You know that PlayStation brawl game we keep hearing about? That one that people are calling Sony's Smash Bros.? It's a real thing, officially announced on tonight's episode of GameTrailers TV. The name is a mouthful: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, and it's coming to the PS3 this holiday season.

PopPace’s browser based anime-style MMORPG Tamer Saga has created quite a stir amongst many with its tantalizing sneak peeks and previews. Today, PopPace team was very glad to announce that the long-awaited Tamer Saga’s Alpha Test will be released at 6:00pm sharp on April 9 th (GMT-8) and available on Facebook first. With the unique Facebook gaming platform, players can enter Tamer Saga’s mysterious world simply by logging into their Facebook accounts.

Date: March 22, 2012
Place: DataArt Kyiv, Kudryavskyi descent, 14-E


Festive format - the beer-pizza!


Program:

1) "Create a game - the first steps" - Eugene Feldman (Playmo)

2) "The experience of participation in the project GameDev-mezhdunarodnіh competitions, as well as the development and promotion of games in the Android Market and alternative stores" - Michael Dvornikov (Kyiv GTUG Center)

Stigma Games wants to bring the world of Hard Fantasy to computers everywhere with their upcoming online game, Dawnshine. Fellow Sacramento-based start-up, Loki's Planet, is working with Stigma to make sure that everyone gets a chance to try out the first game of its kind.

Once out of development, this RPG plans to transport players to a realistic world where war, magic, and politics rule. Players can choose between four factions; each with its own classes, strengths, and weaknesses: The cannibalistic Neg Waths, the night-dwelling citizens of Kayne, Sawkara's purity obsessed Zealots, and The Allianz rebels. Players can level up their characters though PvP, solo playing, or group content.

Zynga has launched a beta game portal via its own domain at Zynga.com. This is a significant move for the company, which has so far been delivering games only through social networking sites, in particularly Facebook. The new Zynga.com portal will be the first time the company hosts its games independently and the platform will also host games created by third-party developers.

Investors are happy with Zynga’s decision as they see this shift giving more financial independence to the company. But it may harm Facebook’s upcoming IPO, since the social network revealed in its filing how dependent its revenue has been on Zynga for both generating game-related purchases and increased advertising views. Overall Zynga accounted for 12 percent of Facebook’s revenue.

Sony Online Entertainment has officially nailed down the date it will throw open the EverQuest doors to F2P gamers.

ZoomSony Online Entertainment has nailed down the launch date for the free-to-play (F2P) model for EverQuest, and it's exactly 13 years years after its original launch: March 16. Previously the company said the new model would arrive sometime in March, but didn’t set a specific date. It was assumed to be on the MMORPG's 13th anniversary due to the festivities.

Funcom's supernatural real-ish-world MMORPG The Secret World will creep into our own reality on June 19, pushed back from its planned April launch to apply a good spit-shine. Beta testing is to ramp up, including several "large-scale public beta events."

"Allowing for even more time to polish the game really shows just how much faith Funcom as a company has in 'The Secret World' and how committed we are to making it the best it can be," creative director Ragnar Tørnquist said in the announcement.

MMORPG Tibia turns 15 this year. In January 1997 Tibia went online for the first time and never stopped running ever since.

CipSoft, the developer of Tibia, prepared many different events for their players in order to celebrate this special day. The party has just begun and offers a lot of activities for all players, for example

RIFT developer Trion Worlds and guild site hosting service Guild Launch recently teamed up to hold a contest for the MMORPG. The objective was to find the game's biggest fan. Today they announced the winner: Sonoko Suzuki of the Wolfsbane shard.

"There were many impressive contenders,” said Stephen Johnston, CEO of Guild Launch, "but Sonoko’s game achievements really blew us away."

Sonoko has racked up over 2,700 hours of playtime on his main character, which comes out to over 112 days. He was the first player in the world to complete the Colossal Victory, an Achievement for participating in every zone event, and Ultimate Hunter, an Achievement for killing 105 rare mobs. He also has over 12,000 platinum in the bank.

Zenimax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks, announced today that they have reached a settlement with Interplay in regards to the Fallout license. In 2009, Bethesda filed a suit against Interplay seeking to rescind the rights to a Fallout MMORPG, stating that Interplay had failed to meet the conditions to keep the license.

With this settlement, Bethesda will immediately regain rights to produce an MMORPG with the Fallout license and Interplay will hold zero rights to the franchise for game development. Interplay does retain the rights to sell their original titles, Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics until December 31, 2013, upon which dates, the rights revert to Bethesda. This was a part of the original purchase agreement of the Fallout license.

