Archive for October, 2009

Sid Meier to bring Civilization to Facebook

October 23, 2009

There’s been a lot of comment that the games that succeed on Facebook are not established brands. Farmville, Pet Society, Mafia Wars: they’re all new games from new companies (endless cloning notwithstanding). Sid Meier is about to change all that. He’s announced Civilization Network for Facebook, a free-to-play version of Civ on Facebook where gamers [...]

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Posted in: Distribution

Tagged with: browser games, civilization, facebook, firaxis, take two

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Unveiling my inner geek: Microsoft Surface meets Dungeons and Dragons

October 23, 2009

It’s time to unveil my inner geek. I saw this video and was immediately entranced. I’ve been a pen and paper gamer for years, but haven’t a chance recently. And the strides taken, particularly by Bioware/Black Isle, have made the computer experience as good, if not better. But if we can find a way to [...]

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Posted in: Sandbox

Tagged with: car wars, hardware, microsoft, roleplaying, technology

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Gamesbrief’s Weekly Tweets for 2009-10-23

October 23, 2009

Apologies for the duplicate. Got 2 rival plugins vying for Tweeting rights from WordPress # Just posted: Is Photo Sauce a new direction for Atari? http://tinyurl.com/ykgsxwn # RT @patrickol: We’ve self-funded it, and it is the first of many exciting projects in Home growing rapidly in complexity and scale #ndreams # RT @patrickol: View the [...]

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Posted in: Sandbox

Tagged with: twitter

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Is Photo Sauce a new direction for Atari?

October 21, 2009

Once upon a time, Atari was at the vanguard of games development. Then, for a long time, it wasn’t. Manufacturing more copies of E.T. than there were consoles to play it on in the entire world was not their smartest move. It was the beginning of a turbulent time for Atari, and the later high-spending [...]

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Posted in: Sandbox

Tagged with: atari, digital distribution, facebook, photo sauce

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New business model alert: Lite is dead as freemium comes to iPhone

October 19, 2009

Apple has announced a change to its terms of service which paves the way for new business models on the iPhone. Historically, virtual goods could only be purchased in paid apps. That led to a series of anomalies, in particular that developers had to follow an upgrade path of: Lite version -> paid version -> [...]

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Posted in: Sales

Tagged with: apple, iphone, microtransactions

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Why Channel 4’s YouTube deal should be an eye-opener for games companies

October 16, 2009

Channel 4 has just announced a groundbreaking deal with YouTube. All titles from C4’s 4OD on demand service (the equivalent of BBC’s iPlayer) will be available, at full length, shortly after broadcast. It will also offer 3,000 hours of archive programming including Brass Eye, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Teachers. Content will be available in 2010 [...]

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Posted in: Distribution, Featured

Tagged with: channel 4, digital distribution, starred, youtube

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Gamesbrief’s Weekly Tweets for 2009-10-16

October 16, 2009

RT @Michael_French Whether the Playfish thing is real or not here's our piece on FB's gaming prowess by @nicholaslovell http://bit.ly/Tt8i1F # RT @gamezebo: AMAZING DEAL: Get World of Goo, pay only what you think it's worth. http://bit.ly/3DPz8Z # New blog post: How do make people take more exercise? By turning stairs into a piano http://bit.ly/4GFfO [...]

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Posted in: Sandbox

Tagged with: twitter

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