Xbox Game Pass is all about the power of word-of-mouth marketing
“When people feel like you’re over-delivering on value, they want to not only continue to use your service but they want to tell their friends about it.”
– Xbox marketing GM Aaron Greenberg explains why the too-good-to-be-true value of Game Pass is its greatest marketing tool.
Xbox Game Pass has been an enticing buy since the subscription library first debuted back in 2017. Now with 10 million subscribers, its value has only increased as Xbox continues to announce more games and perks for its Game Pass memberships.
On paper, this may look like Xbox isn’t reaping the profits it could due to Game Pass’ most basic tier being priced at just $10 per month, but Xbox Games Marketing GM Aaron Greenberg tells What’s Good Games (via GameSpot) that the setup is more about building goodwill with customers for long-term gains rather than seeing short-term profits.
“The most powerful marketing is word-of-mouth marketing. We can create as many advertisements, as many assets as we want, but if both of you go tell one of your closest friends ‘You have to get Game Pass,’ that’s way more effective than any marketing I can do,” Greenberg tells What’s Good Games. He explains that word of mouth marketing is the most potent form of marketing they could ask for, and that over-delivering on the value of Xbox Games pass only adds more fuel to those word-of-mouth fires.
“For us, we just want to keep adding more and more value so you feel really good about that and you feel like you want to go tell your friends about it. And ultimately, we think, long-term, that’s the right thing for the business and will have long-term benefits for us. But in the short-term, yeah, it’s not a big profit play, but we think long-term it works out good for everybody.”
Impulse Gear is an award-winning, independent game studio in San Francisco, CA. We released our first game, Farpoint, in May of 2017 to worldwide acclaim. Founded in 2013, our studio is comprised of exceptional and veteran game development talent from the AAA VR, console, PC and mobile game industries. Our core team has over 50 years of game development experience working on some of the largest and most successful titles in game history. We are looking for game developers who want to solve unique and interesting challenges and have the ability to make a significant impact on future projects. We value fast iteration and people who take initiative and love to learn!
Impulse Gear is looking for an experienced Art Director with a thorough understanding of video game development and production pipelines. The ideal candidate would have experience leading a team and collaborating with senior leadership in directing an art department.
Responsibilities and Requisites
Creates the artistic vision of the game and provides direction to realize that vision including:
* evangelizing the vision
* providing feedback and art critique
* defining visual targets and style guides
* collaborating with leadership to drive all artwork
Content
Able to produce artwork in multiple styles via expert knowledge of visual language and themes including the 2D presentation of the game, front-end and in-game interfaces, and paintovers
People
Evaluates, hires, and manages all art disciplines and third parties Develops leadership and empowers the team by sharing ownership and autonomy Uses experience to help with scoping and risk management on projects
Tech
Oversees the production of art tools, production pipelines, content creation Has the technical knowledge required to realize the artistic vision Identifies new tools and evaluates competing products for suitability/cost/use/etc. Has a thorough and broad technical understanding of assets and best practices
Impulse Gear is a leading VR game development studio, solving unique problems and bringing new creative ideas to our industry. We offer competitive compensation packages, with stock options, along with top end health coverage and other benefits. We are located in the heart of San Francisco, close to BART and many restaurants. We have a fun collaborative team, and are committed to ensuring our employees success.
Impulse Gear is committed to an inclusive and diverse employee base, and is an equal opportunity employer.
Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.
Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.
Microsoft have just joined the Blender Development Fund as a Gold Sponsor, joining the likes of Epic Games, Ubisoft, AMD and NVIDIA. Microsoft are currently using Blender in some in-house projects and will be supporting the Blender Development fund to the tune of 30K Euro per year. Details of the deal from the Blender website:
Microsoft makes use of Blender to generate synthetic 3D models and images of humans that can be used to train AI models. For researchers, having access to high quality free/opensource 3D software has proven to be of great benefit for scientific projects. You can check some of their work here.
To express their support, Microsoft is joining the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund as a Corporate Gold member per July 1st, 2020.
We at Blender are very proud of this support statement, it’s another important signal that the industry migrates to open source and finds ways to contribute to it.
