TriplePoint PR

Out in the vast desert of Las Vegas, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences® (AIAS) hosted the 2010 D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit and the 13th annual Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony, and the TriplePoint team was in attendence. Julia Roether, Joe Ziemer and I joined in the event to learn from video game industry leaders, connect with likeminded individuals…..and enjoy that dry, ultra dehydrating weather that only Las Vegas can provide. Overall, we found that the D.I.C.E. Summit is a can’t miss event with informative and thought-provoking discussions from seasoned industry professionals, and we’ve included some of our key findings from the summit below.

Continuing our efforts to engage in real discussions with the leading members of the gaming industry and beyond,  TriplePoint recently had the opportunity to chat with IGN’s on-camera host and staff writer, Jessica Chobot.  Since 2005, Jessica has become a key influencer within the gaming community and we were fortunate to talk with Jessica on her quick rise at IGN, social media, and oh yeah, the infamous PSP photo.

TP:  How did you find yourself in your current roles at IGN and Maxim?

JC: How I got my spot here at IGN is a long and intricate story, so I’ll give you the semi-quick version. I was going through a quarter-life crisis and working as a model for quick pocket money and at EB Games for discounts. I had pre-ordered a PSP and the day it was released was the same day I had a photo shoot. On the way to the shoot, I stopped by EB to pick up the PSP, took it with me to the studio and during a break, showed it off to everyone and was screwing around and taking goofy pictures. One ended up being the “PSP lick” picture.

Now that Facebook apps can no longer send notifications to users, social game developers are implementing new methods of keeping in touch with their players. Here’s an overview of recent game updates from a few top social titles, as reported on FriskyMongoose.com.

First, in case you’ve been under a rock, the background: Facebook notifications will cease to exist in their previous form, starting this week. According to Mashable, developers of games and other Facebook apps will now be required to either send email updates to users (assuming they’ve agreed to receive them), or hope that users will read about their updates via fan pages and new feeds.

An additional counter feature will also be relied on, which displays the number of app related notices you have next to the application’s name in your left menu navigation on the Facebook homepage (for those applications you have bookmarked). However this is as close to universal notifications as the updated system comes, making those who were tired of logging in to see a big 20+ digit in the corner of their screens very happy campers indeed.

One of the most popular new features is an email alert system. Facebook games are rewarding players who register with all kinds of exclusive in-game items, like new recipes, shells and armor.

I haven’t got any emails in my Outlook inbox. I have about 10 files in My Documents. My iTunes is a lonely, desolate place, used sparingly to upload music to my iPhone. I haven’t owned a boxed PC game in years, and I certainly don’t own any notepaper.

This is thanks to being introduced to the Cloud – a term on a very superficial level that refers to things being kept on external servers and streamed via the internet. Its concept and execution are much more complex, and as a result better explained by Cloud Expert James Urquhart at his blog The Wisdom of Clouds (hosted by CNET).

Basically, it means that I am not effectively shackled to one computer.

At this week’s American International Toy Fair, the Mattel Corporation announced Barbie’s latest career as a computer engineer. Decked out in a binary-print tshirt, leggings and sensible(ish) shoes, Barbie sports a Bluetooth headset and carries a pink laptop (with “Barbie” written in ASCII on the screen, cleverly enough). The Barbie® I Can Be…™ Computer Engineer Doll was created by Mattel to inspire a new generation of girls to become part of this growing profession. Let’s hope Barbie can use her computer engineering skills to inspire more girls to become part of the video game profession, a subset of the computer industry that currently has women comprising only 5% of its ranks.

Social Gold, the premier virtual economy platform, has recently shared some intriguing facts on users’ spending behavior within social games. Social Gold offers users a seamless in-game payments experience so players can purchase virtual goods without disrupting gameplay. New stats that were recently  posted on Social Gold’s blog show that their virtual economy platform increases conversion and drives repeat purchases.

So strangely compelling...

In terms of wide-sweeping brand recognition, Popcap is to casual gaming what Nintendo is to gaming in general.  Your Grandma knows about Nintendo, but your Mom might know a PopCap game or two.  Founded a decade ago, the company does a spectacular job of keeping their games in the public eye and maintaining a friendly, unassuming aesthetic.  It’s as if making boatloads of money is the pleasant side-effect of cranking out highly addictive puzzlers, and to be clear, casual games are doing big business.  Most of their games are available on multiple platforms, with free versions hosted at PopCap.com.  Because the games are both robust and replayable, it’s no surprise that their perennial favorite Bejeweled 2 hasn’t left the Top 10 Highest Grossing list on the App Store since that category was unveiled six months ago .

