RUNES OF MAGIC im Browser

Be­trei­ber Frogs­ter und der Browserspiel-Engine-Spezialist Ka­lydo ha­ben heute in ei­ner Pres­se­mit­tei­lung ver­lau­ten las­sen, dass das MMO RU­NES OF MA­GIC dem­nächst auch im Brow­ser lau­fen soll, statt ei­nen de­zi­dier­ten Cli­ent zu be­nö­ti­gen.

Das Spie­len im Brow­ser aber bei­spiels­weise auch als Facebook-App soll be­reits ab dem 2. Quar­tal 2011 er­mög­licht wer­den, mit Prio­ri­tät auf die Ein­bin­dung auf dem so­zia­len Netz­werk. Spiel­bar sein soll ROM ent­we­der im Fens­ter– oder im Voll­bild­mo­dus, Frogs­ter be­haup­tet sehr voll­mun­dig, dass das im Ver­gleich zur Client-basierten Ver­sion ohne Ein­schrän­kun­gen funk­tio­nie­ren soll.

Da­mit käme RU­NES OF MA­GIC mög­li­cher­weise aus der Cloud und wäre nutz­bar, ohne dass vor dem Spie­len ein Gigabyte-großer Client-Download not­wen­dig würde; es ist nach mei­nen Er­fah­run­gen mit Browser-basierten Ga­mes al­ler­dings mög­li­cher­weise da­von aus­zu­ge­hen, dass es zu Ein­bu­ßen bei der Gra­fi­k­qua­li­tät kom­men könnte — siehe zum Bei­spiel BATT­LE­STAR GA­LAC­TICA ON­LINE, al­ler­dings kommt da­bei eine an­dere Tech­nik zum Ein­satz, näm­lich Unity, also im Prin­zip wie­der ein Cli­ent, der im Brow­ser läuft. Auch Ka­ly­dos Tech­nik setzt auf eine En­gine, hier heisst diese  Game­bryo.

Erste De­mos wol­len Frogs­ter und Ka­lydo auf der Game De­ve­l­o­pers Con­fe­rence in San Fran­cisco zei­gen, die vom 28. Fe­bruar bis 4. März 2011 statt­fin­det.

Promo-Grafik RU­NES OF MA­GIC Co­py­right Frogs­ter In­ter­ac­tive

Die kom­plette Pres­se­mel­dung im voll­stän­di­gen Ar­ti­kel.

Ru­nes of Ma­gic goes Brow­ser 

Frogs­ter and Ka­lydo Working on Fully Playable Brow­ser and Face­book Ver­sion of the Fantasy-MMORPG, First Glim­p­ses at GDC San Fran­cisco

Ber­lin, 25/02/2011: Frogster’s suc­cess­ful fantasy-MMORPG Ru­nes of Ma­gic will be ent­i­rely playable in a brow­ser win­dow and on Face­book star­ting in Q2/2011. The in­ter­na­tio­nal publis­her has clo­sed a co­ope­ra­tion agree­ment with tech­no­logy part­ner Ka­lydo. The Dutch midd­le­ware pro­vi­der will rea­lize the brow­ser in­te­gra­tion with a brow­ser plug-in and a scalable ser­ver plat­form run­ning on cloud com­pu­ting that they de­ve­l­o­ped. Using the so-called Ka­lydo Player, the ori­gi­nally client-based MMORPG can then be en­joyed through any brow­ser on prac­tically every Win­dows PC wi­t­hout any cons­traints.

The in­itial fo­cus of the part­nership will be Face­book in­te­gra­tion. For the re­gis­tra­tion, the part­ners will use the so­cial network’s user-friendly single-opt-in func­tion, al­lo­wing every Face­book user to dive strai­ght into the vir­tual world wi­t­hout ha­ving to com­plete any ad­di­tio­nal re­gis­tra­tion pro­ce­du­res. Once in­side the so­cial net­work, Ru­nes of Ma­gic can be played in eit­her full screen or win­dow mode wi­t­hout li­mit­ing any of the game’s func­tio­na­lity. The Ka­lydo team has al­re­ady star­ted with the tech­ni­cal im­ple­men­ta­tion of the brow­ser ver­sion. Frogs­ter will show a first test ver­sion to selec­ted me­dia part­ners at the Game De­ve­l­o­pers Con­fe­rence in San Fran­cisco from 28th of Fe­bru­ary un­til 4th of March. The publis­her can be found on a com­mon booth with Ga­mef­orge in the North Hall of the Moscone Cen­ter, booth No. 702.

