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Guild Wars 2 reveals China strategy
As Guild Wars 2 prepares to make inroads to its first Asian country, ArenaNet announced some of its plans for how it will handle the game in China. The Chinese version of Guild Wars 2 will retain the buy-to-play model that the game currently employs in the West, which is a departure from the typical business models in the region. So what about the rapid pace of its content releases and the progression of the living story? The Eastern and Western versions of the game will not exist independently in this regard, but will be synced up so that both get the same updates. There will be a few changes to the tutorial for Chinese players, however. Guild Wars 2 will be published in the region by KongZhong and is planning to go into closed beta testing on March 11th. [Source: ArenaNet press release]
GREE tweaks US operations, invests in MunkyFun
GREE is a very large Japanese social network similar to Facebook or Twitter that has been trying to secure some mindspace in the West by acquiring game developers and their large audiences. The company is making a heavy investment in MunkyFun, makers of My Horse and Bounty Bots, for $3 million. It's also switching up its US business to focus on its own titles. That includes "some redundancies," and GREE says its platform business will start transitioning back to Tokyo in the future. Probably the most high-profile acquisition GREE made on iOS was in the OpenFeint social network, and that system is being shut down this month, so it's not too surprising that the company is making some cutbacks. But this is the first sign we've seen that GREE might be changing its mind about trying to take over the West. These social networks have bought a lot of access to users, but haven't seen much growth, so they might have to come up with another tactic to connect up with the big audience of Westerners using iOS devices. Update: This post previously stated that GREE was acquiring MunkyFun, but the $3 million put in is just a minority investment, not a full acquistion. Show full PR text GREE Expands its U.S. Games Business With New Mobile Games Fund and Announcement of $3 million Investment in Hit Developer, MunkyFun San Francisco, CA December 06, 2012- GREE is today announcing that it's expanding its focus on 2nd party mobile game development with a new mobile investment fund managed by a new publishing and partnerships group. The fund's first venture is in mobile game developer, MunkyFun, maker of games such as My Horse and Bounty Bots. MunkyFun received a minority investment of $3 million from GREE. GREE, which recently announced the closure of mobile social gaming platform, OpenFeint, is focusing its US business primarily on its own titles and developer partner titles. As part of the company's internal US reorganization, a majority of the GREE games platform team will be transitioned to new departments with redundancies in some areas. The overall GREE Platform business will begin transitioning to its operations in Tokyo as a part of this change The US operation continues to build a strong portfolio of mobile games- including recently launched titles Monster Quest and MLB: Full Deck. The mobile investment fund is the latest in a series of commitments to first party and second party titles including full-out acquisitions of mobile game developers App Ant in September 2012 and Investment in IUGO Entertainment earlier this year.
Bringing a Chinese shooter to the west with Mercenary Ops
Mercenary Ops is something of a rarity. While there are quite a few Western-developed games being published in Asia by Chinese and Korean companies, there aren't a lot of Chinese-developed online titles being published by Western companies.Developed in China by Yingpei Games, which used to be called Epic Games China, the shooter is being distributed by the San Francisco-based outfit Kalends, a group of developers who've decided to try their hand at publishing on their own.As for the game itself, Kalends has announced that Mercenary Ops will be released as a free-to-play, microtransaction-based title – a business plan that has deep roots in China, but is only just breaking ground stateside.%Gallery-149855%
Ask Massively: This hat has ruined everything edition
I was having trouble coming up with a topic for this week's header, so I tried writing down a bunch of different topics on pieces of paper and sticking them in a hat. Then I put the hat on. Now I still don't know what to write for this week's header, and I have an ugly hat on my head. Plus, little bits of paper are jammed against my head, and it's itchy. I knew this would be a problem starting with the bowler hat. This week's Ask Massively will go on despite my itchy scalp and ugly hat. And in this edition, I'm talking about potential Eastern games for a player looking for new games and beta invitations. If you'd like to have a question answered in a future installment of the column, send it to ask@massively.com or leave it in the comments. Questions may be edited slightly for clarity and/or brevity.
