1）据gamasutra报道，独立游戏开发商War Balloon日前公布《Star Command》项目2011年9-10月在Kickstarter平台融资的捐赠款项分配情况:

截止融资活动结束时，工作室共获得3万6967美元的捐赠。其中有2000美元去向未明细，扣除Kickstarter与Amazon Payments从中分成的3000美元，War Balloon又用其中的1万美元制作海报和T恤用于回馈捐赠者；在剩下的2.2万美元中，有6000美元用于制作《Star Command》的音效，4000美元用于成立工作室（例如法务、创业资金等），有2000美元用于海报美术设计，在iPad平台投入1000美元，在PAX East大会宣传中投入3000美元。

这样War Balloon还剩6000美元，这部分款项被视为纯收益，因此需将其中的三分之一缴税。该工作室在开发《Star Command》期间还负债5万美元，这款游戏预计于今年夏天登陆iOS和Android平台。

该工作室总结表示，他们其实不应该花钱聘请律师帮助注册成立公司并签署运营协议，他们其实可以不花钱自己处理这些事务。此外他们还提醒其他有意通过Kickstarter融资的开发者注意，那些用于回馈支持者的赠品和物料其实是一笔很容易失控的大开销。

2）据techcrunch报道，亚马逊日前向开发者发送的邮件显示，亚马逊平台的分级控制功能已进行更新，开发者已可向该平台推出售价超过20美元的IAP内容。

观察者称亚马逊一键式支付操作流程原本可能导致该平台重蹈苹果覆辙（游戏邦注：之前有不少儿童在iOS免费增值游戏中购买大量虚拟商品，引起许多家长不快并起诉苹果），但亚马逊设备拥有分级控制设置，用户的任何交易都需要输入Amazon.com密码或4位PIN码，Kindle用户可通过其设备上的“设置”菜单完成这种操作。

3）据pocketgamer报道，硬核社交游戏开发商Kabam日前宣布，其首款iOS免费增值游戏《Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North》下载量已超过100万次，玩家在其中建立的王国突破75万个，这表明自2月29日发布以来，有75万以上的玩家开始玩这款游戏。

其中有20%玩家来自iPad平台，玩家平均每天登录游戏3.3次，该游戏最高峰时曾跻身美国iPhone营收榜单第8名。

据Kabam移动副总裁Matt Ricchetti所称，公司还计划将所有游戏引进Android平台，目前已投入开发一系列新游戏，其中一者即将进入测试阶段。

4）游戏行业元老、《水果忍者》开发者Tony Takoushi日前宣布成立自己的新工作室Total Arkade Software。Takoushi的游戏职业生涯始于1979年，曾与世嘉、Codemasters和Halfbrick合作，今后将面向iOS、Android和三星bada平台发布游戏。

5）EA日前发布针对《战地3》信息追踪服务的iOS应用Battlelog，以便通过社交网络维持用户留存率。

这款免费的iOS应用提供了许多与网页版本相同的选项，支持《战地3》玩家由此追踪自己在游戏中的状态和解琐内容，并向游戏中的好友发送即时通告等信息。

在此之前，美国动视也针对《使命召唤：现代战争3》平台发布了信息追踪服务平台Call of Duty Elite的iOS版本。

6）Unity Technologies日前宣布在中国上海成立新工作室，开拓当地市场并与蓝汛和奇虎360等中国本土科技公司进行合作。

这个新工作室将由前微软高管Allen Foo主导，这是Unity工作室继加拿大、丹麦、英国、日本、韩国、立陶宛、瑞典和美国之后延伸的第9个国家。

7）移动视频广告网站AdColony及尼尔森最近报告指出，同时在电视及移动设备展示的广告可以获得更多关度，更能激发用户的兴趣和购买欲。

该报告调查了400名用户，让这些用户在30分钟看电视的过程中，同时使用iPad或iPhone。在此期间，这些观察会看到宣传电影《Contraband》的15秒电视广告。结果发现，同时在iOS设备和电视上看到15秒广告的用户购买产品意愿比只看电视广告的用户高72%，他们对品牌的印象也比后者高69%。

有22%同时看电视和iOS广告的用户表示有兴趣再搜索更多关于该电影的信息，而只看电视广告用户的这一比例仅为4%；26%同时看电视和iOS广告者表示将向好友推荐该电影，而只看电视广告用户的这一比例只有10%。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

1）Star Command dev shares realities of costs after Kickstarter funding

by Eric Caoili

Though indie game developer War Balloon surpassed its Kickstarter funding goal for Star Command, an honest breakdown of its costs reveals that a fraction of those donations went toward the actual game.

Last October, War Balloon joined a fast-growing list of small companies that crowd-funded their game projects on Kickstarter, but that didn’t mean the company was financially set to complete its anticipated iOS and Android title Star Command.

