Tablets Get Licensed Motion Comics

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Last year, startup Madefire began publishing its own line of digitally-enhanced motion comics for tablets, bringing a different media experience to these mobile devices. Co-founder Ben Wolstenholme stated that he wants Madefire to be a “best-in-class reading experience” rather than resemble an animated movie. Since then Madefire has expanded into user-generated content through a partnership with deviantART as well, but didn’t have any established publishers on board. Yesterday, Madefire announced that it is partnering with IDW, Top Cow, Boom! Studios, and ITV Studios America to bring established published content to the service.

Madefire will be working with its newly announced partners to bring a number of their series to the motion comic service, including the likes of My Little Pony and Star Trek from IDW, and The Darkness from Top Cow. All of the titles will be available on the Madefire iOS app and will also be on their deviantART. The new comics will cost anywhere from 99 cents to $1.99 depending on the length of the comic.

These motion comics are continuing to experiment with animation, sound effects and music, as well as trying out 3D-like effects. Will Madefire experiment with interactivity as well Interactive storytelling could be an interesting direction for motion comics to explore and could allow for stronger video game tie-ins.

Source: TechCrunch

This Week’s [a]list Jobs – July 17

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Who’s the best game company to work for  According to Business Insider, it’s Riot Games.

Here are this week’s [a]list jobs:

  • Activision Publishing Inc, Senior Manager, Public Relations, Skylanders (Greater Los Angeles Area)
  • Turtle Beach, Brand Marketing Manager (Greater San Diego Area)
  • Ayzenberg Group, Business Development for Broadcast (Greater Los Angeles Area)
  • Comcast, Media Sales Planner (Greater Los Angeles Area)
  • Ubisoft, Associate Brand Manager (San Francisco Bay Area)

[a]list daily is now your source for the hottest job openings for senior management and marketing in games, entertainment and social media. Check here every Wednesday for the latest openings. To see last week’s [a]list jobs click here.

 

How World Of Tanks Is Revolutionizing Xbox

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One of the more interesting and unexpected occurrences at E3 this year was the surprise appearance of Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi at Microsoft’s press event. Kislyi announced the imminent arrival of Wargming’s smash free-to-play hit World of Tanks on the Xbox 360, as a free download through Xbox Live. It’s the first time World of Tanks has appeared on a console, and the first major free-to-play game to appear on Xbox Live.

World of Tanks has become a stunning success, with over 60 million players registered worldwide. Wargaming has grown, too, and now has 1,600 employees, with 15 offices around the world (recently opening a Tokyo office). The company’s World of Warplanes has just entered open beta, and World of Warships is on the way as well. The Xbox 360, and potentially other consoles, represents new territory for Wargaming to conquer. The [a]list daily caught up with Victor Kislyi to ask him about this surprising announcement.

Why bring World of Tanks to the Xbox 360 It’s basically the same answer bank robber Willie Sutton gave in the 1930’s, when asked by a reporter why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is,” he replied, albeit apocryphally. Kislyi provides the modern game industry version: “In North America and the UK, that’s the way people play games,” Kislyi said. “Microsoft and Sony combined have an installed user base of more than 100 million, and those are gamers. They’re not checking email on Xbox or PlayStation. It’s a culture. You have to come to them.”

So Kislyi is coming to them, adapting World of Tanks to play on the Xbox 360. The result is an impressive AAA game that plays well on the Xbox 360 and has all the appeal of the PC versions. “The core game has all the depth and complexity that the PC version has,” noted executive producer and creative director TJ Wagner. “It’s running on the same server versions. The changes we made were all about playing it from ten feet away – simplifying the UI, navigating it from the controllers, combining the tank upgrades into packages.”

The biggest hurdle that Wargaming had to overcome was not a technical one at all. Wargaming had to convince Microsoft to change its business policies and procedures. “This is a risky thing for us and for Microsoft,” said Kislyi. “If you look at this objectively this is probably the first big project to come into Xbox free-to-play. Because Microsoft is a huge corporation . . . they have rules, they still sell boxes, there are dozens of aspects we are working with them to overcome. They have to change; they understand this.”

Microsoft traditionally can take weeks or months to approve changes or patches to be rolled out through Xbox Live, yet Wargaming is used to releasing patches and new data for World of Tanks every week. How can those two very different processes be reconciled “That is one of the risk factors,” Kislyi acknowledged. “We’ve been working with Microsoft already for lots of time. It’s about the teamwork. Their rules and policies are changing, and they now understand if they don’t change they will probably lag behind. It’s not easy, it’s not fast.”

