Smartphone games are starting to spread out beyond the Apple iPhone and Google Android platforms. In support of that trend, Scoreloop is announcing today that it is adapting its social gaming platform to support Samsung’s mobile phones and web-connected TVs.
Munich, Germany-based Scoreloop makes a software development kit that adds social features to mobile games. Game developers can use it to easily add social features such as leaderboards, friend invites, and achievement sharing to their mobile games on the iPhone and Android platforms. Today, Scoreloop is adding support for phones that use Samsung’s bada mobile operating system.
Samsung will also use Scoreloop’s infrastructure for social games at its World Cyber Games events, which are tournaments for the world’s best professional video game players.
Scoreloop has more than 3,000 developers using its SDK already. It competes with Aurora Feint’s OpenFeint platform, as well as Ngmoco’s Plus+, Papaya Mobile, and Mocospace. Scoreloop is trying to set itself apart by being a “white label” company, where it provides a platform that big companies use to reach more consumers, said Scoreloop chief executive Marc Gumpinger.
Scoreloop has steadily been adding features such as monetization to expand its reach. It has also added customers such as Taiwan’s Chunghwa, a big mobile carrier.
Through social sharing, Scoreloop helps games spread to new users as friends share their games and achievements. Scoreloop will enable a games discovery app on Samsung’s bada devices to let friends connect and discovery what others are playing.
Scoreloop also enables game makers to make money via in-game virtual currency transactions.
The social platform will also work on Samsung TVs that are connected to the internet. Samsung has created an app platform that allows you to buy games and other apps that you can play on the TV set.
“To us, this deal is very interesting because of the potential for apps on the TV,” Gumpinger said.
Scoreloop says that games using its platform are amassing 100,000 new users per day. The company was founded in 2008 and has 35 employees. Gumpinger will be one of our speakers at DiscoveryBeat 2010.
Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. See the full agenda here. The conference takes place on October 18 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. To register, click here. Hurry though. Tickets are limited, and going fast.
Next Story: Microsoft launches Windows Phone 7, hitting the US on Nov. 8 Previous Story: 4 common mistakes in picking a co-founder
Interactivity is a key element when it comes to successfully spreading web content, which is why the ARG or transmedia experience — which works across platforms to create a narrative that the user has to discover on his or her own — has become a much more visible part of the landscape. Enter a recently launched ARG created specifically for the web series community, one that celebrates it.
Created by producer Jenni Powell and No Mimes Media, Webishades launched earlier this month via an article posted on Tubefilter. That article included a link to the Webishades website, which had secrets to be unlocked with phone calls, emails and ads on websites for series including The Guild, Squatters, Compulsions and The Temp Life. “It was a lot insidery, but that was part of the fun of it,” Powell said via phone.
To be honest, I completed the Webishades challenge in about ten minutes, because I cheated. And while I cheated — with some help from the ARG forum Unfiction, where previous players have documented the complete path to victory — that low level of commitment is deliberate.
Webishades is part of No Mimes’ recent string of 10 Minute ARG projects, which are created to be self-sustaining in perpetuity. “People don’t do stuff when we want them to, necessarily,” No Mimes managing director Benham Karbassi said via phone. “So we want to give them the opportunity to do it when they want to.”
So far, by Karbassi’s estimations, “a few thousand” people have checked out the Webishades website, with “a few hundred” following up on the phone call. But every component of the Webishades experience is automated, and as long as the participating web series don’t remove the clues from their websites, the game will be playable for the foreseeable future.
Not that there’s a lot there, to be frank — Webishades doesn’t have much in the way of story, instead operating as a promotional engine for the shows involved, and the reward is relatively Spartan. “It’s not as narrative as other ARG games,” Powell said. “It’s very different because it’s advertisement-based: ‘Here’s this fun fake product, let’s talk about it.’ That’s more of the game. We could have blown this out more, but it was just a fun way for us to work together.”
One of the complications is that Felicia Day, who in the project’s original iteration played a much larger role, was cast in a multi-episode arc on the SyFy Channel series Eureka this summer, meaning that her involvement had to be scaled back dramatically. “As you go, you have to be really flexible — that’s why ARGs are so fun to design,” Powell said. “You have to be on your toes the entire time.”
No money exchanged hands in this project, with everyone instead donating their time to put the elements together (with the exception of performance fees for actors in the Webishades commercial). That’s because Webishades isn’t intended to be a moneymaker; in fact, a Crackle representative, during a call with Powell and the No Mimes team, directly challenged No Mimes as to why they were doing this project — because it was just going to cost them money.
Karbassi’s reply at the time was that it would be great advertising for them, and also give them access to the web series community. Which seems to have paid off, at least in regard to the latter point: The number of series which participated in the project does represent an impressive range of the talent currently making web narrative. And while the numbers are low on players who have fully engaged with the project, those Webishades ads do remain on all the respective sites. The game is still on.
Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Shattering the Fourth Wall To Find Web Audiences
Scripting <b>News</b>: The Juan Williams controversy
I always thought he was pretty liberal, but then also shows up on Fox News. When he's on Fox, it's as if he's a different person. Very odd. Permanent link to this item in the archive. He said something on Fox that caused NPR to fire him ...
Surprise: Fox <b>News</b> signs Juan Williams to new $2 million deal <b>...</b>
Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. ...
Fox <b>News</b> Gives Juan Williams $2 Million Contract | 89.3 KPCC
NPR has been sharply criticized for terminating the contract of news analyst Juan Williams for remarks he made about Muslims. Williams appeared on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor" Thursday night to respond to NPR's decision.
eric seiger eric seiger
Smartphone games are starting to spread out beyond the Apple iPhone and Google Android platforms. In support of that trend, Scoreloop is announcing today that it is adapting its social gaming platform to support Samsung’s mobile phones and web-connected TVs.
