December 23rd, 2008
This will be our last post before the new year. It’s that time of the year when worker productivity hits it’s lowest point, (except for March Madness). Bosses are usually gone by this week to some ski vacation in their 15th home in Aspen and they’ll find something to complain to you about their trip after they return (I hear family time can do that to ya).
However, worker mice have piled up important looking papers on their desks and opened smokescreen docs on their computers in their best attempts to imitate hard work, while secretly they are browsing the web to learn how to brew their own eggnog, upping their game-playing or book-reading breaks to 60% of their day from 20%, tripling bathroom break frequency and length and stopping at every desk to chat along the way, desperately applying for other jobs, drinking at least two at every lunch and sometimes not coming back, quintupling their snacky and sweety intake, and our personal fav, embarrassing yourself at company office parties (”I never knew he/she rolled like that”).
From all of us at BuyPlayWin, long live the holiday season. We’d all probably kill each other without one!
November 12th, 2008
Our good friends at Occipital, founded at TechStars.org in Boulder, CO by two genius former computer science student, Vikas and Jeff, are determined to organize your photographic memories over time and space, and are already revealing beautiful “life tapestries” comprised of your photos all over the internet and extracting important connections that you never knew existed. (You guys owe us for this plug.)
Occipital
Occipital found this pizza company, Red Baron, and the promotion printed on their boxes in grocery stores across America, and sent us a photo as evidence of our website name’s closely matching text. How thoughtful of them…
Red Baron
Amazingly, we received another email from a game developer who wanted to learn more about us, and came accross this same promotion. I am sure that these encounters will not be the last. I have his permission to quote a small part of his email:
“Does BPW (BuyPlayWin) develop food promotional materials, like the ‘EatPlayWin’ promotion on RedBaron Pizza boxes? Thanks.”
As funny as this was to our whole team, let it be known that BuyPlayWin is in no way affiliated with Red Baron pizza, their parent company, Schwan’s Consumer Brands North America, Inc, or the EatPlayWin promotion. BuyPlayWin is a startup company developing e-commerce and game technologies, part of a new and sensational service that is soon to be offered to consumers everywhere.
We must admit, Red Barron brand pizza does have good taste in their promotional slogans.
***for non-gamers, the title of this post references a leetspeak slang term, “PWNED”, which is not a typo and is derived from the word “own”. Pwn implies domination or humiliation of a rival, used primarily in the Internet gaming culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g. “You just got pwned!”). One other meaning can be ‘perfect ownage’. To do this, you could be playing a fighting game, where your character defeats an opponent without receiving any damage (i.e. leaving him/her unscathed).***
November 4th, 2008
It’s always interesting to see which folks that write about video game and social network industry news actually play the games they write about. We’ve yet to hear much about the Agarwalla brothers re-release of Scrabulous under the new website and brand, lexulous.
Had you been a real fan of the Scrabulous game that captured Hasbro’s dim-witted attention and legal wrath on Facebook, you would be a registered user, and received an email like the one I got:
You can continue playing your favorite word game online at http://www.LEXULOUS.com.
Your old username “________” will work and your ratings have been preserved. In case you have forgotten your password, please visit - http://www.lexulous.com/forgot_password.php
For any help, please feel free to reply to this email and we shall get back to you within a few hours.
Best Regards,
Rajat & Jayant (The Lexulous Team)
P.S. All the old rooms like “The Lounge” and “Bingo Boomers” are now open.
They’ve put a lot of quality effort into their new release and have several versions available to play, and to license for your own private website. Check them out!
November 4th, 2008
We’ve been traveling the globe recently and met with some truly incredible people, who are doing incredible things. My business partner scoured major cities in China for development talent, and to meet with several game companies. I just got back from India, Singapore, Japan, and China where I met with developers, businessmen/women, and company founders.
I observed extreme variance in taste and preference with gaming and shopping from country to country, and it is evident in the way the product is catered to the intended audience.
Checkout GamezIndia:
If you’re an American, you probably don’t know what a DESI is, but all Indians know this term and use it popularly to refer to themselves. Hence the site’s motto: “the desi playground”.
Desi (or Deshi; pronounced [ˈd̪eːsi] or [ˈd̪eːʃi], Hindi: देसी, Urdu: دیسی, Punjabi: ਦੇਸੀ, دیسی) is a word originally from Sanskrit literally meaning “from the country” or “of the country”.
Desi is commonly used in conjunction with ABCD, a term for Indians that have relocated abroad, and are neither here nor there.
American-Born Confused Desi, or ABCD for short is a term used to refer to Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Americans born in the United States, in contrast to those who were born overseas and later settled there.
These cultural nuances are vital to a business that operates within a nation’s borders, and I’ve gone to great lengths to learn some of them. In the example above, the term “Desi” allows residents of India to truly identify with the website, and builds loyalty. Thinking of expanding internationally? I suggest you do the same for any targeted region.
Have a similar unique characterisitc you’ve observed in another culture? Comment and share with us!
October 13th, 2008
Well, I’d say the Virtual Goods Summit 2008 was a huge success. There were tons of smart people representing a host of game companies, and of course, I was over-dressed.