Free-to win is the concept that Kislyi is using, rather than free-to-play. “We allow you to earn those things you could previously only buy for gold. It will take you a little longer,” Kislyi said. “Our point with the unified premium account is that the fewer restrictions for people to enjoy your product, the better. That’s the whole beauty and magic of free-to-play, or what we now call free-to-win. It sounds funny that Wargaming comes up with a new word. But it takes courage and guts to do that. Big companies would be ‘free-to-play, how do we allow anything for free ‘ Golden bullets, you used to have to pay money to get, now you can grind for it. It’s risky. But it’s working. There is no way back. If you announce golden bullets for in-game money, you can not go back. Well, you can, but it would be very painful.”

Characteristically, Wargaming’s marketing plan for World of Tanks on the Xbox 360 is simple and straightforward. “With Microsoft we have a marketing plan,” Kislyi said. “We do interviews, we do press, the press is very excited about this. Dozens if not hundreds of different interviews and hands-ons. We’re going to repeat our successful tactics on the PC with eSports, championships, prize money, special events like Liberty Day or Victory Day. There’s going to be a lot of excitement around this game.”

Wargaming may eventually bring World of Tanks to the Xbox One, but Kislyi isn’t concentrating on that. “Well, first they have to come out,” he laughed. “We’re very open with Microsoft about this. We see no reason why not, but they have to get the user base. For free-to-play you need critical mass.” Once the Xbox One has a user base in the millions, then Kislyi will be more interested in the possibilities for World of Tanks. By that time, too, Wargaming should have plenty of information about how well World of Tanks does on the Xbox 360.

If Kislyi has any expectations as to how World of Tanks is going to do on the Xbox, he’s keeping them to himself. “As I mentioned, this is risky both for us and for Microsoft,” Kislyi said. “The best way to find out is to launch, to work hard, to throw our best people on it, to convince Microsoft to throw their best people on it, and see how it goes. The user base is 48 million for Xbox Live; it’s a good number. All connected, playing actively. So let’s see how they love Tanks, how they feel about our free-to-win model.”

The free-to-play model may be a necessary game type for next-gen consoles to really be competitive with all of the options on PCs and mobile. That doesn’t mean every game should be or will be free-to-play, but the availability of high-quality free-to-play options will provide consoles with another reason for people to play on them. Whether free-to-play starts to drive out other business models (as it has done with MMORPGs on PCs) or it settles down to become another type of payment option alongside of premium paid games is not clear.

However it turns out in the end, World of Tanks is already changing the way Microsoft does business. It’s not just the camel’s nose in the tent. The camel has moved in, grabbed a beer from the fridge, settled on the couch and started to play on your Xbox 360. “At the end of the day we’re talking about the service,” Kislyi said. “It’s a game, but around it there are hundreds of people making you happier every day, every month, every year.” It will be fascinating to see what sort of reception awaits World of Tanks on the Xbox 360, and how much of the procedural changes it brings affect Microsoft’s policies for all games.

US Gives ‘League Of Legends’ Pro Sports Status

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Professional gaming has reached a new pinnacle of recognition, as the US State Department has now recognized tournaments for Riot Games’ League of Legends as a professional sport. As with other recognized sports, this means that professional League of Legends players are eligible for US work visas, opening up the market for player trades between US and international teams.

Though the game is now classified as an official sport, only players that are a part of Riot’s official tournament series are eligible for professional status.

“Now we have the same designation as the NBA or NHL or other professional leagues,” Riot VP of eSports Dustin Beck said in an interview with Polygon. “This opens the gate for other professional League of Legends players to make the transfer to U.S. Teams.”

This decision should change the composition of American teams as out-of-country players can now be recruited and granted work status. It also cements professional gaming, or e-Sports, as a legitimate enterprise and likely a cultural mainstay. League of Legends viewer figures are higher than “80 or 90 percent of the sports covered on ESPN,” according to Beck. That seems to hint that nationally televised League of Legends tournaments may not be too far off in the future.

Source: GI.biz

Retail Brand Boldly Tweets About Trayvon Martin

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Clothing brand The Illuminati, which themes itself as a conspiracy theorist brand, has been tweeting bluntly about the controversial trial of George Zimmerman, the man recently found not-guilty of murdering Florida teen Trayvon Martin.

The clothing brand caused a stir last Tuesday when it tweeted, “The Only Justice for Trayvon Martin is to take the Life of George Zimmerman. #EyeForanEye #ZimmermanTrial.”

