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MMObility: The Chromebook 'All-In-One' project: More games
This will be my last week using the new Chromebook Pixel, at least here on Massively. I will continue to look at its techier side of things on my personal blog, just as I did with the original Chromebook All-In-One project. The shorter time frame for this series can be explained by the fact that Chromebooks do admittedly cut out a lot of the browser-based MMOs out there by not allowing the usage of Unity or other plugins. Flash is allowed, but Adobe and other companies' recent disapproval of the use of Flash for mobile platforms came with a reason: It's often hard to run. Once HTML5 becomes more standard thanks to publishers like Jagex, I'll be able to comment more on that. It's also important to note that the Pixel is really just a nicer Samsung model, so you can refer to the older posts as well. I want to encourage everyone who is interested in Chromebooks to check out the Samsung ARM-based Chromebook I talked about last time. It's very inexpensive and quite literally does everything that the Pixel does, albeit on a much smaller screen that is attached to a weaker device that has a much lower build quality. Still, my time with the Pixel has amazed me with a wonderful, touchable screen, but the Pixel has also convinced me that the Samsung should be the flagship device for Chromebook, hopefully kept at the same price range while slowly improving in quality. Now, let's talk about the games. I found a few that run much better on the Pixel's beefier stats, but please refer to my Samsung coverage for 30 MMOs that run on both machines. The following list is especially good for touchscreens.
Zynga's website removes Facebook login requirement
Zynga has redesigned its website, no longer requiring gamers to log into the site using the Facebook credentials.Once upon a time, Facebook and Zynga were the best of pals, with Zynga's titles driving engagement on the big blue social network and Facebook providing a steady stream of new users to play Zynga's offerings. Last year, however, Facebook and Zynga decided to start parting ways, and that's led us to this current situation, where Zynga is pushing its platform beyond the walls of the Facebook system.Not completely outside, however: Zynga players can still log into Facebook on Zynga.com if they like, and as you can see on the site, the Facebook logo and login box are still prominently displayed. But players are no longer forced to use that process to partake in Zynga's library of games.
Rise and Shiny: Game of Thrones Ascent
There are several things that Game of Thrones Ascent, a social game by Disruptor Beam, does right. At the top of that list is the way the game works as a vehicle for easily digestible content, content that comes from some of the densest reading material in modern fantasy. For the record, I still haven't read any of the books that the Game of Thrones television series is based on, but luckily I have a wife who will simply burst with excitement when she reads some new tidbit... unless she tells the nearest person (me). It must be hard making a game based on such a popular piece of fiction. The fact is that I didn't expect the little-known developers to do much good. I thought players would be smashing through a game that served as nothing but a cheap commercial for the HBO series. I was very wrong.
MMObility: Innogames' Fabio Lo Zito on cash shops, quality, and PvP
One of the greatest parts of my job is having the ability to take a peek into the minds of some of the industry's most creative developers. If an interview goes really well, I come away from it with not only a deeper understanding of mechanics or policies but some knowledge about the creative process. For me, MMOs represent a perfect storm of writing, music, art, and math; they click my creativity into hyperdrive. I couldn't write about MMOs if I didn't love them so much. I'm not sure why I didn't notice German-based developer Innogames until relatively recently, but its lineup is more varied, challenging, and immersive than many of its rivals. It makes titles that offer a variety not only of gameplay but of accessibility. All of its titles can be played in a browser, and now a handful are available even on mobile. I sat down with Innogames' Fabio Lo Zito during a livestream earlier this week to discuss what makes it all work.
The Soapbox: Using MMOs to relax and unwind
Every now and then, everyone needs to take a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to relax and unwind. The outside world can be loud, and the stresses of work and home life can add up quickly, so it helps to be able to switch off for a while. Some of us find relaxation in sitting down in front of the TV, others in zoning out to their favourite music, and an increasing number of people now wind down with computer games. I've personally found MMOs to be incredibly effective refuges from stress and anxiety, but until now I've never really thought about why that might be. Any game can provide a few hours of escape from the daily grind, but there's something special about MMOs that seems to make them more comforting places to be. Certainly MMOs are manufactured to give a sense of solid progress as you play, a fairness that the unpredictability of real life often can't deliver, but there has to be more to it. Do the music and ambient sounds in EverQuest II's virtual forests and glens produce the same reaction as walking through a real life wood? Likewise, does EVE Online trick us into slowing down, and is spending time in a virtual world just more appealing than slogging along in the real one? In this opinion piece, I look at some of the most relaxing areas and activities I've found in MMOs and try to figure out what makes them tick.
