GAMES | Roman Nouzareth | Boonty | CAFE.COM

The Most Innovative Companies in Gaming

from fast company

By: Sherri SmithWed Feb 11, 2009 at 5:39 PM

1. Nintendo: Serious gamers balk, but the mass-market embrace of Wii and DS has redefined gaming.
2. Ubisoft: With a 37% sales increase in its most recent quarter (at press time), Ubisoft has sidestepped recession with a mix of casual and hard-core games spread across platforms, including Shaun White Snowboarding and Tom Clancy's EndWar.
3. Blizzard: Just when you think you've conquered every dungeon, Blizzard hits you with more irresistible battles. The company's World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich Kingshattered the record for one-day PC game sales with 8 million copies sold.
4. Media Molecule: Its LittleBigPlanet has received acclaim for breathing life into a tired genre with simple controls, an adorable mascot -- and a function that lets players create and share their own levels.
5. Harmonix: The makers of Rock Band one-upped Guitar Hero with a deal to produce a game based on the Beatles catalog.
6. GarageGames: Its Web site InstantAction.com combines the best of 3-D console gaming with the best of the social Web.
7. Take-Two Interactive: Publisher of the controversial Grand Theft Auto, Take-Two fended off EA's attempt at a hostile takeover and took home the Game of the Year award from the 2008 Video Game Awards for GTA IV.
8. Microsoft: Xbox 360 continues to outsell Sony's PS3, thanks to exclusive big titles such as Gears of War 2 and a beefed-up Xbox Live with Netflix. And big price cuts.
9. Greystripe: Storming the mobile world with its ad-supported games, Greystripe boasts more than 110 million downloads of iPhone and Java games.
10. RealNetworks: By adapting its popular PC games for the iPhone and the Wii -- and creating original titles for each platform -- RealNetworks has reasserted its importance.

Cafe.com sells Boonty to Nexway

My brother and I will announce later today that cafe.com has sold Boonty to Nexway.

Boonty has been the initial business of the company, started in 2001. At the time our idea was to sell downloadable games trough the big portals of the world. Now that we have the appstore, Itunes, XboxLive, Wiiware and others, it may seem obvious but back then lots of people thought we were crazy.

We got the idea in 2000 when we saw the Napster phenomenon. Whereas the industry was trying to solve the piracy issue with lawsuits and DRM, we thought that the problem could easily be solved with an easy to use, extensive and cheap offer. The funny thing is that initially we wanted to sell hard core titles.

Having started our first internet company in 1995 and sold it to IconMedialab of Sweden in 1999, we thought we would have enough credibility to meet most of the major publishers and convince them to try something new… but they all turned us down. Why bother selling online when they were making so much money in retail? And why take the risk of piracy? My brother and I almost gave up. However we stumble upon a few independent game developers selling casual titles and willing to give download a try. It was instant success and the starting point of the casual game revolution that has become so big today.

We grew quickly all over Europe, US and Asia from 2002 to 2005. We raised our first VC round in 2004 after my brother and I and business angels funded the initial stage. From 2005 to 2007, we had harder times and we had to turn the company around to come back to profitability only at the very beginning of 2008.

Boonty is now a very profitable business and growing quickly. I am glad Nexway bought it. It is a fantastic, fast growing, profitable (and big) digital download company. You will hear a lot form them in the next few years.

This is a very important turning point for cafe.com. From now on, our team will focus 100% on growing our social casual game web sites. Cafe.com is a place where casual gamers play, win and meet others within a friendly, safe, social environment. Cafe.com features more than 30 highly addictive casual games wrapped inside a social networking experience.

My favorite games are Temple of Mahjong, Busta Fruit and Absolute Solitaire. We will launch exciting new original games in the next few days, I can’t wait !

Initial technical work started in 2006 and Cafe.com was launched to the public in May 2008 in the US and a few weeks later in France and Germany.

Today over 5 million people play Cafe.com social games every month. This is quite an achievement after only 9 months in operation and near zero marketing budget! The site targets the primary casual gaming audience, which is more than 50% women with 60% of the entire audience being over 26 years old.

From the beginning, Cafe.com’s business model has been based on micro-transactions and rich media advertising, a successful model started in Asia and now being adopted by other entertainment companies.