Munich, Germany-based Scoreloop makes a software development kit that adds social features to mobile games. Game developers can use it to easily add social features such as leaderboards, friend invites, and achievement sharing to their mobile games on the iPhone and Android platforms. Today, Scoreloop is adding support for phones that use Samsung’s bada mobile operating system.
Samsung will also use Scoreloop’s infrastructure for social games at its World Cyber Games events, which are tournaments for the world’s best professional video game players.
Scoreloop has more than 3,000 developers using its SDK already. It competes with Aurora Feint’s OpenFeint platform, as well as Ngmoco’s Plus+, Papaya Mobile, and Mocospace. Scoreloop is trying to set itself apart by being a “white label” company, where it provides a platform that big companies use to reach more consumers, said Scoreloop chief executive Marc Gumpinger.
Scoreloop has steadily been adding features such as monetization to expand its reach. It has also added customers such as Taiwan’s Chunghwa, a big mobile carrier.
Through social sharing, Scoreloop helps games spread to new users as friends share their games and achievements. Scoreloop will enable a games discovery app on Samsung’s bada devices to let friends connect and discovery what others are playing.
Scoreloop also enables game makers to make money via in-game virtual currency transactions.
The social platform will also work on Samsung TVs that are connected to the internet. Samsung has created an app platform that allows you to buy games and other apps that you can play on the TV set.
“To us, this deal is very interesting because of the potential for apps on the TV,” Gumpinger said.
Scoreloop says that games using its platform are amassing 100,000 new users per day. The company was founded in 2008 and has 35 employees. Gumpinger will be one of our speakers at DiscoveryBeat 2010.
Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. See the full agenda here. The conference takes place on October 18 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. To register, click here. Hurry though. Tickets are limited, and going fast.
Next Story: Microsoft launches Windows Phone 7, hitting the US on Nov. 8 Previous Story: 4 common mistakes in picking a co-founder
Interactivity is a key element when it comes to successfully spreading web content, which is why the ARG or transmedia experience — which works across platforms to create a narrative that the user has to discover on his or her own — has become a much more visible part of the landscape. Enter a recently launched ARG created specifically for the web series community, one that celebrates it.
Created by producer Jenni Powell and No Mimes Media, Webishades launched earlier this month via an article posted on Tubefilter. That article included a link to the Webishades website, which had secrets to be unlocked with phone calls, emails and ads on websites for series including The Guild, Squatters, Compulsions and The Temp Life. “It was a lot insidery, but that was part of the fun of it,” Powell said via phone.
To be honest, I completed the Webishades challenge in about ten minutes, because I cheated. And while I cheated — with some help from the ARG forum Unfiction, where previous players have documented the complete path to victory — that low level of commitment is deliberate.
Webishades is part of No Mimes’ recent string of 10 Minute ARG projects, which are created to be self-sustaining in perpetuity. “People don’t do stuff when we want them to, necessarily,” No Mimes managing director Benham Karbassi said via phone. “So we want to give them the opportunity to do it when they want to.”
So far, by Karbassi’s estimations, “a few thousand” people have checked out the Webishades website, with “a few hundred” following up on the phone call. But every component of the Webishades experience is automated, and as long as the participating web series don’t remove the clues from their websites, the game will be playable for the foreseeable future.
Not that there’s a lot there, to be frank — Webishades doesn’t have much in the way of story, instead operating as a promotional engine for the shows involved, and the reward is relatively Spartan. “It’s not as narrative as other ARG games,” Powell said. “It’s very different because it’s advertisement-based: ‘Here’s this fun fake product, let’s talk about it.’ That’s more of the game. We could have blown this out more, but it was just a fun way for us to work together.”
One of the complications is that Felicia Day, who in the project’s original iteration played a much larger role, was cast in a multi-episode arc on the SyFy Channel series Eureka this summer, meaning that her involvement had to be scaled back dramatically. “As you go, you have to be really flexible — that’s why ARGs are so fun to design,” Powell said. “You have to be on your toes the entire time.”
No money exchanged hands in this project, with everyone instead donating their time to put the elements together (with the exception of performance fees for actors in the Webishades commercial). That’s because Webishades isn’t intended to be a moneymaker; in fact, a Crackle representative, during a call with Powell and the No Mimes team, directly challenged No Mimes as to why they were doing this project — because it was just going to cost them money.
Karbassi’s reply at the time was that it would be great advertising for them, and also give them access to the web series community. Which seems to have paid off, at least in regard to the latter point: The number of series which participated in the project does represent an impressive range of the talent currently making web narrative. And while the numbers are low on players who have fully engaged with the project, those Webishades ads do remain on all the respective sites. The game is still on.
Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Shattering the Fourth Wall To Find Web Audiences
Scripting <b>News</b>: The Juan Williams controversy
I always thought he was pretty liberal, but then also shows up on Fox News. When he's on Fox, it's as if he's a different person. Very odd. Permanent link to this item in the archive. He said something on Fox that caused NPR to fire him ...
Surprise: Fox <b>News</b> signs Juan Williams to new $2 million deal <b>...</b>
Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. ...
Fox <b>News</b> Gives Juan Williams $2 Million Contract | 89.3 KPCC
NPR has been sharply criticized for terminating the contract of news analyst Juan Williams for remarks he made about Muslims. Williams appeared on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor" Thursday night to respond to NPR's decision.
eric seiger eric seiger
No comments:
Post a Comment