Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed the company is considering putting ads in traditional AAA games, which players purchase for around $70 apiece. During EA's latest earnings call, Wilson said, "Advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us," and that teams are looking at how to thoughtfully implement ads within game experiences. In-game advertising is not new, with the first recorded instance dating back to 1978. As the gaming industry is expected to grow to $583 billion by 2030, in-game ads are seen as a natural progression. However, player reception depends on the placement and unobtrusiveness of the ads. EA has faced backlash in the past for poorly placed ads, such as full-screen promotions for a TV show in UFC 4, which disrupted gameplay. The company has been experimenting with dynamic ads since 2006, with titles like Need for Speed Carbon and Battlefield 2142 among the first to feature them.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Financial Times Alphaville: Look, we know we write a lot about Jane Street, but it's a fascinating place, and people seem interested in it. So it was hard to resist writing about the trading shop entering the mobile phone game space (kinda). Back in 2013 Jane Street developed a card game called "Figgie," which it made to simulate open outcry trading, teach trading nous, and generally burnish its reputation for quirkiness -- de rigueur in the industry. All you need are 40 cards from a normal deck, and the rules have been public for a while. During Covid, Jane Street made a virtual version for remote interns. Now it's a mobile game that's publicly available on the official Apple and Google app stores.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Pokemon Go players are creating a headache for members of the open source map tool OpenStreetMaps by adding fake beaches where they don't exist in hopes of more easily catching Wigletts, a Pokemon that only spawns on beaches. OpenStreetMaps is a free, open source map tool much like Google or Apple maps, but is maintained by a self-governing community of volunteers where anyone is welcome to contribute. An April 27 thread in the OpenStreetMap community forum first spotted the issue, flagging two users in Italy who began marking beaches in all sorts of locations where they don't actually exist. The OpenStreetMap user who noticed the fictitious beaches immediately connected the dots: Pokemon Go, the mega popular mobile game where players catch Pokemon and can engage in different activities depending on their geolocation, introduced different "biomes" like beach, city, forest, and mountains. Each of these have a different look, and critically, some specific Pokemon will only spawn at specific biomes. Wiglett, for example, only spawns at beaches. Some video game sites quickly noticed that Pokemon Go's beaches were appearing in real world locations like golf courses, sports fields, and other places that are not real beaches. Pokemon Go uses OpenStreetMap for its map data, and is how the game knows players are near certain points of interest. The OpenStreetMap user created a filter of OpenStreetMap that surfaced instances where "new mappers" added beaches to the map, revealing a number of clearly fake submissions. [...] It's not clear how often Pokemon Go updates the game with data from OpenStreetMaps, but in theory the people who are manipulating the data would have easier access to the beach biome the next time it does. The OpenStreetMap thread goes on to identify one repeat offender who added dozens of fake beaches. Some are near bodies of water, like lakes, rivers, or docks, and others are landlocked schools, parking lots, and random strips of land. If there was any doubt that some of these changes are being made by Pokemon Go players, the same repeat offender also marked the map with his handle, as well as a poke ball.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Players who made Steam purchases of Helldivers 2 are now, months after the fact, being told by Sony that their games will be useless unless linked to a PSN account," writes longtime Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. From a report: Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment announced today that Helldivers 2 players on Steam will soon be required to link their in-game profiles to a PlayStation Network account -- a feature that was optional at launch due to "technical issues" -- or risk losing access to the game. SIE explained that account linking allows players to take advantage of "safety and security" provided by PlayStation, as it can more easily protect folks from "griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behavior." Many Steam players haven't responded well to the news. As of the time of writing, over 2,500 negative user reviews have been submitted to the game's storefront page today, blemishing an otherwise spotless "Very Positive" rating. Some reviews cite data harvesting and security concerns as potential worries. Others point to the fact that Sony waited months after launch to make account linking mandatory. How this affects players in regions that don't have access to the PlayStation Network is a bigger concern, though. In the Helldivers 2 Discord, community manager Thomas 'Twinbeard' Petersson said they aren't yet sure what these rule changes meant for players in areas without PSN access, which could be another factor contributing to the negative downturn.