100% of the all-cash deal will be reinvested into cafe.com.

Cafe.com featured on TheDeal.com

Wordox redux: Boonty to relaunch popular online word game

Wordox: Word Snatcher, a popular online word game that went offline when the dot-com bubble burst, will make a comeback in the next few days, Roman Nouzareth, founder and CEO of New York game distributor Boonty Inc., tells Behind the Money.

Wordox, which lets you steal your opponents' letters, was a big hit at the beginning of the decade, with 4 million members and around 40,000 people playing at the same time, according to Nouzareth (pictured). "As a comparison, today -- and not six years ago -- the biggest Pogo game has around 15,000 people playing at the same time," he explains, referring to Electronic Arts Inc.'s gaming site.

Continue reading the article

Sudoku: A time and a place for everything

You know, it's not often I ever find myself DISCOURAGING people from playing casual games, but my daily sweeps of internet news sites yesterday yielded this little gem:

Trial aborted over Sudoku-playing jurors

People, please. There is a time and place for everything. On a sunny day in the park? Sure! Long bus ride home? Absolutely! During evidence presentation in a multi-million dollar drug trial? Not so much.

Sudoku Arena at cafe.com is pretty awesome, and a must try for any Soduku enthusiast. Boosts, multiplayer, different game modes, its great! But please, play responsibly!

Play Sudoko Arena today!
(But not if you have jury duty).

Technorati Tags: Cafe.com, Free Games, Free online games, Roman Nouzareth

Amazon is a great startup!

While reading at the 2007 annual report of amazon, I've been delighted to read the 1997 letter to shareholders (reprinted in 2008 annual report). The vision and direction is crystal clear and is still the same after all these years. For me, this really denotes a great company: A good vision well executed!

Looking at that, we can really say it was a great startup and considering the future of the company and the evolution of the technologies at large (internet, smartphone, kindle, ipod, digital distribution, entertainment, ...), I believe that when we will read the 2018 annual report, it will make us think that amazon is a startup today... we'll see...

1997 LETTER TO SHAREHOLDERS (Reprinted from the 1997 Annual Report)

To our shareholders: Amazon.com passed many milestones in 1997: by year-end, we had served more than 1.5 million customers, yielding 838% revenue growth to $147.8 million, and extended our market leadership despite aggressive competitive entry. But this is Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com. Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets. We have a window of opportunity as larger players marshal the resources to pursue the online opportunity and as customers, new to purchasing online, are receptive to forming new relationships. The competitive landscape has continued to evolve at a fast pace. Many large players have moved online with credible offerings and have devoted substantial energy and resources to building awareness, traffic, and sales. Our goal is to move quickly to solidify and extend our current position while we begin to pursue the online commerce opportunities in other areas. We see substantial opportunity in the large markets we are targeting.
This strategy is not without risk: it requires serious investment and crisp execution against established franchise leaders. It’s All About the Long Term We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term. This value will be a direct result of our ability to extend and solidify our current market leadership position. The stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model. Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital. Our decisions have consistently reflected this focus. We first measure ourselves in terms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand. We have invested and will continue to invest aggressively to expand and leverage our customer base, brand, and infrastructure as we move to establish an enduring franchise.
Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh tradeoffs differently than some companies. Accordingly, we want to share with you our fundamental management and decision-making approach so that you, our shareholders, may confirm that it is consistent with your investment philosophy: • We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers.
• We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions.
• We will continue to measure our programs and the effectiveness of our investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best. We will continue to learn from both our successes and our failures.

• We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages. Some of these investments will pay off, others will not, and we will have learned another valuable lesson in either case.
• When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we’ll take the cash flows.
• We will share our strategic thought processes with you when we make bold choices (to the extent competitive pressures allow), so that you may evaluate for yourselves whether we are making rational long-term leadership investments.
• We will work hard to spend wisely and maintain our lean culture. We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture, particularly in a business incurring net losses.
• We will balance our focus on growth with emphasis on long-term profitability and capital management. At this stage, we choose to prioritize growth because we believe that scale is central to achieving the potential of our business model.
• We will continue to focus on hiring and retaining versatile and talented employees, and continue to weight their compensation to stock options rather than cash. We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner. We aren’t so bold as to claim that the above is the “right” investment philosophy, but it’s ours, and we would be remiss if we weren’t clear in the approach we have taken and will continue to take. With this foundation, we would like to turn to a review of our business focus, our progress in 1997, and our outlook for the future.

