Gaming Archives - Serious Startups

Overwatch Brings Video Gaming to Real Life Paintball

Okay, I’ll be honest here. I’m neither a big gamer nor avid paintball fan. I don’t love the graphic violence on video games, and paintball–well, those things hurt!

But, both pastimes are obviously very popular, and players of both are often not just participants but avid fans.

One of those avid fans is Josh Moody, who realized that real life paintball and airsoft could be greatly enhanced by the features of online combat games. So, he created Overwatch, a smartphone app that incorporates GPS, Bluetooth, and other technologies to provide a more digital experience to real life.

Josh gave me a quick education in gaming and what Overwatch can do to enhance real life games. Check out our chat below.

1) What does your company do?

Overwatch brings the futuristic technology of combat video games to real-life games of paintball, airsoft, and laser tag. See the location of teammates and opponents through an overview of the entire playing field, communicate with teammates via voice chat, and activate perks and unlocks to gain an edge on the opposition during any game—all through your iOS or Android device.

2) Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

The company was founded by Joe Saumweber, Michael Paladino, and me. Joe and Michael are the owners of RevUnit, an independent software development firm based in Bentonville, Arkansas. Joe has an extensive background in digital and mobile strategy, large enterprise solutions, and consumer facing applications. Michael has over ten years of experience in software development and developer management across web, mobile, and social platforms. As for me, I am a self-taught programmer and web designer, with experience designing and building electronic hardware. While I am only eighteen and have not had years and years of experience like my co-founders, I pride myself on being able to learn quickly and constantly improve.

3) What’s the story behind your idea?

Three years ago, just as most teenage guys are, I was an avid gamer. Specifically, I played quite a bit of “first-person shooter” games—titles such as Call of Duty and Battlefield. While I enjoyed gaming on my console, I also enjoyed playing airsoft and paintball with friends.

—Most people are familiar with paintball but not airsoft. To explain, airsoft is a similar game, but with much smaller, plastic BB projectiles instead of paintballs. Airsoft guns also provide a much more realistic, tactical feel and experience.—

Interested in both the digital and real-life versions of combat gaming, I realized a substantial gap between the two. None of the features of combat video games were present in real-life combat gaming, and thus, the Overwatch concept was born. Using the Overwatch app and hardware, gamers now have real-time GPS radar to track the location of teammates and opponents on the playing field, bluetooth voice chat to communicate with one another at all times, and even perks and unlocks that provide special abilities (such as Radar Jam). All of this and more is displayed right on the user’s smartphone, mounted directly in front of them, during any airsoft, paintball, or laser tag match. Overwatch is interactive gaming in its truest sense.

4) How as being part of the ARK Challenge helpful for your startup?

Without the ARK Challenge, Overwatch would not be where it is today. Not only did the ARK provide the funds our company needed to start up, it also provided invaluable mentorship and advice from experienced entrepreneurs, and the knowledge necessary to continue onward even after the 14-week competition had concluded. I am incredibly grateful for each person who worked to make the ARK Challenge the great program that it is, and hope to see many more companies emerge from it.

5) What milestones have you reached, and what are you working on next?

From our founding, we’ve built the Overwatch app from the ground up for both iOS and Android, as well as designed the perfect hardware to incorporate a player’s smartphone into gameplay while providing adequate protection for the device. At the close of the ARK Challenge, Overwatch secured a partnership with the largest airsoft manufacturer in the world to ensure that our products have a strong presence in both online and retail stores worldwide. The iOS app is complete and will be submitted to the app store in the coming weeks, while the Android version is soon to follow. As for the hardware, the armband, essentially a running band for your forearm, will be available in the coming months. The rail mount, similar to the heartbeat sensor in Call of Duty, will be available later this year.

6) Where can folks find out more?

