Trading Card Freebie

  After spending a lot of time on free-to-play, I'm shifting to a game industry that is getting no love. Together with the wizkids over at To Be Continued, LLC I'm been working on a white paper that we plan to launch into the world in a few weeks. Trading Card Games (TCG), roughly the same size as casual gaming, are a natural extension of currently emerging free MMOs. For one, trading card games attract the same demographic. The immensely popular Yu-Gi-Oh!, which dominates with about 50% of the entire market, is hot sh*t with 12 year olds.

Maximum Hulkness

The cure for the common GTA clone. Heck, the Hulk puts GTA to shame.  One enjoys roaming one's habitat and stir some excitement. But it's difficult to outrun those pesky Liberty City law enforcers. And in all the Spiderman games, the city is really boring. But not no more. — read on

Female Advergaming gets Funded. Blows.

It is an obvious proposition: women like casual games, and advertisers like women. Therefore, advertisers like casual games. And so, unsurprisingly, a host of female-targeting games are sprouting all over the Interwebs. Thanks to the technical convenience of flash-based games, every site, blog and forum now features some idiotic clickable nonsense. But, unlike some of the people who are investing money in this, I'm skeptical that some of these new 'portals' will successfully persuade any women. Example. — read on

Yummmm…Bionic Commando

Yes, I too am a sucker for those games from the past. It's like remembering that fling you had in the summer of 198x. Well, I just ran into her on the street and she is looking fine... — read on

Quoted. Sort of.

After the exciting release of the report that I wrote with DFC Intelligence on the game activities of big media companies, Business Week is running a story this week that seems informed by my writing. — read on

Out now: Media Co’s & Interactive Entertainment Industry

Over the past year I've been working with David Cole from DFC Intelligence on a report that investigates all the videogame-related activity of media companies. And it's finally available. — read on

ESPN [Disney/Hearst]: sports & video games

As if it needed any evidence that video games are the sports of the 21st century, ESPN has announced it'll add a slew of 40 games to its site. Under the name ESPN Arcade, created in collaboration with casual & advergame developer Skyworks, sports fans can play online and collect trophies and other obviousness. — read on

Disney triples game dev effort

According to this article, Disney is reaching out and grabbing itself a piece. Last year Disney spent about $100 million on game development, which has increased to $130 million this year and, over the next five years, will further grow to $350 million "per year in video game investment, principally consoles and handhelds," according to CFO Tom Staggs. — read on