New Game Of Thrones Game Unleashed On Kongregate

Social game developer Disruptor Beam has announced that their social game based on Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin has made the jump from Facebook to Kongregate.com. The game has already had over 500,000 installs on Facebook over the last 2 months, and the developers are hoping the expansion to Kongregate will generate even more installs moving forward.

The game allows players to live the life of a noble in the Game of Thrones universe. The game featured weekly updates over the course of Season 3 of the TV show, allowing players to play alongside the show. Decisions made by players tactically and morally in the game not only affect other players in the world, but the story as well.

You can find the game right now on Facebook and here.

First Person Darth Vader Series Shows Us What It’s Like Being Vader

The latest video in stuntpeople’s YouTube series First Person Darth Vader lets watchers know what it’s like to have the power of Darth Vader in a fight. The creators also have a Kickstarter open to fund more episodes of the series, aptly titled Vader Strikes Back. You can find the Kickstarter here; show them some support to get more Vader!

 

Dying Light Shows Running With Zombies

Dying Light’s trailer for E3 shows the action for this Techland title heading to Xbox One, PS4, PS3, PC and Xbox 360 next year. Produced by Ayzenberg Group alongside Warner Bros. Entertainment, players traverse an expansive urban environment overrun by a vicious outbreak, scavenging the world for supplies and crafting weapons to defend against the growing infected population. The song adds urgency to the desperate dash, and the ending is a shock.

 

Exclusive: Secrets Of E3 Marketing Techniques Revealed

By Steve Peterson

For game marketers, E3 is a vast research laboratory of marketing techniques, where you can learn what works and what doesn’t — and someone else has paid for it all. With that in mind, a walk through the halls of E3 can be a great way to see and evaluate different marketing techniques to see how you might use them as inspiration — or as something to avoid.

Let’s start with booth design, since that’s one of the first things you’ll notice. Check out the hot titles at the big booths — is there a traffic jam That’s a sign of poor booth design. Sure, all the booths will get clogged with people sometimes, but when it spills into the aisles it becomes counter-productive. People start avoiding a booth altogether if it’s not possible to walk by… and the company is losing impressions that it paid a lot of money to get.

Aside from the sheer logistics of the booth, does it make sense? Can you easily grasp the focal point Is it absolutely clear what’s most important to the company? It should be… and what’s the message you’re getting? Does it match what is being said in flyers, or what the booth personnel are saying? The booth is the opportunity to drive home the most important products and selling points. Too often booths become confused with competitive messages and distracting visuals everywhere. Make a note which booths work best, and why — and which booths don’t work for you, and why they don’t.

Is it hard or easy to find the games you’re interested in Even if you can’t get hands-on due to the crowd, can you watch the game play easily without standing on someone’s head?

Booth personnel are a critical part of a booth’s success. Is it obvious who the booth personnel are? It should be. Are they helpful and friendly? Again, they should be. Sometimes companies will just throw developers onto the show floor with little or no training or preparation, which can hurt how games are perceived. Oh, and a note on the dress code: It should be professional. As for booth babes (or boys) in scanty costumes, that’s a sure sign the company lacks confidence in the quality of the game. (Or that execs in charge of the booth are insensitive to the brand message this puts out.)

Collateral materials, whether digital or physical, are an important component for driving home marketing messages and increasing their reach, both in time and in space. Videos will no doubt be posted in huge numbers next week; who’s getting all the views Are there some interesting items being given out at the booth (Last year the Oswald ears at the Disney booth garnered huge interest.) It’s one thing to attract attention at E3; it’s entirely another to capture the imagination of gamers around the world. Pay close attention to the videos or other collateral that are drawing the most buzz, and you’re halfway to being able to do that for your products.

Events are another E3 marketing mainstay that you should pay attention to. Many companies like to drag in celebrities of one sort or another, but that doesn’t always guarantee an impact. How well is an event staged Is there a crowd Are people engaging with the product, or just with the celebrity It can be a difficult task to shift the spotlight from a celeb to your game; is the celebrity helping or hindering?

Keep in mind that all of this marketing activity should ultimately be designed to sell more games. Metrics like social media impact, or measurements of buzz are all well and good — but investors and owners need to see that the income ends up being greater than the outgo. These games have to generate money, not just attention. Marketing needs to translate attention into action — which is to say, money. Maybe the game caught your eye, but did you walk away wanting to buy it?

Finally, let’s not forget that the marketing can only do so much; in the end the game has to sell on its own merits. Last year’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter got a terrific marketing treatment by EA, but ultimately the game’s sales were disappointing. Marketing did its best, but flaws in the game kept sales from reaching its goals. With that in mind, don’t oversell a game if you plan to sell more games in the future. In the hyper-connected gamer marketplace, games can’t hide any flaws.

Twitch.tv Hires In-House Sales Team

In the period between now and last September, streaming startup twitch.tv has gone from 20 million monthly unique viewers up to 35 million monthly unique viewers and has hired an in-house ad sales team to capitalize on potential ad revenue. The new team, named The Twitch Media Group, is focusing on getting big advertisers in the video game industry to advertise on their site and reach those 35 million viewers.

