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This week in racing game news:
The “Hot Wheels Unleashed” Design Battle contest winner will see their design sold worldwide – but that’s it
Starting today, “Hot Wheels Unleashed” players can compete for the chance to have their very own in-game livery design sold as a real-life Hot Wheels toy worldwide. Using the robust livery editor in “Hot Wheels Unleashed,” players can create an impressively wide range of designs. Until Feb. 14, you’ll be able to upload up to 100 different designs for consideration. If you win, Mattel will use your design to make a real life Hot Wheels toy.
On the surface, this sounds like a pretty cool opportunity, but unfortunately, the prize seems to only amount to having the privilege of seeing a multi-million dollar business line their pockets with earnings from your hard work, while the lucky designer receives, as far as we can tell, absolutely nothing at all. The terms and conditions of the contest bluntly point out that “recognition of personal merit constitutes the ‘prize’ for the creator of the selected work” and that if you win, “by signing the letter of acceptance and transfer of rights, the author of the graphic selected as the winner will assign to Mattel Inc. without any exclusion all the rights of copyright and economic exploitation, for the purposes of the production of the vehicle described above, without time or territorial limits, with express waiver by the author of any and all economic claims against Mattel Inc., the promoter company and their successors in title.”
That doesn’t seem like much of a “prize” to us, but if you still want to enter, you’ll have until Feb. 14 to do it.
The next “Twisted Metal” is officially in the works at Sony
VGC has reported that a new “Twisted Metal” is finally on the horizon and the project is being led by Sony’s first-party Firesprite studio. Interestingly, Firesprite mostly has experience in creating games for Playstation VR, which begs the question, could we be getting a virtual reality version of the upcoming battle royale racer? Hopefully we won’t have to wait long to find out since with a TV adaptation on the way as well, it sure seems like Sony is gearing up for a big murder-y ice cream truck push in the very near future.
Take-Two finally remembers “Midnight Club” exists, but it feels like our wish was granted via monkey’s paw
Over the past week it was widely reported that Take-Two Interactive, owner of monster development houses like Rockstar and 2K Games, has purchased Zynga (prolific mobile game developer) in a multi-billion dollar deal. That’s either exciting or devastating depending on your perspective on mobile games, but one undeniably interesting tidbit came out of the news as IGN reported that during an investor call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick actually acknowledged “Midnight Club” in a graphic while referencing the company owning some of “the most iconic brands in the world.” This marks the first sign of life for the franchise in many years and while it’s exciting that a reference to the game probably means that it isn’t completely dead, fans of the franchise are already worried that, with Zynga’s involvement, the next “Midnight Club” could be relegated to mobile instead of being a full-fledged console game. Only time will tell of course, and hey, maybe a mobile “Midnight Club” could be good? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Source: www.autoblog.com