What rings in the holidays better than complete online pwnage? Social game domination without the need for a pesky credit card, that's what. Facebook strategy game maker Kabam announced that $25 and $50 gift cards are now available in GameStop and Best Buy locations across the U.S. Of course, players can use these cards to buy in-game boosts for an unfair competitive advantage.
"The introduction of Kabam Game Cards is an important step forward in our continuous search for new and better ways to serve our audience of core gamers," Kabam COO Chris Carvalho said in a release. "The availability of pre-paid Kabam Game Cards at these two leading game retailers validates the rise of hardcore social gaming as a mainstream activity and allows more players to enrich their game experience with powerful in-game items."
By "enrich their game experience" we assume Kabam means "crush their weaker, non-paying foes." But really, the point of the Kabam gift cards is to allow a new portion of social gamers the chance to pay up: those without bank accounts or credit cards. The gift cards are usable through the developer's games hosted on Facebook and Kabam.com, but not Google+.
That said, every Kabam game supports the new gift cards at least somewhere, including the brand new The Godfather: Five Families. Attention stubborn free players: Prepare to have your butt handed to you this winter--Happy Holidays.
Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn kabam. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng
Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn kabam. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng
Thứ Hai, 9 tháng 1, 2012
Thứ Sáu, 30 tháng 12, 2011
Hardcore Facebook games could grow five-fold by 2013
While I would consider FarmVille as hardcore an experience as they come for dedication's sake, that's not what this study by Social Times Pro has in mind. All Facebook reports that the market for games like Kabam's Kingdom's of Camelot and Backyard Monsters by Casual Collective will increase five times in just the next two years. As of right now, the total hardcore social game player base is about 20 million--by 2013 that number could soar to 100 million. And according to Casual Collective CEO Will Harbin, making it happen is as easy as making games that hardcore gamers want to play.
"[We] just need to make games they're not embarrassed to play," Harbin said to All Facebook. "As quality of the content increases... we'll see a lot of growth in the male gaming market." Ah-ha, so that's who you're looking at? If this is the case across the board, you can probably expect more stereotypically violent social games in the future. And while Harbin admits that these types of games have player bases that are dwarfed by the likes of FarmVille and CityVille, he claims that the hardcore audience is more likely to spend than your average digital farmer.
Social Times Pro study
According to All Facebook, Casual Collective's Backyard Monsters raked $30 thousand more a day after the company announced and released weapon upgrade. He expects that by 2013, 30 percent of the top monthly Facebook game charts will be male dominated games. That is entirely possible due to the expected increases in daily players, which would boost monthly numbers by default. But what's more interesting is Harbin's estimation that Zynga will not enter the hardcore social game market. You better hope that you're right about that, Harbin, because Zynga has quite a few studios with hardcore backgrounds, probably just waiting to make Facebook's proverbial StarCraft.
[Image Credits: Denuology and Social Times Pro]
Are you a hardcore social gamer? Do you see the sub genre growing by this much in just two years?
"[We] just need to make games they're not embarrassed to play," Harbin said to All Facebook. "As quality of the content increases... we'll see a lot of growth in the male gaming market." Ah-ha, so that's who you're looking at? If this is the case across the board, you can probably expect more stereotypically violent social games in the future. And while Harbin admits that these types of games have player bases that are dwarfed by the likes of FarmVille and CityVille, he claims that the hardcore audience is more likely to spend than your average digital farmer.
Social Times Pro study
According to All Facebook, Casual Collective's Backyard Monsters raked $30 thousand more a day after the company announced and released weapon upgrade. He expects that by 2013, 30 percent of the top monthly Facebook game charts will be male dominated games. That is entirely possible due to the expected increases in daily players, which would boost monthly numbers by default. But what's more interesting is Harbin's estimation that Zynga will not enter the hardcore social game market. You better hope that you're right about that, Harbin, because Zynga has quite a few studios with hardcore backgrounds, probably just waiting to make Facebook's proverbial StarCraft.
[Image Credits: Denuology and Social Times Pro]
Are you a hardcore social gamer? Do you see the sub genre growing by this much in just two years?
Thứ Hai, 26 tháng 12, 2011
Global Warfare on Facebook: Is Kabam's latest a 'real game for real gamers?'
