Tag Archives: online

May 30 2012

Red Menace Threatens Scottish Gamers

The chances are that you’ve not come across GameVial before.  We’re a fairly clued up and expert sort of channel and we were stunned, staggered and bewildered to sit next to them at the Cross Party Group on Videogames Technology and discover a whole new studio, right under our noses.  It was exactly the sort of discovery that James Cameron was hoping for on his jaunt to the bottom of the Marianas Trench…

So, allow us to enlighten you.  GameVial is a studio specialising in online browser-based games.  At our last count, they’ve released around 100 titles on their website, from simple puzzle titles, through to complex 3D games.

They’ve also brought over a dozen of these titles to mobile – and their latest is a killer…

Russia’s Army is a 3D, massively multiplayer, cross platform, first person shooter (we’ll pause and let you read that back to yourself).  Players can compete against each other from a web browser on a computer, or via Android smartphones.  And there’s a free ‘lite’ version for cheapskates and ne’er do wells worldwide.

The free version offers a limited set of weapons (which does include the AK-47 mayhem fans), while the full version of the game – which comes in at a cost conscious quid – offers far more variety and destructive malarkey such as:

  • Pistol
  • SPAS12 shotgun
  • Dragunov 50 cal sniper rifle
  • RG6 tactical grenade launcher
  • RPG, the iconic Russias Army Rocket Propelled Grenade

Progress Forward To The Further Betterment Of Society, Comrades.  Then shoot it full of holes…

If delivering hot lead political debate to the forehead of an opponent isn’t your cup of tea, never fear, GameVial has your back.  Now, for – we believe – the first time, you can flap to victory with Fly Like A Bird.

This particular slice of feathered fun puts players in the tiny, pecky brain of a humble birdy.  Now you too can perch, build nests, raise chicks and spoil the lives of hateful BMW drivers who have been out carefully buffing their precious, precious cars with a chamois leather and Clarkson-approved cream.

No.  Really.  You’re a bird.  You fly.  You have little birds.  In a nest.  You poo on people.  It’s twisted genius.  The site describes it as a ‘cult classic’ but we’d go further.  This is the sort of game Dare and Jam teams should be coming up with.  Odd, beaky and desperate for breadcrumbs.

There’s a lite version of this too, for the criminally parsimonious.

So, who the HELL are GameVial?  We’ll let them explain…

We are Gamevial.com, Imigea Ltd, Edinburgh based game developers and have built over 100 games during the last decade, pioneering browser 3D games since emergence, finally the market hs caught up  :P

Originally middleware and third party content developers, our last custom job, the 3D ship painting tool for Sony’s, WipeOut game on the Pulse (so players could custom paint skins for ther ships for in game playback). We invested the funds from this job into our own first 3D multiplayer browser game Russias Army Barracks. This game got traction online and generated enough revenue to perpetuate development of our own titles, experiments and ideas exploration. Coupled with the sucess of our Fly Like a Bird game and TeamTanks, Gamevial.com now has over 2 million monthly unique players is big in Turkey and Brazil & Poland :)

We are a small company, very small- just two of us, we outsource any exotics but of recent have been looking to hire in new fulltime developers to help grow the games further.

Say hello.  Or better yet, say hello and go and buy their games.  They’d do it for you.

You can also follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook.

May 28 2012

All Change…

So you may have noticed the new theme on the www.scottishgames.net site.  It’s the first step in the ongoing evolution of the site as a force for all that is good and right and true in the rapidly evolving wide, wide world o’ games.

NOW for the FIRST TIME EVER you can find all of the important bits of the site – The COMPANY DIRECTORY, the SUBMIT A BANNER page and the CORNER SHOP of ULTIMATE FASHION, all in one place.

The banner remains.  We love you and it gives individuals and companies a way to contribute and participate in new and exciting ways (and it’s open to everyone remember…)

Along with the new LinkedIn group, the Facebook page, Twitter account, RSS feed and e-mail list, we’re hitting several thousand people per day and pulling in all manner of attention from the powers-that-be, the powers-that-would-like-to-be, media, wider interactive sector and the ivory towers of academia from all four corners of the world.

Welcome all, to “the industry bible” (Holyrood Magazine).

We’re planning a lot more new and fascinating updates over the next few weeks, in anticipation of something a little more fundamental and radical later in 2012.  All good, we assure you.  In the mean time, we’re going to try this democracy thing over on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  We’ll be asking what you, our beloved readers, would like to see more of, less of, some of and otherwise pick your brains about how to make Scottishgames even more invaluable and awesome.

