The new Batman: Arkham Origins trailer, titled Personal Mission, "sets the tone for visceral combat, an expansive Gotham City and action-packed story players can expect to see as they suit up as the young hero known as Batman to take on Black Mask and eight deadly assassins." Batman: Arkham Origins launches on October 25th.
Unfortunately, the Wii U version won't have multiplayer. Not to worry, though, as WB Games will drop the price. While the other versions will sell for $60, the Wii U edition will go for $10 less, clocking in at $50. The price change has already taken effect with Amazon pre-orders, and other retailers should follow suit.
Batman: Arkham Origins releases October 25h for Wii U, along with Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
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Warner's has announced a collector's edition for Batman: Arkham Origins. The special package will cost $119.99 and comes with a host of goodies.
Here is the full list of stuff you'll get if you make a purchase. It includes some epic stuff such as an 80 page artbook and an Batman and Joker Statue.Exclusive Arkham Origins highly detailed premium statue featuring Batman & The Joker•80-page, full-color hardcover artbookAssassin's Intel Dossier, including files on the eight assassins, as well as Black Mask's contract1st Appearance Batman Skin DLCDeathstroke Challenge Pack DLC – Usable throughout all the Arkham Origins Challenge maps and also includes two bonus challenge maps and two bonus Deathstroke SkinsExclusive 3D Metal PackThe PS3 edition will also include the Knightfall pack as an exclusive piece of content.Tags: arkham orgins, arkham origins, arkhamorgins, arkhamorigins, Batman, Batman Arkham City, Batman Arkham City Armored Edition, batman arkham city dlc, batman arkham collection, batman arkham news, batman arkham origins, batman arkham origins 3d metal pack, Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate, batman arkham origins collection, batman arkham origins collectors edition, batman arkham origins gameplay, batman arkham origins news, batman arkham origins october 25, batman arkham origins PC, batman arkham origins release date, batman arkham origins trailer, batman arkham origins wii u, Batman dlc, Batman-Arkham-Asylum, batman-arkham-asylum-2, batman-arkham-city, BatmanArkhamCity, batmanarkhamorigins3dmetalpack, batmanarkhamoriginscollectorsedition, by collection editor batman origins, bycollectioneditorbatmanorigins, collector edition batman arkham origins, collectoreditionbatmanarkhamorigins, editor collection, origins 119 edition, origins119edition
Treyarch has just released the Black Ops 2 'Origins' video from their YouTube channel today.
The most important yet confusing part of the video is the four men and the giant robot. Many have speculated that the men may be characters from zombies or even from the campaign.
The most logical explanation for the teaser would be that Treyarch might be announcing their fourth DLC for Black Ops 2.
Watch the teaser on PlayStation Gang>"Every story has a beginning...and an end."
-Treyarch
Tags: black ops, black ops 2, black ops 2 origins, black ops 2 video, black ops 2 youtube, black ops origins, black ops2, black-ops-2-origins, black-ops-games, BlackOps, BlackOps2, BlackOpsEdition, BlackOpsIi, Call of Duty, Call of Duty 3, call of duty 4, Call of Duty Black Ops, call of duty black ops 2, call of duty ps, call of duty ps4, call of duty teaser, call of duty videos, call of duty xbox one, Call of Duty youtube, Call-of-Duty, call-of-duty-black-ops, Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-2, call-of-duty-teaser, Call-of-Duty-video, CallOfDuty, CallOfDuty2, CallOfDutyBlackOps2, callofdutyteaser, DLC black ops, Treyarch, treyarch call of duty, treyarch-studiosFarm games are a craze on social networks worldwide, but its origins are mistaken. The story of farm games is a reflection of the young social games industry: rife with copycats, riches, and misunderstandings.
There were farms before FarmVille?Most social games are far from revolutionary: farm games pre-date their social network successors by 15 years. SimFarm, released by Maxis in 1993, is the earliest to this author’s knowledge. Harvest Moon, released by Victor Interactive Software in 1996, further popularized the genre. To date, the spread of social games is all about distribution, not original gameplay.