Obsess Over Customers

I'm a Cave Man

Videogames feed your inner cavemen, says report

By James Sherwood

Men now have a proper excuse for spending hours glued to a games console, thanks to new research which has concluded that videogames force blokes to revert to their caveman roots.

Allan Reiss, professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science at Stanford University, US recently hooked a group of men and women up to an MRI scanner whilst playing a videogame where the aim was to win virtual territory.

Although the study found that the mesocorticolimbic area of the brain – which is associated with reward and addiction – became stimulated in both sexes during gameplay, the effect on men was more intense.

For example, male brains displayed higher levels of activity as they progressed through the videogame and won more territory. The study concluded that male brains are simply hardwired to conquer and dominate, which could be the result of our caveman days spent fending off sabre-toothed tigers and rival cave-dwellers.

Professor Reiss said that men are more likely to feel some sense of reward by ‘succeeding’ in videogames. “These gender differences might help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become “hooked” on, videogames than females,” he added.

LTV

Very goo post from Andrew Chen about the customer Life Time Value

LTV for retail sites versus social sites
For retail sites, the calculation of LTV is pretty clear. In plain English, you might define it as:

The stream of all previous and future profits that a user generates from their purchases

So for a given user, you'd add up all their previous transactions and then add that to whatever model you've created about their likely future transactions. Part of what makes this work is that:

Transactions in a retail setting are unambiguous
Each individual makes an isolated impact on the system, in the form of a transaction
Retail buying has a long established history of data, both online and offline

Continue reading the article

Social sites help casualgames reach the next level

Very nice article about our free online games site cafe.com

"Cafe.com features drawing game Sketch-It!, along with the more traditional Concentration and Sudoku; players can buy game "boosts" and outfit "Mini-Me" avatars.
[...]
One of the games on new Cafe.com, Sketch-It! is a cross between Etch A Sketch and Charades. Players must get competitors to guess a secret word by drawing the object using a palette of colors. Newcomers get 10,000 Cafe coins (virtual currency) to outfit their "Mini-Me" or to use during games as "boosts.""

Read the full article

Mahjong Wars: cafe.com whups pogo

Man, what are they thinking over at Pogo.com?

I just can’t get into their Mahjong games. Literally. Oh don’t get me wrong, at my friends’ behest I really, really tried, but it’s like they want you to give up in frustration. For starters, the best version of it isn’t even available to everyone… you have to be a paying VIP.

Oh well, they’ve got bunches of others, I’ll just try one of them right? Oh, too bad, can’t play it in Firefox, so now I have to load up Internet Explorer (ew). Can you say inconvenient? On to the game! Wait, no… oh look, IE needs to install software to play the game… and the browser’s security protocols are blocking its own download. Great. The game better be worth all this trouble.

And meanwhile, I especially love the little add screaming “hello” at me every time my mouse passes near it. Not. Ok, forget in-browser, I’ll just try the downloadable version.

Finally, I’m playing. Ok, lots of layouts, pretty graphics, not bad…not bad… but jeez, can you say “boring”? And way too easy.

That’s it, I give up. I’m going back to Cafe.com. The Mahjong there is just a lot more challenging … I just click and play. Don’t even have to be a member!

Stumble It!

Cafe.com reviews

2 nice reviews over the week end about cafe.com

Casual Gamer Chick: "Casual gaming shouldn’t resemble walking into a car dealership, free casual games are not nagware and shouldn’t be in your face. This is the number one reason we have to recommend Cafe.com as a place to stop by and game. Give us quality casual games without the harassment and we’ll stay around to play."

and

Casualgaming.biz: "Social gaming portal Café.com believes it CafeCoins micro-transaction system has pioneered an Asian business model in the West – and is having winning results"

We love to hear comments about our free online games site. We are working to achieve perfection, it's not easy but we are passionate about what we are doing, so go for it and thank you for your support!