Then we can stick it to the rest of the creative industries with our astonishing use of digital media.  Because let’s face it, it would be embarrassing to be overtaken by the film & tv crowd, or art & antiques.

We’re counting on you.  Now go enjoy Monday…

Apr 24 2012

WeeWorld – Studio Profile

WeeWorld has been around on the periphery of the games industry, for several years now. Yet while many people recognise the company, it has evolved hugely since it was founded and is now working at the cutting edge of interactive entertainment.

So. In a nutshell: WeeWorld creates ‘visually distinctive and deeply engaging web, iOS and Android social games and applications’. The company’s goal is to ‘entertain and expand creativity and self expression in people of all ages.’

Which makes WeeWorld a ‘social entertainment’ company, which exists in the sweet spot between social networking, casual gaming and online communities. To start with, WeeWorld runs WeeWorld.com which has, quite literally, millions of teens hanging out every month.

WeeWorld.com is a top 10 teen social community, with a massive audience in the US. Every month millions of WeeMees express themselves, socialize, play games and engage with some equally large marketing campaigns, brands and celebrities.

As of now, there are 50 million WeeMees, which can be personalised and outfitted in the latest designer clothing, or equipped with massive range of accessories and interests, allowing users to reflect their real life interests and enthusiasms. These WeeMee are used all over the web to personalize blogs, email signatures, Twitter pics, the chances are very high that at least one of your contacts has one.

Last – and perhaps most importantly – WeeWorld is now in the mobile apps development and publishing business with a long list of five star rated apps in the market so far including:

WeeWorld’s mobile games studio has launched nine mobile applications to date, including the WeeMee Avatar Creator, which is #1 avatar on iPhone and ranked in the top 10 highest grossing iOS apps in the entire social networking category.

The company is following their existing apps with the recently announced Pocket Pup.

This is a virtual pet game in which the player has to train and care for an adorable WeeMee style puppy. Play with it, walk it, feed it and keep it healthy. From work-in-progress shots we’ve seen, the opportunities for ‘creative care’ should keep kids… happy.  WeeWorld’s mobile team also have a variety of other fun new applications in development.

WeeWorld’s focus on entertainment, gaming, virtual goods sales, personalisation and fun has paid dividends with the younger audience. The youth market currently drives around 50% of the overall app market so WeeWorld is perfect placed for further success in the App markets.

WeeWorld has also worked with many of the biggest brands and licenses in the teen market. Companies, artists and personalities including Coca Cola, Skittles, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, The Jonas Brothers, Jason Derulo, Snoop Dogg, Skechers, Timberland and Warner Music have all had campaigns and new content included in WeeWorld.

New games, new content, new apps and new deals with brand owners are all produced at WeeWorld’s development office in Glasgow.

WeeWorld works entirely on its own IP and now you – yes YOU – can be part of that creative fun! The company is actively looking for game designers, iOS developers and talented people to help the company continue innovating and producing popular, fun and original new content.

WeeWorld is backed by two of the most respected venture capital funds in the digital world. Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners, both of whom have invested in many pioneers in the online and mobile markets.

We’ll be talking to WeeWorld’s CEO Celia Francis later this week, to get more insight and information on the company and their work.

In the meantime, check out the Game Designer and iOS Developer jobs, or download one of WeeWorld’s apps for limitless creative fun!

Apr 23 2012

Coming Soon… WeeWorld Week

The first ever week-long focus on an innovative interactive company based in Scotland kicks off later today with WeeWorld.

Thanks to the art team for the spiffy new banner gracing the top of the blog.  Watch this space for much more info.  Coming soon….

Apr 20 2012

New Breed Part 1 – New Update For APB: Reloaded

APB: Reloaded is the new free-to-play incarnation of APB, the action-based MMO released by Realtime Worlds shortly before its demise in 2010.

The game was acquired by US-based Gamers First and ongoing development was put into the hands of Reloaded Productions, now located in Edinburgh.

APB: Reloaded was released towards the end of 2011 and has been building a growing audience of players worldwide – and generating revenue from the sale of virtual goods.

Today marks the release of the game’s first major update.  Code-named New Breed Part 1, the update adds a huge amount of new content, new challenges as well as tweaks, improvements and fixes across the board.