To find out more, we encourage people to visit OverwatchApp.com and sign up for our email updates. If anyone has any additional questions after checking out the Overwatch website, feel free to email me at: josh@overwatchapp.com

Exclusive: Hands On With Nyko PlayPad Pro

Nyko, the brand known for its third party controller for consols such as the XBox360, Play Station 3 and Wii is coming to Android with its PlayPad Pro which we got a hands on with at e3. From someone who doesn’t game any more, The PlayPad Pro won me over as a must have accessory to play games on my Android tablet. The controller, looks to be based upon the Xbox360 one pairs to your Android tablet running 3.0 and newer via Bluetooth.

Sweet Nibletz We’re On Location At E3

Despite a few hiccups in our travel plans we’ve made it safely to Los Angeles to cover the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), this year the theme is Innovation unveiled. We’re going to cover it for our gaming, tech and mobile sections and we’re going to take some time out of our schedule to focus on cool new gaming startups. If you’re a gaming startup in either hardware or software and you’re exhibiting at E3 please make sure you reach out to us at startup@nibletz.com and we’ll make sure to stop by your booth or meet up with you over the next 3 and a half days.

We’re looking forward to big announcements from Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony and many many more.

Nintendo made history Sunday by deciding not to wait and announcing their new Wii U Gamepad and Pro Controllers. We’re expecting more from Nintendo on Tuesday morning.

Make sure you let everyone know to follow our RSS feed, our Twitter Stream and our G+ page for the latest from E3 and especially our startup spin.

Boston Startup: Brass Monkey Is A Fun Interactive Mass Challenge Grad VIDEO INTERVIEW

We found an awesome startup out of Boston Massachusetts called Brass Monkey. In addition to having an uber cool name the technology is cool, innovative and fun, a definite recipe for great success.

Brass Monkey allows the user to play fun, interactive games on their computer’s monitor or any other monitor with a browser, using their iPhone as a controller. The iPhone controller utilizes all the sensors in the iPhone to create an interactive experience. In the demo video below we check out a golf game, similar to Wii Golf, that allows you to use the iPhones motion sensors to control the iPhone like a golf club.

There are currently 10 games available. Brass Monkey has a free SDK for developers who are interested in developing games on their system.

Brass Monkey is a recent graduate of the Mass Challenge program, which they credit as a large part of their success thus far. They also received a $750k round of funding in January of this year which included the co-founders of Kima Ventures, Jeremie Berrebi, David Beyer, CEO of Chart.io, Founder and Managing Director of Boston Seed Capital Nicole Stata, and more.

Check out the video below:

Zynga Sues Kobojo Over The Use Of “Ville” In Their Social Games

A French developer has created an egyption based social game where you need to make egyption pyramid cities. The game is called PyramidVille and it plays on the classic model of Zynga’s Farmville, Cityville, Frontierville and other Ville style games.

Zynga has now sued the French developer over the use of the word Ville. The suit, which was filed in a San Francisco court, is asking a judge to ban Kobojo from using the word “Ville” in the US release of the game.

Zynga’s attorney Dennis Wilson said Kobojo’s use of Ville was a “willful violation of Zynga’s trademark by a competitor seeking to exploit Zynga’s hard-earned reputation in the social gaming space.” With the game’s focus building an Egyptian city, we can see where the confusion may come in to play.

According to this report Zynga tried to work this out with Kobojo but they willfully ignored the social game studios requests. Kobojo has already released a mobile version of PyramidVille.

Zynga build a franchise around their Facebook integrated social games. Their first game, Farmville, became a blockbuster hit. CityVille followed soon after that.

Zynga has also made a presence in the social mobile space after purchasing “Words With Friends” they’ve also got a version of Hangman played with friends. Their first mobile game, Zynga Poker is also a big hit.

Their most notable mobile news was the nearly $200 million dollar purchase of New York based game studio OMGPOP. Zynga acquired OMGPOP after their hit game Draw Something was able to knock Words With Friends out of the top spot in the mobile games arena.

The staff of OMGPOP was absorbed into Zynga and Dan Porter, the CEO of OMGPOP became Zynga’s Vice President of their New York operation which to date only includes the Draw Something title. We ran a feature story on Dan Porter and his unique use of HBO hit series “The Wire” characters as the names of OMGPOPs conference rooms.

