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Game Awards 2022

The Game Awards 2022: Winners Revealed

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Recently Game Awards 2022 took place in Los Angeles, California.

Game Awards 2022, the largest gaming event of the year, left behind a trove of discussion and fresh previews for gaming enthusiasts to watch and rewatch over the holidays.

Game Awards 2022
Image Source: tudocelular.com

Elden Ring beat out God of War Ragnarök for the top honor at The Game Awards 2022, even though the latter PlayStation-exclusive won more awards overall than the former FromSoftware game (six vs four). Elden Ring won the best game and art direction awards, but God of War Ragnarök swept the narrative, audio, and performance categories.

Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of the game, showed up on stage to receive the honor. Through a translation, Miyazaki expressed appreciation to From Software, the creators of Elden Ring, as well as the writer George R.R. Martin. Along with thanking the audience for their support, Miyazaki hinted that there might be more Elden Ring content and other ideas from From Software in the future.

Read More: Is the Nintendo Switch Pro worth buying in 2023?

Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West each received seven nominations, while God of War Ragnarok received ten total nominations, leading all other nominees.

At The Game Awards 2022, other winners included Stray, which won the best independent game, Marvel Snap, which won the best mobile game, Bayonetta 3, which won best action game, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, which won best simulation and strategy game, and Gran Turismo 7, which won best sports and racing game.

Here’s a full list of winners:

GAME OF THE YEAR: Elden Ring (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco)

BEST GAME DIRECTION: Elden Ring (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco)

BEST NARRATIVE: God of War Ragnarök (Sony Santa Monica/SIE)

BEST ART DIRECTION: Elden Ring (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco)

BEST SCORE AND MUSIC: Bear McCreary, God of War Ragnarök

BEST AUDIO DESIGN: God of War Ragnarök (Sony Santa Monica/SIE)

BEST PERFORMANCE: Christopher Judge, God of War Ragnarök

GAMES FOR IMPACT: As Dusk Falls (Interior Night/Xbox Game Studios)

BEST ONGOING GAME: FINAL FANTASY XIV (Square Enix)

BEST DEBUT INDIE: Stray (BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna)

BEST INDIE: Stray (BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna)

BEST COMMUNITY SUPPORT: FINAL FANTASY XIV (Square Enix)

BEST ACTION: Bayonetta 3 (Platinum Games/Nintendo)

BEST VR/AR: Moss: Book II (Polyarc)

BEST ESPORTS EVENT: 2022 League of Legends World Championship

BEST ESPORTS COACH: Matheus “bzkA” Tarasconi (LOUD, VALORANT)

BEST ESPORTS TEAM: LOUD (Valorant)

BEST ADAPTATION Arcane: League of Legends (Fortiche/Riot Games/Netflix)

INNOVATION IN ACCESSIBILITY: God of War Ragnarök (Sony Santa Monica/SIE)

BEST ESPORTS GAME: VALORANT (Riot Games)

BEST ESPORTS ATHLETE: Jacob “Yay” Whiteaker (Cloud9, Valorant)

BEST MULTIPLAYER: Splatoon 3 (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)

CONTENT CREATOR OF THE YEAR: Ludwig

MOST ANTICIPATED: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)

BEST MOBILE: MARVEL SNAP (Second Dinner Studios/Nuverse)

BEST SPORTS/RACING: Gran Turismo 7 (Polyphony Digital/SIE)

BEST ACTION/ADVENTURE: God of War Ragnarök (Sony Santa Monica/SIE)

BEST ACTION: Bayonetta 3 (Platinum Games/Nintendo)

BEST SIM/STRATEGY: Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope (Ubisoft Milan/Paris/Ubisoft)

BEST FAMILY: Kirby and the Forgotten Land (HAL Laboratory / Nintendo)

BEST FIGHTING: MultiVersus (Player First Games/WB Games)

BEST ROLE PLAYING: Elden Ring (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco)

Oregon Trail

The Oregon Trail is soon coming to PC and Nintendo Switch

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As per a recent announcement from Gameloft, The Oregon Trail will be made available for PC and Nintendo Switch.

