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Awards recognise games for first time.
Strategy game Civilization V has made history after becoming the first videogame to be nominated for a Grammy Award.
Composes Christopher Tin received the nomination for track Baba Yetu, which features in Civ V’s opening theme. Fancy a listen? Check out the video below. It reminds us of The Lion King.
Baba Yetu, which features the Soweto Gospel Choir, was short-listed for the “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists” category, reports Gamasutra.
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Japan-based developer will make the leap from iOS with Pocket God.Mobile game developer Ngmoco, a subsidiary of Japanese social gaming company DeNA, has announced its debut title for the Android platform.
Pocket God was developed by US-based development team Bolt Creative for iOS devices and released last year.
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Refuses to reveal plans.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn developer Hiroyuki Takahashi loves the 3DS so much he’s “excited” to create a game for it.
Unfortunately, though, he won’t say what he’s got up his sleeve.
“I’m afraid I can’t go into detail at this time, but the features of Nintendo 3DS are really exciting to me as a developer,” the Camelot boss told IGN.
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Developer Zattikka launches official site for Facebook’s Ministry Of Silly Games.Following last month’s announcement that it had acquired the rights to develop and publish a Monty Python social game, UK-based studio Zattikka is taking registrations for beta testers.
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Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones approve.
Beloved British comics Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones are promoting a brand new Monty Python virtual world for Facebook.
It will be known as The Ministry of Silly Games.
Developer Zattika hopes to rekindle the bonkers style of Python and turn many cherished sketches into games within a game. At launch (whenever that is) there will be the following pursuits: Twit Russian Roulette, Camelot Smashalot, Grumbly Flower Arranging, King Arthur’s Knight Fight, Monty Python’s Scratch and Sniff, Mr Creosote, Gillaxian and Aerial Antics.
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Culture minister suggests call for changes to game industry tax system will have to wait.During a select committee for the department of Culture, Media and Sport yesterday, the government’s minister for culture, communications and creative industries Ed Vaizey said the UK may have to wait “three or four” years before game development tax breaks “realistically comes back onto the table.”
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Blizzard’s executive vice president of game design questions the industry’s focus on figures.
In an exclusive Edge interview, Blizzard executive vice president of game design, Rob Pardo, questions the benefits of metrics-led game design, saying that intuition should always play a more prominent role.
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Head of Interactive Entertainment says service has around 12.5 million Gold members.Speaking at the Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference in the US on Wednesday, Dennis Durkin, head of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business said: "Of our 25 million members [worldwide], about half of them are subscribers to the business and pay us about $60 a year for that."
The figure means Microsoft is receiving $750 million from its members each year from subscriptions alone.
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What?
Mega developer Valve has launched a public beta for online shooter Team Fortress 2 over three years after its release.
Why? To test “new technologies without the risk of breaking the game”, the developer wrote on the Team Fortress 2 blog.
Valve’s testing class, item and weapon changes. Mysterious “higher level, game-wide experiments” are going on, too.
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Issue off the table for three or four years.
UK game development suffered another blow today after the government said much sought after tax breaks could be years away.
According to GameSpot, culture minister Ed Vaizey said during yesterday’s Culture Department select committee meeting he could put tax breaks on a “three or four year hiatus” – suggesting the issue is a no go until the next general election.
The move comes after the Conservative Party promised “unequivocally” to introduce game tax breaks “in our first budget” – that was when it was in opposition. How things change.