By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Japanese news site BLOGOS, not really a big supporter of the social gaming industry in Japan and of GREE in particular (the blog ran several critical articles in recent weeks), has made public that GREE again stopped the trading function in their top game, social card battle game doliland. The...
GREE caused quite a splash a few days ago when the company announced a deal with Dentsu under which the advertising giant is to promote the platform internationally. And now Dentsu started doing what they’re supposed to do – in airports. You read that right, somebody decided the best...
HTML5 is one of the biggest buzzwords in social gaming today, and there are many companies betting high on the technology to become a standard for making games in the near future. Now GREE has announced it has invested in a company that focuses on HTML5, Tokyo-based startup Wizcorp. That’s...
GREE is introducing yet another measure against real-money trading of virtual items from its platform – following a task force, a set of automated tools, payment caps and a council with members from Japan’s top social gaming companies (see here, here, and here). The main driver here is...
Anyone just vaguely familiar with social gaming in Japan knows that (almost) all users use mobile devices to play these games: GREE and Mobage are cell phone-only services. Most users live in the Tokyo area, and a lot of people play social games to kill time during their train commute to and from...
Edit (May 5, 2012): It happened, the Japanese government is reported to be ready to crack down on social games. See here. Japan’s social gaming industry in general, and its current 800-pound gorilla GREE in particular, are getting a lot of bad press at the moment. Social games were never...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry