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Samsung Ads, the advanced advertising arm of Samsung Electronics, today announced a major expansion of its award-winning GameBreaks portfolio, adding four new interactive titles.

Ripplash, the next new GameBreak, is now available for advertisers and builds on the momentum ofThe Six, the franchise’s inaugural game, which will expand to audiences in the United Kingdom for the first time later this year.

Built natively for Samsung Smart TVs, GameBreaks is altering the utility of ad time by transforming traditional ad breaks on Samsung TV Plus into interactive moments that deliver consumer experiences shown to improve brand recall.

These fun-sized experiences run in the first ad slot of premium commercial pods, offering viewers a frictionless way to engage. Giving advertisers a new, brand-safe avenue to earn attention, Samsung Ads is evolving traditional ad time, historically considered for brand awareness, into a mid-funnel, engaging experience.

GameBreaks provides a turnkey and scalable solution that offers a simple launch process and easy-access opportunities for deep brand integration and strong contextual relevance across campaigns. Leveraging Samsung Ads’ proprietary technology, brands have access to a uniquely repeatable solution with a suite of games to choose from to create ongoing, fresh, and bespoke customer engagement through interactive ads.

Samsung Ads and MediaScience research lab’s recent research found the format has proven itself as a performance driver, delivering a 53% lift in unaided brand recall and 1.5 times higher engagement than standard video ads. With no need for game controllers or downloads, GameBreaks lowers the barrier to entry for interactive experiences on the biggest screen in the home. Notably, 89% of viewers say they prefer GameBreaks over traditional commercial breaks.

Following the breakout success of The Six, Samsung Ads’ new GameBreaks formats designed to deepen engagement and offer even more creative flexibility include:

Ripplash– Now available to advertisers, this visually captivating word-guessing game reveals images through animated water ripples. Its sleek, design-forward format can be easily co-branded and customized to align with any vertical.

Pop Off– A mad-lib style trivia game with escalating difficulty and themed content tied to cultural moments such as holidays or movie releases.

Finish Line– A fill-in-the-blank game that prompts users to complete iconic slogans, lyrics, and taglines—ideal for brand reinforcement.

Eye-Q– A visual memory challenge where players recall details from short clips, maximizing repeat exposure and brand visibility.

“This expansion is about redefining what advertising can be,” said Michael Scott, vice president and head of ad sales & operations at Samsung Ads, in a statement. “With GameBreaks, Samsung Ads is pioneering a new model at the intersection of CTV, interactivity, and brand storytelling—offering marketers a turnkey, measurable, and highly engaging way to win.”

Pop Off, Finish Line, and Eye-Q will be available for advertisers across Samsung TV Plus’s premium inventory this summer–presenting a boon for advertisers looking to see higher performance from their CTV budgets and drive KPIs while engaging hard-to-reach audiences.

“We believe the future of TV is becoming more interactive and Samsung is looking at ways to make social game play more accessible,” said Avner Ronen, VP of product development at Samsung, in a statement. “We know casual game experiences are becoming a more popular form of entertainment for our TV owners. GameBreaks like The Six offer new ways for players to engage and bring people together over a shared game experience in their living room.”

The timing follows The Six’s recent sweep at the Telly Awards, where the game earned six honors for Branded Content, Use of Graphics, and Digital Environments. Additionally, The Six recently garnered a Shorty Award in the CTV/OTT category. With themed daily trivia spanning entertainment, history, and current events, The Six gives brands recurring exposure in an interactive format that boasts a 98% completion rate.

As connected TV continues to evolve, Samsung Ads is reimagining the role of the largest screen in the home—from a place to watch passively to a place to play and engage. While traditional linear ads rely on reach, GameBreaks adds interactivity, initiating a two-way dialogue between brands and viewers.

Adding this interactivity with Samsung’s scale, that reach for advertisers is significant. Three in four U.S. households own at least one Samsung device, and Samsung has held the title of No. 1 Smart TV brand globally for 19 consecutive years. With over 500 million devices sold annually across the globe, including TVs, smartphones, and digital signage, the Samsung ecosystem offers advertisers unmatched access, cross-device targeting, and real-time optimization.

FIFA Rivals, the officially licensed arcade-style mobile soccer game, is now available for download on the App Store and Google Play around the world.

Powered by FIFA’s global license andMythical Games’ hybrid Web2/Web3 game platform, FIFA Rivals delivers an arcade-style football experience with gamers building their dream teams and attempting to dominate their rivals by competing in live events and PvP leagues.