Happy Farm, one of the first two SNS games. Still the happiest.China is most often cited as the source of the first social farm game, which is half-true. Happy Farm (????) was released by Five Minutes in "November 2008" (China Social Games is waiting to receive confirmation of an exact date). The inspiration for Happy Farm was Harvest Moon, the earlier cited Japanese console game. It went on to become massively popular in China, attracting litters of copycats.
myFarm, one of the first two SNS farm games. Since copied and eclipsed by FarmTown and FarmVille.But the frequent claim that Facebook developers copied this game is false. At the same time, US-companies playSocial and Take(5)Social released myFarm, the first farm game on Facebook. Tom Hansen, President of Take(5)Social, writes:
myFarm was the original farming game on Facebook. We launched Nov 1st 2008. My team came up with the concept based on Lil’ Green Patch and the success that it was having. If people wanted to collect and gift pets and flowers for their little green patch, how cool would it be to take animals gifted to you and raise them. Being able to raise them on your own ‘farm’ was the obvious choice. Then of course harvesting crops to earn cash fit perfectly with the farm theme and voila the concept was born.
Farm Town by Slashkey and FarmVille by Zynga copied myFarm, not Happy Farm.
Gameplay between Happy Farm and myFarm is significantly different: Happy Farm zooms in on a few plots while myFarm is a more expansive sandbox-style game with animals, gifts, and buildings. Season Xu, co-founder of Five Minutes (developer of Happy Farm), writes:
myFarm, Farm Town, FarmVille, are different from Happy Farm and all Happy Farm copies. The game play between ‘Farm Town’ type and ‘Happy Farm’ type is very different… [they] did a good job of innovation. They invented a new type of farm game… Happy Farm is not the original Farmville
Farm Town is.
In short, Happy Farm and myFarm—the first two social farming games—were independently developed and released in China and the US at almost exactly the same time. Both borrowed from earlier games, Harvest Moon and Lil’ Green Patch, respectively.
Developing a new trend in social games is no guarantee. Unless you also happen to be genius in distribution, like Zynga.Slashkey released Farm Town in April 2009. It remains the 20th most popular game on Facebook with 2 million DAU (daily active users). Following Farm Town’s success, Zynga released FarmVille in July 2009. The game we all know (and love?) took farming to another level, with 27 million DAU today.
Happy Farm has done well, but not great. It remains massively popular with an estimated 23 million DAU (includes clones across all platforms), but China’s users are challenging to monetize and social networks are closed or offer poor revenue share.
Being first is no guarantee of riches. Zynga has a speculative $5 billion valuation not because its “_Ville” games were first or original, but because it executes aggressive advertising and pushy virality (inundating friends with requests) better than anyone else. Again, the spread of social games is all about distribution, not original gameplay.
Every country has a concept of farming. But no tractors in China's vision.Commentators like to pontificate on how Chinese city-dwellers are “returning” to the farms they only recently left. Isaac Stone Fish at Newsweek waxes poetic:
The game's success reflects a deep and growing nostalgia for China's traditional agrarian way of life… the game also taps into concerns among many members of the urban middle class that economic growth has far outpaced the country's environmental standards. Poor air and food quality are both major concerns, and Happy Farmer reflects a wistfulness for a rural China that at least in the romantic image does not suffer from such problems.
But these claims are farfetched and fail to explain FarmVille’s popularity in America, hardly a nation of farmers. In addition to farming, are social gamers also nostalgic about flipping burgers, hunting treasure, raising fish, and fighting mafia wars?
Farm games succeeded by crossing addictive game mechanics with an intuitive, accessible theme. Farm games popularized “appointment” game mechanics, in which players need to check-in every few hours to plant, water, tend, or harvest their crops. This game mechanic is dominant across the top social games today, having been applied to “growing” fish, pets, restaurants, cities, et al. But farming crops is still the best fit with these mechanics. And every culture has a concept of farming, though specifics may differ slightly (China’s version lacks tractors).
Lastly, there is certainly also an element of serendipity, that these games were independently developed and released in China and the US at the same time and then grew to popularity.
Farm games also demonstrate that game themes and mechanics are universal. Fish, pet, and restaurant games have since gone on to become global hits, with cross-pollination between China and Facebook.
Every country is at play in the digital agricultural revolution.