MMObility: How Facebook's recent changes affect MMOs
As you might be aware, Facebook is officially changing its policy on how an embedded MMO interacts with the famous social network. I'm no fan of reading through lines of policy changes and attempting to interpret them exactly, namely because reading about changes and fully experiencing them are two different things. Both can lead to different conclusions, as well. I want to know how these changes affect MMO developers. I would also like to clear up what Facebook is. I've covered it many times before, but there is always a section of players and readers who have no idea or have only heard what Facebook is and what it does. To many of them, Facebook is FarmVille and spam, period. While I will not deny the existence of either of those things, I'd rather take this week to break down what Facebook is to developers, how it actually works, and how recent changes might affect players like yours truly who enjoy playing games through, on, or by utilizing Facebook.
Gree closing down OpenFeint on December 14
I believe we've now reached the end of iOS' first generation as a platform -- it's almost every week now that we're hearing about a major startup losing a founder or a big franchise shutting down. This time it's OpenFeint, the social gaming platform started up way back by Jason Citron and Danielle Cassley, that at one point claimed 25 million users, and then was sold to a Japanese social network named Gree for $104 million. Gree has announced that it's finally shutting down the network on December 14, leaving developers who still depend on it in the lurch, and closing a book that makes up the first big chapter of the iOS marketplace. OpenFeint was originally started from a game itself, but it grew into an easily implemented social network that connected the App Store's offerings together, both in terms of user accounts and leaderboards, and in helping developers promote and share their apps with a large group of consumers. Gree is planning to migrate current OpenFeint users to its own social network, but it says that the current OpenFeint API calls will no longer work after December 14, which means any developers who still depend on those calls will be out of luck. Of course, Apple's Game Center service is the official version of OpenFeint, and though Citron and his crew (and later, Gree) fought to try and keep OpenFeint relevant even when Apple introduced its own service, it appears the battle's finally been lost. Citron left the company late last year as well. We'll see if Gree tries to do something to appease devs angry about the short notice on the changeover, but it's much more likely that those devs will just make their own switch to Game Center and be done with third-party services in general. As I said, it's the end of an era for the App Store. Going forward, Game Center reigns supreme.
EA's Riccitiello on social games: 'Consumers won't pay for crap'
The decline of social games has been "overhyped," Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said at Friday's App Conference in San Jose, California, AllThingsD reported. "Companies that are now suffering will have another day," Riccitiello said.The CEO noted that viral marketing-style messages in social games that spam friends lists with requests don't make for "great gaming," and that "consumers won't pay for crap." Riccitiello had similar comments in May, when he said that "consumers want to be entertained, they don't want to be data managed."
MMO Blender: A real-time Farmville MMO minus the Zynga
Let's talk about FarmVille for a minute. Yes, I mean the Zynga-produced FarmVille, the one that helped social gaming become what it is today. There are a lot of things that have been said about the game, like "it's not even a game" or "it preys on gamer's addictive natures" and all sorts of sufficiently evil-sounding things. Say what you want about the evil monster that is Zynga and make all the jokes that you can about FarmVille and other social titles, but I want to tackle it from a different view. Let's look at it as the sandbox game that it is and use that example to invent a brand-new MMO, although I'm sure ours would not meet with even a fraction of the success that FarmVille has. FarmVille is arguably the most popular sandbox title in the world. We've defined "sandbox" a million times on this site, but it's easy to see just how open and flexible FarmVille is. Is it limited to the confines of its unique set of tools and designs? Of course, but so is every sandbox. FarmVille has successfully introduced the wonders of sandbox gaming to people who might never give a similarly described game a chance.
The Soapbox: Social gaming won't destroy MMOs
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Richard Garriott has gone on record saying that he believes that the days of classic MMOs are over. The future is social gaming, social media, a lot of things with the word "social" shoehorned in. Coincidentally, he's gone on record as saying this at a time that coincides with his entry into the social gaming arena following a somewhat forcible expulsion from the MMO genre. You probably think that Richard Garriott is crazy even if you haven't been to space. Still, the idea is a little worrisome. Your phone calls with your mother have changed from being about your aunt's new hip to asking why you haven't watered your crops in FarmCenterWorld or whatever she's playing. You can smile at the collapse of Zynga all you want, but there are still plenty of companies making good money by slapping microtransactions on Build Mode from The Sims and calling it a day. Combine that with recent failures and missteps in the MMO world you probably wonder whether Garriott, crazy or not, might have a point. But don't worry. Odds are pretty low that social gaming is actually going to kill MMOs... for a lot of good reasons.
