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Gameloft tries to make good with Dungeon Hunter 4
Gameloft is one of the most interesting companies on Apple's App Store. The company, run out of Paris, France, has earned a reputation for itself by essentially cloning popular console titles. When the App Store first began, huge console titles like Halo, Call of Duty, and Diablo didn't have apps of their own on the store, and Gameloft saw the opportunity to recreate those game styles on iOS devices. That's how the NOVA, Modern Combat, and Dungeon Hunter games got started, and because players hungry for those experiences didn't have any other options, Gameloft saw a lot of success. These days, however, big companies like Activision and EA have discovered a lot of value on the App Store, and AAA developers are making games of their own. That's rendered Gameloft's model a little obsolete, but the company has an answer: A few years of success and hardcore development have made them experts in delivering high quality titles on mobile platforms, and so they're now starting to push out original content, and turn these titles once known as clones into standalone IPs of their own. The one hiccup in this plan has been the move towards freemium markets. Dungeon Hunter was a series that started out as a Diablo clone, an action RPG that allows you to choose one of a few classes and hack and slash through a storyline, gaining equipment and XP as you went. Dungeon Hunter 2 was a refined version of the first title, and offered some great experiences, both as a singleplayer RPG and even a multiplayer co-op game. Dungeon Hunter 3, however, saw Gameloft trying to turn the game into a purely freemium title, switching from a singleplayer storyline to a series of arenas, all designed to just keep players spending money on in-app purchases. The release earned Gameloft lots of jeers across the Internet, and you can still see the harsh fan feedback on the game's reviews. This past week at GDC, Gameloft showed me Dungeon Hunter 4, and the title shows off both of what's great and terrible about the company lately. The latest version of the game, set for a release later this month, returns the series to a relatively linear storyline, and contains some really excellent action RPG gameplay, portrayed with some very impressive art. All of Gameloft's expertise is brought to bear, and Dungeon Hunter 4 looks like it will be a really fun return to the kind of gameplay that made Dungeon Hunter 2 so popular. Unfortunately, despite abandoning the "arena" ideas that caused so many problems with the third game in the series, the freemium elements are still there in force. You will probably enjoy this one -- if you can avoid and ignore the bright in-app purchase buttons and currency markers that seem to litter the screen. Some of the game's mechanics are annoyingly freemium as well: You get a limited number of health potions every few hours, and you're required to buy more if you need them. Gear can be upgraded by questing through the game -- or you can just press a button below one of your pieces to get a better option. And the title will include a full crafting system, but it's likely that too will be burdened with lots of shortcuts and options for more purchases. Obviously, this is only based on a few minutes with the game, and we don't know for sure what Dungeon Hunter 4 will be like in its final form. But Gameloft is in a tough place right now: At the same time that the company is making better games than ever before, it's also (forced, perhaps, by market forces) depending more than ever on the annoyances of freemium gaming. Dungeon Hunter 4 will be out later this month, and the few minutes of it that I saw at GDC got me really excited about how the game both looks and plays. We'll just hope that Gameloft can keep the freemium prompts to a minimum, allowing the game to pull players in thanks to its quality, not sales tricks and nonsense.
MMObility: Modern War almost gets it, but only almost
Modern War by Gree has some pretty neat things going for it. A lot of the gameplay is not really state-of-the-art, and most of it we've seen before in many social-style games, but it allows for some cool and relatively persistent play on your mobile device. It's hard to find MMOs in today's mobile market. A lot of the time I'll download a new one only to find out that it's not really an MMO at all. There are some really great titles in the mobile/smartphone market, but it takes work to find them. Modern War is a sneaky one. It's more of a pseudo-MMO but does a few cool things that more MMORTS titles should. It also works nicely on my Nexus 7 tablet, for the most part, except for a few odd problems that I'll cover in a minute. After I'm done, you might understand how mixed up the game feels as it's pretty close to becoming a good game.
Gameloft announces 27% boost in earnings in 2012, 56% of sales from back catalog
Developer Gameloft has announced its earnings for the last quarter, and they're up. The company even beat out its own guidance, ending 2012 with a 27 percent boost in earnings on the year in total, up to $275 million. I would have thought much of that was from the major Christmas sales that we saw, but I would have been wrong: Gameloft says that the company's Q4 sales were only up by 23 percent, with Q2 and Q3 showing more growth, at 35 and 37 percent, respectively. That's interesting. The company also announced that while sales of major new releases of course played a part in its success, over 56 percent of its sales in 2012 came from back catalog titles, older releases like Ice Age Village, Order and Chaos Online and Asphalt 7. It's a lot to draw out a trend from the earnings report of one company, but those numbers definitely stand out. I wonder if we're hitting a transition point on iOS in general -- in the past, big new releases (and Christmas sales) have almost always made or broken companies' earnings reports, but I wonder if, as the App Store gets more and more crowded, just having bigger libraries of back catalog titles might not make more of a difference. Of course, at the same time, Gameloft announced that it has shut down its India-based studio, so not everything is going perfectly over there.
