Mobile

Electronic Arts has laid off an undisclosed number of staff. The company tells Joystiq that it is "sharpening its focus to provide games for new platforms and mobile. In some cases, this involves reducing team sizes as we evolve into a more efficient organization."

Joystiq says that 60 to 70 permanent employees were let go from the EA Mobile Montreal office, with over 100 contractors also affected. "If you walk through the office all you see is a bunch of already cleared-out desks, and people cleaning out their desks," a source told the website.

Update: As to the rumors and tips we've received about the layoff impact on EA's MMO lineup, we contacted EA for a response, but EA declined to comment specifically on Mythic or BioWare, providing us instead with the same statement given Joystiq.

Order & Chaos Online is definitely trending a bit closer to the chaos side today. Gameloft's mobile MMO is getting a major patch to shake up a number of the game's systems, starting with the level cap rising to 70. That alone will shake up player expectations, but the addition of two new areas for players to explore is going to give fans plenty of new options on their way to that expanded level cap.

Not a fan? Well, then, none of that is going to matter to you. But you can get into the game easier than before, with the patch allowing new users to sign in via Facebook accounts. There are also more mounts, pets, and a beauty salon for changing your character's appearance. So there's plenty to enjoy, but if you're playing it on your phone, you should probably pull your car off to one side of the road before downloading. Otherwise you'll be causing entirely the wrong sort of chaos out of the game.



[Source: Gameloft press release]

My brother called me the other day to tell me that he had just beaten me in Real Racing 3, an EA title that has drawn some criticism for its use of microtransactions. I enjoyed the heck out of the game, and it seems that EA is not worried about the criticism thanks to the overall positive response to the title. I asked my brother about the in-game purchases and he didn't really know what I was talking about. It was only more evidence that the rest of the market -- especially the huge mobile market -- doesn't really appear to care about persistent worlds or immersive lore. The fact is that pseudo-MMOs or games that are barely on the edge of MMO are MMO enough for many people, even people like my brother, who is no stranger to MMO gaming and has spent years in and out of World of Warcraft raiding and leveling.

I was going to write about a game called Raft Pirates for this column, but when I started to look at it, I realized that it didn't quite seem like a "real" MMO, and so I asked the developer to define the game for me. The response I got back only added to my confusion about where the mobile market is going. So in today's MMObility, I want to continue the discussion I started last week, but this time I'll like to look at how the mobile market is keeping things muddy.

Continue Reading

The mobile MMO market is still so young and underdeveloped that it seems unfair to judge it too harshly. Calling it devoid of quality content is sort of like describing the dark days of early graphical MMOs, a time filled with games that were nothing but a grind wrapped in what we thought was a pretty package. In hindsight, those three-day waits and incredibly tedious levels were "fun" only when we consider that they were all we had to choose from.

The mobile market is about 80% crap as it is right now; this is true. I say that as someone who is a massive fan of the platform. For what it's worth, the rest of the standard MMO market is around 80% crap as well, but there are a lot more titles to choose from. Mobile has its star titles and wonderful developers, but when a game like Avabel Online pops up, I cringe at the possibility that an entire generation of gamers might grow up on such tedium.

Continue Reading

If you've got a serious craving for ArcheAge and you don't mind cutesy graphics, you might want to check out XLGAMES' ArcheVille. Oh yeah, you'll also need an iOS device (an Android version is in the works).

What exactly is ArcheVille? It's a farming- and minipet-based mobile game that ties into XL's upcoming sandpark title. MMO Culture reports that gift exchanges are possible between ArcheVille and ArcheAge, though we're not sure if that functionality will work for English-speakers just yet due to the latter's Korean-only client.

In any event, ArcheVille is currently available in English and viewable in the App Store. You can view a gameplay video after the break.

[Thanks Dengar!]

Continue Reading

Want to play World of Tanks on your tablet? You'll soon be able to do something similar thanks to World of Tanks Blitz, an Android and iOS title announced today by Wargaming.net.

The game will feature 7-on-7 PvP matches "inspired by" World of Tanks, and it will allow players to lead American, Russian, and German tanks into battle. "With World of Tanks Blitz we're doing our best to give players a gaming experience that would rival anything they could find on a console," says Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi via press release. "We've always been committed to bringing World of Tanks to new platforms and we're excited to give players a chance to experience the game in a whole new way."

The firm has yet to announce a release date.

Mobile MMORPGs are still hard to come by. Sure, there are a ton of pseudo-MMOs and developers who claim to have created an MMO, but the fact is that persistence -- a key to defining what an MMO is -- is often gone from many of these games. I want to be able to log out of the game while the rest of the digital world goes on without me. Or better yet, and in the case of most MMORTS titles, I want to log out of the game and continue to have an effect on the world through trades, wars, or the fallout of diplomacy.

Even though the market is often bare, there are still quite a few MMOs out there. Many of them are fun as well! I know, I know, I am making it seem as though the smartphone or tablet MMO market is empty of all content, but the truth is that for its age, it's doing very well. There are more and more coming out all of the time, and hopefully I'll be there to cover them. In the meanwhile, enjoy a list of the specific titles that rest on my Nexus 7 3G tablet, just waiting to be played anywhere and any time!