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LinkedIn, the professional network known for job listings and unsolicited career advice, is jumping into gaming. From a report: The platform is officially introducing a set of Wordle-style puzzle games, weeks after they were first spotted in the app. The company is starting with three games: Pinpoint, a word game where players must guess the theme that ties a series of words together; Queens, a puzzle game that's a bit like a cross between Sudoku and Minesweeper; and Crossclimb, a trivia game that involves guessing a series of four-letter words and placing them in the correct order. LinkedIn describes them as "thinking-oriented games," though the format will likely look familiar to fans of The New York Times Games app. Each game can only be played once a day, and players can share their score with friends in cute emoji-filled messages reminiscent of the "Wordle grid." The service will also keep track of "streaks," to encourage players to come back every day. Given the similarities, it shouldn't be surprising that games were developed by LinkedIn's news team, which recently hired a dedicated games editor.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: "Early Access" was once a novel, quirky thing, giving a select set of Steam PC games a way to involve enthusiastic fans in pre-alpha-level play-testing and feedback. Now loads of games launch in various forms of Early Access, in a wide variety of readiness. It's been a boon for games like Baldur's Gate 3, which came a long way across years of Early Access. Early Access, and the "Advanced Access" provided for complete games by major publishers for "Deluxe Editions" and the like, has also been a boon to freeloaders. Craven types could play a game for hours and hours, then demand a refund within the standard two hours of play, 14 days after the purchase window of the game's "official" release. Steam-maker Valve has noticed and, as of Tuesday night, updated its refund policy. "Playtime acquired during the Advanced Access period will now count towards the Steam refund period," reads the update. In other words: Playtime is playtime now, so if you've played more than two hours of a game in any state, you don't get a refund. That closes at least one way that people could, with time-crunched effort, play and enjoy games for free in either Early or Advanced access.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader sfraggle writes: Biplane shoot-'em up, Sopwith, is celebrating 40 years today since its first release back in 1984. The game is one of the oldest PC games still in active development today, originating as an MS-DOS game for the original IBM PC. The 40th anniversary site has a detailed history of how the game was written as a tech demo for the now-defunct Imaginet networking system. There is also a video interview with its original authors. "The game involves piloting a Sopwith biplane, attempting to bomb enemy buildings while avoiding fire from enemy planes and various other obstacles," reads the Wiki page. "Sopwith uses four-color CGA graphics and music and sound effects use the PC speaker. A sequel with the same name, but often referred to as Sopwith 2, was released in 1985." You can play Sopwith in your browser here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, PhD, applied Vilfredo Pareto's (the early 20th-century Italian economist) theories to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to determine the best racer combinations. "When you break down the build options (including driver stats and various vehicle details) in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, there are over 700,000 possible combinations," notes Engadget. "But once you eliminate duplicates that differ only in appearance, you can narrow it down to 'only' 25,704 possibilities." From the report: Pareto's theories, most notably the Pareto front, help us navigate the complexities of choice. They can pinpoint the solutions with the most balanced strengths and the fewest trade-offs. Pareto's work is about efficiency and effectiveness. [...] Mayerowitz's Pareto front analysis lets you narrow your possibilities down to the 14 most efficient. And it turns out the game's top players were onto something: One of the combinations with the most ideal balance of speed, acceleration and mini-turbo is Cat Peach driving the Teddy Buggy, roller tires and cloud glider -- one already favored among Mario Kart 8 competitors. Of course, if that combination isn't your cup of tea, there are others that allow you to stay within the Pareto front's optimal range. As Eurogamer points out, Donkey Kong, Wario (my old standby, mostly because he makes me laugh) and Princess Peach are often highlighted as drivers, and you can use Mayerowitz's data fields to find the best matching vehicles. Keep in mind that others have identical stats, so racers like Villager (female), Inkling Girl and Diddy Kong are separated only by appearances. To find your ideal racer, you can head over to Mayerowitz's website. There, you can enter your most prized stats and view the combos that give you the best balance (those highlighted in yellow), according to Pareto's theories.