Octodad: Deadliest Catch is something new, and safe to say not like anything gamers have seen before. Players play as an octopus who marries a human, and must then pose as a regular human being without bringing attention to the fact that he is actually an octopus.
This trailer for the game shows off the consequences, including destruction inadvertently caused by Octodad as he flops around the world trying to fit in and complete menial tasks. The game will be released next year for PS4.
Amazon has enhanced its GameCircle service and released a study showing games that incorporate it monetize signficantly better than those that don’t.
GameCircle is now able to sync game data such as game play progress, achievements and leaderboards across devices using Android operating systems, not just Amazon’s Kindle line. The service works when offline, saving data for games that are compatible with GameCircle in the app on the device in use, then syncing through an internet connection to update data for access by other devices. This means a game saved during play on an Android device such as the Galaxy Tab will pick up where the player left off if they start playing on another Android device, including Amazon’s Kindles. There are currently more than 500 apps that work with GameCircle, with popular games such as Temple Run and Doodle Jump among them.
The service is modeled after Apple’s GameCenter for iOS. It also competes with Google Play’s Game Services, although Google’s service also offers a platform for multiplayer gaming and works with iOS.
Amazon conducted a study looking at GameCircle’s engagement and monetization rates from November 2012 to January 2013. The three-month period showed games that integrated GameCircle produced 38 percent higher conversion rates and 33 percent more in-app orders than games that didn’t integrate it. When those stats are combined, Amazon says that GameCircle enabled games drive 83 percent more average revenue per user.
Source: TechCrunch
Players can again walk the streets of Dungeons & Dragons‘ city of Neverwinter, as Perfect World’s Cryptic Studios releases the new MMO Neverwinter. The game’s launch trailer shows off classes and powers available to players in the game, as well as some of the environments and enemies they’ll face.
Neverwinter is out now and free-to-play. Check out our exclusive interview with Cryptic CEO Jack Emmert on how the studio approached making a free-to-play MMO based on the venerable D&D IP.
The Professor Layton series has become one of the mainstay series of Nintendo’s DS and 3DS handhelds. Now, the series is making the jump from Nintendo’s consoles to iOS in the form of Layton Brothers: Mystery Room.
Instead of playing as the Professor, as in previous games, players will take control of his son Alfendi as he attempts to solve murders using deduction, evidence, and his assistant Lucy Baker. The game is now available on iOS.
If you know a Guild Wars 2 fanatic who has a tendency to tinker with low-level code, kiss that person goodbye for a while. Arenanet is taking a leap beyond the standard player-generated MMO game events to let players actually create tools and apps using data from the game server. That includes mobile apps for iOS and Android.
“We have a team working on exposing some of the code to the player base,” said Arenanet content designer Mike Zadorojny, speaking to MMO game site PC GamesN. “We have APIs the players can tie into. The fans are already working on a Google Maps for Tyria that lets you zoom in and see what’s going on at the individual map level.”
According to the game’s official Wiki, the API allows access to server data that goes well beyond maps and matches. There are ways to access and document world events including those that are still active or about to take place. If the event’s completed, there’s a way to see if it was a success or failure. There’s also data for mapping and documenting what’s been discovered by players in the games, things such as hidden items and recipes for crafting.
Zadorojny has hinted that the effort takes some burden off of Arenanet, letting them see what players can do with the reams of data on hand while their team focuses on real game updates. The developer has been quickening updates from initially once a month to twice monthly content drops. Zadorojny said it’s part of Arenanet’s strategy to make Guild Wars 2 a living MMO world.
“Now we’re seriously looking at how the world changes based on player interaction. That’s why we’ve been moving towards this more frequent build structure,” said Zadorojny. “We’ve got four teams building content that will be coming out every two weeks, because we want to create a true living world that reacts to what the players are doing as much as possible. That’s kind of been the holy grail for MMOs. If you can have enough engaging content, you keep the player excited and challenged. They’re always going to have something new every time they log in. That’s really the impetus behind what we’re doing.”
A new update to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires kids’ app makers to get parents’ permission before collecting even the most basic data, with penalties for violations running up to $16,000 per violation. The rule change goes into effect today, July 1.
Many developers supply apps for free and use data to attract advertisers, without strictly policing whether or not kids are using the apps. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal into popular apps used by kids found that many of them are still collecting data from children directly or via third parties including ad networks or analytics companies such as Flurry.
Developers will now need to either unplug these services or require permissions, such as having a parent authorize their child to join a social network or share data such as first and last name, street address and photographs. Privacy policies will also have to be clearly posted.
While protecting children is a noble goal, some observers worry that this new regulation might be used to hurt businesses by ‘opportunistic privacy groups and their lawyers,’ GigaOm noted.
