Amazon game console, game studio Double Helix

Amazon acquires game studio Double Helix Games | Tech Culture - CNET News: " . . . "Amazon has acquired Double Helix as part of our ongoing commitment to build innovative games for customers," Amazon said in a statement ... Amazon has been rumored to be working on an Android-based console for months. But the acquisition comes a week after a report that Amazon plans to launch a game console later this year that will run on Android and allow for both streaming and downloading games. VG247 reported last week that Amazon has been showing publishers popular Android and iOS games as demos for a console that will launch for less than $300..."

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Mobile Games, Ratings Manipulation

Welcome To Mobile Gaming, Angry Dungeon Keeper Fans: " . . . Recently it has come to light that Dungeon Keeper on Android features a less-than-straightforward 'rate this app' screen. . . . Clicking the '1-4 Stars' button apparently takes players to a feedback page instead of the Google Play feedback page, asking them to tell EA what they can do to make the game worth a higher ranking. Hitting '5 Stars' takes players to the ranking page. That's sort of evil. It's also sort of par for the course. The ratings for free-to-play games on Google Play and iTunes mean about as much as the average Metacritic user rating of a mobile game under fire for ruining a classic franchise. Have the people rating the game played it? Who knows? Were the raters coerced? There's a good chance....Why Traditional Gamers Hate It: Because it's damn shady. It's a system that allows itself to be fiddled with and gamed. It's a broken system. Mobile gamers don't mind. They seem to enjoy broken things. ..."


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Spil Games, 1000 HTML5 games by December 2014

Spil Games aims to have 1,000 HTML5 games by the end of the year | GamesBeat | Games | by Dean Takahashi:

• "...“The obvious route was HTML5.”

• But early HTML5 games didn’t work that well. Games based on the WebGL format can use 3D hardware in a mobile device, but there’s a smaller subset of devices that are capable of running WebGL games. But over time, as with the previous Java format, the hardware capabilities of mobile devices are getting better, and more devices can run HTML5 games properly.

• “We invested money in this and found some developers who could do it,” Goossens said.

• The company created a $5 million fund to finance HTML5 games,..."

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IPO goes sour, Candy Crush maker "crushed"

Not so sweet IPO: Candy Crush maker slides 15%: "IPO shares of King Digital Entertainment, maker of the massively popular Candy Crush mobile app, fell more than 15.5% in their first day of trading Wednesday."

‘Candy Crush’ Maker Trades Lower in Debut - King Digital Opens at $20.50, Below the Offer Price of $22.50 - King Digital opened lower, on the heels of an IPO that valued the "Candy Crush" game maker at more than $7 billion. http://on.wsj.com/1p5M8jb

see also: "Candy Crush completely stole this guy's idea, and here's his open letter to them"

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Rakuten, Voice-Call App, Viber, Games

Rakuten to Buy Voice-Call App Maker Viber - WSJ.com: "Since 2012, Mr. Mikitani has also mandated that all in-house business—from meetings to memos to cafeteria menus—be in English, to prepare Rakuten's 3,498 employees for life in the international business community. Buying Viber would give Rakuten access to millions of Viber users, who could use their phone number and password to open a Rakuten shopping account, Mr. Mikitani said. Viber's virtual stickers will also bring in cash, and the two companies said they hoped to make games available on Viber in the future as well. Viber rival Line Corp., the Japanese arm of South Korea's Naver Corp. offers games—a lucrative source of app revenue."


