Swampy has to share the spotlight! Disney Interactive has just updated Where’s My Water?, the iOS and Android app that tasks players with helping an alligator get water to take a bath, even though the other alligators have redirected the water away from him. Now, players also have to help Cranky, one of the alligators more »

As Gamertell previously reported, several Black Rock Studio employees lost jobs in a recent round of Disney Interactive layoffs. A team of 30 is still working at Black Rock Studios on a Disney project with no details revealed. The studio’s most recent release was Split Second, a racing game featuring highly destructible environments. Two former Black Rock employees have resurfaced with a new venture, RoundCube Entertainment. Nick Baynes, game director on Split Second, will head the studio while Ian Monaghan will be development director.

There’s another game you’ll want to keep an eye on at E3 2011, and it’s one you wouldn’t expect. It’s a multiplayer game from Disney called Disney Universe. How appropriate. Those characters up there? Those are the avatars in some of the costumes players can dress up in. Yes, they’re just adorable.

That’s one of the main points Disney seems to want to make with Disney Universe – that it’s adorable…

Rock Studios, the developer of Split Second, is going through layoffs. Around 40 will be let go as the studio gets down to a single development team, according to Eurogamer. That site’s unnamed source said about half of the studio’s employees haven’t had a project to work on since December 2010. Split Second debuted in May 2010 to favorable reviews but tepid sales.

On its Split/Second Facebook page, developer Black Rock Studios said four packs of downloadable content are coming by the end of September. Three of the packs for the arcade-style racer will include new cars, while the pack scheduled for September will have a whole new play environment.

Disney played a little trick on gamers via iTunes. The company released two apps with Toy Story in the title and labelled them both as “Games.”

The first, Toy Story Mania, is a collection of cute mini games with progressive goals. The other, titled Toy Story 3, does include a hard-to-play Woody-themed freebie game but it is really a marketing tool to get you to see the movie, buy Toy Story Mania and partake in digital pin collecting.

Depending on which you download first and your expectations, you’ll either be royally pissed or sufficiently pleased.

The talks are (mostly) over and it is now confirmed that Disney is buying Playdom valued at $763.2 million (US).

According to the New York Times, Walt Disney Company will pay $563.2 million and $200 million more later if Playdom “achieves growth thresholds that were not made public.”

As part of the deal, Playdom Chief Executive John Pleasants become a Disney Executive Vice President, reporting to Disney’s Interactive Media Group.

This also coincides with…

With the recent increase in popularity of casual games, especially in social media sites such as Facebook, more and more companies are showing interest in this new segment. The big entertainment companies are aware of this new market and Disney, being among the giants in the industry, is making its move by going into talks to buy casual games company, Playdom.

Warren Spector has been working on Epic Mickey, coming to the Nintendo Wii, for some time now and has constantly been quoted as stating that he wants to shake things up and reference oft-forgotten material.

The entire game is meant to be steeped in Mickey Mouse lore from the very depths of the Disney vault.

The thing is, everyone’s favorite cartoon mouse has not always been a pillar of virtue.

Disney Interactive Studios gave a lot of booth time to Epic Mickey at E3 2010.

Available Fall 2010 for Wii, Epic Mickey will include more than 60 Disney animated characters and feature a brush-wielding Mickey Mouse.

With the power of paint and paint thinner, a 1920s-to-1930s-era Mikey is able to erase and redraw the game’s environment (*cough* Shaun White Skateboarding *cough*) in this action-platformer-RPG hybrid designed by Warren Spector (and developed by Junction Point Studios).