A new study from the University of Oxford has revealed that playing video games doesn’t affect a person’s wellbeing.
As reported by The Guardian, the study tracked the habits of nearly 40,000 people.
They were asked to track information such as if they were playing for fun, to socialize, and or to meet goals within the game.
Understanding how to gather interest for your game ahead of launch is a prime topic at every Develop:Brighton.
And at this year's edition of the conference, Twin Drums' founder and creative director Allan Cudicio delivered an inspiring example based on the studio's journey so far with Afro-fantasy MMORPG The Wagadu Chronicles, which has garnered interest in particular since a viral Twitter thread in January 2020.
"There are so many games out there, Steam every year is worse," Cudicio started. "That's why it's really important to think about traction before your game comes out. It's important to think about B2B as well. So not just customers, but also publishers, investors and other additional organisations you are going to be working with. That's something I started thinking of very early and it paid off."
Clear community guidelines and human moderation are key to reducing hate and harassment in online gaming communities.
That's one of the key findings the Anti-Defamation League reported this week out of a study it conducted into hate and harassment in Minecraft.
The group partnered with Take This, Gamersafer and the Middlebury Institute's Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism to assess three months' worth of anonymized moderation actions and chat logs provided by three private Minecraft servers.
Meta's string of VR acquisitions has hit a snag, as the Federal Trade Commission today announced it wants to block the Facebook parent company and CEO Mark Zuckerberg from acquiring Within, the maker of the VR fitness app Supernatural.
"Instead of competing on the merits, Meta is trying to buy its way to the top," FTC Bureau of Competition deputy director John Newman said. "Meta already owns a best-selling virtual reality fitness app, and it had the capabilities to compete even more closely with Within's popular Supernatural app. But Meta chose to buy market position instead of earning it on the merits. This is an illegal acquisition, and we will pursue all appropriate relief."
The FTC noted that Meta already owns the top-selling VR device in the Meta Quest and a leading storefront for VR apps in Quest Store, and a stable of the most successful VR developers including Beat Games, and "one of the best-selling apps of all time" in Beat Saber. All of those properties can be traced back to acquisitions made by Meta/Facebook, dating back to the 2014 acquisition of Oculus for $2 billion.
Internal documents leaked from Roblox have detailed the firm’s early plans to align itself with a number of Chinese censorship rules and laws.
According to the August 2017 documents, which were shared by Vice this week, the company listed several key features necessary for Roblox’s launch in China, and had plans to separate its Chinese user base from other international players.
The company also discussed the potential that its Chinese launch partner Tencent may seek to hack the game, or launch its own 'copycat' version of Roblox.
Microsoft has released its financial results for the fourth quarter of its financial year (three months ended June 30, 2022), as well as its full-year results, showing a slight decline in gaming revenues.
Fourth Quarter
Revenue: $51.9 billion (up 12% year-on-year) Operating income: $20.5 billion (up 8%) Net income: $16.7 billion (up 2%)
Rockstar Games has apparently undergone a significant transformation over the last few years in order to veer away from its history of crunch, staff burnout and insensitive content.
Bloomberg spoke to 20 current or recently departed employees, all under the condition of anonymity, who report the company has new structures in place specifically to avoid overtime and has even reduced the scope of its highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6.
In fact, managers have reportedly been promising for four years that excessive overtime will not be required to finish the game.
The UK's premier indie, publishing and investment event will return to London Excel in September.
GI Live: London will feature leading games companies meeting and connecting with developers in a two-day event. The show begins on Wednesday, September 21st and runs until Thursday, September 22nd, with a digital-only meeting day set for Tuesday, September 20th.
Companies set to speak and meet with creators includes Valve, ID@Xbox, Square Enix Collective, Sega, Curve and many more to be announced. Tickets are on sale now.
Capcom has released its financial results for Q1 2022, covering the three month period ending in June 30, reporting a year-over-year decrease in revenue and operating income.
The firm reported net sales of ¥25.2 billion ($184 million), a 48% decline during the same period of the previous year.
Operating income dropped by 49% year-over-year, coming in at ¥12 billion ($87.6 million).
Meta is taking the unusual step of raising prices on its latest VR headset.
The company today announced that beginning next month, the Meta Quest 2 will carry a suggested retail price of $400 for the 128GB model and $500 for the 256GB version. Both represent a $100 mark-up over the current price.
Those who buy the headset at the higher price point before the end of the year will be able to download a copy of Beat Saber at no extra cost.
Wizards of the Coast has announced its new video game studio, Skeleton Key today.
Based-out of Austin, Texas the developer will focus on creating AAA titles.
The company joins Wizards of the Coast's slate of North American game studios which includes Archetype Entertainment, Atomic Arcade, and Tuque Games.
Reginald Cash has purchased gaming and marketing firm 3BlackDot -- he's been serving as its CEO since 2017.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, it's one of the few Black-owned global entertainment firms and is valued at $87 million.
Established in 2014 and based out of Los Angeles, California, 3BlackDot began as a talent-management company with a focus on gaming content creators.
You can enter the GamesIndustry.biz Canada Best Places To Work Awards 2022 from today.
The awards are open to all Canada games companies, including developers, publishers, service companies, retail and media, and you can submit your company through here.The judging period ends on Friday, September 16th.