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ICE gaming conference, Gaming Law

Top 5 gaming law takeaways from ICE gaming conference! | DLA Piper - IP Technology in Italy - JDSupra




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HTML5 Video Interactivity

How to Add Interactivity to HTML5 Video - Streaming Media Magazine:

HOW TO: Making the HTML5 Video Element Interactive

The HTML5 Video element has now become widely used by browsers and supported in a broad set of websites for streaming video content. With some JavaScript and CSS, we can leverage the HTML video element to create highly interactive experiences for the viewer in both traditional and mobile browsing environments. This hands-on session explores the integration of events with the video timeline, creating positioned hotspots with links and dynamic content, and capturing user input. In addition, the session examines supporting mobile platform browsers along with future opportunities with the HTML5 video tag. Get sample code, ideas, and best practices for making the HTML5 video element an engaging interactive experience for your viewers.
Speaker: Chuck Hudson, Co-Author, HTML5 Developer's Cookbook


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Microsoft Xbox Live to power Android and iOS games

Microsoft wants Xbox Live to power Android and iOS games | The Verge: "Xbox Live is primarily used in Microsoft’s consoles and Windows or Windows Phone games for achievements, friend lists, and game matchmaking. While Microsoft has experimented with achievements on iOS and Android recently, the company is planning to push Xbox Live cross-platform in a big way soon. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that Microsoft is building a platform to extend Xbox Live functionality to iOS and Android games...."


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HTML5, Your Next App

5 Reasons HTML5 is Right for You and Your Next App/ | App Developer Magazine: "When it comes to creating an app, many developers choose the iOS or Android path to market. However, these shouldn’t be the only options that are considered. HTML5 is picking up steam worldwide and for good reason. It provides many benefits for developers that native apps simply don’t have – from the development process down to the user acquisition stage...." (read more at link above)


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Amazon Appstore, Developers Can Charge For HTML5 Web Apps

Amazon Appstore Now Allows Developers To Charge For HTML5 Web Apps, Promote Them Through “Free App Of The Day” | TechCrunch: "Amazon is announcing a change to its Appstore today, which will now allow developers building HTML5 (web-based) applications to price those apps to sell, just the same as their natively coded counterparts. Previously, all HTML5 apps were automatically set to “free” when added to the Appstore, which may have lessened developer interest and uptake in this feature. As you may recall, Amazon took the notable stance of opening its Appstore to HTML5 apps last August, offering developers a way to quickly turn their web applications and mobile sites into Android apps that could be downloaded anywhere the Amazon Appstore is able to run, including on Amazon’s Kindle Fire devices, as well as on other Android smartphones and tablets. Developers wanting to use this option did not have to do any native app development – instead, they simply submit their URLs and Amazon does all the work of packaging up the app in the correct format, and adding the necessary metadata (like images, product descriptions, etc.)..."


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Flappy Bird, Game Patterns, Context

What Games Are: Flappy Bird, Patterns And Context | TechCrunch: "... Ultimately most of our complicated thinking is nothing more than dressed-up confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, but it’s still powerful. The financier class (investors, VCs, publishers, etc) particularly finds it hard to resist falling into these mental traps, and so money spent making games tends to follow this way of thinking. Contract developers specialize in making outsourced games for publishers who think this way and have become experts at pitching to their concerns. Learn to think and talk this way and your game will get funded. Do it well enough and your funding is actually your profit margin. Cynical perhaps but all too true...."


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Google Developer Day at GDC - LIVE video March 18, 1:00PM EDT (5:00PM UTC)

Google Developer Day at GDC - Live video from the Game Developers Conference, San Francisco, March 18, starts 1 pm EDT (5:00PM UTC)

Agenda (All Times are PDT - San Francisco, CA):

10:00-10:15am Developer Day Kick-Off

10:15-10:45am Growth Hacking with Play Games
Greg Hartrell, Product Manager, Google Play Games, Google
Dan Galpin, Developer Advocate, Android, Google
Let's look at how you can harness the incredible growth of Google Play Games to rapidly expand the user base of your game, and how Play Games assists in discovery, engagement and retention.

10:45-11:15am Engaging Your Entire Community
Todd Kerpelman, Developer Advocate, Play Games, Google
Your player community is stronger when they can all play together. So why are you needlessly dividing them up into arbitrary groups across screens and devices? Let's look at how Google Play Games is letting all of your players play together as one big happy family.

