There will be no escaping games in 2012. From the Olympics to hit shows on TV, lucrative games on your mobile phone to innovative live events, games are more a part of our everyday lives than they’ve ever been.
This briefing document looks ahead to the key issues that can help guide your strategy in 2012. And, since the gaming world evolves fast, we’ve drawn some concrete examples of these trends from front-runners in 2011, so you can get to grips with what they mean in practice. 

A timely paper out of Google at the recent ICML 2011 conference, "Suggesting (More) Friends Using the Implicit Social Graph" (PDF), not only describes the technology behind GMail's fun "Don't forget Bob!" and "Got the right Bob?" features, but also may be part of the friend suggestions in Google+ Circles

Scott Pilgrim’s life is awesome. He’s 23 years old, in a rock band, between jobs, and dating a cute high school girl. Everything’s fantastic until a seriously mind-blowing, dangerously fashionable, rollerblading delivery girl named Ramona Flowers starts cruising through his dreams and sailing by him at parties. But the path to Ms. Flowers isn’t covered in rose petals. Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends stand in the way between Scott and true happiness. Can Scott beat the bad guys and get the girl without turning his life upside-down?

Get previews of the book online here.

Now you can download 6 exclusive Cubeecraft toys based on characters from the series!

Welcome to Creaturekebab Downloads!

You can now make your very own Creaturekebab characters from paper! All you need to do is save & print out the templates (on to craft card if you can get it) below, grab your scissors and glue and get crafting!

In 2007, the AVEA project proposal called for a new research effort into "so-called virtual property, artificially scarce digital objects that have rapidly become a viable business model for software products and online services." Gold farmers and real-money traders in massively-multiplayer online games had recently broken into popular consciousness. There was an expectation that virtual economies were going to continue to expand in one way or the other. Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT and the Finnish interactive media industry had already had a good start in grasping the phenomenon thanks to some successful early ventures and research projects. Now was a time to push on and take part in creating the next wave of the phenomenon.