Following a successful soft launch, the global launch introduces innovative features, fast-paced multiplayer, enhanced gameplay, and digital ownership, providing a fresh take on competitive football gaming. The system for the game’s monetization is similar to Mythical’s NFL Rivals game. Last week, Mythical announced thatAdidas was throwing its supportbehind FIFA Rivals.

“Football is the world’s game, and we’re thrilled to bring its billions of global fans an experience that captures the thrill of the sport, with the accessibility of mobile gaming,” said John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games, in a statement. “With FIFA Rivals, we’re blending high-energy arcade gameplay with team-building strategy and actual ownership in gaming. This is just the beginning of what we believe will become a landmark title in gaming.”

In FIFA Rivals, gamers can build their dream football team from their favorite stars, teams, and leagues, compete in real-time PvP matches, and take on live events to climb the global leaderboards. Dynamic gameplay and intuitive controls, designed for mainstream mobile gamers, allow users to pull off skill moves, trick shots, and signature plays from star athletes — each represented as a tradable digital collectible on the Mythical Marketplace.

Highlights include:● Fast-paced PvP gameplay designed for mobile users worldwide.

● Skill-based progression with real-time events and competitive leagues.

● Player collectible ownership and trading through blockchain technology, with no priorweb3 knowledge required.

● PVE Scenarios Mode to hone your skills and relive highlights from famous matches.

● Access to Mythical Marketplace allowing gamers to trade, buy, and sell their way to the greatest football team.

The launch of FIFA Rivals forms part of FIFA’s broader objective to make esports and gaming more accessible, offering fans across the globe a wide range of digital football experiences. The global launch of the free-to-play mobile game FIFA Rivals marks the latest milestone in this journey.

FIFA Rivals is available now on the App Store and Google Play Store. For updates and more information, visit fifa.rivals.game and join the community on X (@fifarivals).

Mythical’s current games, Blankos Block Party and NFL Rivals, are already played by millions of consumers worldwide and create a new economy for players, allowing them to engage in a new way with games, but also directly trade and transact safely with other players worldwide.

The Mythical Marketplace, the first in-game blockchain Marketplace on iOS and Android, provides gamers with ownership and control over the purchase and sale of digital assets, while the Mythical Platform protects gamers that may be new to blockchain through a custodial wallet for their digital items.

Mythical has had a a hybrid Web2/Web3 NFL Rivals football game out for a while and it has been a success, with seven million downloads to date and 60,000 a day engage with the Web3 marketplace. That’s a small percentage of the overall players, but those players tend to monetize better and keep coming back to trade items in the marketplace. Most players don’t care that it’s a hybrid game, as players cannot purchase victory.

Since NFL Rivals launched, the app stores have loosened up some restrictions in the marketplace. One of the potential problems was that the platforms could have placed a 30% fee on every trade transaction in the Web3 marketplace. But that isn’t the case at the moment with the way Mythical handles “quick trades,” said Linden in an interview with GamesBeat last week.

If you want to trade to get a Cristiano Ronaldo card, it might require you to send a whole package of less famous players to another player. Mythical carries out those trades as a kind of barter, which carries no fee in the app stores. If there are multiple trades that need to happen, then Mythical carries them out. With each trade, Mythical collects a small transaction fee. But the players don’t incur the bigger platform fees.

And since players no longer seem to care about the Web3 distinction, Linden said the company is close to dropping the Web3 terminology from the description of the game.

“It’s just a game with a tradeable economy, and I think everybody’s starting to understand that,” Linden said. “NFL really helped us kick that off the ground. Trading is happening around the world and it is an exciting global secondary market. You’re able to trade seamlessly with each other.”

As for the advances Epic Games has made in getting Fortnite back into the App Store after winning antitrust litigation with Apple in the U.S., Linden said, “I think what Epic is doing is absolutely remarkable for the industry. I think it’s a much needed thing to be done. I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet as an industry, but I do think Epic is making some good progress in terms of what developers can do to engage with their players. And I think that’s awesome.”

As for the ability to create alternative web shops and promote them inside an app, Linden said it is OK to push players toward a secondary market. So the restrictions have loosened on that front. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) still have some restrictions, but the market is opening up.

“It makes it much easier for what we’re doing,” Linden said. A lot of the things we dealt with over the last three or four years from bot a regulatory perspective and also with the App Store perspective, I think that’s all going away now.”

And Linden noted that Adidas has embraced Web3 pretty heavily in the past with sales of collections. But this partnership focuses on Adidas’ interest in gaming and gamers.

With the success of NFL Rivals, Mythical has been able to grow close to 250 people now.

Daikosaid it plans to launch its blockchain-based Virtual Pet game to bring real-world dog care into gaming.

The Irish company said we live in a time where our lives are increasingly intertwined with smart devices and digital experiences, and innovators like Daiko are taking the canine-human bond to the next level. Set for a 2026 debut, the Daiko’s Virtual Pet morphs your real-world dog care routine into an immersive, gamified digital experience that grows, learns, and plays alongside you.

At its heart, Daiko’s Virtual Pet is a true digital twin of your dog, surpassing the standard static avatar by (dog) miles. You begin by selecting your dog’s breed, coat color, size, and even personality quirks. Whether your furry digital friend is a mischievous explorer or a cuddle enthusiast that mirrors your real-world companion down to the wag of the tail.

Through the Daiko app, you’ll get continuous feedback, displayed via intuitive mood indicators, such as energetic, happy, sleepy, or even a bit grumpy. Skip a routine feeding or grooming, and you’ll receive a friendly reminder to show your real-life pup some love.

Consistency unlocks mood upgrades, too. If you manage to hit a week of daily walks, your virtual dog might sport an extra spring in its step or reward you with a loving, playful zoomie animation. And that isn’t the only reward.

The Daiko Smart Leash turns every outing into points which can be converted into Daiko tokens. Daiko tokens can then be spent on virtual assets for your virtual pet or physical items in our Daiko Store. For walks, points start accumulating through a simple tap of your phone or smartwatch off of the Daiko Smart Leash. Your phone tracks distance, pace, and duration, while in-app logs capture meals, treats, grooming sessions, play, and vet check-ins. Every action moves you closer to new levels, badges, points, digital goodies, and Daiko tokens.

● Wellness Gamified: Build healthy habits with rewarding game mechanics. Earn XP for each activity, unlock levels that reveal deeper health insights, and receive personalized tips, such as ideal daily step counts or adjustments to feeding schedules.

● Marketplace Customization: Redeem achievements to unlock free digital collars, toys, and seasonal costumes, or visit the Daiko in-app store to purchase exclusive gear. Whether it’s a raincoat earned after ten rainy-day walks or a festive holiday sweater, your virtual pup’s wardrobe grows with you.

● Interactive Engagement: Regular reminders and progress bars keep you on track. Consistency badges, such as ‘Health Hero’ for regular vet visits, celebrate responsible pet parenting and encourage you to maintain top-notch care. Building these habits through real-world data collection and playful rewards with Daiko not only makes pet care feel enjoyable, but it also helps ensure that no task, whether big or small, slips through the cracks.

Owning a dog brings joy that’s hard to measure, but certainly plenty of responsibility that’s even tougher to track. Studies show that structured routines and timely reminders can have a huge impact on improving adherence to pet care schedules, reducing missed walks, delayed vaccinations, and overlooked grooming appointments.

By turning these tasks into engaging challenges, Daiko’s Virtual Pet motivates owners to maintain healthy habits for their furry companions (and themselves).

As our social and gaming lives blend and migrate into the digital realm, whether for fitness or to explore the metaverse, our pets deserve an equal place in the fun. The Daiko Virtual Pet bridges the tangible and virtual worlds, nurturing emotional bonds through shared experiences both on the ground and on the screen.

This isn’t just the reinvention of the dog leash; it’s a holistic ecosystem that honors the timeless bond between humans and their canine loved ones. From everyday routines to infinite digital worlds, your dog’s story becomes richer, more interactive, and significantly more fun.

Maestro Mediais launching a Kickstarter forClash of Clans: The Epic Raid, a new tabletop game based on Supercell’s top-selling mobile game.

The Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign is scheduled to being on June 17, but the team is already well under way on creating the tabletop game, said Javon Frazier, CEO of Maestro Media, in an interview with GamesBeat. The Clash of Clans tabletop game is expected to come out in 2026.

The game’s co-designer is veteran tabletop game designer Eric M. Lang. In an interview, Lang said the game will have two to four players and it will be a strategy title that will resonate with Clash of Clans fans. Clash of Clans debuted 13 years ago but it still has 30 million daily active players.

“It’s targeted toward a giant new audience of millions of players that aren’t necessarily used to board games, but are used to big, complicated app games,” Lang said. “Because Clash of Clans is a really deep, immersive, rich experience. So we want to take that and make it a tabletop game. The big twist here is that there are two to four players at the table.”

In the game, Lang said you build your village, collect resources, create a loadout of units and then go raid other players’ villages to collect resources. You rank up on a leaderboard. It’s not unlike the mobile game, but this one takes about 90 minutes to play. Anywhere from two people to six can play.