Amazon announces GameCircle, similar to Apple's GameCenter
Amazon has announced a new service for its Kindle Fire platform called GameCircle, which is akin to Apple's own GameCenter service. It's set to provide a series of APIs for leaderboards, achievements, and other socially-centered game-related features. GameCircle has already been tested with a few popular titles on the Kindle Fire, and it's available for developers to sign up and check out right now. Obviously this has nothing to do with us iOS users, as GameCenter not only covers our needs on Apple's portable devices, but it's also coming to OS X in the quickly approaching Mountain Lion. But this does show that other device manufacturers are learning from Apple's history. Originally on the iOS platform, there was no official social gaming network, and it was a free-for-all between popular networks like OpenFeint, Crystal, and plenty of others. But Amazon's heading all of that off early, aiming to bring developers under its own official umbrella for social gaming.
Richard Garriott's Portalarium raises $7 million in funding
Richard Garriott designed Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa, and he has also been to outer space. This has apparently convinced several investors that funding his new company Portalarium is a sound decision, as it was recently announced that Portalarium has secured roughly $7 million in investment capital. The money is being pushed into the final stages of development on the company's first title, Ultimate Collector, which is slated for release later this summer on Facebook, mobile, and browser-based platforms. Some of the funds are also earmarked for development on the company's second game, alternately known as both Ultimate RPG and New Britannia, which does not yet have a release window. The chief investment firm was London-based m8 Capital, but several other sources also contribued to the groundswell of support, including Richard Garriott himself. Last month, the company announced that it will be working through the Zynga Platform Partners program to publish Ultimate Collector.
EA opens SimCity Social on Facebook, really, really hopes you'll 'like' it
Sure, it may not have been the most, you know, explosive launch at this year's E3 -- but if Facebook "likes" are any sort of metric (which, granted, is debatable), EA's newly reborn and heavily-socialized SimCity has a bright future ahead of it. SimCity Social opened up shop on the Zuckerbergian social network this week, letting players plan and build cities, harnessing the site's massive user base to build friendly relationships or form rivalries between towns. The 800k or so likes the game has currently racked up clearly aren't enough, so EA is offering up exclusive content for those who click the friendly thumb. And seeing as how sitting in front of your computer wouldn't be complete without some fried breakfast pastries, Dunkin' Donuts is getting in the act, allowing players to gift coffee and doughnut "Boosts" in-game.
E3 2012: Dragon Eternity's cross-platform warfare and weddings
Harken back, o reader, to ye olden days of E3 2012, if thou canst recall, as a great and powerful force of dragons has arrived among us. OK, so E3 wasn't that long ago (although it often feels like it), but something dragon-like has certainly surfaced: During the expo, I saw an impressive demo of Dragon Eternity, a cross-platform fantasy MMO from Game Insight, and as of this morning, the embargo on all the details of that demo has finally lifted. Hit the break and I'll tell you all about it!
Facebook backing away from Facebook Credits and adding subscription billing
Facebook may not be your first choice for gaming, but it's impossible to ignore the influence that its games have had on pricing and the social landscape. Starting next month, the development team behind the site is empowering companies to give players a very novel way of paying for items: a recurring subscription for a fixed amount each month, which one might call a "subscription fee." Yes, that's right: Facebook is opening up the option for subscriptions to its games in the hopes of drawing in more money. Subscriptions are already being tested in several games, such as KIXEYE's Backyard Monsters. This coincides with the development team's shift away from Facebook Credits as a universal microtransaction currency for all of the many games floating around, mostly since developers preferred to use in-brand virtual currencies instead. None of this is particularly new to MMO veterans. It's still rather interesting after years of business model changes to see subscriptions being touted as the future of payments. [Thanks to Space Cobra for the tip!]
Richard Garriott says his new social game is the 'spiritual successor' of his previous work
Every so often, Ultima Online creator Richard Garriott takes a break from his social gaming endeavors to grant an interview to a fan site. The latest such is on display at Gather Your Party, and Garriott has plenty to say about his current company, Portalarium, and how its new Ultimate Collector title might appeal to UO fans. "For us it's a stepping stone. It's an MMO-lite in my mind. Very lite, with more what I will call classical leveraging of casual game mechanics than you will probably see in the RPG, but compared to most casual games, to most social games, it is far deeper," Garriott explains. He's also aware of the amount of skepticism that his turn toward social gaming generates among Ultima fans and MMORPG enthusiasts, but he thinks that's par for the course. "Newness is fraught with a certain kind of risk, distrust and lack of understanding," Garriott says. "I think what I'm building now is the spiritual successor of my previous work."
