Today, the game has sold 125 million copies. Tetris was created at the height of the Cold War in 1984. And, where most companies are spending millions of dollars developing new games, Tetris is a title that has stayed around for 25 years as a worldwide sensation. The game’s creator, Alexey Pajitnov, credits the game’s success because it is considered “easy to play but hard to master,” and it does not involve violence or other bad behavior. Electronic Arts, who holds the exclusive license on mobile devices for Tetris, hopes to see the franchise continue to grow. Read more…
Don’t look directly into the trap!
If you’re playing Burnout Paradise on your Xbox 360, and think you see “Obama for president” billboards, you’re not crazy. It has been confirmed that the presidential hopeful has bought advertising space in the game - presumably to try to appeal to the youth demographic.
Everything you ever wanted to know about Nintendo but were afraid to ask:
I have some exciting news about The Princess Bride Game! WorldWide Biggies has just released the Mac version of the game so that all apple users can join in the fun. Get the Mac version now by going to the game’s official site, www.princessbridegame.com. You can also view an exclusive behind the scenes video of The Making of The Princess Bride Game on MacLife here:
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/exclusive_behind_scenes_video_princess_bride_game
Additionally, MacLife is offering a 30% off discount coupon for all their readers, so head over to the site so you can save big!
The Princess Bride Game combines spectacular animation with the best of casual, narrative and adventure games. Help Princess Buttercup and Westley manage life on the farm, outsmart Vizzini in Battle Of The Wits, use teamwork to survive The Fire Swamp, find hidden objects with Miracle Max, and collect inventory to storm the castle. Check out the trailer here:
The Princess Bride Downloadable Game Trailer from PrincessBrideGame on Vimeo
Dresden, Germany (PRWEB) December 6, 2007 — As ackBytes has announced today, the arcade action video game Marble Sheep is ready and available for download on the Marble Sheep website.
Marble Sheep is an arcade game in which the player must help a little sheep to complete a total of 30 arcade-style levels packed with tons of different enemies, power-ups and logic challenges - each to be solved in a given time.
Do you remember those times sitting in the sandbox playing with glass marbles? Now you´re trapped inside one of those marbles. Ready to roll!
Ulf Ackermann, the developer of the casual game, said “Do you remember those times sitting in the sandbox playing with glass marbles? Now you´re trapped inside one of those marbles. Ready to roll!” This is great fun for players of any age.
“Marble Sheep was made to capture the best classic arcade gaming elements from different genres such as jump & run, racing or logic puzzle games.” The experiment did work, players have lots of fun racing down platforms, tubes or loopings. Evading dangerous obstacles such as flesh-eating plants, slime monsters or scarecrows is a blast. As in racing games, players have limited time to beat a stage. But this only works if they make wise use of the power-ups scattered in the levels and solve some physics riddles on the way to the exit.
Marble Sheep features a colorful, comic-like environment divided into three themes. Passing grassy hills, snowy mountains or deep dark jungles is the only way for the cute little sheep to find the good magician “Mumpelwitz”, who can get him out of the marble misery. Fortunately the game is free of violence, thus it delivers fun to a very wide range of gamers. A kid will be able to learn to control the mouse better, while casual gamers can just relax from work by exploring the challenging setting. Hardcore gamers may try to beat the latest online highscores.
Marble Sheep is currently available for PC download (14,95 $) and runs well on older hardware, too. The free demo features 4 levels of the full version.
For more information visit the ackBytes website or the ackBytes gamedev blog.
SEATTLE, Aug. 28 /PRNewswire/ — PopCap Games, the leading developer and publisher of casual games, today unveiled the results of the largest survey of players of “casual” computer/video games ever conducted. Among the nearly 7,500 adult respondents who took part in the survey, nearly a third (31%) indicated they had children or grandchildren under 18 who played these family-friendly puzzle, word and simple action games in their home. And of these 2,298 “family gamers,” 80% said they played casual games with their children or grandchildren. Conservative estimates peg the casual games market as being more than 200 million people in size, meaning more than 50 million casual game players are “family gamers” who enjoy experiencing the games in the company of younger family members.
Leading survey firm Information Solutions Group contacted 7,487 consumers and identified 2,298 as “family gamers.” Of those identified as family gamers, 79% were female and 95% were age 30 or older, figures that closely reflect the overall casual gamer audience. As many as 44% of survey respondents identified themselves as mothers of children who play casual games, and 36% indicated they were grandmothers. On the male side of the equation, 16% and 6% of respondents identified themselves as fathers and grandfathers, respectively.
