MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry

ELSPA has attended an ‘urgent meeting’ with the Department Of Heath after the Government’s controversial Change4Life ad campaign linked video games to premature death . The ads have become a hot topic of debate amongst the industry this morning. The new print promotion – supported by The British Heart Foundation, …

Konami achieves 40 years in business this month, and the Japanese company is already looking ahead to its next four decades – with European growth and new IP a priority. The publisher has been responsible for creating some of the most popular video games in the world, including Pro Evolution …

French studio Darkworks no longer working on ambitious new title

The news that online retail giant Amazon is to enter the pre-owned games market has seen the shares of High Street rival GameStop take a steep fall, dipping 14 per cent yesterday. Variety reports that used games account for 44 per cent of GameStop’s profits, and that Amazon’s move into …

Marketing veteran Sarah Seaby has joined Fallout 3 publisher Bethesda as European marketing and PR director. Seaby will report to Bethesda European MD Sean Brennan and will be responsible for developing the overall brand strategy for the firm. Sarah’s vast experience of marketing triple-A titles and her affinity to the …

But let’s not pussy foot around: Change4Life’s advertising campaign makes a mockery of everything the industry has achieved in the last decade. And it’s bang out of order. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have all moved Heaven and Earth to provide a more socially embedded and (whisper it) healthy interactive experience …

The Government’s Change4Life campaign upped the ante in drawing spurious links between games and premature death this week. The British Heart Foundation, Diabetes UK and Cancer Research have all lent their name to a new print campaign (pictured here), which shows a gamer risking an early grave by ‘doing nothing’. …

The 200th edition of Edge magazine hits newsagents next week, and boasts a world first: the magazine will be issued with 200 collectors’ covers. The variants include game icons such as Mario, Sonic and Master Chief, alongside forgotten legends such as Dizzy, Q-Bert and Dirk the Daring. Subscribers will receive …

The Swedish prosecution of the owners of BitTorrent site Pirate Bay has ended with the site’s defence lawyers arguing that the four accused cannot be held accountable for the conduct of the website’s users. It is not proved that Fredrik Neij has earned any money, just that the Pirate Bay’s …

Vision is the easy thing â?? shaping it into a form thatâ??s worth investing your time and money is the difficult thing, reckons Jon Jordan. Time to brush up on prototyping and pre-viz toolâ?¦