 According to the press release you get:
  • Weekly Challenges added to the Fight Club zones. Players can now compete for several tiers of prizes using entirely new, heart-pounding game modes.
  • New Progression Contacts in the game, handing out new player levels and the very latest experimental gear and gadgets. By finding them, players can earn themselves cool new virtual gear.
  • New Mods and Features can be picked up from the new Contacts, bringing new capabilities to players including increased inventory, radar jammers, recoil decrease, opponent tracking and the ultimate high-tech way to lock vehicle speeds at MAX.
  • Combat has been enhanced with new marksmanship and mobility modifications and sweet new weapons.
  • New Custom Clothing Sets including this spring’s ‘must have’ Paramilitary rig.
  • New Vehicle Kits for both Criminals and Enforcers. Players can cruise in style and smash into buildings and opponents while looking even cooler than before.

“New Breed Part 1 is a major step forward for APB Reloaded. The team has been listening to players’ feedback and making sure that every update makes San Paro a more incredible place to play”, said Michael Boniface, General Manager of Reloaded Productions, when we asked him for a quote.

It’s genuinely exciting to see a game that the majority of the industry had dismissed and written off as dead-in-the-water not only making a comeback, but building such an active (and growing) audience.  We’ll be talking to Reloaded in the very near future, to find out more about their plans for the game, the evolution from a paid product to free-to-play and the response from the media and games industry to their trend-bucking.

In the meantime, you can download and play APB: Reloaded – free – on your PC.  Find the game’s blog, or community, find them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.


We’ll leave you with the genuinely awesome live action trailer for the game, which will add a dash of colour and excitement to your Friday morning.

Apr 18 2012

The Physical Effects Of Audio In Gaming

GamaSutra has just posted a new piece of research commissioned by Euphonious and carried out by the team at Abertay’s H.I.V.E. facility, which looks at how audio in games physically affects players.

It’s an interesting read.  Across the board, with very different types of game, players experienced heightened breathing and heart rates when playing games WITH audio present.

There’s a brief excerpt from the piece below.  You can find the whole article on GamaSutra…

[What effect does in-game audio have on players? Audio expert Raymond Usher (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Crackdown) shares the results of a study in which players were monitored while playing three games -- Osmos, FlatOut, and Amnesia -- with audio and without.]

This study investigated the importance of audio in computer games. To do this an experiment was designed that compared groups of participants that played the same games with and without audio. Participants’ physical responses to the games were recorded via a bioharness that recorded participant’s breathing wave, heart rate, respiration rate and skin temperature.

Analysis of the heart rate and respiration rate of participants showed that those playing games with audio had a higher level of arousal (a combination of heart rate and respiration rate) and demonstrated the immersion capabilities of audio in games.

Which is why Euphonious started the off-the-shelf AudioSkins service, which provides smaller projects and indie developers with access to complete audio ‘packs’ for their online / casual / social or mobile games titles…

If you’re a developer, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Apr 17 2012

Not Just A Blog…

You can find us, like us, love us, join us, read us or participate with us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ too.  Go on, you know you want to.

You can even sign up for a daily e-mail newsletter, should you work for an evil organisation.  Links on the right hand side of the screen there.  Enjoy!

Mar 1 2012

New From YoYo Games – Froad – For iOS & Android

YoYo’s busy and efficient release schedule is back with the company’s latest title emerging for both Android and iOS.  Froad (is he/she a frog or a toad?  We may never know…)

In Froad, players are challenged to catch and nom down on tasty, tasty bugs – and avoid yucky horrid bugs, to keep Froad alive.

Keep him full, keep him happy.

Froad is another title in the simple, fast, pick-up-and-play style of game in which YoYo is rapidly making a name for itself.  The company’s previous titles – Karoshi, They Need To Be Fed, etc. are tapping into the appetite for fast, accessible games for smartphones.

YoYo’s game catalogue is now approaching 20 titles, covering a wide range of styles and genres – and formats, since the company is now publishing titles in HTML5.

You can buy Froad now on the Apple App Store and Android market for £0.69/$0.99.

Check out the video for the game here:

Feb 29 2012

Bigpoint Signs Deal With GamesAnalytics

All games, all analytics, all the time. Oooh yeah...Edinburgh’s Games Analytics have signed a deal with Bigpoint, the German-based online games publisher.  The deal will integrate Games Analytic’s Predict platform into Bigpoint’s games.

This will allow Bigpoint to analyse and predict user behaviour.  They can use this information to enhance the user experience, personalise games and increase retention rates and revenues.

