Massively multiplayer online games and Wii Sports are so last season, it seems. Uplause is a new Finnish gaming startup with quite an interesting a concept — “Crowd Games” or Massively Multiplayer Crowd Playing Game (MMCPG) as the firm calls them. Uplause’s crowd games are developed for large events, where the audience can collectively participate in playing the interactive mini-games, real time, on location. See a quick overview of the concept in the video below.
social gaming
Uplause Introduces Real-World Massively Multiplayer Crowd Games For Big Events
Social Gaming Firm Ironstar Helsinki Launches In Facebook, Appoints New CEO
The Finnish social gaming firm Ironstar Helsinki has announced appointing a new CEO Tiina Zilliacus and expanding its platform reach to Facebook. Ironstar Helsinki runs a social gaming world MoiPal, which up until now has been available on the web and as a downloadable mobile application. MoiPal has currently 200.000 registered users in Finland along some international ones, and is now looking to accelerate the international growth.
Everyplay Comes Out Of Stealth, Launches Facebook Social App Kamu World
Everyplay, a Finnish social gaming startup founded last year, has come out of stealth mode and released a product called Kamu World on Facebook. It is a “virtual hangout place” featuring edgy “Kamu” characters (‘kamu’ also means ‘a buddy’ in Finnish).
http://www.everyplay.com/news.html#bll
Kamu World in its current form is essentially a collection of visualized virtual chat rooms without that many game-like features. It has very polished look and feel already, though. When entering the world, players can create their own Kamu creature, and choose a location around the world (e.g. a game arcade in Tokyo). Kamus appear as small, desktop-size creatures, smaller than for example a drinking glass.
All actions of the player cumulate “Sparks”, experience points, which allow the player to level up and get more features unlocked. Furthermore, all activities of all players in the world also contribute to the status of the whole world, making it a happier and funnier place. Quite interesting feature further engaging the users is that you can print a PDF copy of your Kamu to make a 3D paper doll, then take pictures of your Kamu in real life settings, and gain Sparks from Everyplay in exchange for the pictures.
Jussi Laakkonen, CEO and founder of Everyplay, says Kamu World is a sheer test at the moment – something that getting out of makes the whole thing just more interesting for the firm. Everyplay will keep on building on Kamu World, though, but it is unforeseen how things evolve and they are open to learn as much as possible along the way. Everyplay is fully focused on fixing most pressing issues in the service and learning about usage patterns to build new features. More customization options, virtual items for decorating and games to play are on the way. At the moment there are no other plans, but it is clear also other products may be coming up later.
Jussi commented the firm has no plans to extend to other social networks for the time being. They want to see how well they are able to distribute the game in Facebook considering the competition by the already big startups.
Jussi regards Facebook as a very compelling distribution channel, not least since one can reach an audience of hundreds of million people globally – for free. Jussi isn’t worried, though, about Facebook starting to collect fees (or “rent”) for accessing and providing services for their members — he mentions that one cannot build a business model based on the distribution platform being completely free, and if a minor platform fee is going to kill you the business model has been defective in the first place.
http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/05/should-facebook-charge-app-developers-rent
Everyplay, a Finnish social gaming startup founded last year, has come out of stealth mode and released a product called Kamu World on Facebook. It is a “virtual hangout place” featuring edgy “Kamu” characters (‘kamu’ also means ’a buddy’ in Finnish).
Kamu World in its current form is essentially a collection of visualized virtual characters and chat rooms, with few game-like features. It has compelling and very polished look and feel already, though. When entering the world, players create their own Kamu creature, and choose a location around the world (e.g. a game arcade in Tokyo) to meet other Kamus in. Kamus appear as small, desktop-size creatures, smaller than for example a drinking glass. Continue reading »
Finnish Social Gaming – Calm Before The Storm
I met Jussi Laakkonen the other day and asked what is he cooking at the moment. Jussi is a Finnish social gaming long timer and a fresh CEO of EveryPlay.
