Tag Archives: gamasutra

A Postcard From SXSW: A New ‘Lord British’ Game In The Texas Sun

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Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris reports from this year’s South by Southwest, discovering a Richard Garriott-pitched Lord British social game and a host of other game-related aspects to the Texas media conference.

Music and film might be the dominant forms of entertainment on display at this year’s South by Southwest gathering, but gaming culture is definitely elbowing its way into the party.

Public game demos and several seminars examining the state of the industry have been on display at the Austin Convention Center since Friday – and some developers (including Richard Garriott) are even using the event to announce new titles.

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Interview: Don Bluth’s Return To Games With Tapper World Tour

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Don Bluth will be the first to tell you he’s a filmmaker, not a game maker. But despite the fact that he has just two titles to his credit, the Hollywood veteran has still managed to make a lasting impression on the video game industry.

Dragon’s Lair, in some ways, was the front runner for the modern graphics era. While Dirk the Daring & Co. were hand-animated, the title let players and developers know that games could be just as eye-popping as works on the big screen.

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Interview: Frank Gibeau on EA’s Expanding Focus In The PC Space

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EA’s Frank Gibeau talks to Gamasutra about the company’s position in the casual Facebook gaming market, the renewed focus on PC releases and the increasing dabblings in the freemium business model.

Some publishers are focusing primarily on the online market these days. Others see mobile as the wave of the future. Plenty are chasing the social network audience. And some are sticking doggedly with the traditional game space.

At Electronic Arts, they’re covering their bets.

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Interview: GameSpy To Offer Its Tech To Indie Developers For Free

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GameSpy’s Sean Flinn tells Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris about GameSpy Open Initiative, a new initiative that makes GameSpy’s online game tech available free of charge to small devs.

With its connected gaming technology already integrated into hit titles like Red Dead Redemption, Mario Kart Wii and Crysis, GameSpy is turning its sights to the independent game community.

The company has announced the GameSpy Open initiative, which will make its entire catalog of multiplatform online game technology available free of charge to small development studios. That will allow burgeoning game makers to offer services including cross-platform multiplayer, leaderboards, cloud data storage and community services (such as buddy lists and matchmaking).

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OpenFeint Launching Cross-Platform Social Network

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Gamers on Apple’s iDevices who want to compare scores can do so pretty easily through the company’s GameCenter. But what happens when their friends are playing the same game on an Android phone – or the PC?

OpenFeint is planning to build a bridge to solve the problem. The company has announced the private beta launch for OpenFeint Connect, an API solution that will allow developers to release games on any app store – for any device – and incorporate OpenFeint game data.

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Interview: Why The Tribeca Film Institute Turned Its Attention To Gaming

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[Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris catches up with the Tribeca Film Institute’s director Beth Janson as the prestigious film-making body launches its TFI New Media Fund — for projects that wed traditional film-making with interactive projects like video games.]

One of the film world’s most prestigious festivals is taking an interest in the video game space.

The Tribeca Film Institute (a nonprofit group affiliated with the Tribeca Film Festival) and the Ford Foundations’s JustFilms initiative have announced the creation of a new annual grant — the TFI New Media Fund — for projects that wed traditional filmmaking and new media.

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Industry Analysts Talk Activision’s Guitar Hero Shutdown

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[Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris analyzes the sudden dissolution of the Guitar Hero music franchise at Activision, with input from multiple financial sector analysts, who discuss how the company has “pretty much driven the franchise into the ground”.]

Players might still be reeling from the news that Activision is pulling the plug on Guitar Hero, but Wall Street is giving the fat lady a standing ovation.

It’s no secret that the franchise has been in considerable decline for the past couple of years. And while it seems like it was only yesterday that the games were pulling in $1 billion, analysts say the publisher made a hard choice that will likely serve it well over the long term.

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Analysis: What A Looming NFL Lockout Might Mean For Electronic Arts

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[Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris talks to analysts at M2 and Wedbush Morgan to examine the possible effects on Electronic Arts — and its signature Madden game franchise — of an American football strike.]

Football stadiums across the country might be silent next September – as the prospect of an NFL lockout grows larger by the day – but on the virtual field, the game will still be played.

Electronic Arts will release its 2012 installment of the Madden franchise this year as it has each year since 1988 – but it might be doing so without the marketing force of the league behind it for the first time in the game’s history.

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Behind The Scenes: Microsoft’s Attempt To Woo Conan O’Brien For Xbox Live

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[In exclusive comments made to Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris, the executive producer of Conan O’Brien’s talk show discusses how Microsoft tried to woo the comedian to take his show onto Xbox Live – and why it was ultimately too much of “a leap of faith” for the Conan team.]

U.S. talk show host Conan O’Brien has been a familiar face on late-night TV for the past 18 years, and even when he had his nasty falling-out with NBC in early 2010, most people expected he would wind up at another network – which, of course, he did.

But before TBS came calling, Microsoft did its best to entice the comedian to bring his show to Xbox Live to help launch an original content channel on the console. The company and the performer have never addressed the reports of the conversation.

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In-Depth: PopCap’s Possible IPO – Analysts Weigh In

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[Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris examines PopCap’s potential plans to IPO later this year, quizzing analysts from M2 and Arcadia on the pluses and minuses of a public Plants Vs. Zombies creator.]

The news that PopCap Games is considering a public offering is the stuff that gets the money wonks of the video game industry all atwitter. An indie darling, who leveraged the try-before-you-buy shareware model into multiplatform success? What’s not to love?

While you won’t find people betting against PopCap if the company does decide to make a formal filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that’s not to say every analyst thinks the move is necessarily the right one for the company.

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