Technology
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Letting off Steam? Fortnite Dev Lifts Lid on Epic Games Store
Just days after Epic Games’ phenomenally successful Fortnite cleared 200 million registered users, the studio has announced that it is opening an online gaming store. When you you have already acquired an audience the size of Fortnite’s, that is a step with vast potential to disrupt the ecosystems of the global games industry. For over a decade, the Steam store has dominated PC gaming; and had an influence that has shaped the way games are designed, distributed, and marketed. Steam has arguably [...]
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Rebellion to Open Doors on £78.4m Film & TV Studio
Long-standing independent UK game developer and publisher Rebellion has purchased a facility to convert into a film studio, estimated to be worth USD$100m (£78.4m). That might not seem the most obvious purchase for a video game company, but Rebellion has always confidently expanded its remit beyond its core business. The move equally reflects an ongoing convergence of the industries of game development, film, and television. That convergence to date has been defined most apparently by crossover in technique, technologies, and creative [...]
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Q&A: Reality Clash & the Arrival of Blockchain-Powered AR
Reality Clash is an in-development mobile AR shooter that integrates blockchain, cryptocurrencies, dynamic in-game advertising, and geo-mapping technology into the gameplay experience it offers. Yes… there are a lot of tech buzzwords in that opening line. We’d only need to throw in AI and VR and it might seem like a parody of contemporary marketing parlance. But in truth, there’s often a meaningful reality hidden somewhere behind the hype of headline-grabbing tech trends. And it just so happens that Reality Clash [...]
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'Non-Intrusive' Programmatic Advertising: The Future of AR & VR Monetisation?
This week UK monetisation outfit Admix revealed that it had secured an impressive USD$2.1m (£1.63m) in funding to further develop its AR and VR advertising platform. As reported by Tech.EU, Admix was only founded in 2017, with a focus on allowing developers to place advertisements programatically that sit contextually inside content. A simple, hypothetical example would a be a VR game set in a sprawling city. Admix’s platform could allow a developer to assure that programmatic ads appeared only as billboards on [...]
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Mobile eSports as a Tool to Aquire & Retain: A Primer
You don’t need to be a devoted games industry observer to have noticed something of the recent rise of eSports. Organised competitive gaming has been around along time, of course. eSports’ nascent form was forged in the earliest arcade gaming tournaments in the 1970s, where players competed to win a patch declaring their prowess; presumably to be sewn onto an oversized distressed denim jacket. By the 1990s the notion of a ‘pro-gamer’ making money from prize winnings was established, but even then [...]
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Voodoo Gets Some Help from Goldman; Apple Back in the Ad Business
TheGamingEconomy rounds of some of the biggest stories in the business of gaming. In this week’s edition: Voodoo Gets Some Help from Goldman; Apple Back in the Ad Business; and Zynga Grabs Gram Games for USD$250m. Voodoo Gets Some Help from Goldman There is a huge amount of money still going into gaming. Goldman Sachs is investing USD$200 (£150m) into French gaming firm Voodoo, which has had a string of hits over the past twelve months, and is looking to use the money to build [...]
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Network Communication Capabilities Compromise Gamer Experience: Q&A with PacketZoom
With a surge in popularity of multiplayer games, it comes in tandem with a number of challenges, not least of all with mobile app communication capabilities. TheGamingEconomy speaks exclusively with Shlomi Gian, CEO, and Chetan Ahuja, CTO, PacketZoom (both pictured), about the challenges developers need to consider, and how their new solution helps to mitigate these. TheGamingEconomy: PacketZoom has recently announced the launch of Mobile Connect – how does it work? Shlomi Gian and Chetan Ahuja: PacketZoom’s Mobile Connect is a turnkey cloud [...]
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The Elusive Art of Gaming Monetisation
Gaming monetisation is considered by some as a dirty practice; but, with the gaming category accounting for the highest share (23%) of the billions of downloaded apps, the fact can’t be ignored that gaming is a powerful business, with extremely rich sets of data. Noelia Amoedo, CEO, Mediasmart and Grant Gudgel, COO, SMRTR.MEDIA (both pictured), share their expertise with ExchangeWire on how game developers can leverage data to optimise monetisation, whilst highlighting the challenges faced. Grant Gudgel, COO, SMRTR.MEDIA: Best practice gaming [...]
