Red Robot launches Life is Crime game with location-based play (exclusive)

There’s got to be more to location-based mobile games than checking in. That was the thinking behind the game startup Red Robot Labs and its first game, Life of Crime.

The game debuted on the Android Market yesterday, and it’s one example of the growing number of game developers who are targeting Google’s mobile operating system first before launching an iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) app. Life of Crime uses what Red Robot believes is going to be its critical asset: the R2 Gaming Network platform for making location games.

“From our view, nobody has cracked location gaming yet,” said Mike Ouye, chief executive and co-founder of Red Robot, in an interview.

A special version of the free-to-play game will be playable at the Penny Arcade Expo starting today in Seattle. The game can automatically put a layer on top of the map that looks and feels like a game (see picture). All of the major locations and landmarks are automatically identified. The map is persistent and it turns everyday places into contested criminal territory.

To perform missions, you have to be within range of about 500 meters or so of the location in question. Then the user can take over the building, rob it, leave loot, or search it for information or health packs. You can also gamble and win virtual currency at a location.

The players can add locations to the map. Users can operate in small gangs and build their reputation, energy, and other stats. You can customize your avatar, or virtual character, by buying clothes. You can level up your character and build your criminal reputation. Ultimately, the top player can become the Don of San Francisco or some other major area. Once you own pieces of territory, those places can generate “protection” money for you.

Ex-Playdom veteran Ouye (pictured left) and Pete Hawley (pictured right), a veteran game developer at Electronic Arts and Sony, started the company earlier this year to focus on making games for hardcore gamers on Android mobile devices. They believe that’s an untapped market.

“I’ve made console games for 15 years and I’ve been frustrated that there isn’t more to do on mobile games,” said Hawley, chief product officer. “We’re trying to drive people to meet new friends and play games with them. It’s active game play, not checking in.”

The company has grown quite fast. In January, Red Robot raised $2 million in funding from Rick Thompson, the former chairman of Playdom, and Chamath Palihapitiya, a former board member at Playdom. Red Robot already has 18 people. Ouye hopes to grow the team to about 50 people this year.

Rick Thompson, co-founder of Playdom, said, “The proliferation of smartphones is the most exciting opportunity in gaming today – always on, location aware and socially connected.? Red Robot Labs is among the first to tap into the full potential of this new platform; and they have nailed it with Life Is Crime.”

Life is Crime is a mafia-style game where you can enlist people into your crew and incorporate real world locations into the landscape of the game. You can take over a location, as you can location apps such as Foursquare or Gowalla. But you can also do a lot more. If you meet another player, you can fight, send a gift, or friend them. You can take out other players or watch news feeds for the activity of your friends. You can drop off contraband for someone else to pick up. At the Penny Arcade event, there will be a special leaderboard for players at the show.

Although the game targets hardcore gamers, the actions you take in the game can be done in 30 seconds or so. In that way, the game competes with apps such as Foursquare while the user is waiting in a line for coffee. In tests with members of Google’s Android team, players played the game about eight sessions a day for about 45 seconds each.

Ouye says an iOS version of Life is Crime will likely come out in around 45 days or so. Rivals include Mafia Wars from Zynga and Mobsters from Disney Playdom. Other check-in style rivals include Booyah’s MyTown as well as Foursquare, Gowalla and Shadow Cities. Ouye hopes to launch two more games this year.

“All of the other games take a different approach,” Hawley said. “We’re hanging our hat on location and a real game.”

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Tags: Life is Crime

Companies: Red Robot, Red Robot Labs

People: Mike Ouye, Pete Hawley

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OpenFeint’s single sign-on for social games to replace Apple’s UDID (exclusive)

Apple caused panic among app developers last week when it announced that it would phase out an identification system for users on its mobile devices such as the iPhone. Mobile gaming company OpenFeint says it will help solve the problem created by the elimination of this feature by offering its own “single sign-on” identification system for app developers.