Source: ABS-CBN News

Rovio Mobile Finally Has A Follow Up Game To Angry Birds

It took over 50 games for Finnish game development studio Rovio Mobile to come up with the smash hit Angry Birds. Angry Birds has grown to over 1 billion downloads and a merchandising arm worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.

Rovio Mobile has done two spin off games of their franchise Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space. The latter becoming the fastest growing mobile game in history after being released in March and shown off at SXSW.

The company announced their 2011 earnings results on Monday. In that call they revealed that Angry Birds had generated $106 million dollars in revenue in 2011. “The strong growth in revenue clearly demonstrates the popularity of the Angry Birds brand.” CEO Mikael Hed said. He continued; “The heavy investments made in 2011 to all business areas will be seen in future products. To ensure continuous success we need to be creative and stay focused on entertaining our millions of fans by continuously developing new and innovative products and services.”

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European Startup King.com Beats Out Electronic Arts On Facebook

While we admit we are skeptical on the fact that king.com calls themselves a startup, they do so to that end we will as well. Outside of them being a startup though, this little known game development studio in London has overtaken Electronic Arts in terms of daily app users for their Facebook games.

Admittedly, they aren’t anywhere near eclipsing Facebook giant Zynga but they have their sites set on Zynga. According to this report from the Chicago Tribune, king.com’s game Bubble Witch Saga has more daily active players than Zynga’s smash hit Farmville. Impressive. But not quite the 65 million daily users Zynga has across all of their titles.

King.com’s most recent launch, a game called Candy Crush Saga, has already crossed the half a million daily users threshold. That game just debuted last week.

“Our ultimate ambition is to be the leader in our segment of games for the casual social player, mainly female, social and mobile,” King.com’s Chief Executive and co-founder Riccardo Zacconi said in an interview with Reuters. He continued, “Our target is to reach Zynga.”

Across Facebook and other channels King.com reports that they have 2.5 billion games played per month. Although they started out before Facebook gaming became popular a lot of their game plays comes from Facebook. Zynga has been reportedly looking at options outside of Facebook and King.com says they are looking at other places to host their casual games as well.

King.com lacks in the mobile world and plans to change that this year by introducing their most popular titles to iOS and Android. That’s a space where EA and Zynga have already been successful.

source: ChicagoTribune

And Now Electronic Arts To Lay Off 500

Electronic Arts was just recently voted the worst company in America by the users at consumerist.com. They actually beat out Bank of America and Walmart. Well there woes haven’t stopped there as Monday it was reported that the gaming giant could lay off as many as 500 people.

Startup Grind’s Derek Anderson is reporting that Electronic Arts could lay off between 500-1000 people as soon as this week.

CNet is reporting that this news may not come as surprising considering EA recently had a horrible Q4 which is a crucial time for video game companies. Q4 includes holiday shopping which is supposed to be the best time of the year for video game sales. 2011, not so much for EA as they reported a $205 million dollar loss in Q4 2011.

Q3 2011 was actually worse as EA saw a $340 million dollar loss.

EA was harshly criticized for the lackluster ending of their game Mass Effect 3. Die hard gamers were expecting much more out of the franchise hit. CNet reports that EA was accused of disrespecting gamers for the horrible ending to Mass Effect 3. In fact it was so bad that EA announced that they would release a free “Extended Cut” for those that bought the original version.

To top all this off EA is under-performing with investors as well. Shares of EA stock are down 21.5% to $16.18 In the past five years EA stock has lost 70 percent of it’s value. They aren’t the super sports franchise company we used to know and love.

source: CNet

NY Sex Offenders Banned From Online Gaming With “Operation Game Over”

In a move that’s being praised by parents and child advocacy groups, and criticized by some others, New York Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman, with the help of some of the biggest online gaming publishers in the world, banned 3,500 accounts belonging to NY registered sex offenders from their online games.