There's an interesting new trend developing in Facebook games. While we've all spent the last two years bombarded with me-too games about farming or tending to virtual pets/stores/cities, several companies are starting to reach out to a new type of social gamer -- the hardcore strategy gamer.
These PC-centric strategists make up a small but extremely passionate portion of the game-playing public, and instead of perfecting headshots in games like Halo or Gears of War, they prefer to take down enemies with a series of well-thought-out military style maneuvers (and a little resource management on the side) in games like Command & Conquer or StarCraft.
2KGames is planning to release a rendition of the classic game Civilization for Facebook and Kixeye (formerly Casual Collective) recently rolled out Battle Pirates with plans to create more of the same. Social gaming publisher Kabam, however, has been leading the charge with bringing serious strategy games to Facebook, with the release of Kingdoms of Camelot, Dragons of Atlantis and now, a new modern military-themed strategy game called Global Warfare.
global warfare on facebookThe game is set in a "near future" world where goverments have been disbanded and replaced with a series of warring territories. Players band together to take on other states or dominate using less direct methods, like controlling resources such as titanium or crafting items using collected artifacts.
"We're focused on building real games for real gamers...," says Kabam General Manager Bryan Bennett. "We wanted someone to come into the game and immediately notice that this is different; this is not a typical Facebook game."
To do that, Bennett and crew added a handful of features ripped from classic real-time strategy games, such as crafting -- players can collect artifacts and use them to drive research and development for their societies. Resource collection is another new feature this game. Resources are scarce and in remote areas, designed that way to get players who like to "turtle up," out of their shells and interacting with other players. Bennett says they also played close attention to the game's user interface (which was inspired by StarCraft, btw) and the overall art style.
While this is a tried-and-true strategy game -- Global Warfare is also a social game, though not in the same way that, say, FarmVille is a social game. While there is some light gifting included in the game, GW's social elements work more like those in big online MMOs such as World of Warcraft -- where players form groups, called Alliances ("if you're not in an alliance you're going to get crushed," says Bennett) and then work together in real time to come up with a plan for domination. An in-game chat system helps facilitate all of the required planning.
Soon, Bennett says, Alliances will be able to go to war with each other (right now the game only supports player vs. player combat) and there will be Alliance-wide crafting that will give the entire group a combat bonus.
The game will be refreshed with new content regularly -- one big release per month -- and the next big thing to roll out in game is the ability to build a third city (right now you can access two cities), along with a new type of special troops and other bonuses.
Gallery: Global Warfare on Facebook
Oh yeah, like most other Facebook games, Global Warfare is free to play with the option to spend cash if you want to get ahead faster or score a few rare items. Some things you can spend your hard-earned gelt on includes speeding up how long it takes to train troops and build resources, and -- for those of you who like surprises -- you can spend cash to buy mystery crates with the chance to win a rare item inside.
For now, Global Warfare is only available on Facebook and both Bennett and Kabam VP Brand & Marketing Ted Simon says were tight-lipped on plans to move on other platforms.
"We believe that the game industry is at an inflection point -- current console games are fairly stagnant and growth is primarily happening online," Simon says. "As mobile platforms become more sophisticated, there will be a little shifting taking place.. we'll keep moving where our players are, but that's where we see the opportunities. We think we've got a bit of a jump on other folks."
These PC-centric strategists make up a small but extremely passionate portion of the game-playing public, and instead of perfecting headshots in games like Halo or Gears of War, they prefer to take down enemies with a series of well-thought-out military style maneuvers (and a little resource management on the side) in games like Command & Conquer or StarCraft.
2KGames is planning to release a rendition of the classic game Civilization for Facebook and Kixeye (formerly Casual Collective) recently rolled out Battle Pirates with plans to create more of the same. Social gaming publisher Kabam, however, has been leading the charge with bringing serious strategy games to Facebook, with the release of Kingdoms of Camelot, Dragons of Atlantis and now, a new modern military-themed strategy game called Global Warfare.
global warfare on facebookThe game is set in a "near future" world where goverments have been disbanded and replaced with a series of warring territories. Players band together to take on other states or dominate using less direct methods, like controlling resources such as titanium or crafting items using collected artifacts.
"We're focused on building real games for real gamers...," says Kabam General Manager Bryan Bennett. "We wanted someone to come into the game and immediately notice that this is different; this is not a typical Facebook game."