Time Well Spent — Bonding, Education and More: Among adult “family gamers,” 92% overall (and 95% of grandparents in particular) said that they felt the games provided an opportunity to “bond with, or better relate to” their children or grandchildren. And fully 70% of respondents said they see casual games as providing valuable educational benefits. On a related note, only 28% of adult family gamers indicated they allowed their children or grandchildren to play “hardcore” video games — with fathers and grandfathers being significantly more inclined to allow the playing of such games than mothers and grandmothers (37% vs. 25%).
“Casual games span generations and genders in ways that traditional ‘hardcore’ video games never have,” noted Dr. Carl Arinoldo, a Stony Brook, New York-based psychologist of 25 years, expert on parent-child relationships and author of the new book Essentials of Smart Parenting. “This universal appeal, and the ‘G-rated’ content of the games, makes them a great activity in which the whole family can participate, with each generation enjoying the games in different ways while also enjoying the interaction with other family members.”
The average age of the children referenced by parents or grandparents who took the survey was 10.2 years old, with 65% being age 9 or older and 94% age 5 or older. Among the children with whom adults said they play the games, more than half (53%) were boys — suggesting that games with aggressive, violent and/or explicit content are not the only ones that appeal to young males, despite long-standing perceptions to the contrary. Additional survey data pertaining to specific casual game play among children under 18 will be presented in a separate press release soon.
Cooperative Versus Competitive Play: Among adult purchasers of casual games who have one or more children or grandchildren who play the games in their home, 94% said that at least part of their game-play interaction with their children or grandchildren was cooperative in nature — working together to solve puzzles, complete levels and so forth. In addition, 52% said the game-play with their kids or grandkids was typically a combination of competitive and cooperative play. Almost half (48%) of respondents indicated they had multiple children or grandchildren who played the games in their home. Of those respondents, 88% described the game-play interaction between the children as at least partly cooperative, while 12% characterized that interaction as strictly competitive. “The casual games seem to promote more of a cooperative ‘let’s work on this together’ type of atmosphere, as opposed to an aggressive, interpersonal competitive environment,” observed Dr. Arinoldo.
Benefits of Play: Many of the adults surveyed attributed a wide spectrum of mental benefits to children playing casual games. Nearly half (47%) of respondents observed an increase in their child’s level of interest and/or understanding in spelling, reading, vocabulary, and/or history as a result of casual game play. Mothers and grandmothers (49% each) observed these benefits more often than fathers (41%) and grandfathers (38%). Further, these benefits were observed far more frequently in children between the ages of 5 and 12 (about 51.5% of the time) than in children age 13 to 17 (39% of the time). In keeping with these observations, 66% of parents and grandparents of children who play casual games said they would welcome the use of such games in their children’s or grandchildren’s schools.
Great-grandmother Cheryl Yetter of Paskenta, California plays PopCap’s word puzzle game Bookworm(TM) with her 12-year old granddaughter and finds that both bonding and educational opportunities are plentiful. “She loves the game, and when she spends the night, it’s great fun to play together,” says Yetter, 64. “Considering she doesn’t really like to read, Bookworm has been a valuable tool, as she’s learned a lot of new words and enjoys looking up some of the odd ones in the dictionary.”
Interestingly, while parents and grandparents alike saw benefits such as such as hand-eye coordination, learning and mental workouts for their children or grandchildren, parents were considerably more likely to perceive a reduction in stress levels among their children than grandparents were. 23% of parents vs. just 6% of grandparents noticed a correlation between children playing the games and becoming more relaxed. More than one in ten (11%) survey respondents also said that they purchase casual games for, and/or play casual games with, a child with a physical or cognitive disability. The most common benefits cited for children with disabilities were: skill-building, hand-eye coordination improvement, positive reinforcement, stronger concentration and increased confidence.
Frequency of Play: Nearly one quarter (24%) of those surveyed said their children or grandchildren play casual games daily, with 71% indicating child/grandchild game-play at least once a week. Nearly all (96%) of respondents said they limited children’s’ game-playing sessions to two hours or less. (Likewise, only 18% indicated that their children or grandchildren played the games more than 9 hours per week.) Weekends (55%) and “after school on weekdays” (43%) were cited as the most popular times for kids to play casual games, with 32% also enjoying the games at night before going to bed.
Survey Methodology
This international research was conducted by Information Solutions Group (ISG; http://www.infosolutionsgroup.com) exclusively for PopCap Games. The results are based on online surveys completed by 2,298 respondents randomly selected between June 15 and June 29, 2007. The audience consisted of 1,645 United States and 653 international PopCap.com Website visitors; 483 were men and 1,815 were women. In theory, in 19 cases out of 20, the results will differ by no more than 2.0 percentage points from what would have been obtained by seeking out and polling all PopCap.com users age 18 and over. Smaller subgroups reflect larger margins of sampling error. Other sources of error, such as variations in the order of questions or the wording within the questionnaire, may also contribute to different results.
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