The Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty Collector’s Edition currently sells for $99, making it a $40 premium over the standard Wings of Liberty package. Both are on sale right now, and if you are reading this, you’re probably planning on buy one or the other. According to Amazon.com the CE includes these extras: The Art of StarCraft II: [...]
Source: Geek.com Games
IGN reports that Haden Blackman -- executive producer and writer on The Force Unleashed 2 -- has left LucasArts after 13 years at the company. Specifics aren't clear, but LucasArts says development on FU2 won't be affected.
Blackman's statement to IGN reads:
"I've had a fantastic time working with the team at Lucasfilm and am really grateful for their ongoing support. While the decision to leave LucasArts did not happen overnight or come easily, I really feel that now is the best time for me to move on and explore new creative challenges and I look forward to the next phase of my career."
We've contacted LucasArts for clarification on the situation and will update this story as necessary. Blackman's work on the Star Wars franchise at LucasArts stretches well beyond The Force Unleashed games and it's not clear if he will continue to contribute to that body of work.
Source:
Force Unleashed Producer Resigns [IGN]
UPDATE: LucasArts responded with the following statement -- "After 13 years of service, Haden Blackman has resigned from LucasArts. From launching Behind the Magic to delivering Star Wars: The Force Unleashed I and II, Haden has been an invaluable member of the team during his tenure with the company. We are extremely grateful for his many contributions, fully support him in his new endeavors and wish him all the best in the future."
Got any tips, corrections, or feedback? Contact GamePro's news team or follow the author of this story on Twitter.
Source: Daily News from GamePro.com
Despite lawsuits left and right in recent weeks, this one seems to have left a particularly bad taste in Facebook’s mouth—so much so that it is forbidding its users to talk about it on the site.
You can test it for yourself right now: try to write a status update including the word “power.com”. You can see firsthand that Facebook interprets this as an error. You will get a message that looks like this:
Blogger Eric Goldman, who writes a technology and marketing law blog, has been writing about the case since its inception. When Mr. Goldman publishes a post, he posts the blog headline and URL to Twitter, a standard practice in the blog world (AllFacebook does the same thing). He also uses an application that turns his tweets into Facebook status updates, so that the blog post headline and URL should simultaneously show up on Twitter and Facebook when he sends the tweet. Last Friday, however, when he wrote about a new ruling in the case, his Twitter-to-Facebook app seemed to malfunction, resulting in the headline not appearing as a Facebook status update. The message he tried to send was this, “Blog Post: Important ruling on California’s anti-computer trespass statute–Facebook v. Power.com http://bit.ly/bM7hQ.” Mr. Goldman then received the same message shown in the screenshot above: “This message contains blocked content that has previously been flagged as abusive or spammy. Let us know if you think this is an error.”
Goldman contacted press people at Faceboook who informed him that Power.com had done some “spammy and abusive things” to users’s accounts, and that’s why the word was banned. It is important to remember that there is also no guaranteed right to free speech on Facebook, like there is elsewhere in the U.S., and the private site can ban words if it wants to. But it is necessary? Even if Power.com is sending spammy and abusive content, shouldn’t users be able to discuss that on their walls and in their status updates? Blocking the website’s name isn’t going to solve that problem.
The question remains whether there should be freedom of speech on Facebook. The website is so widely used that it almost seems like such an unalienable right should carry over onto it. What do you think?
Source: All Facebook
Social gaming hiring activity was relatively subdued this week among top developers, according to our latest look at LinkedIn. Nonetheless, RockYou and Playdom still see some significant additions with veteran game developer Raph Koster taking his official position as Vice President of Creative design at the latter, and Mia Kang beginning a new job as Director of Sales at the former. Additionally, we have expanded our coverage of hiring changes to encompass the top 20 social game developers, based on our AppData leaderboards.
Here’s the list:
Source: Inside Social Games
Since we just launched it, the calculator can sometime take a while to load, however we’ll release an asynchronous version shortly which doesn’t run into the same type of page load issues. The tool was created to simply illustrate how Facebook calculates Facebook share and like counts. The first thing that may come to mind is whether or not this is how Facebook should display counts? Since it’s not actually the number of likes or shares, why is Facebook displaying it like it is?