Oregon Trail
Image Source: gameindustry.com

The Oregon Trail, a beloved classic game, will be coming to PC and Nintendo Switch in November. The Oregon Trail is expanding to additional platforms, and Gameloft is excited to announce that it will soon be available on Windows, Steam, and Nintendo Switch.

The Oregon Trail was the most downloaded game on Apple Arcade in 2021 when it was first released in April. On November 14th, 2022, gamers will be able to play Gameloft Brisbane’s updated version of the original game on PC and Nintendo Switch.

David MacMinn, Game Manager, noted, “We’re incredibly excited for even more players to experience The Oregon Trail. We’re pleased to see our game expand to multiple new platforms, and we hope PC and Nintendo players will enjoy their time on the trail as much as we did making it.”

Caroline Fraser, Head of HarperCollins Productions, noted, “The gameplay in our new version of The Oregon Trail has proven to be as exciting and sticky as it was in the ‘90s. The stunning graphics will grab players as they journey west and confront new dangers, meet a wide cast of historical figures, and overcome challenging obstacles on their way to Oregon.”

In The Oregon Trail game, players are put in the middle of all the difficulties encountered on the westward voyage. They must make difficult decisions in perilous and unexpected circumstances in order to fill their wagon, select their traveling group, and ensure that they all arrive in Oregon safely. In a first for the franchise, players will also learn about the real history of the path, such as the Native American experience.

The Oregon Trail, which will be released in November, was developed with assistance from Gameloft Lviv and will be an exact replica of the Apple Arcade edition. The most recent new features provide further accessibility settings, activities, and visual filters to view the game in a completely new way, and it includes all five prior content upgrades.

The Oregon Trail offers “a modern twist on the trials and tribulations of the road to Oregon.” According to the publisher, the game’s 15 playable trips and seven missions will “immerse players in exhilarating journeys ranging from the historically accurate to the totally extreme.”

In the game, there will be a new fishing minigame including over 80 species, as well as the traditional perils like damaged limbs, river fording, moving gunpowder through the wilderness, blizzards, snakebites, famine, tiredness, and dysentery.

The Oregon Trail is a series of various instructional video games. Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger created the initial game in 1971, and the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) produced it in 1974. The original game’s purpose was to educate 8th-grade students about the reality of living as a pioneer on the Oregon Trail during the 19th century. In 1848, the player takes on the role of a wagon leader who is transporting a group of settlers by covered wagon from Missouri to Oregon.

FAU-G

FAU-G – India’s Very Own Shooter-Game Up for Pre-Registration on Google Play Store.

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FAU-G, which is a mobile game that Indians have been looking on with a lot of excitement, has finally come up live on the Google Play Store. While the game is not ready for download yet, gamers can now pre-register for the game, which will be out soon. The Indian public has been waiting patiently for what they believe to be India’s most high-profile made-in-India shooter game. Indians believe that FAU-G will rival PUBG in popularity, and see it as an Indian-made alternative to the viral Chinese shooting game. Let us now take a closer look at the game’s launch on the Google Play Store and what this means for Indian gamers.

FAU-G Up for Pre-Registration

FAU-G had to battle through multiple changes in its launching date and delays to appear on the Google Play Store finally. However, the developers have plans to launch only an Android version initially, and later expand to newer markets. Additionally, the listing on the Play Store helps in expanding on the storyline more than what the teaser initially did. The plans for such a game came out two days after India banned over 118 Chinese apps way back in September. However, the game has been marketed as more than just a replacement for PUBG Mobile India. Most Indians acknowledge that the game is a patriotic one as its developers will contribute a share of their earnings to the armed forces. 