Riccitiello hip to EA's social failings: 'I'd say we're a distant number two'
EA's embattled CEO John Riccitiello isn't above admitting his mistakes, nor is he above admitting those of his company. That honesty was in full swing during an episode of NPR's Morning Edition today where he spoke to EA's social business. "We would like to be number one in every possible area, in every geography. That's a grand ambition. We're not there yet," Riccitiello said.But then he got much, much more honest. "When it comes to Facebook, while we're number two, I'd say we're a distant number two. I mean, the other guys have lapped us three times," he said, referencing major social player Zynga. Riccitiello said EA is in the entertainment business, while his competition in social is in the data business, which he's had a hard time cracking. But he may not have to, according to his predictions."They're not really in the entertainment business. I think that will eventually die. Consumers want to be entertained, they don't want to be data managed," he said. Rather than model EA's future social business on that of the data-driven giants, Riccitiello hired up EA's first chief technology officer, Rajat Taneja, and is trying to get ahead of the Zyngas of the world before they take their next steps.He told the Morning Edition that EA is planning to "apply techniques like machine learning and neural nets, to figure out what will happen next so that we can tailor the game and experiences to delight our customers." Wait ... what? In reality, this means using data for predictive modeling, which can help figure out what you'll like before you, er, like it.Also in the report: Riccitiello wouldn't confirm or deny his company's plans to axe approximately 1,000 jobs in the near future, but he did say the company's internal statistics will see a shift from one of every eight employees being an engineer to one in two. Sounds like a bad time to be a concept artist at EA.[Thanks, Curtis.]
Free for All: Why social gaming could destroy MMOs and how we can fight it
I am a huge fan of social media. Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus -- it all makes sense to me and has shown to be a very useful tool in not only communicating with friends but finding new games, developers, and websites. My Twitter feed provides enough news and information that I can skip any standard media. I haven't watched a local newscast for a long, long time. On top of that, I can communicate with readers in real time, sharing photos and tidbits of cool. Has social media affected MMO gaming? It definitely has. Watch any smart developer's Twitter feed and you will see the community team interacting directly with players, answering questions, hosting contests, and helping players feel as though the developers are actual people. Social media has also changed how we connect to our games, MMO or not. All of this means that everything is social now. Going to the dentist? Share it with your friends. Defeated a boss monster on your Xbox? Tweet it. Just picked up that epic sword in Dark Age of Camelot? Post it to your Facebook. Heck, many MMOs now have a Twitter or Facebook option built right into the client. All of this instant connectivity is nice, but it's possible that the "massively" part of MMO will soon apply to any game. What will this do to the genre?
Zynga acquires Draw Something dev OMGPOP for $200 million
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how App Store fortunes are made. We've posted already about the almost overnight success of Draw Something, an app that has picked up over 30 million downloads and even beaten Zynga at its own game on Facebook. And because everyone knows that Zynga has plenty of cash and just needs as many users as it can get, the check has apparently been written: The company is expected to announce the acquisition of Draw Something's developer, OMGPOP, at a press conference happening in just a bit later on today. All Things Digital says it has indeed been confirmed. OMGPOP has a few different titles out, as well as a New York-based team of about 40 people. But what Zynga is really after here is the audience -- its games are social, so the more people playing them the better, and with the overnight audience of Draw Something, Zynga can promote its other games quite a bit. As for OMGPOP, my guess is that the company hasn't had too much success on the App Store until now, and basically decided to get on the money train while it's still in the station. Zynga's known for swooping in fast on deals like this -- if things had gone the other way, and OMGPOP had decided to hold out and try to really monetize the app on their own, odds are we would have seen Zynga try to take advantage of Draw Something's popularity anyway. At any rate, congrats to the OMGPOP team. Plenty of Draw Something players are groaning on Twitter, and lots of them are hoping that Zynga doesn't ruin what's still a pretty good and clean experience. But you never know -- with Zynga's resources, maybe Draw Something will turn into something even better yet.
Mobile is the fastest-growing segment of social games
The iPad, iPhone and other mobile devices are a growing source of revenue for those selling virtual goods, says a report from Inside Virtual Goods. The report looks at the virtual goods market and tracks sales from mobile devices and social games like those on Facebook. Though social games will remain the leader with US$2.9 billion in sales expected this year, mobile gaming is on the rise. Mobile virtual good sales are expected to climb to $500 million in 2012, up from $350 million in 2011. And this is just the beginning. "Mobile gaming is still hitting its stride," said Justin Smith, the founder of Inside Network, in an interview with Venture Beat. While social games tend to attract older females, the Inside Virtual Goods report claims mobile gaming attracts a different audience. Being on Facebook is important, but the social network shouldn't be a games-only outlet. The winner in this market will be the company that can target both demographics by launching on Facebook and mobile devices at the same time. [Via Venture Beat]
