Creative

• SkyWeaver dev Horizon Blockchain Games secures USD$3.74m (£2.97m) seed round

  1 day ago News

  

  Canadian game dev and blockchain infrastructure outfit Horizon Blockchain Games has completed a USD$3.75m (£2.97m) seed round. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture fund Initialized Capital led the round, which was also supported by Golden Ventures, Polychain, Coinbase, Digital Currency Group and Inovia Capital. The seed round is likely to be a significant boon to bringing Horizon’s game SkyWeaver to market, and to the further development of the company’s blockchain video game network Arcadeum, which is pitched as a ‘crypto arcade’. Backing by [...]

• Developers can now build Synative playable game demos in Google Play for free

  1 month ago News

  

  Game ad tech specialist Synative has moved to make its Playable Studio platform free for devs looking to build playable ‘Try Now’ demos for Google Play. In essence Synative offers in Playable Studio an accessible platform for building playable ads, all without the need to write a single line of code. Using that platform game developers – or their marketing or PR colleagues with little-to-no dev experience – can build demos of their games that exist as a playable ad. Those [...]

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• Google confirms pricing structure, launch details and games for cloud-based Stadia gaming platform

  1 month ago News

  

  Google has moved to reveal more details on its eagerly anticipated Stadia cloud-gaming service; namely pricing structures, launch details and launch games. The gaming platform – due in November this year – requires no console-like ‘box’ or dedicated hardware beyond a game controller or mouse and keyboard. Instead, games will be streamed over the cloud direct from Google data centres to customers’ screens and controllers. Stadia will be available over smart TVs, laptops, desktop computers and smartphones. Users will access the [...]

• Next-Gen On-Device Mobile AI: What Is It & What Might It Mean for Game Ad Tech?

  3 months ago News

  

  Tencent, Qualcomm, and Vivo recently announced a new partnership, with a view to refining game experiences by harnessing the potential of on-device mobile AI. We’ve all heard so much about AI in recent months that it’s easy to assume any reference to it is simply over-enthusiastic marketing speak. But what this collection of tech giants have underway is pretty fascinating. It’s also somewhat confusing, as it’s a little complicated on the technical side of things. So let’s take a look at [...]

• PepsiCo Planned Space-Based Orbiting Billboard for Gaming Ad Campaign

  3 months ago News

  

  U.S. soft drinks giant PepsiCo was, until recently, planning to launch a gaming-focused advertising campaign hosted on billboards suspended in space. If you’re not familiar with ‘stratosphere advertisements’ – also known as ‘orbital display ads’ – brace yourself. Russian tech outfit StartRocket plans to releases networks of tiny ‘cubesat’ satellites into space, which can be arranged into formations that project light back to Earth; perhaps assuming the form of a company logo or slogan. As such, the satellite arrays essentially offer orbiting [...]

• Epic Removes Problematic Player-Created Content from Fortnite

  3 months ago News

  

  Gaming giant Epic has removed a player-created scene from the Fortnite gameplay map after the game’s fans reported that it depicted seriously problematic content. TheGamingEconomy will offer a brief warning here; this article will necessarily make very occasional and passing references to suicide. Back in 2018, Epic revealed that an area of the Fortnite map would be given over to a region called The Block. The idea is that Epic uses The Block to showcase some of the best player-made Fortnite environments, rotating [...]

• GDC Day Four Roundup: Microsoft's Stadia Response, Steam Store Redesign & Overwatch's Well-Behaved Players

  4 months ago News

  

  As the Game Developers Conference 2019 nears its end, the news continues to flow. The most interesting story related to the show in this roundup doesn’t come from the GDC floor itself, though. Instead, it’s from within a reported internal Microsoft email. Specifically, in an email handed to tech site Thurrott (thanks GamesIndustry.biz), Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, apparently contacted colleagues to assure them that the reveal of Google’s game-streaming platform Stadia validated Microsoft’s efforts in the same space. The Google [...]

• GDC Day Two Roundup: Google Enters Gaming Market with Stadia

  4 months ago News

  

  Google has made its move on gaming with the announcement of streaming platform Stadia.  The news came on the second day of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco; and it surely stands as one of the most significant gaming reveals in the industry’s history. Such a major player moving in with such an ambitious platform could radically impact the broad ecosystem of the industry, the makeup of audiences playing games, and the way the medium is consumed and designed. However, Stadia’s [...]

• Humanity, Breadth & Institutional Sponsorship: Mike Murphy O'Reilly on the Evolving Brand Opportunities in Esports

  5 months ago News

  

  For all its snowballing success, esports arguably has a perception problem. Say ‘esports’ to those both inside and beyond the worlds of games, brands, and marketing, and they will perhaps imagine something like a vast arena with sweeping spotlights passing over 20,000 cheering fans, as pro players in heavily branded athletics jerseys do battle in a game like League of Legends. Perhaps a commentator will be unleashing flurries of jargon as a team manager nervously paces back and forth near the [...]

• Analysis: Launching Apex Legends. Fortnite's greatest contender yet?

  5 months ago News

  

  A lot of businesses in the global game industry would like a slice of the ‘battle royale’ pie. And it’s no surprise. Fortnite is a battle royale game – sometimes called a ‘BR’ title – and we all know how well it has done. The shooter hit 200 million players in November last year. According to a source speaking to Tech Crunch, its creator Epic banked USD$3bn (£2.3bn) in revenue through 2018. But, more than all of that, the free-to-play competitive online [...]