Online Gaming Tidbits for March 31st, 2010

A few of the latest online gaming related stories in the news:

• Ubisoft’s senior community developer Kimi Matsuzaki issued a short multiplayer map survey, asking gamers whether they wanted multiplayer maps out of the box or as DLC and if they purposefully unlocked callsigns and emblems (Modern Warfare 2 terminology). Ubisoft’s next major multiplayer FPS due out is Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Hmmm….
• Ubisoft continues to be plagued with problems with its DRM server, especially in Australia, preventing people from playing Settlers 7 on the PC.
• According to AppData, the top 3 Facebook games this week are all from Zynga. Most interestingly? FarmVille, despite its 31 million users this week alone actually managed to gain a million over last week!
• Scoreloop rolled out a new set of white label monetization tools for the iPhone platform, allowing developers to create in-game virtual currencies and storefronts. It’s being billed as ‘the only iPhone social platform that will be directly compatible with the iPad upon launch’.
• Riot Games, developers behind the multiplayer RPG League of Legends discuss their iterative level design in a competitive online game in this post-mortem on Gamasutra.
• Capcom is looking to double its market share (to 4%) and is looking to drastically increasing their focus on post-release DLC as a key means to reach that goal, says the new Capcom Europe boss David Reeves.
• The latest study of the Chinese online game market sees it reaching $9.2 billion by 2014, despite a ‘harsh regulatory environment particularly for foreign games, and a gamer base that has become increasingly discerning about game quality’. There were 68 million online gamers in China at the end of 2009, with the number expecting to grow to 141 million by 2014.

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