Date: January 21, 2012
Place: Lviv, Hutorovka 25a, a conference hall of the Ukrainian Catholic University.



The event will be interested in:
- Owners of companies, game developers
- Indie developers
- Publisher
- Programmers who are interested to understand what the game development
- Designers, musicians, all other parties involved in the industry

There are already 1.5 million gamers playing BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic via the pre-order early access programme, estimates Cowan & Company analyst Doug Creutz.

As of the weekend just passed, EA has 140 servers online, and Creutz noted that player density had "increased meaningfully."

Based on the number of servers now in operation, and the relatively high densities thereon, we feel fairly comfortable estimating that the game already has in excess of 1 million players, and potentially could have as many as 1.5 million, with the official launch date of the game yet to come," he said.

The working year for most of us is nearly over, which means the true miracle of Christmas – hour upon glorious hour of stress-free gaming – will soon be here.

And what a year it's been. Yes, it's been dominated by sequels rather than genuinely fresh ideas, but then originality in gaming is overrated anyway.

On console, we saw titles like Uncharted 3 push the upper limits of current-generation technology, an audio-visual blockbuster swansong before the rumoured unveiling of the next wave of consoles in 2012 (though don't expect to play a new Xbox or PlayStation before 2013).

The first closed beta test for Eligium – The Chosen One, the newest massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), begins today at 15:00 GMT. Players fortunate enough to get their hands on one of the limited beta keys can start their adventure today – a little present before Christmas from publisher Frogster.

The closed beta will run until the 18th January 2012. During that time players will be able to sample a selection of Eligium – The Chosen One‘s many features and raise one of three selectable races to level 45, the level cap  for the closed beta. Players who are waiting to follow the path of the brave Panda will have to practice the art of patience and await the second phase of beta testing where the Panda will make its glorious entrance.

NCsoft's Aion: The Tower of Eternity is the latest MMORPG to switch to the free-to-play model.

The game will drop its monthly subscriptions in February. NCsoft has joined forces with German publisher Gameforge to create a team that will maintain the title and its servers in Europe.

Aion debuted in 2009, and sees players exploring a fantasy world with ultimate aim of growing angelic wings and battling evil in the skies.

Elfster, a free online Secret Santa organizer and social networking platform, today announced a Christmas surprise alongside Google Chrome. Users of the Elfster App for Chrome can use a code fragment secretly hidden inside to unlock one of three special Angry Bird holiday levels! Those that haven't already grabbed Elfster can do so via the official website at http://www.elfster.com/ or on the Google Chrome store athttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pfagmcegbaeelbnibmipibkmigipedmk

"Elfster has always been a whimsical-yet-functional app, so we're thrilled to be connecting with a fellow fun-filled phenomenon like Angry Birds!" said Peter Imburg, CEO at Elfster. "We're excited to be partnering with Google for the holidays and look forward to seeing our fans enjoy the secret AngryBirds holiday level you can only unlock by using Elfster's ChromeApp."

INUCA Interactive, a promising game developer consisting of team members who had previously worked on the successful Kingdom Under Fire series and Ninety Nine Nights for Xbox and Xbox 360 respectively, has announced their first project, EIN. EIN, a new unique massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is derived from “Epicus Incognitus” in Latin, which means “The Unknown Epic”.


Promising a next-generation MMORPG, INUCA is setting a new coordinate towards a destination of fantasy wonderland. EIN is set to deliver an MMORPG featuring highly stylish action and unique story-telling that had the potential to instantly draw in players and immerse them in a whole new world full of excitement and adventures. Recently in GSTAR 2011, INUCA Interactive and NEOWIZ GAMES introduced EIN with stylish movie-like a trailer that was captured from actual gameplay.

Flurry Analytics announced Wednesday that revenue from games on mobile phones, such as iOS and Android devices, has surpassed the combined revenue of more traditional portable consoles like the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable for the first time. Since 2009, mobile phone game revenue has tripled from approximately 20% market share to a projection of almost 60% in 2011, mainly at the expense of Nintendo.

It's one of the biggest hits in mobile gaming history and this week it reached a huge milestone. Rovio announced this week that the puzzle arcade game Angry Birds has now achieved over 500 million downloads. The original version of the game was first released back in December 2009 for Apple's iOS platform and has since expanded to Android, Mac, PC, Windows Phone, the PSP-PS3 platforms and more.

It's not a shock to see why. The combination of creating a addictive mix of puzzle and arcade gameplay with heavy use of physics and some cute (but angry) birds being shot into the air was a brilliant move. It didn't hurt that you could play the game for free with some banner ads popping into view briefly (you can also purchase the game to get rid of the ads).

