MashMine » Entertainment

Nexon Invade Social Gaming with Release of Kart Rider on Facebook

Ryan Nutley — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:16:16 +0000

We all know Zynga, made famous for their social gaming expertise and their very much mainstream games, Castleville and Hidden Chronicles, but todays headlines are focused moreso on their main competitor (other than Rovio) Nexon. Nexon were made famous with the release of their free-to-play online games, that can be downloaded by users and played on their computers. Their latest move however is into the social gaming space, where they are treading on the feet of Zynga in a battle for some social gaming glory with the release of Kart Rider Dash. Nexon, who went public last December following in the footsteps of Zynga, who raised 1 billion for their IPO, is launching the new game as a free-to-play game just like all their other titles, but users can pay money for virtual goods within the game. If the game succeeds as expected, the company could face huge numbers on their books. Kart Rider is probably the most successful of the Nexon games, with more than 250 million registered players, and has already been released on iOS and Android. The Facebook version of the game will allow users to race against friends on a series of tracks and game modes, and it has been commented by the CEO of Nexon America that:

“KartRider Dash will raise the bar for top-notch Facebook games, extending Nexon’s strategy to expose our high quality games to the broadest audiences possible.”

10 Great Nerdy Christmas Decorations

Ryan Nutley — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:12:19 +0000

With just under a week to go until Christmas, now is just as good a time as any to start getting festive. We've collected some of the nerdiest, most disgracefully geeky decorations we could find from around the internet to give all the die hard techies and secretly ashamed nerds among us some last minute inspiration for getting christmassy. The collection includes some Angry Birds tree ornaments, a Full-faced Santa hat (hand-knitted) and even some delicious looking cupcake tree ornaments, which are actually made from glass. Hopefully you'll enjoy our little collection of random Christmas photos. If you are looking for more quirky Christmas ideas for nerds and geeks alike, why not check out a piece that the guys over at Mashable did at the start of December entitled "12 Fun Holiday Cards for Geeky Season’s Greetings". [gallery link="file" orderby="rand"]

Man Legally Changes Name to Mark Zuckerberg to Avoid Facebook Lawsuit

Ryan Nutley — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:10:16 +0000

Rotem Guez launched a site known as 'Like Store', that offers users unique content for liking things on Facebook. The company advertises to businesses looking to improve their number of likes on their Facebook pages, which Facebook itself claims is an illegal action. In response to a lawsuit from Facebook legel, Rotem Guez changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg, the world famous CEO of Facebook. Claiming that in order for Facebook to take legal action they would "have to sue Mark Zuckerberg".

[embed width="625"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OodgTD8lDqQ[/embed]

Minecraft to Release on iOS Tomorrow

Ryan Nutley — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:56:54 +0000

Minecraft, one of the most popular indie sandbox games around the world is releasing an iOS version tomorrow, making the final transition into mobile following on from a prior release on Android earlier this year. Transferring over to mobile platform, the game has to be scaled down to a certain extent. The game's Survival Mode won't be featured on the iOS version, but players can still connect wirelessly with other players and invite them into worlds. Another neat feature of the game is the ability to choose randomized worlds with 36 different kinds of blocks available to build with. What's more, you can save multiplayer worlds right to your mobile device. Founder and creator of Minecraft, Markus Persson, announced earlier this month that the game has reached above 4 million sold PC platform copies (which is still in Beta testing). The iOS version will be released at $9.99 and will be version compatible with iOS 4.3+, making it compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices. An Xbox 360 version of Minecraft is also in production and is set to launch sometime in 2012. [SOURCE]http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/16/minecraft-to-launch-on-ios-devices-tomorrow/[/SOURCE] [SOURCE name="Image Source: "]Gizmodo.com[/SOURCE]

King.com Reaches 1 Billion Plays a Month

Ryan Nutley — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:56:42 +0000

King.com announced last week that they passed one billion gameplays per month, and are now part of the elite top 10 developers on Facebook. Alongside the announcement of this momentous achievement, King.com have also announced that they are expanding its business in the US, with the opening of new offices in San Francisco. King.com currently provide close to 200 different platform games in over 10 languages. Facebook houses many platform games, and its a constant battle for developers to get their game to the top of the apps lists. However, King's "Saga" games "Bubble Saga and Bubble Witch Saga have been very well received over the social network with over 600 million gameplays in the last month. King develop across many platforms, but recently its turned its attention to mobile. They have started to look at transferring many of their hit games over to alternative platforms, with close attention being paid to Android and iOS releases. Rumors have it that there will be a string of releases around January 2012. King.com is only 8 years old, but its still showing telltale signs of a start up. They only have 3 games on Facebook, but they are all performing phenomenally. With the upcoming release of games on mobile platforms, as well as the development of new games and the companies expansion, it would come as no surprise if we heard more from King.com in the near future. [SOURCE]http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/26/game-maker-king-com-now-seeing-1-billion-plays-per-month-joins-facebook-top-10/[/SOURCE]