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Personal computing and console gaming revenue growth is expected to remain below pre-pandemic levels through 2026 as gamers record fewer hours of playtime, according to research firm Newzoo. From a report: The market is expected to grow 2.7% from 2023-end to 2026, below the 7.2% growth rate from 2015 to 2021, according to the report. Gamers have been recording fewer hours of play, with the average quarterly playtime falling 26% from 2021 to 2023. The trend is expected to continue this year due to weaker gaming release schedules, with playtime falling around 10% in January. "Slower player growth rates will impact the industry's capacity to 'expand the pie' via net organic growth," Newzoo said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia's government to explore the development of a series of homegrown consoles to compete with PlayStation and Xbox. Game Rant reports: Russia has taken issue with Western games and developers in recent years, leading the country to threaten the banning of certain titles like Apex Legends and The Last of Us Part 2. This is due to what the Russian government perceives as pro-LGBTQ messaging, which it openly opposes. In February, Russia's Organization for Developing the Video Game Industry (RVI) laid out a long-term plan that ended with the creation of a fully capable gaming console in 2026-2027. It seems that the Russian government may be attempting to follow through with this plan. Following a meeting on the economic development of Kaliningrad, Putin requested government officials to research the requirements for domestic production of stationary and portable gaming consoles. The Russian president also ordered the planning of an appropriate operating system and cloud system for the consoles. The deadline for these plans is set for June 15, 2024, and Russia's prime minister was designated as the official overseeing these tasks. A Kremlin spokesperson confirmed that the orders intend to develop Russia's homegrown gaming industry.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Hollywood is bracing for another actors strike, this time against the videogame industry," according to MarketWatch: "We're currently in bargaining with all the major game studios, and the major sticking point is AI," SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said Thursday. "Actors at all levels are at risk of digital replication. We have strike authorization on that contract and it is, at this point — we could end up going on strike...." The union, which navigated its way to a new film and TV contract after a 118-day strike against the Hollywood studios last year, is again focusing on regulating artificial intelligence and its impact on wages and jobs. "It will be a recurring issue with each successive contract" every three years, Crabtree-Ireland said. Some studios are already using AI-generated voices to save money, the article points out. "Actors and actresses should be very much afraid," Chris Mattmann, an adjunct research professor at the University of Southern California's Computer Science Department, says in the article. "Within three seconds, gen AI can effectively clone a voice." The strike could affect Microsoft's Activision Publishing and Disney, as well as other major game publishers including Electronic Arts, Epic Games, and Warner Bros.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNN looks back to when "dial-up internet (and its iconic dial tone) was 'still a thing..." "File-sharing services like Napster and LimeWire were just beginning to take off... And in sweaty dorm rooms and sparse basements across the world, people brought their desktop monitors together to set up a local area network (LAN) and play multiplayer games — "Half-Life," "Counter-Strike," "Starsiege: Tribes," "StarCraft," "WarCraft" or "Unreal Tournament," to name just a few. These were informal but high-stakes gatherings, then known as LAN parties, whether winning a box of energy drinks or just the joy of emerging victorious. The parties could last several days and nights, with gamers crowded together among heavy computers and fast food boxes, crashing underneath their desks in sleeping bags and taking breaks to pull pranks on each other or watch movies... It's this nostalgia that prompted writer and podcaster Merritt K to document the era's gaming culture in her new photobook "LAN Party: Inside the Multiplayer Revolution." After floating the idea on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, she received an immediate — and visceral — response from old-school gamers all too keen to share memories and photos from LAN parties and gaming conventions across the world... It's strange to remember that the internet was once a place you went to spend time with other real people; a tethered space, not a cling-film-like reality enveloping the corporeal world from your own pocket.... Growing up as a teenager in this era, you could feel a sense of hope (that perhaps now feels like naivete) about the possibilities of technology, K explained. The book is full of photos featuring people smiling and posing with their desktop monitors, pride and fanfare apparent... "It felt like, 'Wow, the future is coming,'" K said. "It was this exciting time where you felt like you were just charting your own way. I don't want to romanticize it too much, because obviously it wasn't