To do that, Bennett and crew added a handful of features ripped from classic real-time strategy games, such as crafting -- players can collect artifacts and use them to drive research and development for their societies. Resource collection is another new feature this game. Resources are scarce and in remote areas, designed that way to get players who like to "turtle up," out of their shells and interacting with other players. Bennett says they also played close attention to the game's user interface (which was inspired by StarCraft, btw) and the overall art style.
While this is a tried-and-true strategy game -- Global Warfare is also a social game, though not in the same way that, say, FarmVille is a social game. While there is some light gifting included in the game, GW's social elements work more like those in big online MMOs such as World of Warcraft -- where players form groups, called Alliances ("if you're not in an alliance you're going to get crushed," says Bennett) and then work together in real time to come up with a plan for domination. An in-game chat system helps facilitate all of the required planning.
Soon, Bennett says, Alliances will be able to go to war with each other (right now the game only supports player vs. player combat) and there will be Alliance-wide crafting that will give the entire group a combat bonus.
The game will be refreshed with new content regularly -- one big release per month -- and the next big thing to roll out in game is the ability to build a third city (right now you can access two cities), along with a new type of special troops and other bonuses.
Gallery: Global Warfare on Facebook
Oh yeah, like most other Facebook games, Global Warfare is free to play with the option to spend cash if you want to get ahead faster or score a few rare items. Some things you can spend your hard-earned gelt on includes speeding up how long it takes to train troops and build resources, and -- for those of you who like surprises -- you can spend cash to buy mystery crates with the chance to win a rare item inside.
For now, Global Warfare is only available on Facebook and both Bennett and Kabam VP Brand & Marketing Ted Simon says were tight-lipped on plans to move on other platforms.
"We believe that the game industry is at an inflection point -- current console games are fairly stagnant and growth is primarily happening online," Simon says. "As mobile platforms become more sophisticated, there will be a little shifting taking place.. we'll keep moving where our players are, but that's where we see the opportunities. We think we've got a bit of a jump on other folks."
Thứ Ba, 20 tháng 12, 2011
Kabam on Edgeworld's release and what battles lie ahead [Interview]
Even at first glance of its war-torn landscape filled with futuristic buildings blasted to bits by the laser weapons of alien and mechanized armies, it's clear that Edgeworld is San Francisco-based developer Kabam's most ambitious project yet. Formerly known as Watercooler, the studio and publisher is filled with fans of traditional strategy PC games. Even CEO Kevin Chou was a world-ranked StarCraft player back in the day.
Inspired by sci-fi staples like Star Wars, Star Trek and even the Halo series of shooter games, Edgeworld is the culmination of Kabam's ongoing mission to bring a true 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game experience to Facebook. Since the game's "open beta" release in August, the team is hard at work to make that vision a reality as it claims to have in previous games. (As of this writing, the game enjoys over 858,000 monthly players, according to AppData.)
We sat down with Edgeworld Producer James Holloway recently to hear his thoughts on the game post-release, and what plans he and the rest of the Kabam team have for the strategy game in the future.
Edgeworld in action
Now that Edgeworld has released, what are your knee-jerk reactions? What do you love about the game at release, and what would you like to fix most?
We're really pleased with the release so far. We're seeing a lot of people come back to play the game--it has a really high retention. A lot of people are joining Alliances and engaging with each other. In every sector, I see chat is very active. But this is just the beginning.
The biggest thing that I think we're missing is that our Alliance feature is pretty lean right now. The thing that we would like to emphasize more is a cooperative play of the game. I think we have just the basics right now. The new Maps feature is going to integrate very tightly with alliances--you work together [with Alliances] to conquer territory.
We have about four unique turrets and nine units, and that's just the beginning. We're working on a new unit and a new turret that we're really excited about, and those are going to launch in the next month. We'll be introducing higher levels of our buildings. So, there's a lot more content that we need to create, and we're just getting started.
What's the most interesting thing you've seen players do in the game since release--something that never happened during testing?
One thing that we sort of didn't anticipate was that some Alliances and players are attacking each other for resources. At one point we didn't have inter-Alliance resource sharing, so right now you can actually send resources to other players to help them out. So, we didn't have that feature [originally].
But what people were doing was working around that by setting up their Command Centers, which are what contain your resources, outside the perimeter of their turrets. [Players would then] leave their Alliance, cook it, and then attack them and take their resources. So, they were doing resource transfers before the feature was even allowed.