When its Kickstarter campaign ended, the studio counted $36,967 in pledges, almost double the $20,000 it initially hoped to bring in to fund the Star Trek-esque sim RPG. However, around $2,000 of those pledges failed to transfer.

Kickstarter and Amazon Payments took their $3,000 cut from that amount, and then the company spent $10,000 on producing the incentives War Balloon promised backers, such as posters and shirts.

With $22,000 remaining, it spent $6,000 on Star Command’s music, $4,000 on setting up the company (attorneys, start-up fees, etc.), $2,000 on poster art, $1,000 on iPads, and $3,000 on its PAX East presence two weeks ago.

War Balloon was left with $6,000 after all that, which counted as income, so it gave up a third of that to taxes. The studio has actually taken on more than $50,000 in debt while working on Star Command, which releases to iOS and Android devices this summer.

In a post offering an update for those who backed the project, War Balloon said that if it could do anything different, the team would have not involved attorneys to register its LLCs and get operating agreements, as it would’ve preferred to handle those matters itself without spending extra money.

Offering insight to other developers interested in Kickstarter, War Balloon also warned that costs for rewards can get out of hand. “We just didn’t fully appreciate the cost of printing 200 posters, shirts, and more than anything shipping,” the team admitted.（source:gamasutra）

2）Amazon Android Developers Can Now Charge More Than $20 For In-App Purchases

Kim-Mai Cutler

Amazon is now letting developers charge higher prices for in-app purchases thanks to new parental controls it just strengthened.

The company sent out an e-mail to developers today that said:

“With our parental controls functionality now updated, in-app items over $20 may now be submitted via the developer portal.”

Developers depend on these pricier items to make their businesses work since only a small percentage (usually in the single digits) of their users pay in their games. These so-called “whales” are responsible for the bulk of a developer’s revenues. In a study earlier this year, mobile analytics company Flurry found that transactions that were more than $20 make up the majority of revenue for top-grossing games on iOS and Android.

But this business model has caused tension on Apple’s iOS platform. Last year, there were widespread reports that children could run up hundreds of dollars in purchases on their iPods, iPhones or iPads to their parents’ chagrin. Apple has a 15-minute window for purchases after an iOS device owner types in their password. After the 15 minutes passes, they have to re-enter their password if they want to buy more.

Amazon famously has a one-click payments flow, which in a normal case could make a Kindle especially risky to hand to a child or toddler. But the device has parental controls. If they’re set up properly, all purchases require an Amazon.com password or a 4-digit PIN. Kindle owners can set this up from the ‘Settings’ menu on their device.

Higher price points for in-app purchases should also help Amazon boost its reputation as an app store that’s more lucrative per user than Google Play. Another Flurry study showed that the average revenue per user on Amazon’s store is about 89 percent of what it is on iOS. Meanwhile, Google Play has an average revenue per user that’s about one-quarter of what it is on iOS.（source:techcrunch）

3）Matt Ricchetti on how Kabam is deploying its online RPG/strategy expertise for mobile

by Jon Jordan

There’s a big clash gearing up in the mobile free-to-play market – it’s a clash over hardcore social gamers.

There’s always been companies in the space – notably Storm8, Glu Mobile and Machine Zone (previously Addmired).

And their success, combined with a broader switch from Facebook to mobile, has attracted a lot of well funded and experienced new entrants to the scene.

Bam-bam baby

One of the most experienced and best funded ($125 million raised to-date) is Kabam.

It’s just released its first free-to-play iOS title: Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North.

A standalone iOS game based on its flagship 15 million-strong online Kingdoms of Camelot title: Kabam says it’s been impressed with the reception.

There’s been over one million downloads, and over 750,000 kingdoms have been created, meaning over 750,000 players have started playing the game since its 29 February release.

Over 20 percent of those are on iPad.

Activity is high too, with the average player logging into the game 3.3 times daily, while the game has peaked to-date at #8 in the US top grossing iPhone chart.

Parallel lines

“We really want to go after the mobile market, but didn’t want to make a game that linked to the online version for technical reasons,” explains Kabam’s VP of mobile, Matt Ricchetti.

In this way, Battle for the North is broadly similar in terms of gameplay but has been reworked for mobile.

“Our focus is ensuring the game is very playable on a phone,” he says.

“We’re hiding complexity, especially in terms of how we’ve redesigned the interface.”

Power users

Yet Ricchetti says the way people play the game is similar.

“On PC, people may have a tab open all day, dipping in and out,” he points out. “With mobile, they’re playing 24/7 thanks to push notifications.”

Driving such constant activity is the gameplay itself, which mixes city-building and resource management with player versus player action, including the ability to hook up in Alliances for large-scale battles.

Unpinning this is the game’s inbuilt chat and messaging system, while use of Kabam’s own log-in system is encouraged, although not required.

Future edge

Launch over, Kabam is now rolling out additional support for Battle for the North.

The first major update out this week will enable players to create a second city or kingdom, also adding leaderboards. Other planned improvements include more localisation – including Turkish and Nordic languages – while an Android release is a more strategic goal.

