s relationship is with the ESRB. We love that it’s there but we’ve got to deal with shit; we have to go through a process to get the rating. If we don’t the retailers won’t stock us, and when some of the content pushes the line a little bit they’re going to call us on it and we have to deal with that. Imagine if the NRA had that same relationship with its industry, the rest of the country would be like ‘Go NRA!’ They could be good guys.”

Read more about the ESRB’s mobile rating system in this [a]list interview with ESRB president Patricia Vance.

Source: GamesIndustry International

Gamefly Restructures Its Business

Gamefly recently confirmed that it has trimmed its workforce by about 15 percent. The company is reorganizing its business to fit its focus on publishing mobile titles and offering PC games for both purchase and rent, along with by-mail renting of console games on disc.

“We recently made the difficult decision to restructure our organization to better align ourselves to the existing console and digital games markets,” said Dave Hodess, CEO at GameFly. “We studied our business and determined that we could operate with a smaller team while continuing to provide the same high level of service to our customers.”

“Aside from a greater focus in our software development efforts, we’re not making any significant changes in our console subscription or digital download businesses,” he added. “GameFly remains profitable with a strong balance sheet. We would like to thank all of our employees for their continued dedication and hard work. For those that are leaving us this week, we sincerely appreciate all your efforts over the years.”

To find out more about Gamefly’s plans moving forward, watch this video interview on [a]list.

Craigslist Missed Connections Analytics

A study on where most Craigslist missed connections take place by state produced interesting results. By the sorts of connections asked for (and demonstrated in this infographic) Idaho had the percentage of the most males seeking heterosexual relationships, while Hawaii lead for males seeking homosexual relationships percentage-wise.

Washington state apparently has the most forward women in the nation, leading for women both seeking men and other women. Amusingly, the average site of missed connections by median age of the poster was an ice cream shop at 20 years, a bar at 30 years and a strip club or adult bookstore at 40 years.

Source: GaleGroup.com

Logitech Cuts Costs, Shifts To Mobile

Logitech has announced that it is restructuring its business in order to better focus on mobile products while enhancing its PC-related product offerings and improving efficiency. As such, $16 to $18 million will be saved this fiscal year from layoffs of roughly 140 people (5 percent of its global workforce), in addition to the $80 million in restructuring enacted in April 2012.

“As we align the organization with our strategy to become a faster, more profitable company, we have also created opportunities to become more focused, improve operational effectiveness and even deliver additional cost savings that will contribute to improved profitability,” said Bracken P. Darrell, Logitech president and CEO. “These actions support our goals to develop outstanding mobility- and PC-related products, streamline our cost structure and achieve faster times to market.”

Amazing Spider-Man 2 Costume Revealed

The first image of the Spider-Man suit for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has been revealed. The design is perhaps closer than any others to matching that of the comic, particularly the Ultimate Spider-Man costume, with bigger eyes in the mask, sharper lines on the costume and a more pronounced chest spider.

For good comparison to the costume from The Amazing Spider-Man, we’ve posted a similar shot below.

Source: ComingSoon.net