Google As Game Publisher?

2008-09-13 15:22:31

Will Google Play Games?

With Google increasingly willing to explore areas beyond its search engine roots, the website of business magazine Forbes has released an article discussing: Is Google as a videogame publisher within the realm of possibility?

The details are as below:

It's not as crazy as it might sound.

Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) already has its toes dipped in the gaming waters on a couple of fronts. "Google Lively," an avatar-based social interaction site, launched in July and appears to target "Second Life" players. And in March 2007, the Internet king acquired in-game advertising firm Adscape for ?23 million.

So far, Google hasn't done much with either. After an initial surge, "Lively" users are minimal--and Adscape has been quiet since the takeover. But the understated nature of these divisions could be temporary.

"The way Google works is they try a lot of different things, and they're OK with putting out sub-par products initially to get things moving," says Colin Sebastian, senior vice president of equity research at Lazard Capital Markets. "People are pretty forgiving of that ... since they're good at upgrading their products."

For its part, Google has downplayed talk of entering the game publishing or development arenas. At a conference in July 2007, Bernie Stolar, Google's Dean of Games (and the former head of both Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) Computer Entertainment America and Sega (other-otc: SEGNF.PK - news - people ) of America), said the company was solely interested in the advertising potential of games--nothing else. The subsequent release of the virtual world "Lively" raises doubts and questions, though.

Is "Lively" meant to be a testing ground for a new delivery method for Adscape? Or is it more?

The paths Google could take to develop a bigger presence in the gaming industry are varied. With its financial war chest, the company could easily acquire one or several casual game development houses, using those to deliver in-game advertising via Adscape.

Read More Here.

Resource: Forbes

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Vanguard: Update 6 Is Live

2008-09-13 15:18:01

Vanguard servers have now been loaded with Update 6. The latest patch comes with a literal boatload of bug fixes, enhancements and changes. Check out some of it below.

Isle of Dawn

The Isle of Dawn was separated from the continent of Kojan during the cataclysm. A village of battle hardened humans and a band of zealot hobgoblins have warred against each other for centuries on the Isle. Their mutual hatred for one another runs deep and even now they are locked in an ongoing struggle. Recently though, increasing numbers of ulvari have begun to surface on the island - much to the dismay of both the humans and the hobgoblins.
Weakened by their perpetual war, the humans aren't able to capably defend themselves. Even now, their villages burn as they frantically seek aid. The isle is in desperate need of heroes.

- The Isle of Dawn is now available for new characters!
- When creating a new character, you will now be presented with two options for your starting location. The Isle of Dawn will be one option, and the other option will be your selected Race's standard starting area.
- PVP, Exchange Brokers, Death experience and tombstones are turned off on the Isle of Dawn.

Player levels have been capped at 10 on the Isle.

Character Model Revamp

Player character models in Vanguard have undergone a bit of a revamp. Not only have they been optimized for better performance but they have been given a new, updated look. The revamped models are now capable of looking much more heroic and contain a lot more personality. Worry not though, for those players who don't necessarily want the heroic look, no customization options have gone away. In fact, we are reintroducing lots of facial customization as well.

Class Damage Updates

We have looked at and modified each class's damage capability, ensuring that each lands in their correct place in the spectrum of classes. We have looked at many things, from raid wide damage capacity to the tank's ability to control aggo, to the weak DPS of some healers and DPS classes. This was a relatively comprehensive pass to ensure that with GU6 raid targets are still killable. While the effects of these changes will primarily be felt at the highest end of the game, we are making sure that all levels of players are still functional. There has been extensive testing of these changes on the test server for the past several weeks and we'd like to thank all those players who have sent in testing logs - your efforts are greatly appreciated! For a more comprehensive list of class changes and updates, please read the list below.

Bug Fixes

In an effort to make the launch of the Isle of Dawn go as smoothly as possible, the Vanguard development team set aside a good portion of time this update to fix as many existing bugs as possible. We are pleased to announce that well over a thousand fixes are included with this patch. While many of them may not be immediately noticeable, we've included a more detailed list of those that are below.

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