To the Moon was released in November by the independent studio Freebird Games. In contrast to last year’s big productions like Skrym or Batman Arkham City, this is a small-budget game developed in a 16-bits retro style. However, this game has been critically acclaimed for its originality, story and music score. From a visual viewpoint,…
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Marshall Seese’s reasons for starting social gaming company Mowgli Games were clear. “Simply put, it pissed me off that money like that could be made from a game where people spent all their time making something fake,” he said, in reference to Zynga’s wildly popular Farmville. “So from there I decided that social gaming would…
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Anyone who has been through team building exercises before knows how truly painful they can be. Someone tosses a NERF football at you, you nervously dig through your memory bank for a story that makes you stand out from the crowd, while simultaneously learning very little about your colleagues and feeling like you’re wasting your…
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Plink, a Facebook Credits-based loyalty program that rewards Facebook users for their offline purchases, officially launched yesterday. The concept isn’t new: Sign your credit or debit card up on their website, make a purchase from one of the participating restaurants or retailers, and start earning rewards. What makes Plink different is the blending between offline and…
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What’s the worst part about making your bed in the morning? That’s easy: it’s not fun. As an adult, you’ve come to grips with the fact that not all tasks can be done for the sake of recreation. Kids, however, have a harder time accepting this premise. That’s why HighScore House is making household chores…
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Last week, a new Facebook application borrowing on Second Life’s theme of an alternate, digital reality, announced it’s launch. Much like Second Life, Dot Friends is a virtual landscape where friends can hang out, chat, buy virtual products, but .Friends ties in a Facebook users’ profiles, allowing a more seamless transition into their offline worlds. “While…
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If you are a big fan of social games, you never want to miss out on the action, but every time you want to check your game status, you have to open your browser and log in to your Facebook account to continue playing. Imagine being just one click away from your favorite games and…
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Starting three years ago, entrepreneur Justin Beck helped transform a gaming hobby into a 37-person company with $180,000 in revenue per month. And now, at 24, he’s already turning his thoughts to charity and community. Beck started coding as an early teenager and built an unsuccessful Craigslist competitor with one of his high school teachers….
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2011 was a great year for the social gaming industry – Farmville, Mafia Wars and The Sims Social continue to be really popular. According to Super Data Research, it is expected that by the end of the year, the total market in North America will reach a growth of 35%. The Sims Social, one of…
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Saving the world ain’t easy, just ask anyone who plays Half-Life. Neither is destroying it, as anyone who plays Grand Theft Auto can attest. Whether you’re vowing your efforts for the side of good or evil, one fact remains constant: serious, all-night gaming requires serious, all-night energy. That’s why GamerFood has created an array of…
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In recent years, many people have discussed the potential of video games for instructional purposes. A few years ago, gaming interaction was achieved through computer or console peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, joysticks, a wide variety of game pads, and funny controllers such as the NES Zapper. The list of successful instructional games using these…
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With the number of social platform options for sharing your status, location, photos and more, there is an opportunity to leverage the existing data to create interesting new experiences. If this sounds a little vague then let me explain. For example, if you own a coffee shop, it may be interesting to showcase some of…
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Since 2009, Seoul startup Paprika Lab has raised US$3 million in funding and grown to 26 team members; they are now preparing to launch a third game. In that time, they’ve also gained some insight about gaming culture across the world. “People in each country behave very different – the level of skill, the tendency…
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I’m not an obsessive gamer, but Glitch, which just launched this Tuesday after over two years of development and 27,000+ beta testers in five months, is helping me understand that particular breed of human. Glitch tempts players with a huge virtual world to explore, with hundreds of places full of curious hand-drawn illustrations, peaceful little…
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Virtual worlds are nothing new. Second Life blazed the trail and opened up people’s eyes to the various uses of a virtual environment. Now virtual worlds may have gone mainstream, as we’ve noticed a serious trend that consists of meshing a virtual world on top of the Facebook social graph. Turntable.fm, which we covered previously,…
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There may be as many as 2 billion people learning English worldwide – a huge market motivated by the promise of higher-paying jobs and new lifestyles. Genii is exploring that market with its first English-learning game, VocabGenii. “We think there is a lot of potential in gaming in education,” says cofounder Rebecca Li, whose background…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More