How Big Is Your Screen? Minecraft Brings Its Game to Movie Theaters in the U.S.

How Big Is Your Screen? Minecraft Brings Its Game to Movie Theaters in the U.S.

The Minecraft sandbox just got a whole lot bigger.

Minecraft
Mojang
By Suelain Moy

This summer, one of the most popular games in the world may be coming to a movie theater near you. But you can play only if you’re between the ages of 7 and 17.

With over 100 million registered users, there is nothing virtual about Minecraft’s success. Microsoft paid $2.5 billion to purchase the game and its developer, Mojang, last year. This summer, startup Super League Gaming is giving young fans a chance to play the game in movie theaters. SLG has partnered with four major movie theater chains—Regal Entertainment Group, AMC Theatres, Cinemark Theatres and iPic Theaters—to bring the shared experience of a 100-minute Minecraft game to thousands of kids in 25 cities at more than 80 theaters.

For theater owners, it’s an attractive way to generate more revenue. They can sell more seats and they get to keep a larger percentage of the gross from league ticket sales than from movie ticket sales. With overall box office receipts in decline, theater owners are searching for new ways to fill theater seats. The summer of 2014 was the worst summer for movies since 1997, with a 15 percent decline of $3.9 billion from 2013. With the $204 billion opening of Jurassic World in June, theater owners are cautiously optimistic for 2015.

SLG president and co-founder Brett Morris told Fortune that “theaters want to be a destination for all entertainment, and there’s not a better next-gen entertainment option than gaming.” The summer games series taps into the kids who already spend hours playing Minecraft and watching Minecraft YouTube videos online.

After purchasing tickets online for $20 each, gamers will bring their own fully-charged laptops (which must be already loaded with Minecraft version 1.8 or above) to the movie theater. Once there, they can form teams and play the game in small groups on their laptops. They also can watch the entire playing field on the movie screen as teams play in real time.

For the kids, it’s a way to socialize—and strategize. Kids can be as loud as they want, compare builds, grab snacks, and move around inside the theater.

Plans for a fall league are already under way, with 150 theaters in 18 states signed up to participate. Each six-week league session costs $120, with gamers playing once a week. SLG is also going international, with gaming events in China and Canada.

Everyone else will have to wait for Minecraft, the movie, which is currently in development at Warner Bros.

Chart of the Day: High Deductible Blues

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The higher the deductible in your health insurance plan, the less happy you probably are with it. That’s according to a new report on employer-sponsored health insurance from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Los Angeles Times.

Chart of the Day: Tax Cuts and the Missing Capex Boom

Construction cranes tower over the base of the 30 Hudson Yards building, Wells Fargo & Co.'s future offices in New York
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
By The Fiscal Times Staff

Despite the Republican tax overhaul, businesses aren’t significantly increasing their capital expenditures. “The federal government will have to borrow an added $1 trillion through 2027 to pay for the corporate tax breaks,” says Bloomberg’s Mark Whitehouse. “So far, it’s hard to see what the country is getting in return.”

Chart of the Day: 2019’s Lobbying Leaders

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
By The Fiscal Times Staff

Roll Call reports that trade, infrastructure and health care issues including prescription drug prices “dominated the lobbying agendas of some of the biggest spenders on K Street early this year.” Here’s Roll Call’s look at the top lobbying spenders so far this year: 

Can You Fix Social Security? A New Tool Lets You Try

iStockphoto
By The Fiscal Times Staff

The Congressional Budget Office released an interactive tool Wednesday that shows how some widely discussed policy changes would affect the long-run financial health of the Social Security system.

“This interactive tool allows the user to explore seven policy options that could be used to improve the Social Security program’s finances and delay the trust funds’ exhaustion,” CBO said. “Four options would reduce benefits, and three options would increase payroll taxes. The tool allows for any combination of those options. It also lets the user change implementation dates and choose whether to show scheduled or payable benefits. … The tool also shows the impact of the options on different groups of people.”

Click here to view the interactive tool on the CBO website.

Why Prescription Drug Prices Keep Rising – and 3 Ways to Bring Them Down

Consumers are sounding off about the downside of generic drugs
Abid Katib/Getty Images
By Michael Rainey

Prescription drug prices have been rising at a blistering rate over the last few decades. Between 1980 and 2016, overall spending on prescription drugs rose from about $12 billion to roughly $330 billion, while its share of total health care spending doubled, from 5% to 10%.

Although lawmakers have shown renewed interest in addressing the problem, with pharmaceutical CEOs testifying before the Senate Finance Committee in February and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMS) scheduled to do so this week, no comprehensive plan to halt the relentless increase in prices has been proposed, let alone agreed upon.

Robin Feldman, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law, takes a look at the drug pricing system in a new book, “Drugs, Money and Secret Handshakes: The Unstoppable Growth of Prescription Drug Prices.” In a recent conversation with Bloomberg’s Joe Nocera, Feldman said that one of the key drivers of rising prices is the ongoing effort of pharmaceutical companies to maintain control of the market.

Fearing competition from lower-cost generics, drugmakers began over the last 10 or 15 years to focus on innovations “outside of the lab,” Feldman said. These innovations include paying PBMs to reduce competition from generics; creating complex systems of rebates to PBMs, hospitals and doctors to maintain high prices; and gaming the patent system to extend monopoly pricing power.

Feldman’s research on the dynamics of the drug market led her to formulate three general solutions for the problem of ever-rising prices:

1) Transparency: The current system thrives on secret deals between drug companies and middlemen. Transparency “lets competitors figure out how to compete and it lets regulators see where the bad behaviors occur,” Feldman says.

2) Patent limitations: Drugmakers have become experts at extending patents on existing drugs, often by making minor modifications in formulation, dosage or delivery. Feldman says that 78% of drugs getting new patents are actually old drugs gaining another round of protection, and thus another round of production and pricing exclusivity. A “one-and-done” patent system would eliminate this increasingly common strategy.

3) Simplification: Feldman says that “complexity breeds opportunity,” and warns that the U.S. “drug price system is so complex that the gaming opportunities are endless.” While “ruthless simplification” of regulatory rules and approval systems could help eliminate some of those opportunities, Feldman says that the U.S. doesn’t seem to be moving in this direction.

Read the full interview at Bloomberg News