Source: GigaOm
The Last of Us has been burning up the best-selling software charts since its launch in June, but the game is even hotter than we thought: A pair of phone lines appearing on a sign in the game appear to be actual phone sex hotlines.
Kotaku first discovered that the numbers, which appeared on a sign in the game, were working ones. Naughty Dog, the (perhaps appropriately named) developer of the game, said the numbers were an accidental inclusion.
“That was an artist’s mistake,” the game’s creative director Neil Druckmann told Kotaku. “We’re now working to take it out. It was just an honest mistake.”
A Sony spokesperson said: “We included some random phone numbers in the game starting with 555, which is a common practice in North American television shows, films and video games, as they are fictitious numbers. It has come to light that for certain 555 phone numbers that begin with an 800 area code, the same does not apply, so a patch was created to address this issue. The patch was deployed today in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia, and will be deployed shortly in Japan.”
The Last of Us is an M-rated game, so it’s not as if young children will be seeing these numbers. Still, it’s an embarrassing PR problem for Sony while the company is gearing up to launch the PlayStation 4 this fall. Sony’s quick work patching the game will minimize any damage, and it’s unlikely to have any impact on sales.
Source: CNBC
Another E3 has gone by, and with it comes the Game Ctitics Awards Best of E3 nominations. This year, Titanfall cleaned house with a total of six nominations in categories like Best Original Game, Best Console Game, and Best In Show. Watch_Dogs was close behind, with a total of five nominations, competing against Titanfall in Best In Show, Best Console Game, Best Online Multiplayer, and Best Original Game. Bungie’s new project Destiny was also nominated in five categories, competing with Titanfall in many of them. Of publishers at the convention, EA won the most nominations with 16 across all of its games, including new entries in the Battlefield, Need For Speed and three sports franchises, as well as Titanfall.
This is a new record for most nominations – the previous record holder was The Last of Us with five nominations last year, and it won all five. Curiously missing from the nominations this year were any of Square Enix’s efforts in the RPG category, which included new entries in the Final Fantasy franchise as well as the new Kingdom Hearts. Also notably absent from the nominee list was Sony’s PS4 racing game Drive Club, though Sony’s other racing franchise Gran Turismo 6 made a showing in its stead.
The winners will be revealed tomorrow on Tuesday, July 2. It may seem that many games such as Ryse: Fall of Rome and Thief were passed over, but only games that were playable on the E3 show floor were able to be nominated. Titanfall has the most nominations, but the true winner will be revealed on July Second.
Source: Polygon
Microsoft has officially removed all charges to companies who wish to release updates and patches to their games on the Xbox Live service. This isn’t a new occurrence – apparently these charges had been removed a while back, but the news has finally been released to the public in a report from Eurogamer.
Previously, Microsoft would charge companies tens of thousands of dollars to update games, meaning that some indie developers were unable to bring patches out for their games, leaving them in imperfect states. Games were allowed one update free of charge with subsequent updates incurring fees, but this new policy means no more fees within reason. Microsoft will still charge fees if there is excessive patching, though exactly what constitutes excessive patching still isn’t clear.
This is great news for indie developers on Xbox Live, as this now means they are free to make their games into the best experiences possible. If a game wanted to make additions like new characters and bug fixes, they are now able to do so without having to worry about spending large amounts of money.
Source: GI.biz
Konami and mobile publisher CocoaChina/Chukong have teamed up to bring the classic side-scrolling shooter series Contra to mobile devices in the form of Contra: Evolution. The game is currently only available on iOS, but an Android version of the game will be released soon. It currently costs only 99 cents on iPhone and $2.99 on iPad.
Contra: Evolution has been available in China for a while, and already has millions of downloads. The release of the game to an international market brings it to places like the US, where the franchise is a video game icon. Unlike the original punishingly difficult game, Evolution features multiple difficulties. The game is also slated to feature controller support when iOS 7 arrives later this year.
Contra isn’t the first classic game to make it to mobile, with Sonic The Hedgehog, Mega Man, and Final Fantasy among big game IP that found their way into App Stores. These classic games tend to follow a classic model of pricing as well though, normally being a one time purchase with no microtransactions involved. Their prices vary, however. Some are relatively cheap, for instance Mega Man 2 going for only 99 cents. Others go for premium pricing, with Final Fantasy III, IV and Tactics priced at $15 each being good examples of the real high end of pricing spectrum.
Konami is keeping a classic alive by bringing Contra: Evolution to mobile. Look for an exclusive interview soon in [a]list daily with John Coligan, Konami director of digital publishing, looking at Konami’s digital and mobile game strategy.