Latest Addition to Angry Birds [VIDEO]

Ryan Nutley — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 11:23:30 +0000

[embed width="625"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D8f4EnDrNwU[/embed] Rovio has been developing Angry Birds for Halloween (the latest addition to Angry Birds Seasons) for the last few weeks, but noone expected them to introduce a new Angry Bird with the version. The new Angry Birds is called Angry Birds Ham'O'Ween and has 30 new Halloween themed levels. What's cool though, is the new orange nameless bird capable of blowing up to several times his own size, like a puffer fish. This is a teaser video for those of you haven't already downloaded the new Angry Birds. [gallery link="file" orderby="rand"]

Angry Birds Valued at $1.2 billion and May Go Public

Ryan Nutley — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:55:31 +0000

Angry Birds is the best selling mobile game for the smartphone era, with several releases across nearly all mobile platforms. Recently valued at $1.2 billion, Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka (creator of Angry Birds) reckons that the company could be worth more stating, "We're happy with our valuation but we think it's probably a bit north of that." Angry Birds was first made famous through its feature game app on the iPhone platform. Users can now download the world renowned app for Android, iOS, Chrome, Playstation, Mac OS, Windows 7 and Google+. After over 12 million downloads were reached through the Apple Store, the Finnish company decided to go ahead and release various versions of Angry Birds, now offering four different titles, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Magic. Additional revenue for the company in recent years has come from merchandising, reaching in the millions every month. According to the the company's website, stuffed toys alone are shipping "a million units a month." As if a stuffed toys weren't enough, Rovio also offer Halloween costumes, movie licenses and clothing. Vesterbacka gloats that, "We are very, very profitable. We're not a publicly traded company yet we can fund our own growth." He also has visions for the company to float, yet he hasn't disclosed a date... "maybe a year from now," he exclaimed in a recent interview. Rovio will be making its public stock offer. We really doubt that the company would fair well with an IPO. The health of the company relies heavily on a single game! Unless Rovio start to roll out more products and diversify their holdings outside of their current assets and IP's, they could risk public launch failure. Perhaps they'll acquire some smaller companies and technologies? Maybe some more IP's? Who know's, but hopefully Vesterbacka will continue doing whatever he's doing, because it seems to be serving them well for the time being.

Hidden Chronicles, A New Game from Zynga

Ryan Nutley — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:17:04 +0000

Hidden Chronicles is a new game announced today by Zynga. The object of the game is to find hidden gems and discover objects within different mosaics. Players are entered into the mysterious Ramsey Manor, and will be faced with the challenge to uncover thousands of items. Unlike one of their other new products like Castleville, this game does not focus on building so much as it does on discovering. The new game is completely social, as with all Zynga games, and players will be able to send each other challenge levels, gifts within levels and compare scores. as well as interact with their friends throughout gameplay. According to Zynga's GM Roy Sehgal, the game will "leverage social connections, and combine that with memory and skill." Hidden Chronicles also joins the roster of nine other products announced today at the Zynga offices in San Francisco, including:

Zynga’s independent gaming network Project Z
Castleville
Zynga Casino (which includes Zynga Bingo)
Facebook’s HTML5 games (which includes Farmville Express, Words With Friends, and Poker)
Dream Zoo — a "zoo with no cages"
Mafia Wars Shakedown on mobile and
Mafia Wars 2 on Google+.

Zynga Announces Castleville

Ryan Nutley — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:14:22 +0000

Today, Mark Pincus, the CEO of social games company Zynga announced their newest game of their world famous “Ville” franchise... "Castleville". Other games in the series include Frontierville, Farmville and of course Cityville, the number one game on Facebook. After a year in development, Castleville has its own soundtrack created by a 75-piece orchestra score and full choir. According to Zynga, Castleville allows players to craft art and armor, as well as trade in a virtual marketplace and protect your castle from "beasties". Castleville also joins the roster of nine other products announced today at the Zynga offices in San Francisco, including:

Zynga’s independent gaming network Project Z
Hidden Chronicles
Zynga Casino (which includes Zynga Bingo)
Facebook’s HTML5 games (which includes Farmville Express, Words With Friends, and Poker)
Dream Zoo — a "zoo with no cages"
Mafia Wars Shakedown on mobile and
Mafia Wars 2 on Google+.

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech at Stanford

Ryan Nutley — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:12:03 +0000

In 2005, Apple's Steve Jobs gave a speech to Stanford's graduate class. In it, he talked about life, death and getting fired from Apple. The CEO and co-founder of Apple computers, died earlier this week and since his death this video has gone viral. There is no question that Steve changed the lives of millions with his visionary ideas. Here is the video footage of Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford in 2005. We've picked our favorite quote from this inspirational piece, let us know what you think:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

[embed width="710"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc[/embed] [SOURCE name="Video Source: "]http://youtube.com/user/StanfordUniversity[/SOURCE] [SOURCE name="Image Source: "]http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/gifs/grad_jobswalks.jpg[/SOURCE]