“We just finished our rule book. Our rule books like 12 pages. I’m very happy about that,” Lang said.

He added, He added, “You are a clan leader, and you are building a village. You’re building a village with all the cool resources you get from Clash of Clans — gold, elixir, free to play gems. And you’re building, literally, an engine of warfare.”

Game designers Lang (Marvel: United, Star Wars: The Card Game, XCOM: The Board Game, Blood Rage) and Ken Gruhl (Life in Reterra, Mantis, Happy Salmon) have crafted this board game to immerse players in the Clash of Clans world in an exciting new format.

The engine gets better as you buy better buildings, get more resources and create the most effective village. You can score points with cool monuments and buildings and use resources to get more buildings or build loadout units like the Barbarian, the Archer, the Pekka and the Dragon. The goal will be to be the first player to get 40 points.

“This game is just all dopamine all the time, right? I get to set your stuff on fire. I get the points for it. I get the resources for it. But doesn’t stop you from getting on with the game because fire clears every turn,” Lang said.

“For a board game, players like you have this fun puzzle. You are building simultaneously a village for yourself to be an engine, and you’re building a playground for your opponents to raid,” said Javon Frazier, CEO of Maestro Media, in an interview with GamesBeat. “It’s fast paced, it’s deeply strategic, but it’s a full reimagining. It’s not just a re-creation one to one. It’s a bold reimagining.”

As a tabletop company, Maestro Media is growing fast, with revenues up 2,300% in the last three years. Frazier said the company talks with its partner Supercell, the maker of Clash of Clans, just about every day.

Lang said, “So for me, Clash of Clans been a bucket list game. I don’t even know if Javon knew that, but like so I played the game when it came out and I have a small bucket list of licenses that I think are like that. I want to reach new audiences, and I want to be the first tabletop game for a lot of different players.”

Frazier added, “I love our that company has really been focused on working with the top IPs in the world. Obviously, we work with Disney on multiple games. We work with Hello Kitty. We work with Smurfs. We work with Strawberry Shortcake.”

Frazier said Supercell has a supportive team and Lang is a genius.

Lang said, “I think tabletop games are always going to deliver. They don’t chase trendy stuff. They’re not looking for fads or trends. They’re looking for licenses of games that are for underserved markets. We want to make games that access your fond nostalgia for these properties and give it the respect it deserves.”

The company has 20 people. Its past successes include tabletop games including The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls and Binding of Isaac: Four Souls Requiem.

Lang has been making games for 28 years, but he said, “I desperately want to make games for players who don’t play board games. There’s no game like this on the market. It is a gateway game but also deep and rich. He thinks of the tabletop game as recession proof.”

“Play never goes out of style,” he said.

As with previous campaigns, Maestro Media leverages Kickstarter as a powerful tool to engage directlywith fans and collaborate with the community from day one. This approach builds excitement and anticipation that lasts throughout the entire project lifecycle. The first to pledge will receive a bonus miniature of the Golden Barbarian.

Frazier said, “Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid is a groundbreaking experience that brings the beloved universe to life like never before. With the genius of legendary designers Eric Lang and Ken Gruhl and our incredible partnership with Supercell, we’ve crafted a game that will surprise and delight and will be a must-have tabletop adventure that captures the heart of Clash of Clans.”

And Andrea Fasulo, head of global licensing at Supercell, said in a statement, “We’ve always been passionate about creating memorable experiences for our players, and Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid is an exciting new chapter in that journey. Partnering with Maestro Media allows us to bring the strategy and excitement of Clash of Clans to life in a whole new way.”

Bandai Namcoshowed up at the Summer Game Fest Play Days with a rogue-lite game from Brownie:Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree.

The 2D action-adventure title debuts on the consoles and PC in September.

It’s a button-mashing rogue-lite set in a mystic realm where ancient forces are threatening Shinju, an idyllic village at the foot of a living sacred tree. You have to fight with a couple of warriors paired together and control both of them with a single game controller. You have to forge weapons and bonds.

Towa is a priestess, a child of the gods and protector of the wondrous village that sits at the base of a living sacred tree. The village was her home, and she lived for ages among the villagers.

But the peace and happiness were broken by the evil god Magatsu, who spread his miasma throughout the lands. And from that poisoned haze, the Maga Ori beasts emerged. The evil beasts claimed more lands and crept closer to the village.

Towa has to recruit eight different warriors from the village — prayer children. They are granted special staffs and swords. The warriors include resolute blade master Rekka, virtuous seeker Nishiki, and a couple of others.