FAU-G
Image Source: i.gadgets360cdn.com

FAU-G Gameplay

FAU-G stands for Fearless and United Guards, and users who sign up for the pre-registration will receive a notification when the game drops on the Play Store. Also, all eligible devices which have signed up will automatically download and install the game. However, the developers have not revealed details regarding the game’s size and other technical details. The listing does give a brief outline of the basic gameplay that FAU-G will follow and the storyline it will stick to, which follows closely what gamers saw in the teaser. As expected, the game will in some ways emulate the clashes that occurred in the Galwan Valley between the Indian and Chinese armed forces. The scenario described on Google Play Store emphasizes that the game will focus on Indian soldiers posted on India’s northern borders. The characters will go by the name FAU-G commandos, which will serve as an elite Indian wing of soldiers who patrol the most dangerous territories.

FAU-G Development

Bangalore-based gaming company nCore Games have been developing FAU-G. The company has been partnering with Bollywood actor and celebrity Akshay Kumar, and the first trailer for the game went live on October 25th. While the game was to drop by the end of October, the team ran into delays and pushed the launch into November. However, this puts the game on a collision course with the launch of PUBG Mobile India. PUBG Mobile India is an alternate version of the trendy shooter game that is tailored for the Indian market. Both have announced that launches in November but ran into delays and now seem to be competing on who will hit the market first. On a troubling note for nCore, the number of followers that PUBG India boasts far outweighs the support that FAU-G enjoys on Tap Tap. However, things might pan out quite differently once the games drop, as FAU-G has a patriotic angle.

PUBG Corporation Hassles

The PUBG Corporation has been trying very hard to minimize the effect of the border tensions between Indian and China in the last few months. The company has had to do this so that they receive the approvals required to make a comeback into the Indian market. Meanwhile, FAU-G has been using the heightened nationalism and anti-China sentiment that arose as a result of the skirmish for their gains. Their teaser emulated the Valley skirmish along the LOC and used brawler mechanics to depict the clash realistically. The game is also using the Atma Nirbhar Bharat sentiment to inspire more Indians to use its made-in-India services. Additionally, the developers will donate 20% of their revenue to Bharat Ke Veer. This is a trust that the government established to help the families of soldiers who died in the line of duty. 

Snapchat to Uncover its New Gaming Platform in the Upcoming Snapchat Summit in April

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snapchat-gaming
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According to a report from Cheddar, the parent company of Snapchat, Snap Inc., is planning to launch its own new gaming platform in the coming month. The rumours about the new gaming platform from Sanp Inc. has been making rounds since June last year, and now if we believe the reports the company is all set to launch one in April.

Snap Inc. has already tried its hands in gaming field with its set of AR lens games named Snappables, and also, in January, the company acquired the Australian game studio Prettygreat for an $8.6 million. Furthermore, the Chinese gaming conglomerate Tencent bought a 12 per cent share in Snap, in 2017, which is a clear indication of Snap Inc. paving its ways towards the gaming industry at a bigger level.

According to the reports, the new gaming platform will allow its users to play third party games over it. The new platform will also accept games from outside developers, and those games will play on the Snapchat application itself.

The company is hosting a Snap Partner Summit in Los Angeles on April 4th, for developers and creators from different regions, where the company is expected to unveil its new gaming platform, which is also referred as the “Project Cognac”. Cheddar has even reported of an invitation for the event having a slogan imprinted over it saying, “Less talk. More play”. The slogan, too, is hinting towards the same new gaming platform, that the company may launch at the event.

Snapchat currently is facing tough competition as many other Snapchat-look-alike apps have come in the market and to move ahead in the competition, entering the gaming business can be a fruitful decision for Snap Inc. Moreover, the new gaming platform will be a source of increased user engagement and higher revenue.

For now, the company has not commented on the matter. But, if the sources are to be believed, the new gaming platform will be a great place for the outside developers and creators to place their games, and for the advertisers too, it will be a popular platform to play their ads.

