Latest Soccer Tycoon Update – Now Live

Dynamo Games has released the latest update for Soccer Tycoon, the company's first Facebook game.  Featuring new stadiums, colour schemes and upgrades for the team room, office and training ground, the update also features the architectural majesty of the new 'San Milan' stadium seen above. Soccer Tycoon is free to play on Facebook.   http://www.facebook.com/pages/GokGames/145536482150586?v=wall#!/soccertycoon

Hot Air Bloon – New From Digital Goldfish

It's an iPhone release frenzy this week for the Scottish development companies.  Digital Goldfish, the company behind the iPhone version of the smash-hit Bloons, has released the latest game in the franchise: Hot Air Bloon. The AppStore itself is less than forthcoming with background on the game, but we prised a little more detail out …

AppJam & AppConference – LIVE

Over in Dundee's famous Discovery Point, the first International AppConference and AppJam are taking place.  The conference has a full line-up of speakers across all the various app platforms and covering everything from games, to lawyers, publishers and possibly even a platform owner (one of which per day may keep a doctor away - the …

FPS Trainer – New Company Offering ‘Online Games Coaching’

Play2Improve is a new company, based within Abertay University, which is focusing on using games technology to help people learn.  The company's first project is an online coaching service called FPS Trainer. FPS Trainer offers players of all ability levels the chance to learn the basic skills needed to play First-Person-Shooter games online against other …

New Xbox Dashboard Marginalising Indie Games?

The update to the Microsoft Xbox dashboard over the last week has caused concern in indie gaming circles.  Many developers worried that moving the Indie Games from the Games Store section to the new 'Specialty Shops' - which also includes features such as avatar customisation - is marginalising the emerging indie games market and making …

Tag Games Invites You To Dinner (And Judges You Harshly)

In a week of frenzied game release activity, Tag Games announced the first title to come through its partnership with Channel 4. Come Dine With Me is the insanely popular cooking programme which challenges four 'normal' members of the public (or occasionally celebrities) to hold dinner parties for each other. The guests then rate their …

Newsround – Thursday

Another day, another grab-bag of fascinating gaming tidbits from around this social network we call the Internet.  Good afternoon and here are today's headlines... GameCity - The UK's most 'idiosyncratic' games festival (it sounds so good we want to cry [GameSetWatch] 4.4 million tablet devices sold in the last quarter alone [Edge Online] Crossover - …

YoYo Games Releases First iPad Game – Maddening

YoYo Games is clearly not a company to rest on its laurels.  Following the release of Skydiver Mach II, the company's first iPhone/iPod game at the end of October, YoYo has now released it's first iPad game, Maddening. The App Store is less than forthcoming with the details, but according to the YoYo Games website: …

Culture Minister Criticises MPs Attitudes Towards Games Business

Ed Vaizey, the UK's Minister for culture, media and sport has attacked MPs general lack of understanding regarding videogames and the industry behind them, reports GamesIndustry.biz. Appearing before the Scottish Affairs Committee, examining the subject of tax breaks for the games industry, Labour MP Ian Davidson remarked that Mr Vaizey "...ought to be concerned about …

Realtimeworlds – postscript

News surfaced on Twitter earlier today that the domain http://www.realtimeworlds.com has now been acquired and staked out by a domain hosting company. So it seems appropriate to link to an epitaph of the company, which was posted on Eurogamer yesterday: "APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature …