Tuokio: Coin-Op Games Experience on iPad With Friends
A new gaming start-up has recently appeared on the Finnish start-up scene. Tuokio is based in Tampere and their core business are mobile games for everyday gatherings. To be more precise, they develop a portfolio of games for iOS devices. Founded in spring 2010, they released three games so far and are developing another game at the moment. Their games so far include King of Opera, Raiding Company and Blond vs Brunette Racing . We talked with one of the founders, Jouni Salonen, to learn more about what they do.
Online And Social Gaming Space In Russia
Online gaming and social gaming are the two biggest blocks of the gaming market in Russia. The market's overall worth has been growing by roughly $20M a year since 2008, reaching $250M in 2010. The 20-30% growth is expected to continue in the following years, estimates RIA Novosti. Between 3-5M people actively play online games, mostly MMORPG client and browser-based games. Even more people - between 10-15M - play social games on local social networks like Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. Large as they might seem, those numbers pale in comparison to the number of online gamers in Europe or US. Russia is lagging behind due to its slowly developing Internet connections (especially in the regions), forbidding price of unlimited data plans and undeveloped online payment systems. At the same time, all of those are changing to the better which is why online gaming market is set to grow to $400M in 2012. Other facilitators of growth include social networks' growing audience together with a growing number of successful online games.
Habbo Hotel Continues To Register Success After Success: 200 Million Users And Counting
2010 was the best year for Habbo Hotel and I thought this would be one news regarding Habbo Hotel for quite some time to come. But success is not stationary and it continues to move ahead. The world’s largest teen virtual community and social game, Habbo registered its 200 millionth user just with the start of January. Quite a news since its tenth anniversary.
Swedish SLX Games Takes First 3D MMO To Facebook
The Swedish social games maker SLX Games has taken its first 3D MMO to Facebook. Their Nord game has now been ported to Facebook, by taking advantage of Java technology that works on all major platforms including Mac, Linux and Windows. They will try to extend Facebook's social reach into 3D in a manner where people can socialize in a way that is common in other parts of the internet. Nord allows players to design their own virtual worlds and fill it with their own events as well as parties.
Rocket Pack Launches Ground Breaking Cross-Platform JavaScript Games Engine
Finnish social gaming startup Rocket Pack is preparing its first casual multi-platform MMO, expected to come into beta in a few weeks. However, maybe the most interesting aspect of the company is that as a "side" product of the development, they have build a game engine and complete tool set for game developers to build browser-based single player games, Facebook games, and browser-based MMOs that work cross-platform. That is, the games run on PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Android, smartphones - on all major browsers, without any plugin installations required.
Ethics And The Freemium Business Model - Case Social Games
Earlier this week we covered the Games Developer Conference Europe 2010 (GDCE) session on Monetizing Social Games. Continuing on the same topic from a different angle, in another GDCE session, Teut Weidemann, lead designer of Settlers Online at a Ubisoft studio, provided further guidance on how to actually maximize the games' monetization by game design. He presented, as reported by Gamasutra, that in order to succeed with the freemium business model, one should "exploit human weaknesses", i.e. design the game so that it psychologically resonates with the deepest human feelings - so look into the seven deadly sins...
Making Money From Social Games
Games Developer Conference Europe 2010 (GDCE) took place last week in Cologne, Germany. Social gaming was naturally one of the key topics, covered in many presentations. As most, if not all, of the games on social networks use the freemium business model (i.e. it is free to install and start playing the games), of particular interest for developers is how to generate revenue from the games.
The Game Industry In Flux
Those following the mobile gaming industry paid notice that the Finnish gaming studio Universomo was shut down (in Finnish) by its owner THQ Wireless, which acquired the Finnish firm back in 2007. Rumors started to spread on Tuesday this week and pretty soon THQ confirmed the liquidation of the studio. This is part of a bigger shift in the game industry.