Kai Lukoff is an analyst at BloggerInsight and an editor on China Social Games. Follow Kai on Twitter @klukoff
The man who has a hand in pretty much all of the games that Disney's social gaming studio, Playdom, puts out knows a thing or two about gaming. One of the creators of storied MMO Ultima Online, Playdom VP of creative design Raph Koster has quite a few theories about his craft. (In fact, he wrote a book that covers the entire industry and the creative processes that underpin it quite thoroughly.) Of course, the gaming veteran has a theory pertaining to social games as well. More specifically, he has an idea of how social games might have been born. (You know, aside from a bug in Ultima Online.) Here's what Koster had to say during a recent interview with Games.com News:
I have this pet theory, and it was really more Ultima Online and also at the same time Dark Ages, Kingdom of the Winds and Lineage made it over to Asia and brought all of that crafting stuff. Lineage and Dark Ages originally didn't have a lot of that. That crafting stuff met up with some of the traditions like Harvest Moon and things like that that were going on in Japan. It became taken for granted in Asia that MMOs were worldy, they had crafting and politics elements.Do you agree with Koster's per theory? What do you think of social games compared with the MMOs of today? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment. Tags: disney, facebook games, facebook games origins, playdom, raph koster, social games, social games origins, ultima onlineTo this day the [World of Warcraft] model is not actually what most MMO models are like in Asia. They have all of these other things like politics, housing and whatever. That market eventually shifted with companies like Nexon and others, who started, I remember particularly in Korea. Korea didn't have consoles, so console games started getting made for the web by MMO companies in Korea. They had MMO qualities to them and one of them was essentially, 'Let's make Harvest Moon online on the web with MMO qualities,' and that was exported back to the states.
That is how we got FarmVille. So, I actually think that those farming games are a direct descendant of MMOs in a very literal sense. We were putting farming and crafting into the UOs and the [Star Wars Galaxies] in hopes of reaching a mass market audience and we didn't. Then it turned out that we did later by stripping away the MMO keys. That's the part that unlocked it, because you didn't have the giant time commitments, the heavy clients and all the rest.
Virtual Villagers Origins is a free-to-play installment in the franchise that takes the entire series back to where it all began in terms of the storyline. A group of villagers are thrown from their volcanic home by a terrible eruption, and must start anew on the beautiful, seemingly deserted island of Isola. As you'd expect, the survivors are traumatized from their recent experiences, and they'll rely on you to set a course for success and peace in this new world. You'll be their eyes, ears and everything in between here, as you can command villagers to build huts, gather food and more.
As villagers complete certain tasks, they'll become more skilled in those areas. For instance, having a specific villager carry out healing or other medical tasks raises their healing task, giving them a better chance of success when performing those same actions later on. You'll grow the population of your island in a similar manner, commanding specific villagers to "pair up." They can refuse at first, but with repeated attempts, they'll eventually go to find privacy and may add another unit or two to your island's population.
The island itself comes equipped with some basic structures left behind by previous inhabitants, allowing you to research and gain points in the areas of spirituality and technology, among others. You'll need to have your villagers forage for food, and have the children pick up rare collectibles that spawn around the island for even more success. All told, this is the Virtual Villagers experience you'd expect (and receive) from any other installment in the genre, but in a free to play setup. To monetize the game, you are given the option of purchasing permanent upgrades for your game, like one that permanently doubles all the food that's brought to the bin for the villagers to eat. Others give you large amounts of Tech Points, which can be spent on upgrades for your island's growth and prosperity.
Again, this particular game won't offer anything new or exciting to those that have already played through other installments in the Virtual Villagers franchise, but the free-to-play setup is definitely a positive for those that might be entirely new to the series. Why not give it a try?
Click here to download Virtual Villagers Origins on iTunes -->
What do you think of Virtual Villagers Origins on Facebook? Have you already played other Virtual Villagers games, or is this your first one? Sound off in the comments.
Farm games are a craze on social networks worldwide, but its origins are mistaken. The story of farm games is a reflection of the young social games industry: rife with copycats, riches, and misunderstandings.
There were farms before FarmVille?Most social games are far from revolutionary: farm games pre-date their social network successors by 15 years. SimFarm, released by Maxis in 1993, is the earliest to this author’s knowledge. Harvest Moon, released by Victor Interactive Software in 1996, further popularized the genre. To date, the spread of social games is all about distribution, not original gameplay.