First Impressions: Forsaken World
Perfect World Entertainment's latest title, Forsaken World, is made to sound like the polar opposite of Perfect World, the older flagship title that serves as Forsaken World's foundation. When I first heard about this newer project, I was enthused. After all, I wasn't really fond of Perfect World. I thought it was too stale and linear. Still, I have admired Perfect World Entertainment for a long time, mainly because the company knows its audience and does really good work. Its games are flexible when it comes to system requirements, and its titles fit all sorts of different players and age ranges. Also, the developers claimed that Forsaken World would be a game made for a "Western audience." Of course this means absolutely nothing to me, being that there are easily millions and millions of players for decidedly "Eastern" games like Nexon titles or other large publishers, so I figured that PWE meant to say that it was a game made for those snootier Western players who consider free-to-play games to be nothing but point-and-click junk. Strangely enough, PWE got the WASD movement wrong in Forsaken World. I have no idea how or why this was missed, but the "Western" audience will notice, I promise. Click past the cut and let's talk about everything I loved about the game -- and a few things I did not.
Riot Games confirms Tencent majority buyout
Riot Games has confirmed that a majority of the company was bought by China's Tencent, putting its stamp of approval on rumors of the deal last week. Brandon Beck, Riot's CEO, is quoted as saying that "Tencent's investment will provide our talented team of designers, developers and community staff with additional resources to focus on innovating around League of Legends and launching new projects that push the boundaries in the gaming space." Financial Times has a nice analysis of the deal -- it sounds like this agreement will help both sides, as Riot will not only get that nice cash infusion of a rumored $350 million, but also invaluable assistance and insight for what it was already hoping would be a nice overseas adoption. And Tencent, of course, gets to lay claim to League of Legends and any other titles that Riot developers, along with the huge microtransaction-based revenues that go along with them, both here and eventually overseas. Plus, this is a sign of the growing trend of Eastern publishers picking up Western companies to develop content for the large audiences over there. Chinese publisher The9 recently bought another Blizzard spinoff, Red 5 Studios, for $15 million, and Japanese firm DeNA picked up iOS developer ngmoco for $400 million as well. Western audiences are big, but Eastern audiences are bigger and, as a result, there's high demand for well-developed games in that market.
Free for All: The difference between East and West
Like many gamers, I find myself going through stages of obsession. Once in a while, I'll get on a PvP kick, followed by having a thing for immersion, then I'll be consumed by running dungeons or grinding. Lately I have been investigating older Western MMOs, games like Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, and EverQuest. While I have already played all of these titles at one time or another, they can become different games between visits. This recent kick of mine started me thinking about the first free-to-play MMOs I enjoyed, as well. The first one was either Flyff or Rose Online, around six or so years ago. I've chatted with a developer who used to work on Flyff, and she claimed that those were some of the very first free-to-plays to see success in North America. What are the differences between the two, Western and Eastern? Is there a difference? If there were, are there still differences between Eastern free-to-play games and Western games? Click past the cut and we'll take a look.
Join us for a TUAW Talkcast tonight at 10pm Eastern
Our talkcast returns to the virtual airwaves this evening as usual, bringing your chance to get in on the discussion with us. This week's topic? Obviously, the iPad will be front and center as we discuss and digest what Apple's new device means for the world (and whether it's underwhelming or overpowered), but we'll also talk about Adobe's Flash and whether it's even worth pursuing for us Mac users, as well as the iPhone revision that wasn't (but hopefully will be later this year). Please do come and join us -- we'll kick things off at 10pm Eastern (7pm Pacific), and once you sign in on Talkshoe, you'll be able to call in with your own phone and chat live with TUAW bloggers and listeners. See you then! To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!
Why do publishers import so many older MMOs?