“All our mobile games will be on Android,” Ricchetti confirms.

Indeed, Kabam has a number of new titles in development, with one going into beta soon.

As with Battle for the North, they’re based on its existing online games, but there will be original games, in what Ricchetti calls a ‘mobile-first’ approach.

“We’re bringing the best of Kabam to mobile, but we also know that there’s different play pattern,” he explains.

“Our expertise is in the RPG and strategy genres, and you can design games for the more frequent, shorter session plays you typically see on mobile. You’ll see what we’re up to by the end of the year.”

In the meantime, however, he says he expects the market to continue to change quickly.

“It’s similar to what happened on Facebook, but it’s happening quicker on mobile,” he argues.

“We have plenty of experience in terms of aspects such as design, monetisation, localisation and user acquisition, and we’re in this business for the long haul.” （source:pocketgamer）

4）Industry veteran and Fruit Ninja developer Tony Takoushi sets up Total Arkade

by Jon Jordan

It’s an unusual name, but one that might be familiar to gamers of a certain era.

One ‘Tony Takoushi’ is listed as playing a part in the creation of UK games mag Mean Machines in the early 1990s, when he was working on the similarly fondly regarded CVG.

Roll on 20 years and Tony Takoushi – now living in Australia – has announced the formation of his new studio Total Arkade Software.

What’s he been doing in the meantime? Just work with little known companies such as Sega, Codemasters and Halfbrick, where he worked on Fruit Ninja.

New scene

But that’s the past and this is the future.

“”I started in the games industry in 1979 and it’s very exciting to be setting up an indie development team at this time with so many opportunities to innovate and create quality titles in the mobile space,” Takoushi says.

“I want to give players the same gorgeous art, great audio and compulsive gaming they would recognise from Halfbrick productions, along with some very innovative gameplay, as you’ll see in our first title shortly.”

As for that game, Takoushi is playing his cards close to his chest, but says it will be released for iOS, Android and bada. （source:pocketgamer）

5）EA launches iOS version of Battlelog

by Mike Rose

Newsbrief: Electronic Arts has released an iOS version of its Battlefield 3 statistics tracking service Battlelog, as part of its aim to hold user retention through social networking.

The free iOS Battlelog app offers many of the same options as its web browser counterpart, allowing Battlefield 3 players to keep track of their stats and unlocks, as well as displaying a “Battle Feed” which acts as a live feed of real-time notifications from friends in-game.

The service comes just months after Activision released an iOS version of its own Call of Duty Elite, the statistics tracking companion app for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.（source:gamasutra）

6）Unity signs Chinese distribution deals, opens Shanghai support office

by Keith Andrew

With more than 1 million developers already on its books, Unity Technologies has signalled an intent to make a mark on the Chinese market, opening up a new office in the country’s largest city, Shanghai.

The new base, announced in front of 800 attendees at the Unity Asia Bootcamp in Beijing, is designed to – in Unity’s words – “investigate specific needs of the area” and will be supported by new partnerships with local technology firms China Cache and Qihoo 360.

Partner power

“We’ve been aggressively expanding Unity into Asia for over a year and opening offices in Shanghai is a big move for us to meet high demand in China,” said CEO David Helgason.

“Partnerships with key Chinese internet firms, agreements with local software resellers, and opening of the China office are all part of a dedication to support the Chinese development community as intensely as we’ve supported it in the west.”

Said partners will be tasked with cementing the distribution of the company’s Unity Web Player, with China Cache delivering 12 thousand servers to support demand and Qihoo 360 distributing the platform to its 240 million Safe Browser users.

The new China office – which will be headed up by ex-Microsoft’s regional director of business development Allen Foo – is the ninth country in which Unity has opened up a base, joining Canada, Denmark, UK, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Sweden, and the United States. （source:pocketgamer）

7）Combining mobile and TV ads can boost recall by 69 percent, study finds

Kathleen De Vere

Mobile video ad network AdColony and Nielsen have revealed that subjects who are exposed to advertisements for a product on both TV and a mobile device show higher awareness, interest and purchase intent.

In a recent study, AdColony and Nielsen surveyed 400 people, asking them to watch TV for 30 minutes while using either an iPad or an iPhone. During the test, viewers were shown a 15-second TV ad for the movie Contraband. Users who were shown the 15-second ad on the iOS device and TV during the 30-minute period demonstrated 72 percent higher purchase intent and 69 percent higher brand recall than respondents who only saw the TV commercial.

The study also found that of viewers who saw the ad on both the TV and the iOS device, 22 percent said they intended to search for information about the movie, as compared to 4 percent of viewers who said they would search for more information after only seeing the TV ad. Results showed 26 percent of viewers who saw the ad on both screens indicated they would recommend the movie to a friend, as compared to the 10 percent who said they would recommend after only seeing the TV spot.（source:insidemobileapps）