It’s time for the long-awaited next step in the evolution of modern combat in the Battlefield series, this time set along the border of Iraq and Iran as well as several remote locations in the direct sequel to 2005′s Battlefield 2, here simply called Battlefield 3. The game was released today, or this morning, rather, depending on how ravenous you were or are in anticipation of playing the game, and is able to run on Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and EA Mobile has even confirmed that there’s an iOS port out there somewhere in space. Though we’ve heard that the game works exceptionally well on the PlayStation 3, you’ve got to know in your heart that the desktop version will bring you the highest amount of action.

Lately, when it comes to peripherals like controllers, it's all about how to use them with your Android device. What about the other way around? Perhaps you're playing a PC game and your wireless mouse dies and you have no spare batteries? Well you could always use your Android device instead.

In the unlikely scenario described above (actually I always find myself without enough batteries for my wireless keyboard and mouse) you can use your Android device if you are in a pinch and need to at least save your game you are playing. If you are not concerned about saving your game at least you can always continue on playing it. This is all done thanks to a two-part application called MetaMouse which can turn your Android device into a motion controlled wireless mouse.

Date: October 29, 2011
Place: Kiev

Maxim Lapshin - author of streaming video server Erlyvideo. Superman.

The master class will be of interest to all who are interested in Erlang, highly reliable services, the development of multiplayer online games.

Description of the master class

Theme flash games for VKontakte, Facebook and other online platforms, has today become a fixed idea for a large number of web programmers.

Zynga on Tuesday unveiled a host of new games and a Web-based service that showcased a new business strategy of creating its own platform for social games.

Zynga's new games include a bingo game that is designed to bring in more of the casual players that made its poker and "FarmVille" games popular.

And there are also mobile versions of Zynga stalwarts like "Words With Friends" and a graphically rich "CastleVille" game that moves more toward online games like Blizzard Entertainment's "World of Warcraft."

Apple Inc. has removed a mobile app, called "Jew or Not Jew?" from its online App Store in France. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said the app did violate local law, so it was removed from the French App Store. It is still available outside France, however, and currently sells for $1.99 through Apple's US App Store.

Apple has removed numerous apps from the App Store since it launched in mid-2008 for violating myriad restrictions it imposes on developers. Take a look at other notable apps that ran afoul of the company's screening process.

Tuesday NCsoft officially opened the doors to City of Heroes' free-to-play model. Even more, previous players who return to play for free will retain most of their unlocked and purchased content.


Seven years ago, NCsoft launched its spandex-clad City of Heroes (CoH) MMORPG on the PC. Originally developed by Cryptic Studios, NCsoft purchased the IP from Cryptic three years later and brought the CoH team into the publisher's collective as a new studio, Paragon Studios. NCsoft also churned out a sequel, City of Villains, a year after the original CoH launch, but decided to combine the two MMOGs after it acquired all the rights.

According to BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk at the 2011 Eurogamer Expo in London, England, their MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic, will be released in the U.S. on December 20 and in Europe on December 22. Said Dr. Muzyka:

“This is an incredible moment for everyone at BioWare and our partners at LucasArts who have dedicated their lives to build this extraordinary game. We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game’s release.”

The other day a new 3D MMORPG landed on the Android Market called Buddy Rush. Developer by Team Sollmo which is essentially the mobile division of Company100 Inc, Buddy Rush features true cross-platform compatibility across Android, iOS and Facebook under a single account.

While this certainly isn't the first MMORPG for Android that features true cross-platform compatibility with iOS (Pocket Legends, Star Legends, World of Midgard etc etc) it could very well be the first with true cross-platform compatibility with Facebook though which the developers are saying it is. All your characters, items and progress throughout the game is saved under one account across all three platforms.

Blizzard has today made public it's highly anticipated beta of the sequel to the 2000 hit game, Diablo. The company, which is well known for the Starcraft franchise in addition to Diablo is known for long development cycles, and this is no exception. However, gamers will be excited to hear they might finally get a turn to play Diablo.

Well, that is, if they opted into the beta, ran a system analyzer and were lucky enough to be selected for this phase of participants. In a post on the Diablo Blog, Blizzard announced that "The fiery gates leading to the Burning Hells have begun to swing open, and the Diablo III beta test is officially underway."

Date: September 21, 2011
Place: Lviv, Liska street 16

Questions for discussion:
- What's new in the development of flash-games?
- Where can I find a good developer for flash?

Date: September 24, 2011
Place: Dnipropetrovsk, Barricadnaja street, 15-A (Downtown "Steps"), Ciklum Company office

Ciklum Game Dev Saturday promises to be colorful, diverse and interesting and fascinating topic, even those who by occupation is not faced with the topic of conversation.