Gaming

Pasha, NEO, Edward, HeatoN, kennyS and Maikelele announced as captains for the upcoming Kinguin Legends CS:GO tournament

Published

2 years ago

September 6, 2022

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Kinguin is today unveiling further details of its upcoming CS:GO tournament, Kinguin Legends. Kinguin Legends is an entertainment-first focused event that will see six CS:GO stars return to competitive play once again and create a captivating event full of nostalgia along with an exciting experience for all CS:GO fans to enjoy.

The “Legends” will battle it out for a share of the €50,000 prize pool and for the right to call themselves the first Kinguin Legends Champion!

Each captain will recruit players, friends, and pros to join them as they gear up to re-enter competitive CS:GO in the hope of emerging as champion. Tournament rules will be modified to highlight legendary captains and their old rivals. A custom designed Kinguin Legends 1v1 map has been exclusively created for the tournament. The only rule for all teams is that the average age of all five players must be 26 or over. The tournament kicks off on September 13th and will run until September 18, with teams playing through an initial round-robin tournament format followed by a best-of-three play-offs to determine who comes out on top.

The captains of the event are led by a group of legendary Counter-Strike players including:

Jarosław “pashaBiceps” Jarząbkowski, Polish legend, mostly known from the Golden Five. He has won many significant tournaments with Virtus Pro including winning and MVP of EMS One Katowice 2014, DreamHack Open Bucharest 2016 and Intel Extreme Masters VI. Pasha was ranked the 3rd best player of 2014 by HLTV.
Filip “NEO” Kubski, Polish legend, also known from the Golden Five. He has won many significant tournaments with Virtus Pro including ELEAGUE Season 1, ESL Major Series One Katowice 2014 and Intel Extreme Masters VI. NEO was ranked the best player of 2011 by HLTV, rated the best CS 1.6 player of all time by 12up and voted ‘Player of the Decade’ (2000’s) by HLTV users.
Ioann “Edward” Sukhariev, Ukrainian legend and veteran with a long career at NAVI. He was the trophy bearer for the IEM Katowice 2022 and was ranked the 5th best player of 2010 by HLTV for CS 1.6.
Emil “HeatoN” Christensen, Swedish legend, best known for his career at Ninjas in Pyjamas and SK Gaming winning multiple CPL tournaments and becoming the first person inducted into the Esports Hall of Fame at ESL One: Cologne 2016. HeatoN was rated one of the best CS 1.6 players of all time by 12up.
Mikail “Maikelele” Bill, Swedish legend, known for his career at teams including Team Kinguin, Ninjas in Pyjamas and Godsent. He has won multiple tournaments at Assembly Winter 2015 and WePlay! Forge of Masters Season 2 while coming 2nd at one of the biggest tournaments of 2016 at DreamHack Winter. Maikelele was the creator of the first international superteam in CS:GO history with Team Kinguin.
Kenny “kennyS” Schrub, French legend, best known for his career at Team EnVyUs and G2 Esports winning multiple tournaments including DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015, World Electronic Sports Games 2016 and ESL Pro League Season 5. “kennyS” was named “Esports Player of the Year” at The Game Awards 2015.

The online stage of the tournament (13-15th September) will be casted by Mamoon “TeaTime” Sabri, Travis “TravCS” Landaw Mott, Harvey “Skriv” Rodgers and Michael “YouM3” Cassidy. James Banks will be hosting the casting team for the finals (17-18th of September) and will be joined by Jack “Jacky” Peters and Davis “DAVEY” Stafford. Accompanying the team will be Halvor “Vendetta” Gulestøl and Dominik “Neo” Dąbrowski from the analysis desk. Meanwhile, the Polish stream will be hosted by Filip “Testree” Mątkowski. Other guest appearances are expected from Counter-Strike personalities to help relive old moments and bring some entertaining ribbing to the legends.

Viktor Romaniuk Wanli, Founder and Creative Director at Kinguin said: “I am delighted to be welcoming such iconic players to Kinguin Legends to create an exciting entertainment event, with new stories for fans to watch and enjoy. Kinguin has a deep-rooted passion for esports and we hope that Kinguin Legends CS:GO will be our first step to creating a long lasting and fully-loaded entertainment experience for fans all over the world. To have kKennyS, Pasha, Edward, Neo and Maikelele playing against each other again is mind blowing! I recall HeatoN as the ultimate Counter-Strike player back in my early involvement with esports since CPL. It’s unbelievable that I may see him play to win again! We have big ambitions with Kinguin Legends and will be bringing more exciting esports events to our community in the future.”

