paul-bettner
Latest
Oculus-only platformer coming from Words with Friends co-creator
Words With Friends co-creator Paul Bettner's new development company Playful Corp will show off its introductory game at E3, Lucky's Tale. The game is a third-person platformer with an intriguing twist: It is exclusive to the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Along with his brother David, Bettner left Zynga in October 2012, nearly two years after the publisher purchased their former studio, NewToy. Lucky's Tale is one of two games in development at Playful Corp, the other being an open-world sandbox game known as Creativerse. Playful expects to bring Creativerse to the Oculus Rift following its launch on Steam "later this year." Oculus VR also announced the hire of former Valve employee Jason Holtman today, the "driving force" behind Steam. [Image: Playful Corp]
Zynga with Friends' Paul and David Bettner leave Zynga
Brothers Paul and David Bettner, best known for coming up with Words with Friends, have left Zynga. The duo are the latest high-profile departures from Zynga following vacancies left by CCO Mike Verdu and COO John Schappert."We are still very excited about the future and feel like we are at the beginning," Paul Bettner told Gamesbeat during a phone interview. Neither would comment on why they chose to leave Zynga nor would they comment on their time at the company.The duo originally came on board with Zynga when the company purchased their Texas-based studio Newtoy, effectively rebranding it Zynga With Friends. Before the Zynga acquisition, the Bettners had previously helped ship Halo Wars at developer Ensemble Studios before its closure.
Zynga buys Newtoy, studio rebranded as Zynga With Friends
Well how about this -- Facebook and social game giant Zynga has bought up iPhone developer Newtoy, makers of the popular Games with Friends apps, including Words with Friends and Chess with Friends. Newtoy has now been rebranded as Zynga With Friends, and will apparently be working on new titles for Zynga in their own style. There's no word on what kind of money changed hands, unfortunately, but Zynga is worth around $5.6 billion, so it has plenty to spend. This is that company's seventh such deal in as many months. As deals for iPhone devs go, this is a big one -- Newtoy previously also worked on the We Rule title for Ngmoco, so the studio has extensive experience in social mobile gaming and monetizing those experiences. Zynga is the company behind Farmville, the most successful social game out there, with its own deep roots in the social gaming field. So this will be an interesting combination to be sure. We just chatted with Newtoy's David Bettner at the Austin GDC a little while ago, and he'll be stepping into the position of studio director, with his brother Paul Bettner becoming a Zynga VP and GM of the new studio. Bettner also told us that the company was working on "at least three prototypes that were up and playable," but it's not clear whether those titles will continue to be made or whether Zynga will have their own products for the former Newtoy devs to work on. If nothing else, this is a big vote of confidence in the App Store yet again -- Words with Friends has been a runaway hit for Newtoy, and clearly Zynga sees potential in the "with Friends" brand.
Ex-Ensemble Studios lead designer responds to Bettner rant (update)
Aside from a very small handful of points, it would seem there's a major disconnect between two ex-Ensemble Studio employees over why the studio was shuttered by Microsoft last year. Ian Fischer (an ex-lead designer at Ensemble, now at Robot Entertainment) details on his blog the many disagreements he has with (claimed) ex-creative lead Paul Bettner's recent rant at the Game Developer's Conference in a panel called "Fired and Fired-up: Jobless Developer's Rant." We say "claimed," because even Bettner's job title is called into question during the response. "Neither you, nor anyone else, was 'Creative Director' at our studio," Fischer alleges. Further, Fischer rebutes Bettner's claim that Ensemble shut down due to a "reliance on crunch" to finish projects that got more and more expensive by the year, saying it had more to do with "chasing after the MMOs and FPSs and RPGs and RTS-differents we constantly had in prototype." He also says that the communication with Microsoft never broke down and that if the publisher had wanted to lower the developer's operating costs, "they could have done so with a phone call ... ES enjoyed a long relationship with Microsoft (as many ex-Studios people now at Robot or Bonfire still do), first as a partner and then as part of the corporation after 2001." So, according to Fisher, what was the reason that Ensemble shut down? "If you want to find mistakes with what we did, I'd suggest that those trips into the weeds, looking for new territory, with a partner who wasn't fond of being there, was more our error," he suggests, referencing the aforementioned prototypes. Update: You can find Paul Bettner's full response to Fischer's claims after the break.
Recently laid-off devs rant about being recently laid off
I think we can all agree that, aside from being hit by a speeding train or dropping a hot meal you've been cooking for hours, being fired from your job is like, the worst thing that can happen to you. As such, we expected the speakers on last week's GDC rant panel, titled "Fired and Fired-up: Jobless Developer's Rant," to be especially inflammatory. We were not disappointed. Just past the jump, we've highlighted three of our favorite presentations from the panel. Some of them get awfully, explicitly blue, so if you happen to find yourself reading this video game news site while at work, you might want to think twice about going beyond the break. (You should also get back to work, you lazy so-and-so!)