Do you have any interesting or helpful gameplay tips for the players to get ahead in Edgeworld?
Certainly! If you're just starting out, we give every player two days of starter protection wherein no other player can attack you. That's a free few days of protection, and use that time wisely to build up your base and experiment with different configurations. Allow the Factions to attack your base. There's a lot of experimentation with the units.
Players are posting on the forums, talking with each other and also within their Alliances about the best combinations of units to deploy when attacking a base. There are a lot of combinations of tanks and DPS [damage per second] units you can deploy. Rhinos, or other types that have a lot of hit points, can take a lot of fire, and then you can deploy units with longer range or higher DPS behind them.
Edgeworld blast
Depending on what your goals are--like, you might want as many resources as possible--you might want to deploy the Raiders. The Rhinos draw fire from the turrets, while the Spectres sit outside and fire away at the turrets. You really want to upgrade your Spectres to give them a longer range.
We have two different types of units in the game right now: infantry units and mechanized units. It's not necessarily that the mechs are more powerful than the infantry--we're still constantly balancing the game to make sure every unit has its role.
Another thing is that the Warp Gates are really important as far as attacking goes. As you upgrade those, you increase their capacity so that you can actually deploy more units on the ground [at once]. As you unlock more units, the more powerful units will start to consume more of the [Warp Gates'] bandwidth, so you want to upgrade those to deploy the biggest army that you can.
Thanks for talking with us (and for the tips), James.
Territories Could Blow Alliance Play Wide Open
During our chat, Holloway had something brand new to show coming soon to Edgeworld. (Though, it's still in the concept phase, so weren't provided images.) It's a feature tentatively known as "Territories," and the game's producer hopes that it will expand Alliance play into something even more meaningful.
"We haven't seen a past feature like this that I can think of, and we all play a lot of games," Holloway gushes about what he's about to show me. "We're trying to make this a deeper, more robust 4X or empires building game."
As it relates to the game's story, many of the Galactic Union's outposts have been abandoned during the war for Cerulea IV, and they're ripe for the taking. The Territories feature will provide you with a map of the entire planet Cerulea IV, with your home base appearing in the center as a star. Your home base will be surrounded by either hostile, Alliance or neutral territories marked in red, green or simply displayed as abandoned outposts, respectively.
Edgeworld concept art
It's up to you to work with your Alliance to invade either hostile (controlled by enemy Alliances) or neutral outposts, and keep them under your control for as long as possible to reap their benefits, which weren't revealed to us. (Our best guess is additional resources to keep your home bases going.) Players will individually attack outposts just as they would enemy bases, and can call on their Alliance for help asynchronously.
However, players cannot build on these outposts, only bolster their existing defense turrets with their own resources to maintain control of the benefits they provide. This will make it more difficult for enemies to invade. Speaking of invading, players can only enter outposts that are adjacent to their own base or controlled outposts. Eventually, we see the Territories feature becoming a constant struggle between opposing Alliances, and hopefully something for us to work toward.
"This is very different from our other strategy games," Holloway says. "In most cases you individually own tiles on the map, but in this case you kind of need an Alliance to own territory. This is something we're really excited about. We're still working on it and prototyping it, but hopefully we'll have something out in the next four weeks."
[Image Credit: Kabam]
What are you impressions of Edgeworld so far? Are you excited about the upcoming Territories feature coming to the game, and what else do you hope to see from developers like Kabam?
Inspired by sci-fi staples like Star Wars, Star Trek and even the Halo series of shooter games, Edgeworld is the culmination of Kabam's ongoing mission to bring a true 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game experience to Facebook. Since the game's "open beta" release in August, the team is hard at work to make that vision a reality as it claims to have in previous games. (As of this writing, the game enjoys over 858,000 monthly players, according to AppData.)
We sat down with Edgeworld Producer James Holloway recently to hear his thoughts on the game post-release, and what plans he and the rest of the Kabam team have for the strategy game in the future.
Edgeworld in action
Now that Edgeworld has released, what are your knee-jerk reactions? What do you love about the game at release, and what would you like to fix most?
We're really pleased with the release so far. We're seeing a lot of people come back to play the game--it has a really high retention. A lot of people are joining Alliances and engaging with each other. In every sector, I see chat is very active. But this is just the beginning.
