Thomas Schulenberg: "Zynga has emerged victorious from a round of battle in the High Court after Mattel claimed Zynga's Scramble With Friends app infringed on the toy maker's trademark for Scrabble. Mattel argued that the app's name was too similar to their classic boardgame, Scrabble, which is known as one of the best ways to turn the action of forming of words into a passive-aggressive, violent affair."
Today several publishers, developers, and corporations within the gaming industry released a joint announcement to launch the #PlayApartTogether Campaign.
Might be nice for some of these companies to offer free play weeks, or weekends for some of their games so people that aren't drowning in back log like us can play some new games and keep themselves occupied.
I think a good way to promote playing with others while staying apart may also be for console makers to give a free month of their online services to all users. While it's likely those without these services are just going to run around getting into groups to play MP, I think it encourages that people can still play together, and gives them a platform to do so. It also sends the message that games are a great way to stay connected during difficult times, and by extension games are a great way to stay connected under normal conditions. From a business perspective, it fosters good will, and seems like a rather inexpensive way to get good publicity....although I'm not one to promote taking advantage of a bad situation for publicity....but it is what it is.
Having play events for certain games can also motivate community for those games. Just like a free weekend, or bonus weekends are used now. Many games already do this, but doing so with the pointed purpose of promoting social distancing is something that would help get the concept through people's heads.
Just a couple of suggestions. Hopefully the console makers see it. May go post it on their execs twitter accounts.
Zynga bring free-to-play to VR with in-game advertising to boot.
After Facebook decided to cancel their agreement with powerhouse app developers Zynga. Don Mattrick, the new CEO of Zynga, chooses to bring the company in a new direction. Zynga will now be developing apps for mobile gaming.
lawsuits!
it seems Don Mattrick did learn a few tricks at Readmound
I wonder if he brought over some of those big bags of money
Mattrick has gone from heading up one of the most well known brands in entertainment to fighting court battles for Scramble with friends.. couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
From being a pillar in the Xbox gaming community, to measuring dicks over iPhone games.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Great! Now lets integrate that piece-of-$hit game with Kinect 2.0, throw in some voice commands, TV, sports, fantasy football... and Voila! You have XBox Two!