Before each quest, you choose which of them will be your Tsurugi (the lead fighter with a sword) or Kagura (the support fighter with a staff). As you enter each area, you the Maga Ori beasts materialize and you have to go on the attack. But you have to avoid damage by dashing around. So the action is very fast.

I found it moved so fast I had to concentrate and avoid panicking as the beast came after me. Using my special powers at the right moment mattered a lot. Of course, if you die, you have to start all over. It’s a rouge-lite, for sure.

Each time you are defeated, you return to the village and can choose different warriors for your next attempt. But your progression stays with you. The priestess turns back time and enables you to try again.

The hand-drawn style character art and painterly backdrops are beautiful and rooted in Eastern mysticism. The music soundtrack comes from composer Hitoshi Sakimoto.

The game comes out on September 19 and you can pre-order it now. it will be out on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam and Nintendo Switch.

As you fight and level up, you can receive a Grace, like a strength boost, a drifting cloud strike, a cloud rendering slice or a drafting cloud attack.

The two main characters ofOut of Wordsare young teens who are falling in love in a coming-of-age story. But then disaster strikes as they lose their mouths. They try to talk but can’t anymore. Their mouths are sewn shut.

And so begins Out of Words, a co-op platformer adventure. Of all the games that I saw at the Summer Game Fest, this one was the best. The goal of the game is to find the lost voices of the puppet-animated characters. But unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for a while.

It’s coming out in 2026 on the PC via the Epic Games Store PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. It’s the first game for Johan Oettinger, game director for Out of Words. The developers are Kong Orange and WiredFly, and its even got a poet, Morten Søndergaard, who penned the poems in the game.

At the Epic Games booth at the Summer Game Fest Play Days, I met with Oettenger and executive producer Esben Kjær Ravn. I played the game with Oettenger, and the co-op platformer adventure immediately reminded me of HazeLight’s game of the year from a few years ago,It Takes Two. The game did its best to remind me how a great game can marry its story with its gameplay mechanics.

Like in HazeLight’s game, you have a couple with some troubles. In this case, they can’t speak to each other. But while It Takes Two was a split-screen game, Out of Words has a single screen for both players because, Oettenger said, the aim is to make people feel the same experience together.

Together with a friend, via online cross-platform or couch co-op, you can explore a wild, colorful realm as Kurt and Karla in a story about the first time they held hands — where everything you see is crafted by hand.

Based on an idea from Søndergaard, Oettinger of Kong Orange began working on the game about 10 years ago in 2015. But he had never made a game before and didn’t know how to do it. He only had an idea that he wanted to make a game based on hand-crafted art using stop-motion animation techniques.

They carefully designed and crafted each stop-motion character, environment and co-op mechanic to tell a story with a distinctly human touch.

It’s a journey built for two where you have to solve physics-defying puzzles in ancient catacombs and perform daring stunts among the clay skyscrapers of Nounberg. If you mess up, one of the characters dies. Then you try again. The adventure will require cooperation, communication and perfect timing between players and their co-player.

The story is about finding your words. The world is at stake — and so is your relationship. Kurt andKarla become entangled in a battle for the future of the world and their friendship itself. Traverse the wonders and dangers being Out of Words while falling in love. Kurt and Karla may save this wonderland — but at what cost?

“It’s about love. It’s a coming-of-age story, and you play either as Kurt or Karla,” Oettinger said in our play session. “You have to play together, either online or like we are doing now, sitting next to each other, cross platform with a friends pass. The dream is to bring people together and experience it.”

He also said, “The game design is designed to to accommodate the story, to accommodate how the characters are feeling, and so the players will feel the same. When the camera gets close in the cut scenes, you can really sense the fidelity of the craft.”

It’s a game with a variety of mechanics to support the story. It takes place in a fabricated world, built first in the real world and then transferred into the game. The team built characters in real life and then captured their movements through stop-motion animation.

“Everything is touched by a human hand,” he said, as police helicopters flew over our heads in Los Angeles and sirens were going off in the distance. “It’s scanned with lighting or photogrammetry and brought into the Unreal Engine. We use classical keyframe animation, but a lot of is also animated through code.

I picked up the controller and started to play with Johan.

“I’ve been doing a lot of other things, but it is a dream come true. My childhood dream was to make stop motion animation,” Oettinger said.

We started playing in the second chapter of the game, and it was like walking right into Alice in Wonderland. In the first chapter, the two friends are best friends, talking about everything and getting into a high-stakes competition. They’re coming of age, and they want to say how they feel about each other, but they can’t find the words.

“And in this split second of doubt, they lose their mouths,” . Their lips crack off. They’re sucked into their inner world of friendship, their world, their language, which is in a bit of a crisis. They fall.”

