Also: Funny or Die makes a Steve Jobs film; EA’s CEO resigns.
A peek at “Draw Something 2”?
Zynga looks to revive Draw Something with a sequel that’s much more of a social network [TECHCRUNCH]
From what we hear, it sounds like it will be much more of a social platform where players get to keep and show off their drawings instead of having them disappear into the game.
This way the very best artists can accumulate followings inside the game and the content will become a lot more long-lasting for the players.
It’s a smart move for the company because it may make the game a lot stickier. Plus, it gets Zynga into game genres that are much more creative than its casual sim, Farmville history would suggest.
Funny or Die makes a Steve Jobs movie [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
“In true Internet fashion, it’s not based on very thorough research — essentially a cursory look at the Steve Jobs Wikipedia page,” said Ryan Perez, who wrote and directed “iSteve.” “It’s very silly. But it looks at his whole life.”
Making fun of Mr. Jobs, the Apple co-founder who died in 2011 and who is considered a deity by many people (at least in the tech world), is a risky proposition, even if done gently. But Allison Hord, who produced “iSteve,” said the tone was such that “even the harshest fanboy critics will be able to laugh with us.”
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitello to step down [FORTUNE]
EA also said its revenue and earnings-per-share will be at the low end or below its January guidance. The company reported lower revenue for the last three months of 2012 than it did for the same period a year earlier. EA had the top-selling video game in February with its action-horror title Dead Space 3. But U.S. retail sales of new video games fell for the fifteenth straight month, year over year. Sales of new video game hardware, software and accessories fell 25% from a year earlier to $810 million in February, the NPD Group reported.
Short term thinking vs. long term thinking [A VC]
But when I think about who is developing the strongest franchise in mobile, it is obviously Google. They have gmail on so many phones. They have google maps on so many phones. They are getting the majority of searches on mobile phones. And that doesn’t even begin to address Android itself. It is the dominant mobile operating system around the world. Just think about all the data they are getting from this enormous mobile footprint they have assembled.
Uber, Data Darwinism and the future of work [GIGAOM]
The coming intellectual and societal upheaval brought on by the state of connectedness is aptly reflected in the recent fracas between Uber, a San Francisco-based personal transportation platform, and the freelance army of drivers who man its cars. They were protesting what they thought was unfair treatment by the company. ”They’re running a sweatshop with an app. They don’t have the balls to come down and talk to us,” Raj Alazzeh, a driver with SF Best Limo and a spokesperson for the drivers, told Liz Gannes. “Uber chooses to call us partners for their tax benefit. If they called us employees, they’d have to cover us all.”
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