The main badge winners will be revealed ahead of MEGAMIGS, Canada's premier video games industry event that takes place in Montréal. Meanwhile, the special award winners will be announced during MEGAMIGS itself, with finalists invited to the show.
On May 2, 2022, Stephane D'Astous began receiving emails and phone calls from former employees. The shared tone was a request for advice and perspective: What's happening? Is it a good sign, or should we be worried?
These messages, of course, referred to the shock news that Square Enix had sold Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal, plus all the IP the trio of studios collectively held, to Embracer Group for a bewilderingly low $300 million.
Even though D'Astous was surprised by the price tag, the Eidos Montreal founder wasn't terribly surprised at how the studios' relationship with Square Enix turned out, saying the roots of its demise were evident even before he left the company in 2013.
In the last few years, Supermassive Games has positioned itself as a standout maker of choice-led interactive games that let players write their own story.
With titles such as Until Dawn, The Quarry, and The Dark Pictures Anthology under its belt, the Guildford-based studio has reached critical acclaim for its narrative design and branching storylines.
The Dark Pictures Anthology is a series of cinematic horror stories that Supermassive releases annually, starting with 2019's Man of Medan. The games don't follow one story, the anthology can be enjoyed in any order, with each of the three titles being a standalone story.
A new report from Newzoo today says that the global video games market is estimated to make $197 billion in revenue for the year of 2022.
The market intelligence firm says that the figure represents an increase of 2.1% year-over-year.
Newzoo attributes mobile game consumer spending as the main driver of 2022's total worldwide consumer spending.
A California judge has approved Riot Games' $100 million settlement following the gender discrimination case brought before the League of Legends firm, meaning more than 1,000 women are expected to receive payouts following their mistreatment at the studio.
Axios reports the settlement was approved on Friday, with more details revealed about how the $100 million will be used to address the issues raised by the class action lawsuit.
Payments will range from four to five-figure sums, and will be issued to more than 1,000 women who have worked at Riot Games since 2014. Payouts are also expected for over 1,000 contractors.
Ubisoft has debunked a rumour that it was going to cancel its free-to-play multiplayer title Roller Champions.
In a statement shared on Twitter, the company was very clear: "Roller Champions isn't getting cancelled, and Ubisoft fully supports it."
The rumour of the cancellation came from Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb, who said on an Xbox Era podcast that "Roller Champions is going to be cancelled after Season 3," reading a message he had received the previous day from an anonymous source.
It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.
If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of the appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.
Big Fish Games has named Gary Rosenfeld as its head of business development.
If you're a regular Twitter user and keep up to date with gaming news on the platform, you'll be very aware of the gaming Twitter discourse that happens at least once a month.
At the end of May, indie game coverage (or the lack thereof) was the subject of discourse. The replies from those sharing their thoughts paint a pretty complicated picture, from nuances around the SEO value of indie game coverage to some indie studios lacking the PR resources to get their times out there.
All of this got me thinking about mobile games, which share a lot of the same challenges as indie games when it comes to coverage and representation but have a 60% market share of the global gaming industry, and generate triple the amount of revenue as console and PC/Mac games.
Employees at Los Angeles-based studio Tender Claws have moved to unionise.
According to Polygon, at least 13 full-time and part-time staff at the firm will align with the Communications Workers of America's Campaign to Organise Digital Employees to form a company union.
Staff sent the proposal to the developer's management last Tuesday, seeking voluntary recognition of their efforts to unionise, which was accepted.
A spaceship crashes on a brightly coloured alien world. A mech robot ejects and lands on the surface with a bang. It emerges from a crater with two huge weapons for arms. So far, so very video games.
And then it starts farming.
"We want to push against this constant violence, so Lightyear Frontier is everything except violence and brutality," begins Denis Ferrier, head of publishing at Amplifier Game Invest.
A breach at Neopets may have compromised the data of over 69 million accounts.
According to Polygon, the incident happened last week, with the company then confirming it in a statement shared on Twitter last Wednesday.
Users' email addresses and passwords "may have been affected," Neopets said, inviting players to change their passwords.
GamesIndustry.biz is changing.
Since the start of 2022, we've been working on our first redesign in six years. In fact, you may have caught glimpses of our brand new logo -- our first in 20 years -- around projects like Best Places To Work Awards UK.
Now everything is almost ready.
A newly released Sensor Tower report says that Riot Games' League of Legends: Wild Rift has generated $500 million in global lifetime revenue.
Wild Rift launched in October 2020 as one of Riot Games' first mobile title offerings.
In terms of player spending, China accounts for 72% of the title's revenue at $346.6 million via the Apple App Store alone.
Rober Alan Koeneke, the developer behind rougelike title the Dungeons of Moria, has passed away aged 64.
As reported by PC Gamer, Koeneke's death was announced via his obituary at dignitymemorial.com.
He released Moria, which was inspired by the Lord of the Rings, in 1983 while attending the University of Oklahoma.
Things got very heated this week. Quite literally.
The heatwave that has swept parts of the world, particularly the UK and Europe, saw governments issuing warnings for people to stay home, avoid travelling unless necessary and generally escape the sun as much as possible.
STAT | 40.3C - Highest recorded temperature in the UK on Tuesday, a new record.