Being such a “noob” industry, there are many issues that need to be dealt with concerning the sale of virtual goods. The major issues that I caught, included:
- Fraud & Security
- Cashouts & Increased Risk
- Elitist Games & Stickiness
- Statistics Tracking & Product Development
- Time Vs Money & Valuating Currency
- Primary & Secondary Markets
I really enjoyed the Session A: “Metrics for Virtual Goods Businesses: The Whirled Case Study” presentation by Andrew Chen & Daniel James. They had their $hit together, and presented some very interesting statistics they track. I learned that children that played “Puzzle Pirates” made an average of $0.20-$0.25 cents per hour. That’s $40.00 per month. Funny how it seems just low enough to disinterest the formation of sweatshops abroad, who may work to create virtual currencies if the time value of money is high enough for that game.
Some of those smart people were panelists, and some of them sure did bring their egos to the conference. It was kind of funny at one point, because I don’t think the panel moderator had much idea of what they should be talking about, so panelists started asking the audience, “what do you people want to know?”
Actually, it sounded like everyone faced the exact same issues.
One fascinating part of the conference for me was talking to an attending PayPal representative, Renata. You see, PayPal charges a minimum of $1.00 for micro transactions, and were losing big in this market and many others to newly founded micro transaction leaders rushing to fill the market gap. Imagine getting charged $1.00 to send $1.00 to a friend. That’s pretty bad pricing analysis, and I expect to see a big change come form them soon.
I won a guitar hero game and plastic guitar for the Wii on my way out of the conference. God, I love the conference organizers! Special thanks to Charles Hudson, VP of Business Development for Serious Business.
I took the gift to Best Buy yesterday, with gift receipt, and exchanged it for Mario Kart and wheels.
I have to say that I’m not so impressed. I mean, its like the same old game with worse controls.
Anyhow, I digress. If I talked to you and never got back to you, shoot me an email!
September 24th, 2008
Here is a short note that “Scott” sent me:
I read TechCrunch daily and you were listed in the 10 startups that demo’d at TechStars. I am not a huge gamer, but I enjoy playing card games, racing games and puzzle games. I prefer to play games that are mentally challenging and employ strategy rather than chance. I am always interested in trying new startups and giving feedback on the direction they’re headed. You have a very unique concept that could prove to make shopping entertaining - more fun than just shopping around for the lowest price. Why not use your skills to save you money to pay the bills! — Scott
Scott, I couldn’t have said it better myself. We’re working really hard for you, and will give you and the other 266 requests beta access soon. Soooon…. Just a little more patience please.
PS - I do believe your last sentence deserves a shout-out to the “OG” authors…
September 24th, 2008
Nintendo’s Ad Campaign = Creativity + Web Technology + Biz Dev
Nintendo is amazing. Click on Wario’s image, (below), to see Nintendo’s new YouTube advertisement they’ve made for Wario Land. What a genius ad campaign. Watch the video through to the end. Trust me… Follow through to the Wario Land website to be uber-impressed.
September 18th, 2008
We’re sorry for not giving you an update since our last post, but we’ve had to relocate our HQ from Boulder, CO to the San Francisco bay area.
Above, you’ll see the area where we’re going to setup shop and a few of the major game companies immediately neighboring us. The SF bay area has the most tech companies, private equity, and college campuses that exist in such a small proximity of each other. Your wacky idea is not wacky here, and everyone will have heard some version of it before and demand an explanation for why you think you are different.
We are actively seeking and partnering with game developers, local and non-local, and welcome your referral. Specifically, we want to meet smaller scale web game developers of every type and genre. Here are some examples of games made by the types of developers we’d like to meet:
Made by Digis, Digital Seed Entertainment
Made by Rasterwerks, Nick Kang
August 21st, 2008
One week ago we halted development at BuyPlayWin to focus on our demo day pitch, yesterday, which marks the culmination of TechStars. To all curious visitors to the website who asked for private beta website access: you’ll get your invite codes in the middle of September.
The founders and mentors of TechStars got to see our progression from what they saw in the beginning of the summer program. I was told that they were very pleased with the presentation and our newly built platform. I’m glad, because we owe a lot to them, especially big Dave.
BuyPlayWin got a nice writeup on TechCrunch, on the Boulder’s Daily Camera, and even on Don Dodge’s blog (Microsoft), along with our fellow TechStars.
We’ll be relocating offices shortly, and hiring several new team members. Those jobs will be posted soon, so stay tuned if you are interersted.
Everyone in the Boulder, CO community has been very supportive of TechStars and BuyPlayWin, and we have enjoyed the energy here.
Thank you for an incredible summer Boulder!
–
The BuyPlayWin Team
August 19th, 2008
Kick butt, take names!
BuyPlayWin will enter private beta in the middle of September. We’ll have the stuff you want, and all the fun. If you have not requested an invitation yet, please do so by sending an email to info [at] BuyPlayWin [dot] com.
We look forward to playing with you. Good luck!
–
The BuyPlayWin Team