Apple’s announcement caused fear among developers because many use this unique device identifier (UDID) number to identify a user in order to quickly access that person’s history and offer cross promotions.?Apple decided to “deprecate” the UDID, meaning the company will phase out the use of the feature and no longer support it at some point in the future. Apple gave no explanation for the deprecation, but some speculated it was to end concerns about privacy.

“Developers have been panicking to some extent,” chief executive of OpenFeint, Jason Citron said. “That is why we decided to do this product.”

OpenFeint, which is owned by Japan’s Gree, said it already has 115 million users logging into games that use the OpenFeint mobile social gaming network for online play and leaderboards. Third-party app developers can now use the OFUID (OpenFeint user identification) to identify users in the same way that Apple did with UDUDs.

When a user starts playing a game or app with the OpenFeint system built-in, OpenFeint asks them to sign into their account. It asks the user if they want to access online play. If the user answers yes, OpenFeint signs them in and the app developer can get access to the player’s anonymized data and history, Citron said. OpenFeint has more than 6,800 games using its platform.

That’s certainly better than the alternative, where developers would have to create their own identification system requiring users to sign in with a username and password before playing a game. OpenFeint removes some of the potential hassle with a more streamlined sign-in system.

It isn’t a perfect replacement for UDID, which was able to log every time a user started a game. The OFUID can only gather information when the user logs into OpenFeint. That doesn’t happen every time a user plays a game. But Citron said this was the next best thing, as “the user can opt in with just one click.” The user has to have the OpenFeint app in order to sign in. However, to play online, users often have to download the OpenFeint app anyway.

The OFUID will give developers access to information such as what games are installed on the user’s phone, their usage of games, and what offers they have taken before. Developers would have otherwise had to figure out a way to do this on their own. To create the workaround, Citron said OpenFeint engineers had to figure out a way to do the single sign-on without using UDID numbers. Citron said that developers who use OpenFeint can learn how to better monetize their users with better targeting.

OpenFeint also announced an “install trade program” for developers that use the new sign-on process. OpenFeint will guarantee developers 1.5 new installs for every new install of Game Channel, an app that is needed for users to enjoy the benefits of single sign on. Game developers will be able to offer incentives for users to use the sign-on process, said Ethan Fassett, senior vice president of product at OpenFeint.

The single sign-on with OFUID will launch later this fall. Citron said that OpenFeint does not make money on this feature. On Android, Citron said that there are fewer restrictions related to the use of a UDID. But OpenFeint also offers its own single-sign-on process there.

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Tags: single sign on, UDID

Companies: Apple, Gree, OpenFeint

People: Jason Citron

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iSwifter on track to exceed $10M in revenue for app streaming (exclusive)

iSwifter, the company that can stream Flash-based Facebook games so they can be played on the iPad, said today that it expects to generate more than $10 million in revenue this year based on current bookings.

That’s remarkably good traction for a startup that is in its first year. Peter Relan, executive chairman of Burlingame, Calif.-based iSwifter, said in an interview that the company is having great success with the iSwifter app that it launched earlier this year. The iSwifter app uses streaming technology to deliver apps and games that would not otherwise work on an iPad. The fast growth of the business means that iSwifter is able to fund its own growth.

Flash games, for instance, don’t work on iPads because Apple and Adobe can’t come to an agreement about the multimedia technology. That’s a problem since lots of Flash-based games are available on Facebook. iSwifter can stream those Facebook games to a special browser in a user’s iPad. Then that streamed game functions just as if it were a native app stored on the iPad itself.

“We are pretty excited about the opportunity,” Relan said.

Rajat Gupta, founder of iSwifter, said in an interview that the company’s technology can be applied to many other kinds of apps. Relan said the company is having success licensing its technology to other kinds of companies, such as enterprises or healthcare companies that want to get their enterprise software to work on an iPad.

“We want to be the Netflix of applications,” Gupta said. Added Relan, “Games are just a leading indicator of what we can stream.”

Gupta said the company has eight employees now and would like to hire as many as 40 this year to expand its business. Among the new hires is Ajit Mayya, an eight-year veteran of VMware, who will lead iSwifter’s engineers as vice president of engienering. Mayya will hire a number of new engineers to build out the company’s platform.