New York has one of the strictest watches over registered sex offenders and their online habits. A registered sex offender in New York must register all their email addresses and online accounts in order to be in compliance with their registration laws. Those who don’t do that sometimes find them the subject of a parole or probation violation.

In a press release today Schneiderman said:

“I applaud all the companies participating in this first-of-its-kind initiative for taking online safety seriously and purging their networks of sex offenders. Together we are making the online community safer for our children, not allowing it to become a 21st century crime scene.”

Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Warner Brothers and Disney Interactive all cooperated with the Attorney General in New York to remove these sex offenders from their online games.

The fear is that some of these sex offenders will use text chat and voice chat in games to cultivate relationships with underage game players.

Website Tech.li reports:

The initiative aims to eliminate situations where sexual predators have worked to befriend and lure underage gamers via popular gaming networks.

Some, including Tech.Li’s Corey Cummings, feel that a move to ban 3,500 accounts in one fell swoop from online gaming entirely may be a bit overboard. There may have been the option for something less drastic like banning them from chat and video chat.

Schneierman is hoping that other states will follow New York’s “operation game over”

source: Tech.li

After Successful 7 Year Run Glu Mobile Acquires Entire “Deer Hunter” Brand

Don’t make any mistake, the Deer Hunter franchise ain’t no duck hunt. In fact it’s one of the most realistic shooting/hunting game franchises on mobile devies, thanks solely to Glu Mobile. Glu Mobile announced earlier today that they have acquired the “Deer Hunter” brand in it’s entirety from Atari. The acquisition includes the trademarks, licensing, domain names and all worldwide intellectual property that pertains to Deer Hunter.

“The Deer Hunter brand has become iconic for hunting gamers since its inception in 1997. It is a strong fit with Glu’s leadership in 3D, high production value, freemium mobile gaming,” said Niccolo de Masi, Glu President and CEO. “Glu has generated more than $21 million in revenue from the Deer Hunter brand over the past seven years, and we are delighted to now add it to our growing IP portfolio. We expect this deal to have a long-term favorable impact on gross margins, and anticipate finishing the year debt-free with double digit millions of cash.”

“In addition to continued growth on smartphones and tablets, we see significant potential to extend Deer Hunter to emerging platforms like the Mac App Store, Google Chrome and Connected TVs to round out full coverage of the future Digital Living Room,” de Masi continued. “The Deer Hunter brand will continue to represent the highest-quality, most realistic hunting experience in gaming. We look forward to expanding on the brand’s success for many years to come, beginning with our launch this month of Deer Hunter: Reloaded.”

Glu Mobile specializes in feature packed arcade style gaming hits for mobile platforms including Deer Hunter, Contract Killer, Gun Bros and many more. The San Francisco based company assures us even more exciting news is on the way.

Razer Gets Enough Facebook Likes, Announces Left Handed Naga MMO Mouse

If you’re a gamer than you are well aware of Razer and their superior line of gaming peripherals. If you’re a hardcore gamer and hardcore fan of Razer than you know already that they had a Facebook contest of sorts to see if there was enough community support to back the release of a left handed Naga gaming mouse.

Well lefty’s rejoice as YES there were enough likes on Facebook to start production of a left handed Naga mouse.

“That Facebook post generated more buzz than we could’ve ever imagined, which proves that there have been a number of gamers that have had their needs ignored for some time,” said Razer CEO and Chief Gamer Min Ling Tan. “We pride ourselves on being gamers ourselves, and we all know that there is no substitute for gaming with your dominant hand.”

This isn’t Razer’s first time producing a left-handed mouse. Two years ago the company released a left-handed version of their popular DeathAdder mouse. There are only two professional gamer left-handed mice in existence and Razer is the proud manufacturer of both.

Source: Engadget

Rumors Surface About The Next Playstation To Be Called Orbis?

Rumors were hot and heavy on the internet Wednesday about the next generation Playstation console. According to many sites including TFTS the next generation Playstation console will be called Orbis. TFTS was quick to point out that the Latin word Vita, the name of Sony’s latest handheld system, is life. The Latin word Orbis, means circle. Perhaps Sony is working on a “circle of life” concept with the next generation console and handheld.

