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Foe's EIF Talk on One Potential Future of Gaming
You might recall the discussions over Scott Foe's look at the future of gaming from the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. Well now you can see the whole talk online via the online video service, Vimeo. There's a number of areas that the article glossed over, so here's your chance to see Foe's unfiltered thoughts.
The N-Gage Unification Theory - Looking to the Future Of Gaming
With the MWC and now GDC events under our belt, Ewan Spence draws from all the clues that Nokia has been dropping and comes up with a connected, converged epiphany into the future of gaming. The unification of smartphone functions, social networking and gaming is just around the corner, perhaps. Personally, I can't see any real showstoppers.
Nokia and Popcap Go SNAP at GDC
Popcap Games (or the online gaming equivalent of crack cocaine) have inked an agreement with Nokia to bring a number of their titles to mobile, and to use the SNAP mobile platform to provide multi-player support for the Java based titles. In rough terms, SNAP is similar to the N-Gage Arena, but primarily for J2ME applications, and it can also be run by a network provider as their own gaming portal (eg YourNetwork Gaming Portal, SNAP powered), which should make the networks as happy as the gamers.
1000 Pirate Downloads Is Only Losing One Legal Purchase
Gamasutra has a fascinating editorial by Russell Carroll, from Reflexive Games, talking about the amount of piracy in casual games and what measures have proven effective. The scary number is that piracy runs at up to 92% for their titles, and rather than one pirate copy equals one lost sales, Reflexive found that they had to stop one thousand pirate downloads to gain one extra sale.
We Want Puzzles and Card Games!
Looking for where to focus any new casual gaming projects? Then the latest survey (this one from Parks Associates) can help. Bottom line is that the majority of casual gamers are interested in Puzzles and Card Games, some 55%, with word and arcade games at 32% and 33% respectively. This compares to 'portable gamers' (eg the PSP and DS users) who almost equally look for Sports, Action, Driving and First Person Shooters for their kicks.
A Mobile Night Before Christmas - A Festive Video Message
As the sun sets, and Christmas draws near, it's time to retell classic stories, with the obligatory modern twist. Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you "A (Mobile) Night Before Christmas" for your viewing pleasure.
Ovi - Doorway to the Future?
In this definitive editorial, a week after the Go:Play event, Rafe Blandford looks in detail about Nokia's new Ovi strategy (Music Store, N-Gage, Maps) and its core components and then predicts how it will evolve and connect to other mainstream Internet players over the next few years.