Among the uses that consumers have found for iSwifter: playing Flash-based games such as CityVille or Empires & Allies on the iPad. These users are willing to pay iSwifter for that capability, even though the games are free to play on Facebook. iSwifter has hundreds of thousands of users who have spent millions of minutes with the app. Over time, Relan wants the huge reservoir of non-iPad apps to migrate onto new mobile platforms such as the iPad.

Users can get the iSwifter app with a regular web browser that can play Flash videos and other web content on an iPad fora flat fee of $4.99 Both deliver Flash and game content — including any social games or massively multiplayer online games.

The first couple of versions of iSwifter let users to watch videos and play a limited number of Flash games on an iPad. But version 3.0 allows you to log into Facebook and play a variety of Flash-based games such as FarmVille, Gupta said in an interview.

Apple approved the previous versions of iSwifter without much interchange. But the 3.0 approval process was lengthier and tougher because iSwifter introduced a new monetization feature. Gupta said he wanted to launch a subscription service where a user would sign up once for iSwifter and the subscription would automatically renew at the end of each month. But Apple balked and required that iSwifter’s users approve the subscription at the end of every month. That way, users won’t get surprised by monthly bills. It isn’t exactly clear why Apple required this restriction for iSwifter, but Gupta said he had to go along. Now, to reduce confusion, iSwifter has eliminated the subscriptions in favor of a single download fee. With version 4.0, users can download it for free and play it for a half hour. If they like it, they can pay the flat fee.

When you load the app, you have two options. You can browse web sites or play games. With the web sites, you can choose from one of the featured links or just type in the web address to go to any web site. For games, there is one game that is available for free each week. The others are available as free-to-play games. After a couple of minutes of playing, the user is prompted to make an in-app purchase to continue playing. If there is a drawback to iSwifter, it is that it needs a constant Wi-Fi connection in order to run, as the video has to be streamed in near real-time to create a continuous and good experience for the user. Gupta says that the amount of bandwidth required to support the app isn’t huge.

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Companies: iSwifter

People: Peter Relan, Raj Gupta

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Medio will help Angry Birds maker find even more users with predictive analytics (exclusive)

It may seem like everyone on the planet has played Angry Birds, but Rovio‘s mobile game has been downloaded only 300 million times, and the company wants to hit more than a billion users. To that end, Rovio is teaming up today with Medio Systems to take advantage of its predictive analytics service.

The deal isn’t a gigantic one, but it tells you what successful game companies are doing in terms of data mining to extend the reach of successful games. Medio is an analytics vendor that says it goes beyond mere reporting of user data. Rather, it forms a profile of users and makes real-time predictions about the kind of content, offering or monetization offers a user will respond to. Medio will support Rovio titles across all consumer platforms including Google Chrome, Android devices, the iPhone and the iPad.

Rovio’s Angry Birds games are played about 1.4 billion minutes a week, producing a ton of data. Medio taps location-aware connected devices, structured and unstructured data (like numbers or videos), and ways to find more users. The idea is to absorb all of that data and turn it into useful information for improving fan satisfaction, getting users to play longer, and making the right pitches to them.

Robert Lilleness, chief executive of Seattle-based Medio, said the platform was built for the age of Big Data and can scale to handle millions upon millions of users. Medio has been profitable since 2010 and grew revenues 280 percent last year. The platform generates 1.3 billion personalized recommendations each month. Other customers include T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless, Telus Mobility, CBS and ABC. The company was founded in 2004 and competes with rivals such as Flurry.

Medio is backed with $46 million in funding to date from Accel Partners ( a Rovio investor), Frazier Technology Ventures, Trilogy Equity Partners, and Mohr Davidow Ventures. In June, Medio announced its analytics platform monitored more than 2.5 million daily unique users. With the addition of Angry Birds, you have to figure it’s going to be more than that now.

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Tags: Analytics, Android, predictive analytics

Companies: Medio Systems, Rovio

People: Robert Lilleness

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