You can learn more about the announcement and development fund in the video below. If you are afraid of these corporate influences taking over Blender please be sure to watch this video as well.
This is the final article to the series demonstrating Perl with Tic-Tac-Toe. This article provides a module that can compute better game moves than the previously presented modules. For fun, the modules chip1.pm through chip3.pm can be incrementally moved out of the hal subdirectory in reverse order. With each chip that is removed, the game will become easier to play. The game must be restarted each time a chip is removed.
An example Perl program
Copy and paste the below code into a plain text file and use the same one-liner that was provided in the the first article of this series to strip the leading numbers. Name the version without the line numbers chip3.pm and move it into the hal subdirectory. Use the version of the game that was provided in the second article so that the below chip will automatically load when placed in the hal subdirectory. Be sure to also include both chip1.pm and chip2.pm from the second and third articles, respectively, in the hal subdirectory.
00 # artificial intelligence chip
01 02 package chip3;
03 require chip2;
04 require chip1;
05 06 use strict;
07 use warnings;
08 09 sub moverama {
10 my $game = shift;
11 my @nums = $game =~ /[1-9]/g;
12 my $rama = qr/[1973]/;
13 my %best;
14 15 for (@nums) {
16 my $ra = $_;
17 next unless $ra =~ $rama;
18 $best{$ra} = 0;
19 for (@nums) {
20 my $ma = $_;
21 next unless $ma =~ $rama;
22 if (($ra-$ma)*(10-$ra-$ma)) {
23 $best{$ra} += 1;
24 }
25 }
26 }
27 28 @nums = sort { $best{$b} <=> $best{$a} } keys %best;
29 30 return $nums[0];
31 }
32 33 sub hal_move {
34 my $game = shift;
35 my $mark = shift;
36 my @mark = @{ shift; };
37 my $move;
38 39 $move = chip2::win_move $game, $mark, \@mark;
40 41 if (not defined $move) {
42 $mark = ($mark eq $mark[0]) ? $mark[1] : $mark[0];
43 $move = chip2::win_move $game, $mark, \@mark;
44 }
45 46 if (not defined $move) {
47 $move = moverama $game;
48 }
49 50 if (not defined $move) {
51 $move = chip1::hal_move $game;
52 }
53 54 return $move;
55 }
56 57 sub complain {
58 print 'Just what do you think you\'re doing, ',
59 ((getpwnam($ENV{'USER'}))[6]||$ENV{'USER'}) =~ s! .*!!r, "?\n";
60 }
61 62 sub import {
63 no strict;
64 no warnings;
65 66 my $p = __PACKAGE__;
67 my $c = caller;
68 69 *{ $c . '::hal_move' } = \&{ $p . '::hal_move' };
70 *{ $c . '::complain' } = \&{ $p . '::complain' };
71 72 if (&::MARKS->[0] ne &::HAL9K) {
73 @{ &::MARKS } = reverse @{ &::MARKS };
74 }
75 }
76 77 1;
How it works
Rather than making a random move or making a move based on probability, this final module to the Perl Tic-Tac-Toe game uses a more deterministic algorithm to calculate the best move.
The big takeaway from this Perl module is that it is yet another example of how references can be misused or abused, and as a consequence lead to unexpected program behavior. With the addition of this chip, the computer learns to cheat. Can you figure out how it is cheating? Hints:
References allow data to be modified out of scope.
Final notes
Line 12 demonstrates that a regular expression can be pre-compiled and stored in a scalar for later use. This is useful as performance optimization when you intend to re-use the same regular expression many times over.
Line 59 demonstrates that some system library calls are available directly in Perl’s built-in core functionality. Using the built-in functions alleviates some overhead that would otherwise be required to launch an external program and setup the I/O channels to communicate with it.
Nexomon: Extinction Gets Three New Trailers And A Confirmed Release Date
A small wave of new trailers have appeared for Nexomon: Extinction today, the Pokémon-like monster-catching game that’s headed for Switch. Oh, and speaking of heading for Switch, we now have a confirmed release date, too.
The game will be launching on 28th August, so we won’t have long to wait to check it out and see how it performs. The team behind the game say that monster-catching fans “can look forward to a return to the roots of the genre”, which should sound good to anyone who’s fallen out of love with Pokémon’s direction over recent years.