He added, “Their friendship is manifested in a cute flying creature. It’s a symbol of their friendship, and that turns out to the player to be the key to changing their inner world. You realize that the characters and players go through a whole fantastical journey into a classical fairy tale.”

The gameplay in the second chapter is fairly mellow, where you play in a side-scrolling platformer style, moving through the landscape together. You can see the grass is painted paper when you look up close.

“Everything is made by hand,” he said. “The water is a gelatin. Cliffs are stacks of book pages.”

Then we came upon a vantage point and the clouds parted. We saw a strange city in the background.

Then Oettinger moved us about an hour ahead in the game, deeper into the city. You meet a lot of characters along the way, like Mr. Speaker as you search for someone who can help you with your mouth and your words. The core mechanic comes through the puppet creature, Baby Moon.

She transfers her power to change gravity. As one player presses the B button, the player transfers gravity to the other player. So one player can walk on a roof upside down without gravity. The other with gravity can walk on the ground. If you are upside down and get the gravity thrown to you, you will fall downward. If you get rid of the gravity and transfer it to your friend, then you could fall and your friend could rise. You keep playing this way in a kind of cooperation. This way, you can get through caverns and gaps and rocky formations together.

“You’re helping each other, touching each other. It leaves that framework pretty clear about how there is no way to progress in this game if you don’t help each other and trust each other,” Oettinger said.

We practiced for a while. You have to move to a certain spot, transfer the Baby Moon creature to the other character, move again as you fall and then catch Baby Moon as it’s returned to you so you can complete the movement and get to safety before you or the other player falls.

Meanwhile, I could see that something dark was going on in the world. It turned out to be quite difficult to get to the city, Oettinger said. Finally, we make our way under the city into the catacombs. We moved further into the game again.

For the past three years, the team of around 40 people has been in fast production. They’re spending most of their time developing mechanics that they want to use to support the story.

“That’s the biggest creative challenge,” Oettinger said. It comes together, so the narrative and the mechanic come together as one coherent thing.”

In a still later section, we meet Mr. Speaker, and he’s in a bad state of doubt and fear. He’s closing down the whole world to prevent it from changing. Kurt and Karla must find a type of primordial clay so they can restore their mouths. You return to the city, and it is empty and the citizens are gone. You come across a golem who wants to cross a column. You give him a nudge, and he falls and catches himself. Then he becomes a bridge you can walk across. And he sees he has found his purpose.

Oettinger said he loved the games from HazeLight because it game them so much encouragement to keep making a co-op game. When those HazeLight games succeeded, it opened doors for Out of Words.

I asked Oettinger how he connected with Epic Games. He said the team got into the Day of the Devs show and the Epic folks saw them there. They agreed to fully fund the game and give the devs total creative freedom.

“It’s the dream. It’s my first game, and I’m spoiled to work with them. They give us the opportunity to bring something really special,” Oettinger said. “The dream came from my childhood. I really loved three things, like puppet making, stop motion animation and games.

“If I found this kind of game when I was a child at 11, it would have meant the world to me,” he said. “I love co-op games. If I could show this game to my mother back then, and she would see why I love games and something that can be played with friends and has a heartwarming and positive tale, that would be something really I would like to bring to the world.”

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Google DeepMindannounced Thursday what it claims is a major breakthrough in hurricane forecasting, introducing an artificial intelligence system that can predict both the path and intensity of tropical cyclones with unprecedented accuracy — a longstanding challenge that has eluded traditional weather models for decades.

The company launchedWeather Lab, an interactive platform showcasing its experimental cyclone prediction model, which generates 50 possible storm scenarios up to 15 days in advance. More significantly, DeepMind announced a partnership with theU.S. National Hurricane Center, marking the first time the federal agency will incorporate experimental AI predictions into its operational forecasting workflow.

“We are presenting three different things,” said Ferran Alet, a DeepMind research scientist leading the project, during a press briefing Wednesday. “The first one is a new experimental model tailored specifically for cyclones. The second one is, we’re excited to announce a partnership with the National Hurricane Center that’s allowing expert human forecasters to see our predictions in real time.”

The announcement marks a critical juncture in the application of artificial intelligence to weather forecasting, an area where machine learning models have rapidly gained ground against traditional physics-based systems. Tropical cyclones — which include hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones — have caused$1.4 trillion in economic losses over the past 50 years, making accurate prediction a matter of life and death for millions in vulnerable coastal regions.