I would argue that this calculation benefits the publisher. The greater the number in the like or share box, the more likely a visitor will click on it. While it’s not the most accurate representation, it’s helping out the publisher, and ultimately, that’s Facebook’s primary goal with the like and the share buttons. If you want to see how share and like counts are calculated, go check out our Facebook Like Count Calculator.
Source: All Facebook
Pokémon fans across North America and the PAL regions will have 28 days to unlock Legendary Pokémon Latias and Latios, beginning July 31.
Source: Geek.com Games
Nintendo posted 188,646 million yen ($2.2 billion USD) in net sales this quarter, down 25 percent from the same quarter last year. Operating income suffered a 42 percent drop to 23,343 million yen ($267 million USD). Wii sales aren't to blame.
Rather, the numbers reveal a dip in Nintendo DS sales for the quarter -- which isn't surprising with everybody probably holding off for the 3DS sometime in 2011.
On the release front, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword appears to be on track for a 2011 release in the United States (but not in Japan, strangely enough) while Hironobu Sakaguchi's The Last Story doesn't even have a U.S. release scheduled despite apparently being due out in Japan this year.
No other real surprises in the earnings report -- although Nintendo did make a point of listing some sales figures for its top-sellers, like Super Mario Galaxy 2 at 4 million sold.
Got any tips, corrections, or feedback? Contact GamePro's news team or follow the author of this story on Twitter.
Source: Daily News from GamePro.com
The reports have been streaming in to our inbox for the past few hours and it hasn’t slowed down. Numerous users are reporting the issue, however most of those users who are reporting it, all appear to be viewing the site in Spanish. By installing the Facebook Translations application and switching to “Spanish”, you can view many of the errors taking place. This isn’t the first time this trick has been used to spread vulgar messages throughout the site.
Due to a flaw in the Facebook Translations application, if enough people vote on an incorrect translation, that phrase will be replace what was previously a legitimate phrase. So far Facebook hasn’t had a chance to resolve the issue, however we’d expect Facebook to fix it pretty quickly as word spreads about the issue. I won’t bother to post screenshots of the issues taking place in other areas around the site, however if you are looking to find some vulgar phrases, switch over to the Spanish version of Facebook and poke around for a little bit.
With millions of Latin American users viewing Facebook daily, plenty of people have already been exposed at this point.
Source: All Facebook
Today we present our monthly look at Facebook’s language leaderboard and growth.
Facebook recently announced that it had reached an astonishing 500 million users around the world. However, the relevant question for developers, advertisers and marketers is not simply how large this total audience is, but how to reach more and more of these users through strategies including language localization.
While the overall ranking of the site’s top languages remains unchanged since June, with English-speaking users outnumbering the next group of language users by over 3:1, this hasn’t stopped many leading developers and marketing firms operating within the ecosystem from significant localization investment.
Such efforts are for good reason, too — among Facebook’s top languages, those that saw the greatest rate of growth were Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish and French. (Stay tuned to see how this maps to country market growth — we’ll be presenting July total audience numbers in the upcoming Facebook Global Monitor).
Here’s a look at growth rates for Facebook’s Top 10 languages:
What you can see from the chart above is that some of Facebook’s fastest-growing languages aren’t yet even part of the site’s top 5 overall. This is unsurprising — any change to the leaderboard will likely be slow, if it happens at all. Nonetheless, major markets in North America and Western Europe are reaching, or have already achieved, Facebook saturation. Users in those markets are also correspondingly savvy in their attitudes and receptiveness towards ads, applications, and fan page marketing campaigns.
The full Facebook Global Language Report, and extensive audience demographic data for Facebook’s markets around the world, is only available to members of Inside Facebook Gold, our data membership service. To learn more or join, please visit Inside Facebook Gold.
Source: Inside Social Games
With Facebook ramping up their Credits product, it’s not completely ridiculous that the company would kill off their gifts product, however the core idea was pretty smart: let people purchase virtual goods as well as receive those virtual goods as gifts from friends and show them off in their profile. The tie between virtual goods and identity is a critical component of any burgeoning virtual goods ecosystem. Somehow, Facebook has a massive virtual goods ecosystem without this key association (the one between virtual goods and identity), however I don’t believe this is sustainable.
