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• E3 2013
• Kingsbridge
• Dust: An Elysian Tail
• Massive Chalice

Today SGN, the esteemed cross-platform developer of casual games like Jewels of the Amazon and Bubble Atlantis, has announced their acquisition of Mob Science as part of the company’s ongoing strategy to expand their development team and add to their impressive roster of games. This news comes hot on the heels of SGN’s latest acquisitions of Hallpass Media and Mindjolt, and now with Mob Science entering the fold, SGN will secure the small developer’s entire portfolio of games, including the hugely popular Legends: Rise of a Hero.

There's no shame in admitting that we all get sucked into the war between style and substance at times. The ideal is to find a balance, but sometimes games like AdventureQuest Worlds show up that are unabashedly fighting on the front lines. This free-to-try fantasy MMO plays right in your browser and serves up some of the coolest looking gear around, but it's often buried in layers of confusion and monotony.

Everyone is familiar with the aftermath of a good trailer. The music starts, the scenes flash, that voice seduces you, and before you know it, you're turning to the person next to you to announce your interest in exploring the full version of the media before you. We've all felt the evocative power of the movie trailer and the pull and anticipation it leaves us with.

We’re really on the brink of summer now! But while many people may be enjoying the prospect of lazy summer days and going to the beach instead of some gloomy school room, video game developers have still been hard at work to bring us great new titles to keep us entertained throughout the hot and sticky summer months. And we should all be glad that they are, because gaming today just keeps getting better and better!

It's unfortunate, but I found my principal enjoyment of Castlot in the names that some of its most devoted players use to refer to it in the public and alliance chat channels. One person calls it "Cashalot," while recounting the dozens of dollars he spent on protection scrolls to level; another calls it "Cast Lots," referring to a gambling-based resource game. They speak from long experience. After all, Castlot isn't exactly a new social strategy game – it's been around for a couple years in beta, and the recent update simply introduced some upgrades to the gameplay and aesthetics. But if my couple of hours with it were enough to serve as any indication, they're not necessarily substantial enough to warrant casting lots of your own in the hope of a better experience.

If teen idols like Justin Bieber have taught us anything, it’s that a meteoric rise is often followed by an equally meteoric fall.  Such appears to be the case with Zynga.  Today the company confirmed that its latest round of layoffs will reduce their workforce by another 18% by August. That’s 520 employees.

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me, I guess. Pirate Storm is a web-based adventure/massive online game (MMOG) from Kabam that puts you in the pantaloons of history’s most intimidating sailors. The premise alone makes it sound like you’re in for a swashbuckling good time, but between the game’s repetitiveness and lack of stimulating exploration, these be dull waters.

Have you ever wondered what Princess Zelda was going through while she desperately waited for Link to come to her rescue? Maybe you have, and maybe you haven’t, but I’d like to believe that if handled properly, her story could make for an interesting twist on the classic tale of the hero‘s journey. Unfortunately, Hope: The Other Side of Adventure takes what could have made for a groundbreaking and empowering experience, and utterly destroys it by substituting community theater-level soliloquy and angst for compelling gameplay.

Solitary grumps like Smaug notwithstanding, dragons are team players. If they weren't, there's no way they'd let you and four other players ride them in Dragons and Titans, a MOBA from Wyrmbyte and Zynga that you can play for free on Facebook. And since the other side of every five-on-five clash has scaly mounts of its own, that's 10 dragons per battle. See? Team players.

Longtime readers of this site may know I have a problem with the current explosion of social strategy games. By the time you've played your twentieth variation of the same formula, they've all started to blur together into a confused jumble of housing, farms, and amicable quest givers. I think I've forgotten the names of most of them. And that's why I found myself looking so forward to Godsrule: War of Mortals. For one, it was published by Sega, whose name still evokes awesomeness despite the many years since the glory days of Sonic the Hedgehog; and for another, it promised to deliver a brand of social strategy combat worth paying attention to. Here, I'd hoped, was a social strategy game worthy of the gods.

Following an endless wave of hype, rumors, pomp and circumstance, Microsoft unveiled the third generation of Xbox earlier today at their headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Though I suppose the location didn’t matter too much. Press and gamer alike, you could watch it from anywhere - whether streamed to your desktop or sent straight to your TV via your soon-to-be-last-gen Xbox 360.

We spend way too much time in our team Skype chats talking about how to do a better job of… umm… our jobs. Granted, much of it is brought on by my own anxiety about the gradual death of PR as a profession, as well as an unfortunate rebellious streak that drives me to subvert the establishment at any cost…. but the fact is — despite a rather solid reputation (I hope) within the industry — we still struggle constantly to secure publicity for some of our clients. What follows is a look into the thoughts we have as a PR agency that wants to constantly adapt to changing market conditions to stay at the forefront of our business.

As far as treasure-themed Facebook games go, Atlas Raider is certainly not a looker, and there was a lot about the initial gameplay that underwhelmed me right off the bat. But as I got ready to simply write the game off and do some backyard raiding of my own, I suddenly realized that several hours had gone by: and that I was actually having fun and didn’t want to stop playing. And that’s exactly the kind of game that Atlas Raider turns out to be.

Back in April, I had the good fortune of moderating a panel at the Social Casino Summit in San Francisco. The panel was about how to stand out in the crowded social casino marketplace.  It’s a topic that Michael Carpenter, CEO of Ruby Seven Studios, knows all too well.

I'm pretty sure it was Kanye West who once opined that no one man should have all that power. That's here on Earth though. Out in space, you can grab all the power you want as long as you've got the right ship and some allies to back you up. Oh, and you'll also have to be playing Pocket Galaxy, a multiplayer cross-platform space battle game getting ready to launch from Spectacle Games.

I’ve never really been a fan of fishing. I tried going a few times before with my dad, but it was always really hot and sticky outside, and I could never manage to catch anything bigger than my finger. You can’t really even talk to anyone while you’re fishing either, for fear of scaring all the fish away. Now virtual fishing, on the other hand, is definitely more my speed: where I can cast my line from the comfort of my couch and with the air conditioning on full blast as I wait for something to bite. And that’s why I’m so excited about FISHAO, which looks to bring the core concepts of fishing to the social gaming scene.

One of the first mistakes developers make when handling their own PR is emailing everyone under the sun who writes about games in any capacity. While initially that may seem like a good idea—I see you writing comments like “Isn’t that what you guys do?!”—writers are busy, and a generic pitch that isn’t in line with what they cover is a surefire way to get Marked As Spam and disappear from their inbox forever.

Sometimes originality is overrated. By that I mean it's entirely possible just to cherry pick the best ideas from previous works, add in your own clever story and dialogue and voila: you've got yourself a great game. Ecol Tactics Online almost proves my point, taking bits from JRPGs, MMOs and tactical battle games and very nearly turning them into something wonderful.

We cover plenty of new games here at Gamezebo every week, but the number of games we’ve already covered that show up on new platforms?  It’s staggering.  This Wednesday and every Wednesday, Gamezebo is rounding up the games that aren’t quite new, but might be new to you depending on your platform of choice.  And who doesn't love new(ish) games?

A lot of good can come from playing video games. It can reduce stress and depression, and even improve the memory of the elderly. But there are some companies out there who wish to take it further. If playing a game can improve you as a person, why can’t it also improve the world around you? This is a question Global Gaming Initiative is hoping to answer.