Here’s a video I shot with my Nokia N95 and subsequently uploaded to JayCut for editing via my laptop (see more on JayCut here). In the video itself Jussi Laakkonen tells about his new social gaming startup, which is still in stealth mode. Jussi asked me to mention that Everyplay is looking into hiring a sitebuilder that can handle Ajax and PHP. You can send your resumes to corporate [at] everyplay.fi
Another long time Finnish gaming master mind Asmo Halinenha s also announced that he’s moving on from Apaja, a company he founded, but has only let us know about a few board positions his moving into at this point, namely at Eat.fi and at Grey Area.
Social gaming startups like for example Playfish is a great exemple how fast the industry is developing and what kind of opportunities (Link In Finnish) there are if one knows what he is doing.
Social gaming, unlike many other industries, can actually benefit from the gloomy economic environment, as people many times move towards inpexsive games played in the browser from the expensive console games, and in extreme cases have much more time to play and tinker with all kinds of stuff online if they get laid off. As harsh as this may sound, this is largely how for example Typepad got started when Ben and Mena Trott started Six Apart after they got laid off.
Further, Jussi promised us that he will shed light into how the Finnish gaming industry has evolved from an active demo scene by writing a guest blog post on the topic. Another strong player that has come this route is Scred.
Casual Games Market Hot – 2-4M USD Invested Per Week
Jussi Laakkonen of Everyplay has compiled a very extensive list of investments to casual gaming startups in the US and Europe.
Laakkonen has compiled the list from public resources such as VentureBeat, TechCrunch, GigaOm, etc. He admits that there are possibly a lot of investments missing as they based on PR, which naturally works best in the US.
From the Nordics and Baltics, in the list are investments to Apaja Online Entertainment and Sulake, so I’m guessing there are many more smaller seed investments made to smaller Nordic and Baltic companies which aren’t present in the list.
What’s your take – is the casual gaming market the hottest corner of the internet industry at the moment?
Valve Setting Up A New Social Gaming Company Tweehouse
We wrote earlier that the Finnish Internet Agency Valve was up to something in the social gaming arena. Now we have found out that they are setting up a new firm that produces end-to-end social gaming solutions for large brands. The new company is called Tweehouse (Pronounced as a little kid would pronounce ‘tree house’). The games, described as more game like with a storyline than for example Habbo, are aimed at the younger end of the gaming market.
Tweehouse will be set up in partnership with Snap TV, a Santa Monica-based game company that “produces and develops interactive games for media-savvy kids”. Valve will own 50 percent of the venture while Snap TV owns the other half. There are no third party investors involved at this point.
Tweehouse will target purely US market in the beginning. For this Snap TV is an ideal partner to handle the Sales and PR and leave the game development and pipeline management to the Helsinki office. Snap TV prides itself for having a dedicated sales force that calls on all classes of retail and ships products to over 20,000 storefronts across the United States and Canada, thus enabling quick access to market when the product is ready. This is where many other services coming from Europe have fallen short when trying to enter the US market with only a PR agency or a two man office talking to the market.
Tweehouse was born when Valve and Snap TV realized they could actually build a product out of what was initially only a single project. This is a great way for any digital agency to test the market and see what works. I hope we will see more of this type of ’spin-offs’ coming from the Nordic and Baltic countries.
The business model will build on the end-to-end solution. The service covers everything from design, development and marketing all the way to running the platform and moderation of the games themselves. In essence Tweehouse is aiming to build and sell solid gaming platforms to their customers. In addition to a fixed price element, the company also aims to always build an upside to the products they sell. This could mean for example a revenue share model that will be a percentage of each game sold.
Tweehouse has so far only one full time employee, but their first project will soon see around 10 people working on it coming partly through Valve and partly as new hires. Paavo Perttula is currently running the company as its Chairman of the Board. Tweehouse should have their first game out after a year, but they are looking into getting another client project in as soon as late spring 2009.
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