CES 2013: Duo Gamer controller sees success after a half price cut
We posted about the Duo Gamer iPhone controller back when it first released in October of last year, but I hadn't gotten a chance to try it out yet. Fortunately, Duo is here on the floor of CES this week, and they of course had the controller on display and available for a demo. It's actually a really great controller -- the form factor is a little strange, but the buttons are quite responsive and the analog sticks are especially impressive, something that not a lot of iOS controllers have gotten right. Plus, the Duo Gamer is actually half the price it was when it started out. The company dropped the price from US$79.99 to just $39.99 late last year, and the company's rep says that (surprise) sales have gone up considerably since the price drop. So where's the catch? The biggest problem with the Duo Gamer is that because Duo has made a deal with Gameloft, this controller only works with Gameloft's games. Those games aren't bad -- they include big iOS hits like NOVA, the Asphalt series and Gameloft's Warcraft clone Order and Chaos Online. But that's it -- if you want to use the controller with any other titles, you're out of luck. That's kind of a shame. And Duo's representative told us that there were absolutely no plans to open up the controller at all. The company picked Gameloft to pair up with because it believed those were the most console-like apps on the store (not necessarily an invalid claim), and Duo says that even if it wanted to allow other app developers to make their apps compatible with the Duo Gamer, that decision would be out of their hands. Which is too bad -- it'd be nice if a solid controller like this had a more open API (stay tuned for news on the Phone Halo controller, which has a slightly more promising future). The Duo Gamer is a good piece of hardware, and it provides an impressive way to control these games. If you're a fan of Gameloft's titles and would like to use some buttons to control them, this is obviously a great option for you.
Gameloft cuts many game prices to 99 cents, wants screen time on your gift phone
More than a few of us are getting phones and tablets as gifts this year, and Gameloft wants to be there the moment we're hunting for new apps to feed our devices. Accordingly, the developer has slashed the price on many of its recent games to 99 cents during the holidays, even including better-known titles like Asphalt 7 and Dark Knight Rises. Not surprisingly, the discounting doesn't include Modern Combat 4 and a few other releases -- there have to be profit-makers left somewhere, after all -- but it's a huge break for those who want a few starter titles and aren't concerned about always having the latest and greatest. Both Android and iOS gamers can splurge at the source links.
Daily iPhone App: Heroes of Order and Chaos brings MOBA to iOS
If I sound a little flustered in today's Daily App video below (you have noticed that we do one of these per day, right?), it's because I am a little flustered. Gameloft has earned a reputation on the App Store for ripping off more popular traditional games and bringing them to Apple's platform, something that sometimes rubs traditional gamers the wrong way a bit. But they've done something pretty spectacular with this title, Heroes of Order and Chaos. Gameloft has recreated, as faithfully as possible, the very popular MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) gametype that titles like League of Legends and DotA have made famous on the PC. I'm a huge MOBA fan, and you may know that if you're not already interested in this kind of game, it can be a hard hill to climb: MOBA combines real-time strategy, RPG combat elements and team-based gameplay all together into one big mish-mash of gameplay. Usually that's pretty hard to pull off, even when you have a full keyboard and mouse to play with. But Gameloft has somehow done it here on iOS -- I won't say Heroes of Order and Chaos is the best MOBA I've played, but it definitely is a MOBA, complete with lots of champions, two maps, an item store with upgradable items and lots of various champions and heroes to play with. It's a very impressive undertaking, and Gameloft has pulled it off with a lot of really great style. I haven't played much of the online gameplay yet -- the game only released recently, and since it's free, you can grab it on the App Store to see how it plays online for yourself. But yeah, even as an offline example of bringing MOBA to iOS, Gameloft has really succeeded here. They still don't get too many points for originality, but the execution is very impressive.
Duo Games reveals Gameloft-branded iOS controller, coming very soon
iOS publisher Gameloft has teamed up with Duo Games to make a Bluetooth-powered controller for iOS games, called the Duo Gamer controller. As you can see above, the controller comes with a tablet stand for your iPad. It features a d-pad and four buttons (as is pretty standard for these sorts of things), plus two analog sticks for FPS look/shoot movement or anything else developers want to use them for. The big feature of this controller is in the software. It's co-branded with Gameloft, which means that all of Gameloft's popular iOS games will work with it out of the box. That includes big series like NOVA, Modern Combat, and the upcoming Wild Blood, all big-budget mobile titles that borrow heavy influence from console games, where these analog sticks are used as well. In other words, Gameloft is trying to bring the full console experience to Apple's tablet, courtesy of this gamepad. Presumably the API for this controller will be open (ideally, it would also work with the iCade standard, but IGN doesn't mention whether that's the case in its writeup or not), so any developer will be able to program their games to work with it. Even if not, however, the Gameloft library has a large audience as is, and just knowing any future titles will be compatible will go a long way toward pleasing fans of the company's games. The Duo Gamer controller is set to show up in stores right around now, for an MSRP of US$79.99.