“We are ex­pec­ting to see a mar­ked in­crease in the num­bers of play­ers for Ru­nes of Ma­gic through this co­ope­ra­tion with Ka­lydo. Powered by the im­pres­sive Ka­lydo tech­no­logy the brow­ser ver­sion will enable us to at­tract new tar­get groups who pre­viously have found the down­load, in­stal­la­tion and re­gis­tra­tion pro­cess too com­pli­ca­ted”, com­men­ted An­dreas Wei­den­haupt, Chief Li­cen­sing Of­fi­cer of Frogs­ter In­ter­ac­tive Pic­tures AG on the si­gning of the con­tract.

Doki Tops, CEO of Ka­lydo agrees with him:  “This is the fu­ture of ga­ming. Play­ers en­ter the game with a sin­gle click of the mouse in­stead of spen­ding hours on a down­load and in­stal­la­tion and get the ex­act same ex­pe­ri­ence. We praise Frogs­ter for re­co­gnizing this po­ten­tial and ta­king a lea­ding role with us in pionee­ring this mas­sive new style of ga­ming.”

Ka­lydo has al­re­ady in­cor­po­ra­ted the 3D role-playing game Gods­War into Face­book, which has gone from strength to strength.

About Ka­lydo

De­ve­l­o­ped by Exi­mion, Ka­lydo is a lea­ding brow­ser game midd­le­ware so­lu­tion which enab­les em­bed­ding ga­mes, ba­sed on any game tech­no­logy, di­rectly into every brow­ser and so­cial net­work. Kalydo’s in­no­va­tive and scalable way of de­ploy­ing ga­mes ta­kes away tra­di­tio­nal bar­ri­ers, such as the need to down­load and in­stall soft­ware. Ka­lydo de­crea­ses dis­tri­bu­tion costs while in­cre­a­sing visitor-to-player con­ver­sion and re­ve­nues. Ga­mes can now be of­fe­red in a “click & play” fa­shion, brin­ging con­su­mers a fan­tas­tic ga­ming ex­pe­ri­ence from any­where in the world. Ba­sed in Eind­ho­ven, The Nether­lands, Ka­lydo laun­ched their pu­blic beta in 2008 be­fore go­ing com­mer­ci­ally live in 2009.

Con­tact
Exi­mion B.V. | Ka­lydo
Chris van der Lin­den
Busi­ness De­ve­lop­ment Ma­na­ger
Pa­ra­dijs­laan 5, 5611 KM, Eind­ho­ven, The Nether­lands

Tel       +31 (0)407 620 700
Cell       +31 (0)617 484 074
Web     www.kalydo.com

Con­tact
Frogs­ter In­ter­ac­tive Pic­tures AG
Axel Schmidt
Di­rec­tor Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons
Har­den­berg­str. 9A · 10623 Ber­lin · Ger­many

Tel       +49 (0)30–28 47 01 44
Fax       +49 (0)30–28 47 01 11
Cell       +49 (0)171–34 78 460
Web     www.frogster.de

Frogs­ter – We take you to a new world!

The Frogs­ter group is a Berlin-based, lis­ted publis­her of on­line ga­mes. Frogs­ter fo­cu­ses on the mar­ke­ting and ope­ra­tion of vir­tual worlds, so-called mas­si­vely mul­ti­player on­line ga­mes – one of the stron­gest gro­wing sec­tors in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try. With its top tit­les ‘Ru­nes of Ma­gic’ and ‘Bounty Bay On­line’ Frogs­ter has al­re­ady gathe­red over 5 mil­lion re­gis­te­red play­ers world­wide. For a re­lease in 2011 Frogs­ter has just re­cently an­noun­ced the two highly am­bi­tious MMO ga­mes ‘TERA’ and ‘My­thos’. Frogs­ter also in­tends to en­ter into the ra­pidly gro­wing mar­ket of brow­ser ga­mes with ‘Bounty Bay Live’ and ‘Throne of Fire’ shortly. Cur­rently the Frogs­ter group em­ploys more than 200 staff mem­bers in the fields of game de­ve­lop­ment, li­cen­sing, IT, web de­sign and web de­ve­lop­ment, pro­duct ma­nage­ment, mar­ke­ting, PR, web publis­hing, com­mu­nity ma­nage­ment, sup­port, sa­les, hos­ting, bil­ling and finance/administration. Frogster’s sub­si­dia­ries Frogs­ter On­line Ga­ming, Frogs­ter Ame­rica and Frogs­ter Pa­ci­fic mar­ket and ope­rate their ga­mes in Eu­rope, Ame­rica and Ocea­nia re­spec­tively. The sha­res of the Frogs­ter In­ter­ac­tive Pic­tures AG have been lis­ted in the Entry Stan­dard seg­ment of the Frank­furt stock ex­ch­ange since Fe­bru­ary 2006. In­ter­net: www.frogster.de