Facebook is staggeringly huge. They have over 400 million active users, half of whom log in on any given day, over 500k active applications, and can rattle off plenty of other impressive totals for those who’d like to listen. As an open platform, they have provided companies like Zynga and PlayFish with millions of dollars in revenue, and provided many other developers with a shot at financial success. Despite these achievements, and despite an estimated company valuation that extends into the billions, monetization remains the one aspect of Facebook’s business that hasn’t matched their growth. With this week’s sure-to-be-critiqued changes, that last piece of the puzzle may be ready to fall into place. But first, a bit of background…

Mainstream Gamers

Gone are the days when gamers consisted only of nerdy guys in their mother’s basements. Social games on Facebook and MySpace have expanded the video games market, and these “social gamers” now consist of women, older people, and people who don’t even identify themselves as traditional gamers. Playdom seems to have tapped into yet another market with their Sorority Life game: sorority girls and their wannabes. Whether you are, or have always wanted to be, in a sorority, Sorority Life lets you live out your dreams via a very stylish avatar. But just how realistic is this game? As a former sorority gal, I’ll take a look at the game’s features and how they translate to real life.

Video games challenge players to solve problems, overcome obstacles and, in many cases, learn. While some argue that games can be extremely effective education tools, researchers have just started to scratch the surface of what actually happens in our brain when we play games.

Cerebral Cortex, a research journal for papers about the study of the cerebral cortex, published a recent report by the University of Pittsburgh’s Kirk Erikson, Assistant Professor of Psychology, about certain regions of the brain that seem to facilitate advanced understanding of interactive media. In other words, Erikson discovered four distinct areas of the brain that might actually make us better at playing video games.

Inside Network recently released a report that the virtual goods market is expected to drive $1.6 billion in revenue in the U.S. in 2010. The market is driven in large part by virtual items sold in social games, which account for $835 million of the total sales projected. While publishers such as Zynga, Playfish, Playdom and Serious Business are hard at work creating the content and engagement mechanisms to drive sales, payments solutions such as Social Gold (online), Zong (mobile), Open Network Entertainment, Inc. (prepaid cards) and the newly launched Kwedit (cash) are striving to help customers purchase those virtual goods seamlessly.

Got a small business, blog, group, class or cause? Appanda has an app for that… I recently had a chance to sit down with Chris Przybyszewski, CEO of RESOLUTE, the Memphis-based iPhone developers behind a variety of original and for-hire games and apps.

RESOLUTE’s latest release, Appanda is making it easier than ever for small businesses to create and launch their own mobile apps (iPhone and Android). Here’s the inside scoop on Appanda, do-it-yourself iPhone development and more – enjoy!

Give us an overview of RESOLUTE – who are you and what do you do?
RESOLUTE builds software platforms that help everyone create their own mobile device app, such as an iPhone app or an Android Marketplace phone.

I’m a lucky man – every day I get to work with and talk to some of the most excellent people in technology, both client and reporter-side.

Hence I’m not sure why I was so surprised when, out of nowhere, a chance encounter with Armor Games founder Daniel McNeely led to working on the iPhone version of one of my favorite flash games, Crush The Castle.

The challenge, however, was getting press for a game that while recently, significantly updated, was months old. Great as a game is, many PR firms would have said that the press (and the consumer) can tend to have a short memory – and that if something is considered ‘old news,’ it’s mostly left to the dogs.

Gaia Co.’s Sword and Poker, a seemingly benign and innocent mixture of poker, RPG and Final Fantasy’s Triple Triad, is a pox on my productivity.

I simply must put time into it every day, further delving into the dungeon to stop Chaos, the god of something-or-other that is largely irrelevant to the game and my need to play.

It’s a simple enough game – you place cards on a 9×9 board to make poker hands. These, in turn, do damage to your opponent. In the single player mode, you gain items that mitigate and cause damage, change the cards on the board, and even steal them from your opponent. All of these elements, combined with the slow dungeon crawl of killing monsters to reach the end of a floor, are all puzzle pieces that make up the overall experience of the grind – the need to gain more.

Over the last year, the number of retro and classic console and arcade games on the iPhone has dramatically increased, often providing these much-beloved chestnuts with a new lease on life (and great success for their publishers). Classic characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Earthworm Jim, Guybrush Threepwood and Dirk the Daring are back in full force, with more characters set to make a comeback on the horizon.

Sonic the Hedgehog for iPhone

How have these once-antiquated characters found new relevancy on a new medium? Beyond the obvious nostalgia factor, it all boils down to gameplay, fun, and interesting game design. The most popular games from the 80s and 90s still resonate with gamers today. In the “golden era” of 16- and 32-bit graphics, game designers couldn’t rely on whiz-bang visuals, environmental physics and detailed rendering to impress gamers. Games were distilled down to their simplest elements: pick-up-and-play ease, addictive fun and compelling gameplay.