Minton co-founded 
DDM in 2005 to help represent vidgame development studios and to act as a strategic adviser for Hollywood licensors.
The company has clients in the U.S. and Europe and is in the midst of helping Red Stallion set up a development studio in Qatar. Lately, Minton has been working with Hollywood directors who want to retain the videogame rights to their films, allowing them to continue to grow the properties in a new medium.
The video game 
industry’s top developer seems ready to step back from game making.
Shiergu Miyamoto, creator of Donkey Kong, Mario and The Legend of Zelda, has told Wired.com that he plans to step away from major game development and focus instead on smaller projects and training younger developers. He does not, however, plan to leave the company.
It takes a lot of 
guts for a social game to turn its back on Facebook, but you probably would expect nothing less of a game based on the Godfather franchise.
The Godfather: Five Families has decided to bypass the largest social networking site and launch exclusively on Google+.
Director Gore 
Verbinski is getting into the video game industry.
The helmer of such pictures as The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Rango has announced a deal with Microsoft, where his Blind Wink transmedia company will produce original interactive content for Microsoft platforms, including the Xbox 360, Windows Phone and Windows-based PCs.
As the end of the year 
draws close, the inevitable year in review pieces are starting to roll out. The first, from Twitter, however, shows what the hot shows, music, movies and actors were with the Twitterati – and it holds some pretty big surprises.
While it’s not exactly shocking that Charlie Sheen led the actor category, Elizabeth Taylor was the most talked about actress (and Raven Symone topped both Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lopez). And of all the shows on TV, ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars” was the hottest topic.
The video game 
world has never really been represented well at Robert Redford’s popular Sundance Film Festival, but that’s set to change this year.
Indie Game: The Movie has been selected to screen at the event. The film will show in the festival’s World Documentary category, which only approved 12 submissions this year.
For pros in 
the scripted entertainment world, the jump to making an interactive app can be a jarring one. Confusion about appropriate budgets and how to tailor the content can result in something that does more harm than good to the property it’s trying to promote.
If you’re tapped with overseeing or signing off on an app for an entertainment property (or even just giving notes on one), there are a few basic elements you should be looking for to ensuring its success.
Spending on consumer 
electronics will account for one-third of all holiday gift-shopping this year, according to the Consumer Electronics Assn. — but finding the right gift for the gadget-hound on your list won’t be easy, or cheap. While overall electronics prices are falling in some categories, like TVs, items on the cutting edge tend to carry a premium pricetag. They’re also often hard to get since they may not be carried by big-box stores and thus not be on the radar of most shoppers.
To help out, Variety has put together its annual list of items that are bound to please even the most discriminating techie.
South Park has 
been around the video game block a few times, but its latest trip could be remarkably different.
South Park Digital Studios and Obsidian Entertainment, makers of “Fallout: New Vegas,” are teaming to create a South Park role-playing game. THQ will publish the title.
Disney was 
the first studio to fully integrate iOS systems with their films, but they’re no longer the only filmmaker doing so.
The Weinstein Company and Technicolor have teamed up to utilize the tech company’s MediaEcho application to supplement last year’s Best Picture “The King’s Speech” with historical footage, additional commentary and behind the scenes information.
Chris Morris: Journalist 