The main flaw with the existing system is that when a user stops playing a game (like FarmVille for example), the virtual goods from that game do not transfer anywhere. In other words, all the money that was spent (which will soon be Facebook Credits) ends up being money that was spent on content that was not retained and had no lasting value. Tied in as part of the Facebook profile, those virtual goods can be saved forever. Most obvious is that virtual goods serve as digital artifacts that form a core component of an individual’s online identity.
Given that Facebook profiles serve as the primary representation of an individual’s digital identity, it’s only logical that virtual goods would become integrated and allow the application experience to live on, once the application is gone. This would not only increase the volume of transactions to take place with Facebook Credits, but it would also benefit the entire ecosystem. According to people I’ve spoken to, this concept is something that Sean Parker has personally pressed for, as well as other execs, however Mark Zuckerberg is not as big of a fan of the concept.
However the internal political debate is playing out isn’t really that relevant though. The main point is this: Facebook must provide some sort of central archive for individual virtual goods within the profile to help further the virtual goods ecosystem and accelerate usage of Facebook Credits, something the company is currently focused heavily on.
Source: All Facebook
R4 cards are well known around the world for allowing DS gamers to carry lots of games on a single cartridge. Unfortunately many of these cards are full of pirate ROMs downloaded rather than paid-for. In 2008 Nintendo decided to go after R4 importers by joining forces with 54 software developers and filing lawsuits in Japan. [...]
Source: Geek.com Games
Speaking to MTV News, film director Guillermo del Toro said he plans to announce a deal with a video game studio "soon" to make games. There are a few clues as to what kind of game he'd like to make -- but not many on with whom del Toro could make them.
Games blog MTV Multiplayer has the thought that the mystery "big company" could be Irrational Games -- since that studio has plans to unveil their mystery game in August. MTV also points out, however, that del Toro wanted to do a Hobbit game once upon a time ad we doubt that Irrational managed to score that contract without J.R.R. Tolkien fans finding out about it.
So who could it be? Activision, EA, maybe even Sony? Hopefully we'll find out sooner rather than later.
Here's del Toro's full quote in the MTV News interview:
"One of the things we're announcing in the next few weeks is a big deal with a big company. We're going to do games that are going to be technically and narratively very interesting. It's not a development deal. We're going to do it. We're doing them. And we're going to announce it soon enough."
Source:
Guillermo del Toro Has Multiple Games In The Works With A 'Big Company' [MTV Multiplayer]
Got any tips, corrections, or feedback? Contact GamePro's news team or follow the author of this story on Twitter.
Source: Daily News from GamePro.com
Right now the product will only be launched to a beta group, however Questions will be rolled out based on how the beta test performs. There are a number of significant features within questions that are not provided by competing services (i.e. Quora). For example, users will be able to add photos to a question, create polls, and browse through questions based on categories. One other substantial feature that many Page administrators will welcome, is the ability to ask questions directly from a Facebook Page.
Unfortunately, this product is still limited to a small group of testers, however it will eventually be expanded. One other pretty impressive feature is that users who define interests within their profile will have questions surfaced to them based on that information. In other words, it functions identically to Quora which also has a questions based profile for users. Just like Quora, Facebook Questions also has the ability to “Follow” specific questions and receive updates any time someone submits a new answer.
While we haven’t had the opportunity to play around with the Questions product yet, we will be able to explore this more in depth beginning at 1 PM Pacific. If you are not included in this round of the beta test, do not despair. Facebook plans on rolling this out to more users in the near future. Facebook also told us that for now, there are no plans to integrate questions into Facebook Ads, even though we personally can see the benefit of doing so.
To view the Questions product, simply visit http://www.facebook.com/questions.
Source: All Facebook
Having already grown to nearly 300,000 monthly active users in just a week’s time, this business game is already doing well for itself. It’s understandable growth considering the popularity of virtual space-oriented games and the point of playing going beyond mere aesthetics — and Playdom’s marketing muscle, no doubt.Overall the game is quality, and includes a few interesting tweaks on the sim concept. But it also has a few rough spots, probably due to its newness.