The most important details to the reader are probably release date and pricing. Well we are far away from pricing but if sources are correct we would see the Playstation Orbis in time for the 2013 holiday season so about a year and a half from now.

The console system is said to rock an AMD x64 CPU and an AMD Southern Islands GPU. That will give it the capability of playing games at a resolution up to 4096×2160 (how much is the tv going to cost to support that???). It’s believed that the PlayStation Orbis will support 3D gaming out of the box.

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We Go One On One With Apsalar To Find Out How They Are Changing Mobile Gaming Forever

We were able to sit down with Apsalar, a Mobile Engagement Management company, as well as walk through the company’s offices. Right off the back when walking in, the look is prototypical start-up, with no cubicles, only desks in the open, relaxed, yet get-work-down type of feel. However, unlike most start-up companies, Apsalar has within a year evolved in a way most take longer to do. Originally, the company gave Mobile Game developers the ability to see cohorting stats weekly; they are now providing the same type of information daily to enhance what developers are looking for. When asked, Michael Oiknine stated,

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[Exclusive] Gameloft goes Social with Gameloft Live for Android

First details of Gameloft Live for Android. While in San Francisco for the Crunchies we stopped into meet with Gameloft. What we were able to see and preview is their newest application to be launched on the Android system. Gameloft Live will be their social experience rather than what they currently have in, in-games currently. Think the Sims and XBox Live having a baby.

You’ll be able to login with your Gameloft ID you currently have from playing past games or create a new one if you don’t. At the start you’ll have to set up your avatar in which throughout the Hub you’ll either look like or interact with. Thankfully they have the ability to have a Mohawk on your guy so I wasn’t feeling left out. Everything from how the hair looks, to what color it is can be changed. Your clothing style is also able to change however I didn’t spend enough time in that to let you know more. Your avatar while limited to just being in your Hub for now(We could only guess further Social aspects will be added later on) the main focus will be connecting with fellow friends as well as seeing achievements.

In each Hub you are also able to purchase new items to decorate the area, as well as different interactions that can and will take place. You’ll notice that there are “shiny stars” and for each one, clicking on them does something else. The fireplace does work as well (But doesn’t warm you up for those cold San Francisco days like today) and with clicking on wall reveals a Nova/Mr. And Mrs Smith type cache of weapons. Other stars are there so I won’t fully spoil the fun in finding them all. You can buy other Hubs as well with Gameloft cash you either buy with cash, or earn the ability to unlock things such as adding friends or achievements in games.

The main aspect, I believe, is to make Gameloft games more social and that’s what they do. The “dashboard” in which you see what your friends profile with either the games they’ve played, achievements unlocked, or others is a GIANT step up from what they had before. The interface is beautiful and extremely easy to use. Within a few minutes I no longer felt lost. Without dumbing it down making it intuitive as possible was a welcome sign.

The only other Social Hub for gaming I can think of, Open Feint causes me to want to violently vomit because of it’s visual design, Gameloft’s Social Hub is welcoming. Gameloft throws in the best of Sims and XBox Live in one and does it beautifully. While it never caused the Galaxy S II to stutter, I wondered how a lesser device might handle the game, I was assured the experience on any device. When pushed about if there was a specific tablet version coming out, while being told no at first, I was quickly told that unlike other applications viewing on a tablet is just as enjoyable if not more due to its increase in screen size since they don’t just down the size and call it a day.

Gameloft Live will also allow you to chat with friends who are in the application as well. High Scores are also a key area in which Gameloft has gone after, with the ability to break down world-wide or by country. Always nice to say you have more points than friends never hurts when you see them again or take a screen shot to email them. Tomorrow they will be doing a soft-launch and followed by a major push on Monday. Gameloft takes aim at bringing all your Gameloft Social needs and wants into one. While with any release on Android bugs are to be expected, updates will be happening as this is how the future of mobile gaming plus social could and will come together as one.