Happy Farm, one of the first two SNS games. Still the happiest.China is most often cited as the source of the first social farm game, which is half-true. Happy Farm (????) was released by Five Minutes in "November 2008" (China Social Games is waiting to receive confirmation of an exact date). The inspiration for Happy Farm was Harvest Moon, the earlier cited Japanese console game. It went on to become massively popular in China, attracting litters of copycats.
myFarm, one of the first two SNS farm games. Since copied and eclipsed by FarmTown and FarmVille.But the frequent claim that Facebook developers copied this game is false. At the same time, US-companies playSocial and Take(5)Social released myFarm, the first farm game on Facebook. Tom Hansen, President of Take(5)Social, writes:
myFarm was the original farming game on Facebook. We launched Nov 1st 2008. My team came up with the concept based on Lil’ Green Patch and the success that it was having. If people wanted to collect and gift pets and flowers for their little green patch, how cool would it be to take animals gifted to you and raise them. Being able to raise them on your own ‘farm’ was the obvious choice. Then of course harvesting crops to earn cash fit perfectly with the farm theme and voila the concept was born.
Farm Town by Slashkey and FarmVille by Zynga copied myFarm, not Happy Farm.
Gameplay between Happy Farm and myFarm is significantly different: Happy Farm zooms in on a few plots while myFarm is a more expansive sandbox-style game with animals, gifts, and buildings. Season Xu, co-founder of Five Minutes (developer of Happy Farm), writes:
myFarm, Farm Town, FarmVille, are different from Happy Farm and all Happy Farm copies. The game play between ‘Farm Town’ type and ‘Happy Farm’ type is very different… [they] did a good job of innovation. They invented a new type of farm game… Happy Farm is not the original Farmville
Farm Town is.
In short, Happy Farm and myFarm—the first two social farming games—were independently developed and released in China and the US at almost exactly the same time. Both borrowed from earlier games, Harvest Moon and Lil’ Green Patch, respectively.
Developing a new trend in social games is no guarantee. Unless you also happen to be genius in distribution, like Zynga.Slashkey released Farm Town in April 2009. It remains the 20th most popular game on Facebook with 2 million DAU (daily active users). Following Farm Town’s success, Zynga released FarmVille in July 2009. The game we all know (and love?) took farming to another level, with 27 million DAU today.
Happy Farm has done well, but not great. It remains massively popular with an estimated 23 million DAU (includes clones across all platforms), but China’s users are challenging to monetize and social networks are closed or offer poor revenue share.
Being first is no guarantee of riches. Zynga has a speculative $5 billion valuation not because its “_Ville” games were first or original, but because it executes aggressive advertising and pushy virality (inundating friends with requests) better than anyone else. Again, the spread of social games is all about distribution, not original gameplay.
Every country has a concept of farming. But no tractors in China's vision.Commentators like to pontificate on how Chinese city-dwellers are “returning” to the farms they only recently left. Isaac Stone Fish at Newsweek waxes poetic:
The game's success reflects a deep and growing nostalgia for China's traditional agrarian way of life… the game also taps into concerns among many members of the urban middle class that economic growth has far outpaced the country's environmental standards. Poor air and food quality are both major concerns, and Happy Farmer reflects a wistfulness for a rural China that at least in the romantic image does not suffer from such problems.
But these claims are farfetched and fail to explain FarmVille’s popularity in America, hardly a nation of farmers. In addition to farming, are social gamers also nostalgic about flipping burgers, hunting treasure, raising fish, and fighting mafia wars?
Farm games succeeded by crossing addictive game mechanics with an intuitive, accessible theme. Farm games popularized “appointment” game mechanics, in which players need to check-in every few hours to plant, water, tend, or harvest their crops. This game mechanic is dominant across the top social games today, having been applied to “growing” fish, pets, restaurants, cities, et al. But farming crops is still the best fit with these mechanics. And every culture has a concept of farming, though specifics may differ slightly (China’s version lacks tractors).
Lastly, there is certainly also an element of serendipity, that these games were independently developed and released in China and the US at the same time and then grew to popularity.
Farm games also demonstrate that game themes and mechanics are universal. Fish, pet, and restaurant games have since gone on to become global hits, with cross-pollination between China and Facebook.
Every country is at play in the digital agricultural revolution.
Kai Lukoff is an analyst at BloggerInsight and an editor on China Social Games. Follow Kai on Twitter @klukoff
