The News Review:

- Austin’s WebWars to launch online games
- nline Games to Account for $11 Billion in ‘09 ‘” Lazard
- Turbine offers new lure: free D&D play
- Analysis: Examining Massively Single Player nline Games

Austin’s WebWars to launch online games
Austin American-Statesman
Austin startup WebWars LLC is laying out its game plan. The year-old company which is backed by the billionaire owner of the NBA Memphis Grizzlies announced today that it’s launching a series of online games aimed at 13- to 18-year-olds.

nline Games to Account for $11 Billion in ‘09 ‘” Lazard
GameDAILY BIZ
As Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian points out in his most recent report “[The] Internet [is] emerging as key platform for industry growth. Video games are emerging as an important part of the migration of content ‘into the cloud’ and account for the largest portion of paid online content ahead of music and video. Lazard is forecasting that online games will “generate more than $11 billion [worldwide] in revenues this year and account for roughly 25% of industry sales and over time should provide publishers with higher growth multiples. ” It’s worth noting that this figure stood at $3 billion only a few years ago in 2005 – the march towards online seems to be accelerating. Downloadable content is becoming a huge driver of additional incremental revenue and Lazard noted that “microtransactions appear to be emerging as the standard for monetizing many online games. That said the retail sector doesn’t need to grow overly concerned just yet. Sebastian added “Core gamers and packaged goods still paying the bills.
Related from Liabilitymanagementsystems: 10-K: LAZARD LTD

Turbine offers new lure: free D&D play
Boston Globe
of Westwood released a beta version of its first free-to-play game yesterday a move meant to draw new gamers to its Dungeons & Dragons nline franchise. Turbine known for its The Lord of the Rings nline game launched a pre-release version of its Dungeons & Dragons nline: Eberron Unlimited allowing players to test the game before the final version is released later this summer. In Dungeons & Dragons players move around a virtual world fighting characters and discovering hidden treasure. “A lot of people don’t have a lot of time to play the game. This is giving them an option” to play it for free said Adam Mersky a Turbine spokesman. The play-for-free option could pay off for Turbine.

Analysis: Examining Massively Single Player nline Games
Gamasutra
In short: games are games first and foremost and anything else is incidental. There is an area of gamingdom that contests the point of content at least (though not necessarily art). I refer not to gaming critics i. the “Brainysphere” (which this column has.