11:15-11:30am Break

11:30-12:00pm Making Money on Google Play: Best Practices in Monetization
Bob Meese, Business Development, Games, Google
To be successful, you need to learn from the best. This talk will review commercially successful games on Google Play and common themes they share.

12:00-12:30pm Grow Your Game Revenue with AdMob
AdMob Product Team
Google advertisers spend more ad dollars in games than any other type of app! Discover how you can maximize your game's earnings with awesome ads and recent innovations from AdMob.

12:30-1:20pm LunchBreak

1:20-1:45pm Okay Glass, Play a Game

1:45-2:15pm The Next Level of In-game Advertising
Marc Theermann, Head of Mobile Platform Sales, Google
Ever wonder how the mobile ads ecosystem works and how ads reach your game's inventory? Join us to learn the inner workings of programmatic and direct sales advertising, including an overview of the tools you can use to take your in-game advertising revenue to the next level.

2:15-2:30pm Break

2:30-3:00pm From Players to Customers: Tracking Revenue with Google Analytics
Rahul Oak, Product Manager, Google
Snehal Thakkar, Software Engineer, Google
Mike Kwong, Software Engineer, Google
What makes your players spend in your game? Who are your high value users and how do they play your game? Learn how Google Analytics can help you find the insights for the users that matter the most for you.

3:00-3:30pm Take Your Users to the Next Level
Lukas Bergstrom, Product Manager, Google
Neil Rhodes, Software Engineer, Google
Small tweaks to your game can result in significant revenue increase. However you cannot rely only on personal opinions; hypotheses need to be confirmed by users. In this session you will learn how to use Google SDKs to control experiments and configuration without shipping a new version of your app.

3:30-4:00pm Build Games that Scale in the Cloud
Chris Elliott, Solutions Architect, Cloud, Google
Your game is a living, breathing creation that takes a lot of time and attention even after launch. So why worry about your technical infrastructure? Come hear how to build games that scale that run on Google's state-of-the-art infrastructure.

4:00-4:20pm Break

4:20-4:35pm Looking to the Future
Noah Falstein, Chief Game Designer, Google

4:35-5:00pm From Box2D to Liquid Fun: Just Add Water-like Particles!
Wolff Dobson, Developer Programs Engineer, Google
LiquidFun, Google's new extension to Box2D, adds realistic fluid physics to any game. We'll show how it works, and explore how it can enliven your next game with gooey, sticky, powdery, or jelly-like fun!

5:00-5:25pm Bringing the Power of YouTube to your Games
The YouTube Product Team, Google

5:25-5:45pm Texture Wranglin' : Getting your Android Game Assets Under Control
Colt McAnlis, Games Developer Advocate, Google
Bloated APKs make customers sad, and with >60% of sizes coming from textures, it's easy to see the culprit. Get your texture footprint back under control. This talk will focus on advanced processing techniques to reduce PNG sizes; Migration to GPU formats, as well as WEBP; and advanced techniques for compressing sprite animations.

5:45-6:00pm Wrap Up
RJ Mical, Engineering Director, Google

Links:
Google Play Game Services — Google Developers

Google Play Developer Console

Unlocking the Power of Google for Your Games, at GDC | Android Developers Blog

Game Developers Conference | March 17-21, 2014 | Moscone Convention Center | San Francisco, California

Google Developer Day at GDC - YouTube

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Google opens Chromecast to game developers

Games on your smartphone or TV via Chromecast --

Google opens Chromecast to all developers | Internet & Media - CNET News: "... Chromecast's future depends on developers making their apps compatible with the device. "With the Chromecast, we're resetting consumer applications," said Rishi Chandra, Chromecast's director of product management. People, he said, "should expect their phones or tablet applications to just work on the television."..."Gaming is an exciting opportunity for what you can do with Chromecast," he said, as one example of an area where developers could spend more time. "It's exactly the right model. The fact that it works with your iOS phone and Android tablet and Windows laptop is true multiscreen. There's a lot of potential there," he said. As simple as the Chromecast is, making sure that it was easy to develop for took some time. One thing Google learned, said Chandra, is that Chromecast developers are like Chromecast consumers: they want it to just work. When it comes to the SDK, he said that "developers don't really need or want all the features. They want turnkey solutions." When it comes to all things Chromecast, the geniuses at Google may have finally learned their lesson: keep it simple, stupid..."