The breakthrough addresses a fundamental limitation in current forecasting methods. Traditional weather models face a stark trade-off: global, low-resolution models excel at predicting where storms will go by capturing vast atmospheric patterns, while regional, high-resolution models better forecast storm intensity by focusing on turbulent processes within the storm’s core.

“Making tropical cyclone predictions is hard because we’re trying to predict two different things,” Alet explained. “The first one is track prediction, so where is the cyclone going to go? The second one is intensity prediction, how strong is the cyclone going to get?”

DeepMind’s experimental model claims to solve both problems simultaneously. In internal evaluations followingNational Hurricane Centerprotocols, the AI system demonstrated substantial improvements over existing methods. For track prediction, the model’s five-day forecasts were on average 140 kilometers closer to actual storm positions thanENS, the leading European physics-based ensemble model.

More remarkably, the system outperformedNOAA’s Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System(HAFS) on intensity prediction — an area where AI models have historically struggled. “This is the first AI model that we are now very skillful as well on tropical cyclone intensity,” Alet noted.

Beyond accuracy improvements, the AI system demonstrates dramatic efficiency gains. While traditional physics-based models can take hours to generate forecasts, DeepMind’s model produces 15-day predictions in approximately one minute on a single specialized computer chip.

“Our probabilistic model is now even faster than the previous one,” Alet said. “Our new model, we estimate, is probably around one minute” compared to the eight minutes required by DeepMind’s previous weather model.

This speed advantage allows the system to meet tight operational deadlines. Tom Anderson, a research engineer on DeepMind’s AI weather team, explained that theNational Hurricane Centerspecifically requested forecasts be available within six and a half hours of data collection — a target the AI system now meets ahead of schedule.

The partnership with theNational Hurricane Centervalidates AI weather forecasting in a major way. Keith Battaglia, senior director leading DeepMind’s weather team, described the collaboration as evolving from informal conversations to a more official partnership allowing forecasters to integrate AI predictions with traditional methods.

“It wasn’t really an official partnership then, it was just sort of more casual conversation,” Battaglia said of the early discussions that began about 18 months ago. “Now we’re sort of working toward a kind of a more official partnership that allow us to hand them the models that we’re building, and then they can decide how to use them in their official guidance.”

The timing proves crucial, with the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season already underway. Hurricane center forecasters will see live AI predictions alongside traditional physics-based models and observations, potentially improving forecast accuracy and enabling earlier warnings.

Dr. Kate Musgrave, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University, has been evaluating DeepMind’s model independently. She found it demonstrates “comparable or greater skill than the best operational models for track and intensity,” according to the company. Musgrave stated she’s “looking forward to confirming those results from real-time forecasts during the 2025 hurricane season.”

The AI model’s effectiveness stems from its training on two distinct datasets: vast reanalysis data reconstructing global weather patterns from millions of observations, and a specialized database containing detailed information about nearly 5,000 observed cyclones from the past 45 years.

This dual approach is a departure from previous AI weather models that focused primarily on general atmospheric conditions. “We are training on cyclone specific data,” Alet explained. “We are training on IBTracs and other types of data. So IBTracs provides latitude and longitude and intensity and wind radii for multiple cyclones, up to 5000 cyclones over the last 30 to 40 years.”

The system also incorporates recent advances in probabilistic modeling through what DeepMind callsFunctional Generative Networks(FGN), detailed in a research paper released alongside the announcement. This approach generates forecast ensembles by learning to perturb the model’s parameters, creating more structured variations than previous methods.

Weather Lablaunches with over two years of historical predictions, allowing experts to evaluate the model’s performance across all ocean basins. Anderson demonstrated the system’s capabilities using Hurricane Beryl from 2024 and the notorious Hurricane Otis from 2023.

Hurricane Otis proved particularly significant because it rapidly intensified before striking Mexico, catching many traditional models off guard. “Many of the models were predicting that the storm would remain relatively weak throughout its lifetime,” Anderson explained. When DeepMind showed this example to National Hurricane Center forecasters, “they said that our model would have likely provided an earlier signal of the potential risk of this particular cyclone if they had it available at the time.”

The development signals artificial intelligence’s growing maturation in weather forecasting, following recent breakthroughs by DeepMind’sGraphCastand other AI weather models that have begun outperforming traditional systems in various metrics.

“I think for a pretty early, you know, the first few years, we’ve been mostly focusing on scientific papers and research advances,” Battaglia reflected. “But, you know, as we’ve been able to show that these machine learning systems are rivaling, or even outperforming, the kind of traditional physics-based systems, having the opportunity to take them out of the sort of scientific context into the real world is really exciting.”

