15 FIRMS RESHAPING GAMES 70 MCV 11/06/10
NDREAMS
Being a start-up company in the games business can be a daunting thing. Established studios look down from on high in a market that too often leans towards the familiar. Around here you need to carve your name fast, and you need to carve it well. nDreams has been showing little fear since opening in 2006. Developing and publishing where others fear to tread, the company is breaking ground. Founded by former SCi/Eidos creative director
Patrick O’Luanaigh with a remit of focusing first and foremost on digital gaming, the firm is currently best known for the world-first, genre-bending Xialternative reality game for Playstation Home. But that’s not all, it is launching Facebook games like Spirit of Adventure– the ‘first social networking soap opera’ – and is even collaborating with Reebok and F1 star Lewis Hamilton. In an industry known for being at cutting edge of
entertainment and its consumption, it’s good to know that someone has their sights set firmly on the future.
EA PARTNERS
Natural law dictates that complex systems are successful ones. EA gets this, and EA Partners was born out of it. By co-publishing titles
developed by third-party studios, it is helping independents who would otherwise be a rival to EA and its biggest franchises. Oh, and it brings in cash for EA in the process. Crysis, Left4Dead, Rock Band, Bulletstorm. All
these titles are co-published under the EAP label. Recently Insomniac Games signed up, as did Respawn Entertainment, infamously formed by ex-Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West. By condoning IP retention and allowing studios to
have a say in publishing strategy, EAP’s set-up is now being copied by the likes of Activision and THQ. But it’s too late: the balance of power between publishers and developers has already shifted towards the latter, driven by the very deals EAP encourages.
XBOX LIVE INDIE GAMES
The Xbox Live Indie Games service, which now plays host to over 1,000 titles, has afforded fledgling developers the opportunity to see their work appear on one of the most popular online console services. The channel provides a platform for games
created using Microsoft’s XNA toolset. In time it has helped teams and individuals from all walks of life
GAIKAI
Cloud based games that can be embedded into any website, blog or browser and played from a single server farm? Sounds too good to be true. Still, Dave Perry, the man behind upcoming streaming tech Gaikai, knows the industry, knows the technology and has demoed Modern Warfare, World of Warcraft, EVE, Spore, Mario Kart 64and Adobe Photoshop all running in a simple Flash player to prove it.
FOURSQUARE
Becoming the Mayor of your local Starbucks may sound a little uncool, but in terms of altering the way people think about achievement-based gaming, Foursquare is pushing boundaries. It’s not a game by name, but it sure behaves like
WWW.MCVUK.COM
Gaikai has already procured massive investment
from big venture capital firms and tech investors like Benchmark Capital. And while the potential for cloud services to revolutionise gaming is as massive as the potential for it to fail, it is only with risky ventures that the greatest advancements are made. Which makes ambitious Gaikai one to closely watch.
BIGPOINT
There’s no denying digital distribution is one of the forces empowering numerous firms on this list – and Bigpoint’s gaming portal stands as the best example of how the future of gaming is online. The German firm runs one of the top three gaming
portals in the world and is a publisher, content provider and developer all in one, showing just how much convergence represents the best opportunity for studios to make a profitable business in difficult market circumstances. While the likes of EA Partners are decentralising
the production process, Bigpoint shows a developer taking charge of the whole chain. As questions over
what exactly is a game, and who is a gamer, gets harder and harder to answer, the firm is a trail-blazer in giving some direction.
CONNECT2MEDIA
Apple may grab the headlines when it comes to mobile. But the company itself doesn’t exactly deserve a space on this list for just building the train tracks. The companies to champion are are those driving forward. Hence our choice of Connect2Media, a division of
Manchester-based Mforma. This mobile games firm has developed, published and distributed a raft of
one. Users check-in at venues using text messaging or location-aware apps and are awarded points. The service itself has almost one million users and rumours that Yahoo plans buy it. Where this line of casual play changes things is in
its special use of real locations to encourage devoted behaviour. Foursquare is a game that doesn’t need ‘playing’ and one, if you go by Twitter, a lot of developers are enjoying. It won’t be long until an actual video game tries to capture the same energy.
ONLIVE
Although pitched by some as similar to Gaikai, philosopically OnLive is more Apple to Gaikai’s Microsoft. It’s a format-holder-like, ambitious cloud gaming service that launches this month with big backing – but it’s a closed, proprietary system. Nevertheless, Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Epic Games, Atari, Codemasters, THQ, Warner Bros., 2D Boy and Eidos Interactive have all signed up to have their PC games available on the service, lending OnLive a considerable weight of experience and inherent quality. Having British Telecomm as a minority stake-holder doesn’t hurt, either. OnLive matters because, one way or another, cloud gaming will have a place in video games. And whatever form this sector ultimately takes, you can’t deny OnLive has helped kick-start this field and draw huge attention to it.
METACRITIC
The genuine value of mass score aggregation may be disputable, but the impact of Metacritic –
like it or not – is undeniable. Metacritic flies in the face of assertions that you
can’t quantify class. It takes the barrage of noise made by game reviewers all over the world and condenses it all into a clear, single number. Providing simplicity amid such diversity is the key
the opportunity to create games sold to real consumers for MS Points. There are doubts about an ‘indie ghetto’ on the
console and the usefulness of XNA, but it’s the value of the Creator Community – which tests, reviews and vets games pre-release – that finally shows how Microsoft has delivered on Live’s promise.
titles for iPhone, Android and Symbian. So far, so typical. Yet it’s Connect2Media’s new
efforts to launch subscription services for mobile games in the West – like those available in Japan – that shows real promise. Key acquisitions earlier this year are helping it build a business that will bring new delivery, micro-payment and business models to gaming apps. And not just iPhone apps – all handsets.
to its success online, and in an industry where hype plays a dominant role, Metacritic has become the industry’s own objective voice; the unflinching global review that publishers cannot touch even with the deepest reserves of money. The ties between Metascores and sales volumes is not fully established – with the highest-ranking games typically enjoying huge promotional campaigns from confident publishers – yet when companies base business goals on one website’s archive of numbers, you know there’s real weight behind it.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH Amiqus Games is a leading provider of specialist talent to the video games Industry. The company recruits for some of the world’s premier studios for artists, animators, producers, programmers, designers and executives, such as studio heads and director level.
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