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UK OFT, games developers, consumer laws

UK: OFT gives games developers 2 months to comply with consumer laws (or else) | DLA Piper - I-gaming - JDSupra: "Breaching certain provisions of the associated legislation can amount to a criminal offence. This is the latest example of regulators taking a closer look at the games market and asserting the application of existing laws to this rapidly developing industry."

Online games industry given two months to get house in order following OFT investigation - The Office of Fair Trading: "The OFT ... final principles for online and in-app games, and given games producers a deadline of 1 April to ensure that their games do not breach consumer protection law. The OFT principles state that consumers should be told upfront about costs associated with a game or about in-game advertising, and any important information such as whether their personal data is to be shared with other parties for marketing purposes. The principles also make clear that in-game payments are not authorised, and should not be taken, unless the payment account holder, such as a parent, has given his or her express, informed consent. Failure to comply with the principles could risk enforcement action..."


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US Trademark Bullies Crush Game Competition

US Patent and Trademark Office enables monopolies in generic names for games and industry restraint of trade --

The Candy now belongs to King; puts others in sticky mess - Crave - Geek Culture - CNET Asia: "...With the new trademark claim, Indie developers like Hsu have limited resources to defend themselves and have to find ways around it. "It's useless to fight because us little developers don't have the money or resources to fight back," Hsu explained. "From the other app developers I've spoken with on Facebook and Twitter, they all feel the same way." Hsu mentioned he plans on changing the name of his game "if that is what [he] has to do". With the trademark "Candy" being approved, I can't help but feel that this will have a domino effect in the industry as developers start claiming common words in their trademark filings. At the end of the day, this is going to have the biggest impact on the smaller app developers who are unlikely to have the financial backing to defend themselves against the big boys."


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Pinterest, Evolving as Visual Medium (video)

Pinterest Is Evolving as Visual Medium: CEO: Video - Bloomberg: "Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann speaks to Bloomberg West anchor Emily Chang about the process of building his virtual pinboard. (Source: Bloomberg, March 3)"


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Gartner says HTML5 is a Top 10 Mobile Technology 2015-2016

Gartner Identifies Top 10 Mobile Technologies and Capabilities for 2015 and 2016: "...HTML5 won't be a simple panacea for mobile application portability because it's fragmented and immature and therefore poses many implementation and security risks. However, as HTML5 and its development tools mature, the popularity of the mobile Web and hybrid applications will increase. Hence, despite many challenges, HTML5 will be an essential technology for organizations delivering applications across multiple platforms...."


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Mobile Game Makers, Long Term Survival, Sustainability

Can Mobile Game Makers Survive in the Long Term?: "...Developers can make billions on mobile games. However, it's yet to be seen whether one company can sustainably make billions. It could be that the mobile game business, with its flitting user bases and unpredictable hits like Flappy Bird, favors the single or small team developers, which can be just as nimble as their users. Because, when you begin adding in the infrastructure and overhead of a corporation, the cyclical nature of game popularity can hurt while a company scrambles to produce another hit...."


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Nokia, Hobbled by Windows Phone

Nokia Icon Is Hobbled by Its Windows Phone Framework - NYTimes.com: " . . . . The tragedy is that the technology industry is not a meritocracy. Making great products is often not sufficient for success, and sometimes it’s not even required. In tech, marketing, branding, partnerships and timing can be as important as how well your product works. What’s more, how a company’s product works is largely dependent on the company’s position in the market. Microsoft and Nokia’s consumer businesses are governed by the vicious rules of network effects  . . . ."