Like the restaurant sims of last year (Restaurant City, Café World, etc.), Market Street is all about pleasing customers and making sales. Players start off with a small box of virtual space and begin stocking shelves. Essentially, this is broken up into three basic parts: Order, stock, display.
Once you’ve decided between radial saws or a “Lady La La” CD or whatever, it’s time to stock. Depending on the level and cost of the ordered item, it will take a set amount of time to arrive. Once it does show up, it’s placed in the stock room and must be displayed.
In order to do this, players must purchase shelves, cases, tables and so on, with a limit based on level, in place. However, depending on the size of what it is they wish to buy, certain displays are required. Note that the game will not let the user order something they can’t sell.
Regarding stock and display, this is where the game becomes rather unintuitive. Whenever a player purchases items to sell or displays them, the quantity of objects is not actually apparent. Instead, stock is measured in time (e.g. a fully stocked table of CDs sells in about 10 minutes). It’s a bit odd, but items on display visibly decrease as they are purchased, and can be restocked with the same item before becoming completely empty. When the full amount of stock isn’t placed on an empty display, only a portion is removed from the stock room, and a green bar representing how much of the item is left in the stock room appears. It’s not really a complaint, but it’s certainly an awkward choice.
The first, and most basic, is checkout wait times. As a store gets bigger, players will need to purchase more cash registers to deal with all the customers. This is also where one of the first social elements comes into play, as each of these can be manned by a Facebook friend (and they do not even have to play). As it stands, however, they appear to only be able to be hired as a cashier and their uniform can only be altered by color.
There are other ways to keep customers happy. Aside from stocking your store with a different goods, each customer has a variety of thought bubbles that appear over their head. There are three in particular that one has to watch out for. The first is a trash can. It’s a simple enough fix, as whenever a shelf runs out of stock it gets dirty, but a simple click will clean it. The next is a question mark, meaning the customer needs help. You don’t actually answer their question, but click on them to “help” them before they get annoyed. As for the last interactive customer, it’s the one with a bandit mask. Watch out for these guys as they will steal goods and try to sneak out of the store, tasking the player with catching them before they’re free.
There are a few other things that the game doesn’t make clearly known either. It does attempt to guide the player moderately with a sort of quest system, but there are few specifics. One particularly frustrating moment was attempting to hire a friend, as there is no actual button. In order to do so, apparently one must click on an empty register. However, users start with a generic non-player character which must first be fired. This led to another headache as doing so literally broke the register to where it just said “collect” as if it were full. Obviously this led to many upset customers who couldn‘t check out, not to mention an annoyed player, and required a restart to fix.
Registers, in fact, are another unclear element. After a while they get “full” and the noted “collect” button appears. It does not look like they actually get full in the sense that they stop collecting money, but it’s yet another assumption the player has to figure out.
All in all, Market Street is an excellent business and virtual space title. It’s not fully polished in many parts — an issue that can be attributed to its recent release — but aside from the nasty bug example, such issues will likely go unnoticed by the average user. Additionally, the aesthetic gratification of the game is rather high, and the goal of making a business is so much more effective than other virtual space apps that simply say “make it pretty.” All the same, virtual spaces are a saturated genre for the Facebook space presently, and while business games are a stronger way to make them, it begs the question: What’s next?
Source: Inside Social Games
As before, here is the message that’s being posted when users complete the scam:
OMG OMG OMG… I can’t believe this actually works! Now you really can see who views your profile!!! WOAH –>
The scammers have dramatically increased the number of URLs that are part of this widespread attack. These are the latest URLs that we have compiled that are part of the attack:
What still continues to surprise us is that Facebook doesn’t have a system that catches people posting status updates that match a certain pattern, and alert the user that they may be part of a scam. While I’d expect Facebook to eventually release such a system, there is nothing in place right now and the Profile Spy scam continues to spread, as first pointed out by AVG.
Source: All Facebook
Thursday, July 29, 2010