Sebastian Knutsson : The Co-founder of ‘King’ & its Sagas

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It is inevitable that games are an enormously great way to pass the time and for the recreation of mind, be it offline (real-world) or online (virtual). But since the recent years, the ‘gaming’ (virtual) industry has been putting up a lot of effort to provide the best experience, and with the games that have been rolling out, it is hard to not let the spotlight fall on them. According to IAB (Trends -2016), mobile gaming will be the one to have more than 190+ million users which clearly tells the addictiveness of the games. One such creator of ‘addictive’ games is King.com (King) which is playing a major role in providing the world what it desires. The co-founder and the Chief Creative Officer of King, “Sebastian Knutsson” shares a story of his failures and successes, and how creativity can shake the world.

King.com was founded by Riccardo Zacconi, Toby Rowland, Sebastian Knutsson, Thomas Hartwig, Lars Markgren and Patrik Stymne, in 2003, in Sweden. Zacconi and Toby, after the selling of udate.com, joined four of the co-founders to start a new venture with the help of investments of Angel Investments which were provided by Melvyn Morris.

Sebastian-Knutsson
Image Source: svd.se

The company started with Morris as chairman, Zacconi and Rowland as co-CEOs, Sebastian Knutsson as CCO (Chief Creative Officer), CTO Thomas Hartwig, Managing Director Lars Markgren and Chief Systems Architect Patrik Stymne. All but Rowland are still with the company.

King, initially, focused on the production of web browser compatible games but the company nearly went bankrupt, as it generated no profit. A key investment that saved the company arrived just a day before the doom-day by Melvyn Morris. Within two years, the company started generating revenues with them, growing from $2.60 million in 2004 to $12.21 million in 2004. In 2005, Apax invested a massive $32.68 million with Index Ventures invested $5.65 million. “We became dominant in Europe” quoted Knutsson on the achievement of King.

Knutsson, in the company, is referred to as ‘the gamer guy’ and is the key man which designs games for King. He has been with the company since the very beginning with being at the CCO post, since June 2004. He also served as the Executive Product Developer from February 2003 to June 2004. He had done his BA from Stockholm School of Economics, which enables him to have a sharp business brain. He also co-founded ‘Spray’ which became the main link between Zacconi and him. Alongside Spray and King, he founded Fjord Network AB and Midasplayer.com Ltd. He currently is an investment committee member at Sweet Capital.

It was in 2009 when King again saw a downfall in its users’ count. It was because Facebook started to suck up their lot of users with the interactive games it brought up. “In 2009 and 2010, the growth was stagnant. We had this term when we were talking about our partners, as being ‘F by F’” said Sebastian, mocking their situation back in the day.

In October 2010, the company was revised and shook up the whole system within. The company wanted to integrate with Facebook. The web team was slashed in half, releasing coders to work on five new projects to crack Facebook.

Knutsson was the lead to all this. “We knew we had to manage the transition with improving the communication internally, managing that risk of trying to pivot and make sure the staff were part of that journey and understanding why we are doing it,” he added. Out of five games, one game was in vain, three did okay, and one did all the work that was required. These ‘saga’ games required very little of time investments, unlike the Zynga games. This, turned out to be very successful for the company, as the game ‘Bubble Witch Saga’ managed to gain more than 10 million players and became one of the most played games on Facebook. Their next release, which emerged from the Stockholm Studio of Knutsson, Candy Crush Saga topped the Charts, be it the Facebook or the play store. The game was all over, and this helped King in their IPO.

Knutsson refers to the ‘Saga’ concept as a very simple one. “It is the simplicity that is the strength, not its complexity.” “Candy Crush was our strongest game on Facebook; we knew we had to get it right.” Candy Crush and its Saga proved to be a gem for King as the game was played by more than 93 million people, more than a billion times daily in December.

As of now, King has 13 studios in different locations, is generating revenue of US $1.59 billion, net income of US $575 million (2014). Company’s valuation at IPO is 7.1 Billion. Sebastian owns more than 17 million shares of the company. (Third most in the company)

The life story of Sebastian Knutsson, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of King.com, clearly shows that creativity never lets you down. He claims to have designed 10 out of the company’s 15 worst games ever but still leads the company to the best.