Richard Aihoshi posed this question over at MMORPG.com in his most-recent article entitled "Richard Aihoshi's Free Zone: Why Publishers Import Older MMOs". The curiosity stems from the fact that we're beginning to see many more MMOs that are simply imported and localized for a western audience, rather than publishers taking that risk to create an entirely new IP. Of course there are exceptions, but for the most part, we can't help but wonder if it is in fact easier, and if easier is better.In Richard's article, he interviews Gamepot's Thomas Lee about their recent launch of the western version of The Legend of Mir 2. Thomas has some interesting insight into the typical business model of these imports that caught our attention, "I don't think people will play something just because it's free. It has to be fun; otherwise it's eventually going to fall on its face." Thomas goes on to discuss that common point that clearly defines the MMO mania happening with eastern MMOs and how they're perceived in the western world, "Sure, four million registered players would be nice. However, I'll take a few hundred thousand loyal, happy players any day."Check out the complete article for more from Thomas Lee and Richard Aihoshi on the wave of older eastern imports to hit western shores.
WoW Insider Show Episode 97: Chasing silhouettes
Good times as always on our podcast this past holiday weekend -- while Turpster was away, we Americans took over the show, and declared our independence the only way we know how: by talking about the most popular stories in the World of Warcraft this past week. Adam Holisky, Alex Ziebart, Michael "Belfaire" Sacco and I answered your emails, and then chatted about Blizzard's addition of faction changes to the game (and who'll go for it), patch 3.2 and its extendable raid lockouts and universal armor tokens, Exodus and Ensidia and how Blizzard has dealt with both, and of course, that sneaky Cataclysm trademark and what it might mean for Blizzard's future releases.Whew! If it sounds like a full show, that's because it was. It even went on longer than usual, so you can enjoy the extra-long WoW Insider Show at any of the links below (including clicking on the iTunes link to subscribe directly there). We won't be back next Saturday -- instead, we're setting up for a special Thursday evening show this week at 6pm Eastern, so those of you who can't make it on Saturdays can instead tune in on Thursday night to chat and listen live with us on the Ustream page.Enjoy this past weekend's show, and we'll see you on Thursday.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
Western MMO fan plays Eastern MMO, gets disoriented
There's an article over at The Escapist that tells the story of a hardcore Western-style MMO player who tries out an Eastern-style MMO and experiences a bit of culture shock. The article is written by WarCry Senior Editor John Funk.The game he tries to play is Mabinogi (of which we've published our own first impressions), and he dedicates himself to playing it for one week. During that week, he plays it for a total of 30 hours. That means he played the same game four and a half hours a day for seven days straight. We're not sure there are many games Western, Eastern, or otherwise that can stand up in that kind of intensity but he weathers through it! Comedy occurs as he struggles to understand random owl visits and perplexing user-interface functionality.At first it seems like the article is asking if the game mechanics of an Eastern MMO are destined to be completely lost in translation for Western players, but in the end Funk cops out into another direction. Still, it's humorous and occasionally almost insightful, so check it out if the topic interests you.
RF Online on going free-to-play, localization differences
Warcry has posted a nice interview with Chris Dye and Kyle Rowley, Community Officer and Manager for RF Online, an MMO that sits in an interesting place-- it originally started out as a hardcore Korean MMO, and has now warped here in North America into a Westernized, free-to-play offshoot of the original. It's an interesting strategy, and only one that MMOs can pull off-- if your players don't like the game you release, just update it into a completely different one.One very interesting change they made was to up loot drops-- apparently Western players felt they weren't getting rewarded the way they want to, so Codemasters (who publishes the game here) doubled the drop rates, not once but twice. On the other side of this, they've gone RMT to make the game free to play-- players can play real cash for ingame money used to buy ingame items. For some reason, that's flown in the Eastern MMO market, but not here so far-- it'll be interesting to see how RF Online players get into it (or don't).Unfortunately, none of the interview actually focuses on whether RFO is any more fun to play. Then again, it is free now-- you could do worse than to go grab the download and check it out for yourself.