Continue Reading

In an attempt to answer the question of whether the games industry is dying or not, Twisted Pixel Lead Developer Dan Teasdale conducted research into all of the layoffs of 2012 and believes he has found that, among other things, MMO developers had the highest risk of being fired.

"Looking at the the raw number of people affected, MMO teams laid off more developers than console teams," Teasdale argues. He notes that 38% of video game industry layoffs hit MMO studios, although only 26% of MMO studios did any firing. Layoffs in Boston and Austin, including the closure of 38 Studios, accounted for a third of all industry layoffs, which could look good or bad depending on the total number of studios in those two cities relative to the rest of the industry (info hard to come by and not included in the study).

One upshot of the report was that MMO studios tended to lay off fewer people when firings happened in comparison to social, mobile, and console studios. "While this probably isn't a surprise, it's a clear indication that it's way harder to survive as a social or MMO developer than a console developer," he concludes. However, the analysis does not break down the types of employees laid off, such as designers vs. support, community, and temporary contractors, roles common in the MMO industry.

Continue Reading

Within the ever-changing landscape of MMOs, the mobile MMO is a peculiar beast. Not too often will you find any perfect storm of MMO features in one mobile title, but as players, we're instead forced to make do with a game that includes our favorite parts and pieces.

Book of Heroes is a mobile MMO that first launched for Apple devices in November of 2011 and on Android in March of 2012. The game's developer, Venan Entertainment, has most recently produced Chapter 3: Dragonmoor, which puts the game even closer to what one might want from a "true" MMO. It's not even close to being there quite yet, but if you like raiding and battling up the leaderboards with your friends, you might just enjoy this game.

Continue Reading

Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Keep that in mind before you tell that me the games that fill out the following list of "best-looking browser-based MMORPGs" are ugly as sin. Sure, some of them are an acquired taste, but I wanted to display just how much variety there is now in browser gaming. It's not the delivery system it once was; we have had fancier-looking Flash-based titles for a while, but now with engines like Unity or Silverlight and even HTML5 coding, we have games that look no different from their client-based counterparts.

There are still some ugly-as-sin games out there as well, but they have endearing qualities all the same. So keep that in mind; this is my top 10 list. If you want to suggest your own in the comments section, I would love to hear them!

Now, on to the list, in no particular order...

Continue Reading

Innogames' hit browser-based game Grepolis has been receiving some pretty exciting updates lately. It's one of my favorite MMORTS titles because it's simple to learn and can be played on practically any schedule, so I've really been enjoying the updates that have added music and sound effects, holiday mechanics, and more animations. There's a lot more to come, however, according to Grepolis' developer crew.

What sort of things? Well, besides the usual updates and additions to gameplay, the team is promising that how players interact with the community will change as well. Sure, plenty of developers have promised better communication and more interaction, but what Grepolis is promising might just be some of the coolest community tools yet. If they work, of course.

Continue Reading

First released in Russia in April 2011, Dragon Eternity was later localized in English and grew to include players in other countries. Now, the browser-based fantasy game is expanding into another frontier -- mobile devices. In this exclusive video diary, developers announced that the game is being developed as a cross-platform experience; Dragon Eternity will release for the iPad this spring, then Android and Facebook versions will soon follow.

The video also discussed different aspects of the game, such as the newly implemented naval battles and the quests' tie-ins to minigames. Upcoming content in the works includes player battlegrounds and private castles where players can give others quests to each other. Check out all the details in the video after the cut.

[Source: Game Insight press release]

Continue Reading

If you're turned on by augmented reality gaming or games that occur at least in some part within the real world, then you have probably heard about Google's latest experiment, Ingress. Google has been in the MMO game before. Years ago the company created a sort of social sandbox called Google Lively. It was a very interesting project, but its disappearance did not exactly fill me with confidence that Google could pull off another one. Still, this is one of the country's largest experimentation-driven companies with some of the smartest people and greatest access to information, so an ARG might just be the perfect fit.

I was just given access to the current stage of the game; be aware that everything I talk about or show you is most likely going to change over time.

Continue Reading

Selling power is a much quieter controversy than it used to be. I've been in gaming long enough to remember when selling anything desirable at all was taboo. At the same time, it's always been OK to sell some things like subscriptions or special boxed editions, proving that MMO gamers and others are brilliant at segmenting their rage. If it's a cool, special box with a neat virtual item inside, it somehow does not fall under the same umbrella as selling powerful, useful items in game. I think it does. But geeks in general are good at justifying poor behavior if they get what they want; just ask the hackers and file-swappers.

Still, it doesn't matter how we feel about selling power because the industry is already moving in the direction of selling power, lots of power. EA recently announced that every title it produces from now on will feature microtransactions. While that doesn't guarantee the sale of powerful items, I can promise that it will include some. This train ain't stopping. Sure, the console community seems a bit late to the party when it comes to the power-selling controversy, but that's likely because of MMOs' always-on multiplayer mode.

Continue Reading

According to GamesRadar's unnamed sources, BioWare San Francisco has reportedly been shut down as of today, resulting in the layoffs of 25-30 employees associated with the studio.

The studio formerly known as EA2D was responsible for the Dragon Age Legends Facebook game and the browser-based Mirror's Edge 2D. While it was focused on developing mobile and social games, Electronic Arts found that handling development in the area was too expensive and has shut down operations.

Our condolences to all those affected by this shutdown.