Games Analytics worked with Bigpoint on one game back in 2011 and obviously impressed them with their technology and approach, since this new deal means platforms will be integrated and tight connections formed.

The Bigpoint Logo - yesterday

Bigpoint is the company behind games such as Battlestar Galactica, Skyrama, The Mummy Online and many others.  They get millions of players on a monthly basis.  Most of their titles use the freemium model, so clearly customer satisfaction and retention is a key priority.

Quote time:

Philip Reisberger, Chief Revenue Officer, Bigpoint said: “We are pleased to continue the collaboration with GamesAnalytics having enjoyed very positive results from our first project. Their predictive modeling and in-game messaging technology is an excellent extension our existing market-leading analytics toolkit and we look forward to seeing increased player value and player satisfaction.”

GamesAnalytics’ COO and Co-Founder Mark Robinson added; “it’s a great opportunity for GamesAnalytics to be working with Bigpoint. Their games are played by millions of users which the Predict platform can segment into actionable behaviors to develop sophisticated in-game messaging strategies.”

Games Analytics are out at GDC should you fancy a quick chat with them.  Stand #833 to be precise.

While some people may scoff, or indeed sneer at the use of data analysis and modelling, this is a great achievement for Games Analytics.  Online gaming is only going to get larger and to move beyond the standard cash up front business model (which doesn’t work out so well for anyone bar the publisher) data analysis is a key tool.  Congratulations to the Games Analytics team.

Feb 27 2012

Coming Soon – Cult Leader

There’s a new team in town – and they’re refined, elegant and every inch the sort of gentlemen we need in this hectic, hurly-burly world of videogaming larks.

 

Two Monocle Games is a new studio focusing on the creation of social games for networks including the current market leader, Facebook, as well as up-and-coming communities such as Google+ (with others considered as and when they release an API and have many potential players).

 


The company’s first title, Cult Leader is currently in production, with a release date pencilled in for Q1 2012.  Unlike the sleek, shiny and somewhat banal nature of the Zynga titles, Cult Leader tries to do things a little differently.

 

Players are struck by two sudden revelations.  First, that God is speaking to them and revealing that they, lowly player [x] is in fact a prophet of a higher power!  Charged with spreading the word and recruiting a fearless army of the righteous, to convert the peoples of the world and bring them to an armed compound in a remote location in which they may, together, exist in heavily-armed peace, harmony and one-ness.  All while blowing kisses at the leader’s fleet of bespoke Rolls Royces.

 


Second: that this cult leader thing is quite a good gig.  Pays well and is better even than making videogames as a career.

 

It is, as those in the financial sector are fond of saying, all upside, baby (before eating another swan, braying laughter and buying another bottle of £5,000 wine).  Those people will be first against the wall when the divine legions of [your cult here] sweep through the degenerate, smouldering remains of this so-called civilisation, eliminating the unbelievers and distributing blankets and soup to their still-twitching corpses.

 

So, all in all, nothing like Farmville.

 

Hurrah.

 


Two Monocle is clearly approaching the whole social games market with a very different attitude to the existing social game companies. Tom Naylor, the Big Cheese of the company, told Scottishgames:

 

I really want to try to do something different to the current social gaming trends.  The market leaders have a huge problem with perception and customer churn rates.  We are trying to address that using humour and game play through our brand and our products too. Cult Leader will be something really different on the social gaming scene and hopefully attract lots of attention from its obviously satirical edgy content to its actual game play (not the usual click-wait-click).

 

From our research we know there is a big market there.  Granted it is smaller than the 40-year-old-stay-at-home-mom, but it is there all the same and barely catered for. We want to produce satirical and humorous content for release every week or so (even if it’s just one mission).  Hopefully we can use this as one of the hooks to keep our customers coming back to play and enjoy.

 


All of which points towards something unusual, unique and fun coming to Facebook fairly shortly.  Two Monocle Games have let slip that they’ll be looking for beta testers in the near future.  Rest assured that Scottishgames.net will be your first stop for all of the latest news and updates from the TMG camp as Cult Leader progresses.  Admittedly they spurned our idea of approaching the Scientologists for sponsorship, but we still like them and will enjoy any and all Kool-aid as they provide it.

 


Two Monocle Games are also to be congratulated on a most excellent blog covering the nascent company and its first project.  It’s pithy, erudite and chock-to-the-brim with salient information.  It has gained our heartiest approbation and good wishes.

 

(also note the provision of manifold images and concept art for use within this editorial article.  Our hats, ladies and gentlemen, are most assuredly doffed).