In addition to the numerous viewers, the site also features 600,000 unique broadcasters a month, and viewers that tune in for about 1.5 hours of streaming per day. The members of the team include Chief Revenue Officer Jonathan Simpson-Bint, SVP Kym Nelson, VP of Sales Andy Swanson and Senior Sales Manager Christina Grushkin. All of the team members have had previous experience in the games press, including Nelson who was VP of west coast sales at IGN for 10 years and Swanson who was publisher of Future US’s Games Group.

The massive increase in the popularity of e-Sports and game streams has fed twitch.tv’s growth, and it seems likely that the built-in sharing capabilities of the PS4 and the Xbox One will only help increase this audience. An audience of 35 million viewers is almost three times larger than the most popular series on television currently, and it’s not limited to any geographical area.

Source: TechCunch

Saint’s Row IV Special Edition Features A Dubstep Gun

Where most special editions of games come with an art book or a soundtrack, the “Super Dangerous Wub Wub” edition of Saint’s Row IV has opted to go completely nuts. The special edition comes with a small Johnny Gat memorial statue, a “Dubstep Doomsday Button,” a 12-inch replica of the Dubstep Gun featured in the game with lights and sounds, and a copy of Saint’s Row IV.

Interesting special editions of games aren’t completely new, such as the special edition of Catherine that came with a pair of boxers and a pizza box, but a weapon that fires dubstep is definitely a first. The Super Dangerous Wub Wub edition will go on sale for $99, and supplies will be limited.

 

Exclusive: Warren Spector Comments On Deus Ex: The Fall Announced For iOS

Developer Eidos Montreal has announced the newest iteration of their critically acclaimed Deus Ex franchise Wednesday, entitled Deus Ex: The Fall. The game is not for consoles as many expected though; instead it’s a game designed for mobile devices. The game takes place after the events of the novel Deus Ex: The Icarus Effect.

The game will play as a first person shooter with third person elements much like the previous entry in the series, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The game will be a fully featured Deus Ex entry, featuring RPG and action elements. This is the second console series to announce the jump to mobile this week, after Halo: Spartan Assault earlier this week, meaning an increasingly relevant jump to mobile for game development.

The [a]list Daily reached out to the originator of the franchise, famed designer Warren Spector, for comment. “I’ve always been happy that the DX franchise continues in the post-Ion Storm era,” said Spector. “And I’ve been pretty up front about my enthusiasm for the mobile and tablet platforms. So it probably isn’t too big a stretch to figure out that I think DX on mobile and tablets is pretty darn cool. Of course, it all comes down to execution, so the jury’s still out… In any event, DX: The Fall is now at the top of my ‘things I’m most looking forward to seeing at E3’ list.”

Spector went on to say, “As a note, some folks have expressed concern about FPS gameplay on mobile/tablets — ‘it can’t be done’ comments,” he said. “My response is this: Just because something HASN’T worked doesn’t mean it CAN’T work. And there are other ways to express DX-style play than FPS.”

Castlevania Lords Of Shadow Gets Ultimate Edition PC Release

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, the latest console iteration of Konami’s Castlevania series, is finally making its way to the Steam software distribution service starting this summer. The Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Ultimate Edition will feature the original game as it was on consoles, as well as the two DLC packs Reverie and Resurrection. In addition, the game will run in 1080p at 60 frames per second, and will feature Steam trophy support.

A playable demo for the game will be unveiled at this year’s E3 conference. The game acts as a reimagining of the Castlevania Franchise, and recently released a sequel entitled Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate for 3DS. A sequel is also in development for release this fall. In the meantime, the game is currently available for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 systems.

 

Ad Revenue From YouTube Mobile Triples, 40% Of Views In U.S. From Mobile

As Youtube rolls out more additions to it’s mobile services, 40 percent of it’s views from the U.S. come from mobile devices, and 25 percent of views come from mobile worldwide. In addition, the ad revenue from mobile devices has effectively tripled over the course of the last six months. Much of this increased revenue comes from the release of YouTube’s app for iOS which was released late last year.

As more people turn to mobile apps as a means of watching their videos, advertising on YouTube should also become increasingly mobile. Advertising for mobile apps could probably have an increasingly relevant place on YouTube for advertising. If more people are using their mobile device to view videos, odds are that they would be using their smartphones for entertainment as well, leaving a lot of room for advertising mobile games and apps.

Dragon’s Dogma Quest Reportedly For Vita

Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma franchise is reportedly making the jump from PS3 to Vita this fall in Japan, but in an unexpected way. This week’s Famitsu magazine will reportedly announce the newest iteration, Dragon’s Dogma Quest, which will be a 2D, free-to-play, online-only game for the Vita, taking place in the Dragon’s Dogma universe.

The game will have players controlling a partie of eight “pawns” as they explore towns, dungeons and quests in true RPG fashion. The game will feature a staggering 150 jobs in the vocation system. The mechanics mark a serious departure for the series, whose previous games were 3D RPGs, with online features, but no necessity to be online. For now, the game is Japan only, a western release hasn’t been announced yet.

 

Source: Joystiq