Anyway, let’s get on to those new trailers. The first one talks about the different ways that you can catch a Nexomon for yourself.
Catching Nexomon
With a minigame, various types of food, traps and more, there are many ways to improve your chances of capturing a monster in Nexomon: Extinction! Study which treats the Nexomon you are hunting likes to eat, which trap is most effective against their elemental type and practice the minigame to become a master tamer!
Exploring the World
In Nexomon: Extinction, you’ll become a member of Tamer’s Guild and join the fight against the mighty Tyrant Nexomon who are devastating the world. But the world of Nexomon is also home to plenty of funny, mysterious and thrilling side-quests, gathering opportunities, stories to tell and much more!
Eccentric Characters
Nexomon: Extinction is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously – at least not all the time! You’ll encounter some genuinely hilarious situations and a refreshingly honest sense of humour throughout your journey. If you enjoy sarcasm and characters breaking the fourth wall, this is the perfect monster catching game for you!
If you want to learn more about this one, make sure to check out our previous coverage which has delved into some of the game’s regions, as well as the nine starter monsters you’ll be able to choose from.
Will you be picking this up next month? Tell us below.
These Holographic Augmented Reality Machine rooms are virtual training simulators that let you battle waves of increasingly difficult enemies by yourself, with companion AI, or with four other real players. When the beta goes live this August, you can choose from Iron Man, Kamala Khan, Black Widow, and The Hulk and take them through these challenge rooms to test your teamwork and earn various nameplates that will carry over to the main game. There will be four challenge rooms available in the beta, with more appearing in the full game.
Developer Crystal Dynamics also touched on other Marvel's Avengers aspects during the War Table livestream. The studio shared details on the cooperative Warzone missions, a look at the campaign content, and more.
Get speedy solitaire game Cast for free on Android and iOS!
We here are Pocket Tactics love ourselves a good puzzle game, especially when they’re easy to pick-up-and-play on the move. Games like Threes! or deck-based dungeon games like Card Crawl are always a great way to spend a little time. So that’s why this week we decided to partner with Badbones Productions to give away codes for Cast – a fast-swiping, no nonsense, card-based puzzle game. Cast is free-to-play, but we’ve currently got codes for removing the in-games ads on Android and iOS.
In a similar vein to Threes!, the game centres around combining your cards to earn points, but there’s a little bit of a match-three component as card colour also becomes a consideration. The most important thing to remember, however, is that if you go below zero, you’re done.
Cast builds on a simple formula and escalates it, introducing new cards that damage your total, movement cards that push you in certain directions, and different colours that swap your type. When you round it all off with a lovely vintage aesthetic, it’s a decent little game!
So if fast-swiping card play sounds like your sort of thing, enter below and you might get your hands on one of our Android or iOS codes. If you do, though, please read our terms and conditions first!
If you want to start playing Cast now, you can find it on Google Play and the App Store. You can also check out our list of the best mobile card games should it please you. Good luck! (We’re rooting for you).
Blue Characters Star In This Week’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Spirit Event
This week, Nintendo is hosting a special Super Smash Bros. Ultimate event featuring all sorts of blue characters.
While Sonic the Hedgehog didn’t make the cut, Metal Sonic and Chaos did. So did Krystal from Star Fox Adventures, Rover from the Animal Crossing series, Dialga from the Pokémon series, and Jack Levin from the F-Zero series. The blue Pikmin is also featured!
This event starts later this week on Friday and will run over the weekend. During this time players will be able to earn more SP than usual.
That quote comes from a longer series of statements Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger gave to Deadline, further elaborating that: "While we don’t know the full details and we are always analyzing any move in the industry, we will analyze it. People need to be aware that the first big movie from Universal is coming only in six months so there is no pressure here… But we clearly see this as a wrong move at the wrong time. Clearly we are not changing our policy with regards to showing only movies that are respecting the theatrical window."
It should be noted that the compromise between AMC Theaters and Universal has not yet borne out any specific details of what their deal entails, and for how long--all that's known as of this writing is that the movie-theater chains are working together. It's still unknown how other theaters and movie studios could fit into this developing scenario in the future.