The partnership with government agencies is a crucial step toward operational deployment of AI weather systems. However, DeepMind emphasizes that Weather Lab remains a research tool, and users should continue relying on official meteorological agencies for authoritative forecasts and warnings.

The company plans to continue gathering feedback from weather agencies and emergency services to improve the technology’s practical applications. As climate change potentially intensifies tropical cyclone behavior, advances in prediction accuracy could prove increasingly vital for protecting vulnerable coastal populations worldwide.

“We think AI can provide a solution here,” Alet concluded, referencing the complex interactions that make cyclone prediction so challenging. With the 2025 hurricane season underway, the real-world performance of DeepMind’s experimental system will soon face its ultimate test.

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When we last talked with Lil Snack, they were a two-person company making little games that were like snacks. For fun, we posted their games on the GamesBeat.com web site, and it was cool to tell people thatwe had games on our siteat the 2024 GamesBeat Summit.

It was just a couple of guys using AI to make games.

Flash forward to today, and now they’ve got a partnership with Hasbro to make a game based on the Scattergories board game. Lil Snack has ten new games operated daily for as many as 650 days in a row. It has 600,000 monthly active users and more than 10 million plays to date.

The company’s audience for its snackable games is broad, with roughly 50% male and 50% female across all demographics. It generated seven figures in revenue in its first year, and the deal with Hasbro means that Scattergories Daily Live will debut this month on LilSnack.com. About 35% of the audience is playing five days a week or more.

“Our partnership with Hasbro highlights what’s possible when iconic brands like Scattergories meet fresh distribution — and affirms the momentum behind daily games as a new category,” said Eric Berman, cofounder of Lil Snack.

Not bad. The games are refreshed daily to challenge players. And more intellectual properties are coming soon based on the partnership. And more games are coming soon.

“The exciting relationship for us with Hasbro is incredibly topical, especially coming off the success of Monopoly Go,” said Berman. “We are building a game that will be utilizing AI with Hasbro. I think our approach to AI using consumer products is being human first, in terms of how we create games. What Scopely (maker of Monopoly Go) was for mobile, we would like to be for daily games,” said Berman”

He added, “Humans are the creative pieces behind everything we do, and we have no intent on that going away. If anything, we intend to try to make it more human, but we’re trying to use AI in a very novel way to deliver new game experiences that would not have been able to exist before.”

While Lil Snack started heavily with AI generating games and game images at the beginning, it’s not doing as much now. The team of humans has grown instead.

But a number of them have never made games before. The AI tools have become a way for those people to make games that they could not have done before.

“We try to hire people across the country. We try to hire folks of different backgrounds, different demos, to just really keep the broadness of the games applicable to as large of an audience as we possibly can,” Berman said.

Lil Snack has raised money fromA16z and Lerer Hippeau.

“We’ve been watching the rise of daily games closely—they’re a fun, bite-sized way people are building habits around play. Partnering with Lil Snack gives us a great chance to bring fan-favorites like Scattergories into that world in a way that feels fresh and relevant,” said Barry Dorf, vice president of interactive global licensing at Hasbro, in a statement.

“The goal with Lil Snack is to create a new form of entertainment – a daily ritual of play, with games that are quick, fun, and culturally in tune,” said Travis Chen, cofounder of Lil Snack.

Besides Hasbro, Lil Snack also made a game based on Sony’s Wheel of Fortune property. Berman said the game has done really well. Just about all the growth so far has been organic.

Regarding the business model, Berman said, “We partner with the biggest consumer platforms on the planet to deliver daily engagement and retention through daily games. Now, our partners can benefit from beloved IP from Hasbro, with many more games coming soon.”

Daily Scattergories is a daily single player interpretation of the iconic board game. Players are given a series of categories each day that they must find words to match – all in a race against the clock!

After players finish submitting their category answers, each answer is judged by the Scattergories head! This category judging introduces an innovative single player mechanic to the classically multiplayer game.

Players can then share their results with friends and family encouraging friendly competition. Berman expects to raise more money in the future to help fuel the growing team and build more product.

“We’ve run over 650 days of games in a row now, and we are pretty good at putting new games live every single day,” Berman said.

Berman sees a lot of big companies moving into daily games and light snackable games played on the TV. There are companies like Samsung and Netflix going at it from different directions, and more are kicking the tires, he said.

As for the games that ran on GamesBeat, Berman noted that some of them were just too hard. The company has since learned that people want light games where they can be successful. They don’t want to be stumped by tough trivia questions. They’re just looking for a daily escape.

“We’ve definitely been trying to be less narrow and are broadening it is as much as we possibly can,” Berman said.