Developing smartphone apps is a tough business to break into. Seventy-five percent of apps earn the developer less than 500 dollars per month. Because app markets are saturated, very few apps are able to accumulate many downloads. In fact, only one in six smartphone apps exceed 500 total downloads. Every once in a while, an app is able to break out and find success, gaining high numbers of downloads in a matter of days. For the most successful apps, user numbers lie in the millions and gameplay takes billions of hours from users. What is it that makes these apps, such as Blood Brothers, Minecraft,…

There was a time well before PS3 and Xbox 360 that the best games were not on your console or computer but at the arcade, bowling alley, or bar. Technology made the standup arcade game mostly obsolete; we can get better graphics and more engaging play from the comfort of our homes. Bar favorites like Golden Tee and Mortal Combat lost their coin-eating appeal. McKinney Ad Agency out of Durham, NC, has a 10% rule. The McKinney Ten Percent is a program that encourages employees to use 1/10th of their work time on non-client related projects and as a result, Beercade was born. Created for Big Boss Brewing…

There’s something epic about the power of old videos. They can bring us back in time and help us remember how things were in our lives if we were old enough to remember them. If we weren’t old enough (or if you weren’t even born yet in 1991) then they can give you a glimpse into a different era from which your parents existed. Such is the case with this simple training video from Nintendo. It highlights customer service in an era before Yelp and Google Local Reviews. It isn’t worried about the response from Twitter accounts. Customer service wasn’t being forced on companies back then. You did it because…

Football, if not the most, is one of the most followed sports in the world. The playing clubs and countries have fan-followings around the world. These fans can be seasonal, casual, hardcore or competition- specific. The video gaming football community is ruled by two names, FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES). The PES series was the undisputed king in the previous generation of video games like PS2 and Xbox. What made PES so brilliant was its unmatched gameplay. With the current generation of consoles released in 2005 (X360, P53), FIFA managed to get the better of PES with its great gameplay and…

Eveloper High Moon Studios returns to helm its second game in the Transformers series with lots of explosive action, exciting gameplay, and plenty of transforming. Carrying a strong sense of passion for its source material, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron stands out as a powerful title that carries on the story of everyone’s favorite robots-in-disguise. Even lovers of car games for kids will also enjoy this game! Taking control of both the Autobots and the Decepticons, you’ll be thrust into some truly exciting and grand set-piece moments that do justice to the Transformers franchise. While…

Just as they did last year with the release of Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty has released a live-action teaser trailer right before the launch of their widely-anticipated next chapter in the series, Black Ops 2. The celebrity power is stepped up a notch, as is the cleverness with director Guy Ritchie at the helm. Set in Los Angeles in 2025, we get a snippet of everything from horses to drones, iron men and athletes. The theme, “surprise”, gives us a little glimpse of some of the cool weapons this futuristic game is bringing to the table, but really it’s just a way to get people pumped up and pre-ordering….

I did a bad thing the other day. My son showed me a video (below) of an enhanced variation of Skyrim, the popular video game that has kids and adults alike addicted to a strange fantasy world. It isn’t just the nearly-unlimited potential that the game offers to players. It’s also the amazing graphics, and the ones enhanced in the video below fooled even my Facebook friends. We took a screenshot and posted it on Facebook and Google+. I wanted to see if anyone would notice that the image (the one above) was computer generated rather than a real photograph. If anyone noticed, they didn’t call me out. In fact,…

Every time I hear about a fan-made real-life gaming video, I get discouraged. There have been some pretty good ones over the years but the vast majority of them are amateur at best, insulting at worst. This one, coming to us from @gvoakes, is pretty epic. It combines great real-life special effects but does very well at keeping the two-dimensional feel associated with the gameplay. It pits a pair of the best fighting games of all time against each other. On one side, you have Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.On the other side, you have Ryu from Street Fighter. Who won? The video lets you vote at the end. …

With Zynga targeting senior citizens with their simple and user-friendly games, it’s no wonder why the number of gaming seniors is on the incline. Zynga has released games such as The Ville, Zynga Poker, Bubble Safari, CityVille and the well known FarmVille. Gaming online can help seniors interact with friends, make new ones, keep their minds sharp and if they’re disabled, it’s something they can enjoy in the comforts of their own home. Over 26% of gamers are over the age of 50 and the number continues to grow. More and more, senior citizens are gaining online knowledge, between 2009 and 2011 senior…

There’s certain things we all know about Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 without having to watch a video or read an article: It will be an enhancement on previous games rather than anything that moves beyond the series (if it ain’t broke…) Many people will love it before they ever play it Many people will hate it before they ever play it Millions will buy it and play it It will generate over a billion dollars in revenue – the only question is how quickly The only departure so far from previous releases is the timing surrounding the reveal trailers. They just released the multiplayer reveal that gives about…