CG cutscenes and gaming culture
In an interview with Lost Planet Community's Brian Dunn, Cutscene Director Yoshiyuki Tonoe and Director Kenji Oguro discussed the differences between how cutscenes are used in Western and Eastern gaming worlds. Their decision to use real-time cutscenes in Lost Planet stems from their research into how Western developers tended to tell the story within the game engine, whereas Japanese developers typically rely on CG graphics for the cinematic storytelling.Tonoe dates the Eastern obsession with CG cutscenes to the original Biohazard (released March 1996), though arguably Square Enix had already begun to look into CG before the horror title's release with Final Fantasy VII, whose long development process began in 1995. "The latest CG movies found in games are stunning and really help sell the game," said Tonoe, "but when I think about how they are used to tie the story to the gameplay, I wonder if they are effective at making the games any better."Pictured are some of the games used as reference material during Lost Planet's development. Tonoe cites The Lord of the Rings games, whose cutscenes were amalgamations of movie footage and in-game footage, as "above what Japanese developers were doing at the time."Specific to their game, Tonoe remarks that there are 33 cutscenes in Lost Planet, totaling 73 minutes, averaging just under three minutes with the longest cutscene at around six minutes in length. What's your preference -- explosive CG eye candy or more immersive real-time storytelling?[Via 1UP]
Acclaim's MMO strategy examined
Next Generation brings us the lowdown from Howard Marks -- CEO of the newly-reopened Acclaim -- on Acclaim's MMO strategy. His plan is to bring Eastern games to the West with no subscriber fee, but instead to make money via in-game ads and micropayments.Next Gen's feature asks if this will work in a market with no real precedent. By dropping the phrase "free game" and instead focusing on games as a service, Marks intends it to. However, his strategy doesn't come across with a lot of confidence in this article. It'll be interesting to see if Acclaim manage to set a good precedent for an East-to-West business model, and more importantly whether others follow suit.
Japanese sales charts, May 8-14: Baseball booms
Despite football fever hitting the UK hard, the only soccer title in last week's Japanese charts is lounging at number 4. Baseball's all the rage instead, with Jikkyou Powerful Major League taking the top spot. Tetris DS is still selling well, and the other titles in the top ten are all favourites making re-appearances in this slow week of sales.1. Jikkyou Powerful Major League [PS2]2. Tetris DS [DS]3. Brain Age 2 (Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Motto Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS) [DS]4. World Soccer Winning Eleven 10 [PS2]5. Brain Age: Train your Brain in Minutes a Day (Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju no Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS Training) [DS]6. Animal Crossing: Wild World [DS]7. Eigo ga Nigate na Otona no DS Training: Eigo Duke [DS]8. Pokémon Ranger [DS]9. Dragon Quest: Shounen Yangus no Fushigi na Daibouken [PS2]10. Mother 3 [GBA]
Hands on with Project Wiki
Project Wiki from Webzen is a bright, colourful MMO that immediately stands out from their other post-apocalyptic/dark-fantasy offerings. With inviting colours and visuals reminiscent of a 2D cartoon, the game seems well-matched to its kids-and-teens target demographic. It's simple to play -- perhaps too simple -- and death comes quickly at the hands of nearby enemies; the character we were playing has a limited number of skills which made combat a little repetitive. Project Wiki is only scheduled for a Korean release -- its anime-inspired graphics may make it appealing in the West, but its gameplay is rooted firmly in the East.
East meets West: PC Gamer's trip to Korea
Jim Rossignol, from UK magazine PC Gamer, took a trip to South Korea last year and this account of the gaming culture there takes a look at everything from Starcraft superstars to gaming television and MMO addicts. A culture that revolves primarily around PC gaming, playing games is a very social activity in Korea, and high-profile gamers become celebrities with huge fan clubs. It's not without its problems, though: with many poor quality games, strict censorship and licencing problems, gamers don't have as much freedom to choose as they might like. It's very different to how we work in the West, although some aspects of our culture are converging. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to live in a gamer's utopia, where everyone understands your passion, the answer's quite simple: move to Korea.