The Washington Times published a screen shot of the tweet, which seemed to have called for the death of the former neighborhood watch leader.  The tweet has since been deleted, and a more controlled Illuminati tweet has since emerged, “We do not support any violence in reaction to the #ZimmermanVerdict however we do believe in #JusticeForTrayvon.”

Since the tail end of the trial, the brand, which has over one million followers on Twitter, has continued to tweet a stream of comments surrounding to the case.

The call for brands to be ‘more human’ could be what has recently seemed to spark the bolder social approach. For example, more and more brands are standing up for previously hands-off topics such as marriage equality (Ben & Jerry’s and Svedka) and peace between India and Pakistan (Coca Cola). But a controversial legal case that involves racial issues and murder That’s something most brands would avoid.  Then again this is the same company that posted the article “14 Conspiracy Theory Locations You Must Visit,” and sells t-shirts with slogans like “F*** the police.”

Despite the controversial social strategy, The Illuminati clearly knows its audience. The tweet about Trayvon garnered 1,410 retweets and 492 favorites according to Topsy.

Source: Digiday

 

Microsoft: Xbox One Policies Were Unclear

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Xbox One chief product officer Marc Whitten has said that he regrets the back-and-forth messaging that has been happening since May, speaking in an interview with IGN.

“I think it’s pretty simple. We’ve just got to talk more,” he said. “The thing that’s really gratifying is that people are excited about the types of features that are possible, and it’s sort of shame on us that we haven’t done as good of a job as we can to make people feel like that’s where we’re headed.” Whitten expressed that he didn’t see the reversal of policy as removing features from the console, saying “I believe we’ve added on choice for people.”

Whitten also responded to a recent petition calling for the restoration of Xbox One’s original policies, saying that the dissonance comes directly from Microsoft’s inability to properly discuss the benefits of the policies.

“What it tells me is we need to do more work to talk about what we’re doing because I think that we did something different than maybe how people are perceiving it,” he said, “They wanted what I call a bridge, sort of how they think about the world today using more digital stuff. What we did, we added to what the console can do by providing physical and offline modes in the console. It isn’t about moving away from what that digital vision is for the platform, It’s about adding that choice.”

It appears that Microsoft’s policy change isn’t about removing features, but is about providing a medium between a fully digital policy and the current delivery methods of consoles. Whitten seems to be leading the charge in communicating that Microsoft recognized that there was a problem with explaining the policy, and that now the company is striving for clarity in exactly what the benefits of a digital Xbox One means.

Source: IGN

Kinect Costs ‘Almost As Much’ As Xbox One

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In a recent “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session on Reddit, an unnamed Xbox One developer working for Microsoft revealed inside information about the next-gen console, including how the Kinect costs almost as much as the console itself to manufacture. The person also discussed how Microsoft employees felt about the rocky reaction to the Xbox One announcement.

“The majority of the masses care only about the console, except that the success of the Kinect carries much more weight to us,” said the developer. “The sensor costs almost as much as the console to make. The goal with having a Kinect ship with every Xbox is to guarantee to game developers if they implement Kinect features into their games, everyone who has an Xbox will be able to experience it. I often see people dismiss the Kinect instantly because they haven’t seen it work like I have. It is an integral part of the Xbox One experience.”

Talking about Microsoft employee reaction to the policy changes, the developer expressed regret that the change had to happen, but agreed that it was unclear to gamers what the benefit of the policies actually was. In particular, the developer noted, there was regret internally at Microsoft for the loss of digital sharing options in the new console.

Source: GI.biz

Mad Max ‘Soul Of A Man’ Trailer

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One of the more unexpected games announced at E3 was a video game adaptation of the classic movie Mad Max. This new trailer gives a look at the grim world of Mad Max as well as some of the car-based combat and action players can expect.  The game is slated for release next year.

Qualcomm Promotes ‘Pacific Rim’

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Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm has joined forces with Pacific Rim in a co-promotion campaign designed to tie the special-effects heavy summer blockbuster with Qualcomm’s high-powered Snapdragon mobile processors.

The effort includes two games based on the film. The first, Pacific Rim: Jaeger Combat Simulator, is playable on the Pacific Rim website. It lets players create their own giant robotic, or Jaeger, and fight against the Kaiju monsters from the film in five environments. The second game comes in the form of an Android-only app that allows users to utilize augmented reality to project a city onto any flat surface using Qualcomm’s Vuforia technology. Players then battle against a number of Kaiju, whether on their kitchen table, the backyard or any other usable area.

In a tie-in publicity stunt, Qualcomm left three massive footprints representing the footfalls of the movie’s gargantuan ‘Kaiju’ monsters along with massive banners promoting Snapdragon in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium.

Source: Qualcomm Blog