Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates |
- NYCC: Getting a Sense of Gaming’s Relative Place in the World
- Draw Something Now Officially a Zynga Title
- Age of Wulin (CN)
| NYCC: Getting a Sense of Gaming’s Relative Place in the World Posted: 26 Mar 2012 06:13 AM PDT The oldest video game I’ve found at this year’s New York Comic-Con is from 1977. That’s the same years that Star Wars — whose merchandise dominates the show — made its theatrical debut. In contrast, I’ve seen comics and artwork dating back to the ’40s, maybe even earlier. There are movie goods based on The Wizard of Oz, which memory tells me dates from the ’30s. Video games are newcomers on the stage of nerd culture, and shows like this are stark reminders of that fact. Games have a respectable showing here to be sure, but compared to the breadth and depth of comic- and film-related material, you can’t help but realize the curators of game history need to step it up. Nowhere is this more obvious than in pricing. The most expensive game-related thing I’ve seen do far are those R2-D2 Xbox 360s with integrated projectors ($1200), and those are hand-made custom jobs. On the other hand, I saw an issue of the Gold Key Star Trek comics that I remember reading at my grandparents’ house 30 years ago and dismissing because it wasn’t Star Trek. Its asking price? $800 (you better believe I’m kicking myself for not hanging on to it). And that’s only one of thousands of comics on sale here for three, four, even five figures. The original art for the cover of Wolverine #41 (which is only about 20 years old) is selling for $15,000. The really pricey stuff — graded comics from the Golden Age and associated art boards — isn’t even listed with a price. Like high fashion, if you have to ask, you couldn’t afford it anyway. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a brash young medium. The game-related booths are by far the most energetic and interesting at the show. Not to mention the most popular. Still, perspective is interesting. Wouldn’t it be interesting if dealers were selling original Mario design sketches at trade shows 50 years from now? Just kidding; Nintendo would never let that material out of its sight. Also, that Penguin artwork above isn’t a scene from Arkham City. But don’t you wish it were? Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/nycc-sense-gaming-relative-place-world |
| Draw Something Now Officially a Zynga Title Posted: 25 Mar 2012 09:34 PM PDT Just as recent reports suggested, social game behemoth Zynga has acquired OMGPOP, the developer responsible for the smash hit Draw Something. The company is not talking about how much it spent, but it’s said to be around $200 million — AllThingsD claims it’s a deal worth $180 million, plus about $30 million in employee-retention payments. That is a huge sum of money for the New York City-based OMGPOP, which was founded in 2006, considering that, prior to Draw Something, it was not a big-name company. CEO Dan Porter said during a media briefing today it had racked up only 20 million registered users prior to the launch of Draw Something about six weeks ago. Its latest game has already dwarfed that, racking up 35 million downloads and quickly topping the iOS App Store charts. It’s also got more Daily Active Users than any other game on Facebook, a fact that was sure to catch the eye of Zynga whose Words With Friends and CityVille would ordinarily take the top spot. It was widely believed Zynga would attempt to acquire OMGPOP to bring Draw Something under its corporate umbrella or, failing that, create its own Pictionary-style game. The latter is what allegedly happened with Tiny Tower, where Zynga expressed an interest in buying developer NimbleBit before releasing what amounts to a Tiny Tower clone when the deal didn’t pan out. It’s possible OMGPOP was concerned about potentially being faced with a similar situation: Zynga comes out with an extremely similar competing product and spends millions to make it bigger. Simon Khalaf of analytics firm Flurry told Business Insider that OMGPOP could have ended up being worth a great deal more — perhaps even a cool $1 billion — which would be a remarkable accomplishment. With the game reportedly bringing in $250,000 in revenue daily, maybe it could have gotten that high, but the threat of a competitor (or the next big thing) coming along and putting a dent in Draw Something’s growth makes this the far safer move. With Zynga’s assistance, the developer says it can now bring the features fans are demanding to the game faster, which will help to ensure its growth is sustained. Porter talked about fan-requested features like chat and the ability to save drawings as things we’ll likely end up seeing, and with Zynga’s support we shouldn’t have to wait as long to see these as we otherwise would have. (Considering these were among my few gripes with the game, I’m all for this.) Surprisingly, it was said there are no plans to change the name to fall in line with Zynga’s other asynchronous “With Friends” titles; I presumed an acquisition would mean we’d be playing Draw With Friends before long, but at least publicly that is not in the cards at the moment. I’ve heard some people say they’re disappointed with the news and will stop playing the game. People are certainly entitled to do so if they don’t wish to give Zynga their money (and even playing the free version does result in Zynga getting money, as that version is ad-supported), but I don’t see myself suddenly stopping. It’s a really fun game that is deserving of the success it has amassed, and while I don’t like some of Zynga’s business practices (demonstrated by Dream Heights) the acquisition is not enough to chase me off. If I were an investor in Zynga, however, I might feel a bit worried about the acquisition. While it’s exciting to get your hands on such a hot property, shelling out in the neighborhood of $200 million for a company with only one hit is a potentially dangerous business model. Words With Friends’ popularity has taken a hit recently, presumably as users shifted to playing Draw Something, in which case a chunk of Zynga’s enormous purchase fee is reacquiring some of the same users it once had and may have regained before long. Picking up this one developer isn’t going to break the bank for the company, but continuing to acquire any independent company with a big hit may prove to be unsustainable in the long run. In the interest of ending on a brighter note, Zynga has shared some fun facts about the way people play, including the fact that people need to brush up on their art knowledge:
[Images courtesy of Facebook.] Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/draw-something-omgpop-zynga-acquisition |
| Posted: 25 Mar 2012 06:13 PM PDT
Starting off, players from this clan will be using 1-handed daggers. Similar to Wudang using dual swords from the beginning, the choice of weapon is no doubt, weird. But what I had in mind was that the developers did not want players to immediately jump into the various famous single-sword skill sets. Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2011/10/age-of-wulin-cn-tour-of-er-mei.html |
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