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Facebook Drank the WhatsApp Koolaid

WhatsApp | The Big Picture: " . . . unlike tech, a great song is forever. You don’t have any use for your Windows XP machine, but you still want to hear Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” You can’t buy the world, the same way you can’t buy romance. Connection is something you feel. Creativity is something inbred. Just because Mark Zuckerberg fleshed out Facebook that does not mean he’s a visionary. He’s anything but. Stop drinking the kool-aid. P.S. It’s truly a global village. But only someone from Kiev seems to know this. Jan Koum set about to lasso the entire world’s users, not just those in the media-savvy, media-hungry United States. If you’re not marketing to the entire world, you’re not dreaming big enough...."


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The App-ocalypse: You Do Not Need Apps on Your Smartphone

Coding Horror: App-pocalypse Now: "app-ification of everything is gone out control, 99% of all apps are just glorified browsers."

Steve Jobs was right--web apps (not native apps) are the future. Just bookmark the mobile sites you use, or put shortcuts on your mobile (smartphones, tablets) homescreen.


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Crushing Competition, Trademark Abuse, Mobile Games

Crushing the Competition | Winthrop & Weinstine, P.A. - JDSupra:


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Amazon, mobile game developers, game machine coming?

Amazon is making itself more and more indispensable to mobile game developers | GamesBeat | Games | by Dean Takahashi: "At the recent 2014 International CES, the company rolled out a redesigned portal for app and game developers. Aaron Rubenson, director of the Amazon Appstore for Android and Kindle Fire, told GamesBeat in an interview that the company continues to invest heavily in tools that developers can use to publish their Android games and promote them on its platform.We’ve been tracking the changes and it certainly seems like Amazon is dedicating a lot of resources to making game developers happy. Rumors persist the company will introduce its own game machine, but the details are vague, and Amazon isn’t commenting."

Game Informer reported it heard from sources that Amazon is developing a new Android-based video game console.

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Miami historic preservation board, Miami Tequesta site

Miami Tequesta site update:

Miami historic preservation board moves to protect Tequesta site | MiamiHerald.com: "Miami’s historic preservation board ... rejected a developer’s plan to carve out and display a prehistoric remnant of a recently uncovered Tequesta village in downtown Miami, and instead set the stage for potentially designating the site a protected historic landmark. The board’s decision, encapsulated in three separate votes after a seven-hour hearing, was a big win for preservationists and archaeologists who have been pressing the developer, MDM Group, to redesign a planned commercial and hotel project to accommodate the finds, regarded as some of the most significant traces of an indigenous settlement in the country. But what exactly will happen on the site remains very much in the air...."

Tequesta were the 'Adam and Eve' of Florida | State | Bradenton Herald: "...the recent finds on the north bank of the river -- thousands of precise postholes carved in the bedrock in circular and linear patterns that specialists believe mark the foundations of elevated dwellings and boardwalks -- have shifted the understanding of the Tequesta. Together with the equally unexpected discovery 16 years ago of the probably ceremonial Miami Circle on the river's south bank, the village site directly opposite it confirms that the Tequesta possessed higher degrees of engineering skill and organization than once believed. "They were more sophisticated than we thought,'' said Miami-Dade College historian Paul George. "They traded with people from far away. They had some kind of mathematical precision. These circles are interesting because there is great sophistication to them, and since 1998 we had picked up very little else about the Tequesta...."


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Games, Console Platform, Mobile Platform

Tête-à-tête: Are $15 mobile games worth the investment? | MobileSyrup.com: Right, $15 is a lot of money for a mobile game, mainly because we’ve been trained to believe that there is a huge gulf between console and mobile platforms. Companies like Square Enix are using iOS and Android to reinvigorate beloved aging franchises to not only introduce novice gamers to the content for the first time but to make it far easier to carry on a game wherever you are.

Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

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