Kinguin Legends Captain and ex-CS:GO professional “pashaBiceps” Jarosław Jarząbkowski said: “I am very happy to be able to participate in the Kinguin Legends project. This is a great initiative that will definitely allow us to feel the emotions associated with the great CS:GO scene again. I’m looking forward to the duels with NEO, Edward, HeatoN, kennyS and Maikelele. It will be a great show!”

For this tournament, Kinguin is partnering with the CS:GO matchmaking portal, Esportal, who will be hosting the Kinguin Legends streams on its front page as the official technology partner.

Gaming

Flexion Enters into Partnership with Jam City

Published

1 week ago

May 9, 2024

Niji Narayan

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Reading Time: < 1 minute

Flexion, the games marketing company, has partnered with Jam City, a leading mobile entertainment company behind some of the world’s highest-grossing and most enduring mobile games, to bring a selection of the publisher’s best-in-class games to the Alternative App Stores: Amazon Appstore, Huawei App Gallery, Aptoide, ONE store, Samsung Galaxy Store, DT Hub and Xiaomi GetApps.

“We are always looking for new opportunities to build our network of global players, and Flexion is a proven partner that will help introduce our award-winning titles to new audiences in the alternative stores,” Curtis Barnes, Senior Director of Publishing Operations for Jam City, said.

“We’re all about helping developers like Jam City reach the full potential of their games. We’re delighted they have chosen us to add revenue and audiences for their games on the alternative app stores,” Jens Lauritzson, CEO of Flexion, said.

The post Flexion Enters into Partnership with Jam City appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

Gaming

Mobile Games Index: Analysis of 95M Game Interactions Reveals Shifting Engagement Trends, Available Now

Published

2 weeks ago

May 7, 2024

George Miller

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Reading Time: 2 minutes

The anticipated fourth edition of the annual Mobile Games Index, powered by adjoe and Statista, is now available.

The latest report offers a clear look into the current state of the mobile gaming sector, analyzing the past 12 months of the first-party data from 95 million app interactions across 27 million users. The MGI 2024 reveals what people choose to play on their mobile devices, filling the gap in industry knowledge and enabling game developers and user acquisition specialists to benchmark their products and ultimately target the right audiences with the right content.

Moving forward, it is up to the industry decision-makers to analyze the findings and promptly adapt to the newly-emerged engagement trends from MGI 2024, effectively engaging desired audiences.

A Peek at Shifting Engagement Trends to Capitalize on

Based on predictions from Statista, the overarching trend in the market is its robust growth with a forecasted expansion from $166.1 billion in 2024 to $227 billion by 2028.

Remarkably, Card games are expected to grow the most dramatically at 13.8% a year, nearly doubling their global revenue by 2028. Judging from the engagement charts of MGI 2024, the main driver of growth in this category is Solitaire games. The audience is showing a clear preference for Solitaire – these games hold 7 out of 10 positions in the top list of card games worldwide by time spent with titles from MobilityWare, Gimica, Scopely, and Playvalve, among others.

What allows the market to show revenue growth is the positive changes in global daily time spent. After the dip in engagement highlighted by the last year’s Index, adjoe confirms that average daily sessions have rebounded to 21.5 minutes from 17.3 minutes reported last year, marking a 22% increase.

The most engaged demographic of mobile gamers globally is the 40-49 age group, which has experienced a remarkable 33% increase in daily gaming time, now at 23 minutes daily. The strategies targeted at older demographics over the past 12 months can be deemed successful. However, this has led to a loss of focus on engaging Gen-Z, which has shown only modest growth in time spent.

The MGI also reveals that women are outpacing men in daily gaming time across most genres – as reported for the 4th edition in a row. This consistent and high performance makes the female audience a continuously safer bet when it comes to user targeting.

Another continued trend is the dominance of top publishers such as Supercell, Garena, King, and Playrix, while there’s still space to occupy for smaller publishers. For instance, ForgeGames tops the engagement charts with their game Special Forces Group 2 – capturing over 43 minutes of average daily engagement.

The insights continue in the MGI 2024, going granular to segment and visualize global mobile game engagement data from adjoe by genre, region, and demographic. At the same time, Statista’s extensive market research provides a macro-view of the current and future industry, offering figures for global downloads and revenues with forecasts extending to 2028.

Mobile Games Index 2024 Is Available in Open Access

The MGI 2024 goes deep below the surface of market data and creates a comprehensive snapshot of the mobile gaming industry today. Inside are

For developers and marketers, this report is the green light to benchmark performance against industry leaders and align their products with the rising expectations of mobile gamers. This comprehensive tool is now available for free to inform decision-making and help optimize strategies for short- and long-term actions.