Rise and Shiny revisit: Order and Chaos Online
It's been over a year since I last officially looked at Order and Chaos Online. The funny thing is that when I reread my older article, I immediately notice how my experience has not really altered since then. I pretty much had the exact play experience. What has changed is my appreciation for much of what the game does. I am still impressed by certain parts and quite bored by others, but overall the presentation is where the mobile title shines. There have been a few developments over the last year but not many. One of the biggest was the addition of mounts. I checked them out and basically spent my time between the two servers: one for Android players and another for iOS. I even struggled with streaming the game from my iPad!
Rise and Shiny: Vendetta Online
For the record, Vendetta Online has been in development since 1998 and launched an alpha in 2002. EVE Online was released in North America in 2003. So although it might be too close to call or lost in the foggy details of gamer's memories, it's safe to say that EVE Online did not invent space, spaceships, speedy space travel, trading, or ship-to-ship combat. Still, feel free to post fill the comment section with "EVE-clone," a common phrase that pops up whenever Vendetta Online is mentioned or shown. Now that we have that out of the way, what is Vendetta Online? It's a multi-platform, twitch-based, science-fiction universe that offers free-form travel and character development. At least that's what I have read. So far in my time with the game, I have experienced only a smattering of what it seems to offer. I've traveled a lot, gunned down a few enemies, and read a lot of text. While I know I have touched but the tip of the iceberg, I still had fun this week. And yes, I pretended to "fly" my spacecraft by running through the house while playing on my Nexus 7 tablet. And yes, I provided the WOOSH and BRAKKA BRAKKA sounds myself. (That's how you know it's space.)
Order & Chaos dropping subscription, adding PvP modes and mounts [Updated]
Gameloft's mobile MMO is entering a new phase in its lifecycle. The studio announced that Order & Chaos is not only due for a major update, but is dropping its nominal subscription fee to make it completely free-to-play. The update, which is slated to be pushed to iOS devices later this month, will contain important features for the pint-sized title. First up are PvP combat arenas, which come in 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 varieties. Next is the addition of four new mounts to the game: two horses and two giant wolves. Finally, Gameloft is adding the second part of the Salien dungeon for hardcore adventurers. Previously, Order & Chaos charged $0.99 a month or $2.99 for six months to access on top of the original app purchase price. Gameloft is also developing a spin-off title called Order & Chaos Heroes. [Update: Gameloft contacted us to clarify that there is still a fee for the game's download, but there is no subscription fee and current players will pay nothing extra.] [Source: Gameloft press release]
Gameloft announces its first Unreal Engine game, you figure out what it is
Parisian gaming company Gameloft has pulled the wraps off its first Unreal Engine Android game, but is being rather coy about what it actually is. The teaser image -- which was released on the company's Facebook page -- reveals little more than a bloody sword and skull along with a cryptic message, saying that a clue was hidden in the artwork. Viewers were also invited to vote for the next hint, which will either be another image or a YouTube teaser trailer. Whether the macabre-looking game itself will create as much suspense as its marketing tease remains to be seen. Update: Some sources have reported the platform as Android, but that has not been officially announced.
Gameloft bringing My Little Pony game to mobile platforms this year
Until now, fans have taken the lead, but you'll finally have the chance to get an officially licensed My Little Pony game before the end of this year. Gameloft has formed a partnership with Hasbro to make My Little Pony games for mobile platforms including iOS and Android.Gameloft hasn't detailed the game, but Hasbro did provide some corporate boilerplate if that helps: "Creating highly inventive and accessible digital play experiences based on our world-class brands continues to be at the core of Hasbro's mission and we envision Gameloft to be a key player in the ongoing execution of that global strategy," said Hasbro SVP of Digital Media and Marketing Mark Blecher.Along with My Little Pony, Gameloft will be creating games based on Littlest Pet Shop, which is even littler.
The Dark Knight Rises drops in on iOS and Android this summer
Gameloft is developing an open-world mobile tie-in for The Dark Knight Rises, which looks to cater to the lucrative market of people who want to beat up bald dudes. At least, the first teaser trailer above promises plenty of that this summer, when The Dark Knight Rises debuts on iOS and Android devices.