The biggest thing that I think we're missing is that our Alliance feature is pretty lean right now. The thing that we would like to emphasize more is a cooperative play of the game. I think we have just the basics right now. The new Maps feature is going to integrate very tightly with alliances--you work together [with Alliances] to conquer territory.
We have about four unique turrets and nine units, and that's just the beginning. We're working on a new unit and a new turret that we're really excited about, and those are going to launch in the next month. We'll be introducing higher levels of our buildings. So, there's a lot more content that we need to create, and we're just getting started.
What's the most interesting thing you've seen players do in the game since release--something that never happened during testing?
One thing that we sort of didn't anticipate was that some Alliances and players are attacking each other for resources. At one point we didn't have inter-Alliance resource sharing, so right now you can actually send resources to other players to help them out. So, we didn't have that feature [originally].
But what people were doing was working around that by setting up their Command Centers, which are what contain your resources, outside the perimeter of their turrets. [Players would then] leave their Alliance, cook it, and then attack them and take their resources. So, they were doing resource transfers before the feature was even allowed.
Do you have any interesting or helpful gameplay tips for the players to get ahead in Edgeworld?
Certainly! If you're just starting out, we give every player two days of starter protection wherein no other player can attack you. That's a free few days of protection, and use that time wisely to build up your base and experiment with different configurations. Allow the Factions to attack your base. There's a lot of experimentation with the units.
Players are posting on the forums, talking with each other and also within their Alliances about the best combinations of units to deploy when attacking a base. There are a lot of combinations of tanks and DPS [damage per second] units you can deploy. Rhinos, or other types that have a lot of hit points, can take a lot of fire, and then you can deploy units with longer range or higher DPS behind them.
Edgeworld blast
Depending on what your goals are--like, you might want as many resources as possible--you might want to deploy the Raiders. The Rhinos draw fire from the turrets, while the Spectres sit outside and fire away at the turrets. You really want to upgrade your Spectres to give them a longer range.
We have two different types of units in the game right now: infantry units and mechanized units. It's not necessarily that the mechs are more powerful than the infantry--we're still constantly balancing the game to make sure every unit has its role.
Another thing is that the Warp Gates are really important as far as attacking goes. As you upgrade those, you increase their capacity so that you can actually deploy more units on the ground [at once]. As you unlock more units, the more powerful units will start to consume more of the [Warp Gates'] bandwidth, so you want to upgrade those to deploy the biggest army that you can.
Thanks for talking with us (and for the tips), James.
Territories Could Blow Alliance Play Wide Open
During our chat, Holloway had something brand new to show coming soon to Edgeworld. (Though, it's still in the concept phase, so weren't provided images.) It's a feature tentatively known as "Territories," and the game's producer hopes that it will expand Alliance play into something even more meaningful.
"We haven't seen a past feature like this that I can think of, and we all play a lot of games," Holloway gushes about what he's about to show me. "We're trying to make this a deeper, more robust 4X or empires building game."
As it relates to the game's story, many of the Galactic Union's outposts have been abandoned during the war for Cerulea IV, and they're ripe for the taking. The Territories feature will provide you with a map of the entire planet Cerulea IV, with your home base appearing in the center as a star. Your home base will be surrounded by either hostile, Alliance or neutral territories marked in red, green or simply displayed as abandoned outposts, respectively.
Edgeworld concept art
It's up to you to work with your Alliance to invade either hostile (controlled by enemy Alliances) or neutral outposts, and keep them under your control for as long as possible to reap their benefits, which weren't revealed to us. (Our best guess is additional resources to keep your home bases going.) Players will individually attack outposts just as they would enemy bases, and can call on their Alliance for help asynchronously.
However, players cannot build on these outposts, only bolster their existing defense turrets with their own resources to maintain control of the benefits they provide. This will make it more difficult for enemies to invade. Speaking of invading, players can only enter outposts that are adjacent to their own base or controlled outposts. Eventually, we see the Territories feature becoming a constant struggle between opposing Alliances, and hopefully something for us to work toward.
"This is very different from our other strategy games," Holloway says. "In most cases you individually own tiles on the map, but in this case you kind of need an Alliance to own territory. This is something we're really excited about. We're still working on it and prototyping it, but hopefully we'll have something out in the next four weeks."
[Image Credit: Kabam]
What are you impressions of Edgeworld so far? Are you excited about the upcoming Territories feature coming to the game, and what else do you hope to see from developers like Kabam?
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