Yesterday I had the pleasure to have a chat with Scoreloop’s CEO, Marc Gumpinger. I recently wrote about their SDK and their vision about mobile gaming. He told me they are announcing a game-changing iPhone application and web platform today, Scoreloop Community. This is huge.
The Munich-based startup already offers a free, easy to implement and highly customizable iPhone SDK that makes games “social” in a matter of moments.
Their new Community application will introduce “challenges”, that means you can now play against your friends and challenge them in a particular game.
The user will also be able to see who is playing that particular game, who has the highest score and so on.
That’s a win-win situation for both the customers/gamers and the developers, as Scoreloop Community significantly broadens the visibility of Scoreloop-enabled games and increases customer loyalty by bringing online high scores and player challenges which only the Scoreloop platform offers.
For small developers here’s the real kicker: as soon as you make your game Scoreloop-enabled, as a bonus you get push notifications. Scoreloop offers Push Notifications to every game right out of the box and without requiring a single additional line of code or server knowledge.
It’s not finished: they can make money too. You may be in fact wondering how Scoreloop monetizes all of this.
They created a virtual currency system, shared between all the games. Players can purchase this currency and (major kicker again) they are sharing 50-50% the profits with the developers.
Oh, by the way they are the only ones in the world to have such a product. And it’s free.
So not only do they offer their technology 100% free of charge but they also allow for monetizing even free games.
Among other features are web widgets, friend activities, custom avatars and a lot of other stuff.
“Scoreloop is raising the level of play for game developers,” Gumpinger said. “We’re focused on continuous improvement for our developer ‘partners’ in this fast-moving environment by delivering new features and functionality that gamers want. We don’t create our own games because we don’t compete with game developers. We want them to become even more successful so we can drive the market forward together.”
Disclosure: I have no stake or interest in Scoreloop. I just am genuinely interested and excited about their technology.
Interesting, although Scoreloop is definitely not the only player working in this space. There are several companies trying to capture iPhone gamer communities by offering social and other features requiring server-side services for game developers.
It’s a lucrative opportunity, but I think communities can be successfully built only through series of hit games. I’ve been pondering this for a while: who are in a better position to succeed building a cross-game communities: platform providers trying to lure potential hit-game designers to use their platform or successful game companies trying to build platform after a few hit games?
By the way, how Scoreloop is going to make buying virtual currency work in a user friendly way? iPhone OS’s license agreement forbids using in-app purchases to buy virtual currency.
Hi Teemu, I’m not really sure about that. I understood they will have a points system, they would give away points with each game purchase and the customer could then re-buy some points if he runs out. I won’t comment about the legality of this as I’m not well informed.
Concerning your first question, I really think this approach is the way to go. Game companies are good at doing that and developing such an infrastructure would take away so much effort and time I wouldn’t consider it a wise investment. It then obviously depends on the size of the company and so many different criteria.
What I’m trying to say is simply that in my opinion this approach will work best for most of the game-development companies.
[...] one month after the release of its community application Scoreloop finds a great validation for its product, while Earlybird gets in on one of the most [...]
[...] one month after the release of its community application Scoreloop finds a great validation for its product, while Earlybird gets in on one of the most [...]
[...] one month after the release of its community application Scoreloop finds a great validation for its product, while Earlybird gets in on one of the most [...]
@Stefano Bernardi – I know of at least two apps have been rejected in the AppStore submission process due to the currency system/microtransaction within the app. It could be considered a form of gambling. Definitely something to watch.
[...] one month after the release of its community application Scoreloop finds a great validation for its product, while Earlybird gets in on one of the most [...]
[...] one month after the release of its community application Scoreloop finds a great validation for its product, while Earlybird gets in on one of the most [...]
hi Stefano,
great content and kudos for your info.i like the point “We don’t create our own games because we don’t compete with game developers. We want them to become even more successful so we can drive the market forward together.” ya exactly. they are becoming more popular than any game developers because they are operating at the receiving end. cheers for Scoreloop
It’s really exciting to see the way in which mobile gaming is really starting to take-off!