perfect, but it was a very, very different experience...." "We've kind of lost a lot of control, I think over our relationship to technology," K said. "We have lost a lot of privacy as well. There's less of a sense of exploration because there just isn't as much out there." One photo shows a stack of Mountain Dew cans (remembering that by 2007 the company had even released a line of soda called "Game Fuel"). "It was a little more communal," the book's author told CNN. "If you're playing games in the same room with someone, it's a different experience than doing it online. You can only be so much of a jackass to somebody who was sitting three feet away from you..." They adds that that feeling of connecting to people in other places "was cool. It wasn't something that was taken for granted yet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and others spoke at the Game Developers Conference about Tetris Reversed, reports VentureBeat — and told the story of "a lost prototype of a Tetris game that was never published." But little did Pajitnov know that an engineer in charge of the game, Vedran Klanac, had kept a copy of it. Through the help of intermediaries, he showed it to Pajitnov and the two shared their memories of what happened to the lost game... Pajitnov has lived in the U.S. since 1991, where he has been involved in the development of games such as Pandora's Box and worked with companies such as Microsoft and WildSnake Software... Klanac is the CEO of Ocean Media, and he is originally from Zagreb, Croatia. He was an aerospace engineer who started his career in the games industry with Croteam where he built the physics engine for Serious Sam 2. Since 2006, he has been running Ocean Media, a game publishing company with a focus on consoles. During the last 20 years, he was involved in production as a programmer and executive producer in more than 200 projects. And it turns out he was the programmer who created the Tetris Reversed code based on instructions from Pajitnov, who had passed them on through a middleman. In 2011, programmer Vedran Klanac went to the NLGD Festival of Games in Utrecht, The Netherlands. He listened to a talk on a charitable effort from Martin de Ronde, a cofounder of game studio Guerrilla Games. Klanac said in an interview with GamesBeat that he listened to De Ronde's talk and offered to help. De Ronde came back months later saying he had an agreement with Pajitnov about creating a new prototype for a Tetris game. De Ronde asked if Klanac if he wanted to make Tetris Reversed by Pajitnov. "Are you kidding me?" Klanac reacted. The idea is still to survive as long as you can, according to the article — but the entire playfield was accessible. "For the first time in public, they showed the video of the prototype in action," according to the article, which also records Pajitnov reaction. "When you see the gameplay video, and when you look at the design elements. This is Tetris for like 300 IQ people." No word on yet on whether the game will ever be officially published.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Grâce à un nouveau règlement européen, le DMA, Epic Games lancera prochainement son magasin d'applications sur iOS et Android, avec le retour de Fortnite sur iPhone. L'entreprise proposera aux développeurs une taxe de 12 %, soit un modèle semblable à celui d'Apple.

Soon you might be able to compete in games against friends and colleagues and even the office next door on LinkedIn. From a report: The Microsoft-owned company is reportedly planning to add a new game experience to the platform. According to TechCrunch, the experience is designed to tap into the same popularity of games like Wordle. Players' scores will be sorted by their workplace and ranked, allowing you to take on another office or even across the country. App researcher Nima Owji posted photos of the gaming experience on Twitter/X on Saturday. A representative from LinkedIn confirmed to TechCrunch that the company is working on adding puzzle-based games to the LinkedIn experience as a way to "unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom Warren reports via The Verge: Discord will soon allow developers to build new games and apps that can be used directly in its chat app. A selection of minigames and apps have been available to Discord users for months now, but starting March 18th, all Discord developers will get access to a new Embedded App SDK that lets them build these special embedded apps. Discord has used its Activities feature to enable apps like YouTube, promote minigames like poker, and even encourage users to play with a shared whiteboard experience. These apps all appear as an embedded iframe inside Discord, but they've been limited to select developers so far. The SDK will open up this Activities section of Discord to many more developers, so we're bound to see a lot more minigames that can be played directly inside Discord chats. [...] Discord is also experimenting with a way to allow users to add apps to their accounts so they roam across servers. Developers will be able to enable their apps for accounts, and the experiment will launch alongside the app SDK on March 18th. Discord is also bringing back its app pitches, where developers can pitch prototype app ideas and secure up to $30,000 in funding.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.