The post Mobile Games Index: Analysis of 95M Game Interactions Reveals Shifting Engagement Trends, Available Now appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

Gaming

The German Games Industry Association congratulates all winners of the German Computer Game Awards 2024

Published

4 weeks ago

April 22, 2024

George Miller

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Reading Time: 3 minutes

• “EVERSPACE 2” by ROCKFISH Games is ‘Best German Game’ 2024
• Pixel Maniacs from Nuremberg wins in the ‘Studio of the Year’ category
• ‘Best International Game’ is Baldur’s Gate 3
• ‘Player of the Year’ is Maurice Weber

High-quality games, great entertainment and many well-known personalities from the games industry and the cultural, societal and political spheres – the German Computer Game Awards 2024 (DCP), presented this evening in Munich, featured all that and more. Numerous guests celebrated the best games from Germany and the creative minds behind them in person at Eisbach Studios in Munich. The award show, which was hosted by Katrin Bauerfeind and Uke Bosse, was additionally followed by hundreds of thousands of viewers via live stream. A total of 800,000 euros was awarded in cash prizes. “EVERSPACE 2” by ROCKFISH Games was chosen ‘Best German Game’. The ‘Studio of the Year’ award went to Pixel Maniacs from Nuremberg, which has made a name for itself with successful games like the party racing game “Can’t Drive This”, its multifaceted involvement in the game industry and its promotion of young talent, as well as with its innovations in the area of marketing. The ‘Special Jury Prize’ was awarded to the project “Gaming ohne Grenzen” (Gaming without Borders), an initiative that enables young people with disabilities to participate actively in game culture – for example, by assessing in inclusive game testing groups the accessibility of various games as well as the ability of certain technologies to help overcome barriers in video games. In voting by the community and the jury, Maurice Weber was selected ‘Player of the Year’. The games editor and Twitch streamer regularly analyses current developments in the games industry and takes a critical look at them, while at the same time formulating a clear stance for more diversity and against extremism in games and society.

The German Computer Game Awards, which honour the year’s best German-produced games, are hosted by the German Federal Government, represented by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and game – The German Games Industry Association.

‘Congratulations to all winners of the German Computer Game Awards 2024!’ says Felix Falk, Managing Director of game. ‘Even in these very challenging times for many German firms in the industry, German games companies have created high-quality and successful games that have deservedly been honoured on the big stage of the DCP. Around half of these outstanding games were developed with the support of federal game funding. This once again demonstrates the potential that we can leverage when the underlying policy framework for game development in Germany provides for truly predictable and internationally competitive conditions – conditions that allow games from Germany to shine even more brightly all over the world and achieve even greater success on the national as well as international stage. We must make this our goal!’

Overview of all winners:
Best International Game (not endowed)

Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)

Best German Game (endowed with 100,000 euros)

EVERSPACE 2 (ROCKFISH Games)

The other nominees will each receive 30,000:

Atlas Fallen (Deck 13 Interactive/Focus Entertainment)
Fall of Porcupine (Critical Rabbit/Assemble Entertainment)

Best Family Game (endowed with 40,000 euros)

Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive/rokaplay)

Newcomer Award – Best Debut (endowed with 60,000 euros)

Ad Infinitum (Hekate/NACON)

The other nominees will receive 25,000 euros each:

Fall of Porcupine (Critical Rabbit/Assemble Entertainment)
Lose CTRL (Play From Your Heart)

Newcomer Award – Best Prototype (endowed with 50,000 euros)

Misgiven (Symmetry Break Studio)

The other nominees will receive 25,000 euros each:

Bloodletter (Katharina “Mikey” Müller, David Cafisso, Marvin Braun, Alica Schneider/Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin)
EcoGnomix (Lars Hinnerk Grevsmühl, Lars Eble, Bahy Nguyen, Marcel Zurawka, Alec Shae)
Footgun: Underground (Eduard Dobermann, Theo Lohmüller, Georg Nimke, Robert Pistea, Lukas Salewsky)
REPLICORE (Sarah Inés Roeder, Rody Nawezi, Leonhard Gläser, Maximilian Götz/ HAW Hamburg)

Best Innovation and Technology (endowed with 40,000 euros)

Marble Maze (Fox-Assembly)

Best Serious Game (endowed with 40,000 euros)

Friedrich Ebert – Der Weg zur Demokratie (Playing History/Stiftung Reichspräsident-Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte)

Best Audio Design (endowed with 40,000 euros)

Ad Infinitum (Hekate/NACON)

Best Game Design (endowed with 40,000 euros)

Lose CTRL (Play From Your Heart)

Best Graphic Design (endowed with 40,000 euros)

The Bear – A Story from the World of Gra (Mucks! Games)

Best Mobile Game (endowed with 40,000 euros)

Cat Rescue Story (Tivola Games)