Order & Chaos celebrates its first anniversary
Gameloft's hit mobile MMO, Order & Chaos: Online, has reached its one-year anniversary, and the studio is breaking out the goods to celebrate. To spread the joy, Gameloft is giving three months of game time, 25 runes, and a free gift box to all players. There's plenty to do inside the game as well, as the anniversary update adds quests, pets, fireworks, mini-games, and a lottery to enjoy. Order & Chaos recently received an upgrade that allows it to be played over 3G as well as wifi and upgraded its graphics for the retina display on the most recent iPad. The team also put together an infographic to show off the game's impressive numbers. According to the chart, over three million characters have been created, 831 million creatures have been slain, 35,500 guilds have been created, and 14 million messages have been sent.
Order and Chaos Online developer discusses server-linking and more
In honor of the game's paper anniversary, Order & Chaos: Online producer Arnaud Bonnard took the time to do some Q&A with user-submitted questions about what is one of the biggest mobile MMOs available. Arnaud shared some of the toughest parts of development, which were the pressure of creating a world vast enough to entertain players for months (and now years) and ensuring that everything was as stable and functional as possible from a technical point. He followed up by reliving the joy of a successful launch and the success that the game met with over time. He talked a bit about updates and DLC, which come out every one or two months and are generally still drawn from the original design document for Order & Chaos: Online, given that the world design was much bigger than could possibly fit into the game originally. Bonnard also addressed the server separation between Android, iOS, and Mac devices: Not only would it be time-consuming to link all the operating systems, but such a system would mean that patches could only be deployed once every device was supported, which would be tricky and cause too many extra delays. As far as Order and Chaos' future is concerned, he's optimistic. There are new graphic features coming down the pipe as well as "lots of ideas for the game" as the company looks forward to another fantastic year thanks to fan support. Catch all the intricacies of Bonnard's answers for yourself over at Gameloft.
Gameloft set to offer 11 games on BlackBerry 10 platform at launch, more to follow
Hot off the heels of the BlackBerry 10 exhibit, RIM announced a partnership with Gameloft that will see the developer offer a number of mobile titles by the time the new platform launches. As RIM notes, these games will be designed to take advantage of "key" features within the fresh OS, including Scoreloop social gaming tools and multiplayer functions. Among the 11 games set to be released are Shark Dash, Ice Age Village, Oregon Trail and, of course, N.O.V.A 3: Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance -- all of which will range from free to $6.99. Let's not forget, though, that Jetpack Joyride and Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 will also be making their way onto the platform. All in all, not a bad way for the Waterloo-based outfit to kick things off.
Gameloft bringing Order & Chaos Online to your Mac
It's been nearly a year since Gameloft released Order & Chaos Online to iOS and Android devices. The mobile fantasy MMORPG migrated to Facebook later in the summer of 2011, and now it's coming to a full-scale Mac near you. Gameloft has just published a new trailer heralding Order & Chaos as "the MMORPG for Mac," and the video says that the client will be available for downloading in the Mac App store before the end of the month. Order & Chaos features two playable factions and four classes, and you can get a glimpse of the promotional clip after the cut. [Source: Gameloft press release]
New Assassin's Creed game, Gameloft's 'Gang Domination' coming to GREE platform
A new Assassin's Creed mobile game will launch in December of this year for English and Japanese audiences. The title is being developed by Ubisoft and GREE. In the same breath, GREE is teaming up with Gameloft on Gang Domination, which will be available on various smartphone devices this coming June.So, what's GREE? Beyond being a company with way too much money, it's a mobile publisher/platform that's huge in Japan and is moving into the global marketplace, launching the GREE Platform in the second quarter of 2012. The company bought mobile social network OpenFeint last year and has offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, London, Beijing, Sao Paulo and Dubai. The company states: "GREE will continue to aggressively expand worldwide.""GREE will continue to focus on building relationships with third party game developers and publishers as it moves towards releasing its new platform."So, if GREE wasn't on your radar before, it appears to be a company you're going to be hearing about a lot in the near future.
Asphalt: Injection enters the Vita launch lineup
Asphalt: Injection is a 10-mode racing title from developer Gameloft, and it's going to burn donuts on the Vita's pristine touchscreen at its launch on February 22, the PlayStation Blog has announced. Gone are the thrilling days of driving the speed limit and enjoying the view, we suppose.Asphalt: Injection includes the classic mode Race, as well as the not-so-traditional Cop Chase and Beat 'Em All. It supports both local and online multiplayer, and 20 different leagues to conquer.
Gameloft cleared after 'crunch' probe (ouch)
Former Gameloft Auckland head studio programmer Glenn Watson alleged in July that Gameloft pushed its employees to work 14-hour days, seven days a week, violating New Zealand's 2002 Health and Safety in Employment Act. The resulting investigation by the New Zealand Labour Department, covered by Develop, has now been closed after finding no substantial evidence of inappropriate crunch time or any breach of health and safety laws, and no legal action will be taken against Gameloft. This is good news for mobile-game enthusiasts -- and for Gameloft employees.
