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Geek Culture / giftgaming - And being a member since 2004

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Mr Crazy
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:05 Edited at: 31st May 2014 20:09
Hi All,

A bit about me
I joined up on TGC back in 2004 (!). One of my friends told me about DarkBASIC Classic - back then it was full-screen black and white terminal if I remember correctly. But when I got my first cube rendered to the screen, one of the happiest days of my life.

Anyway after all these years, I am very happy to see TGC is alive and kicking - I will try and come to a TGC meetup if there's one soon! I get happy feels coming back here because I feel like this community is purely about the love of game making.

giftgaming
On that note, it dawned upon me how I would monetise a free game so I could pay the rent. As much as I dreamed of being a successful game developer, I wasn't convinced freemium was a sufficient model for most (not everyone can be King/Zynga). And thus I founded giftgaming (www.giftgaming.com).

Basically it's an in-game ad service that let brands buy powerups and in-game items for players as a form of advertising. This means some revenue for the game developer as well as less annoying advertising for the player...

Any feedback on our business idea would be greatly appreciated as we prepare for a private trial beta with a game company. We're also thinking of running a Seedr campaign in the near future if anyone is interested in a small amount of equity...

EDIT: Question
If we were to add support for DarkBasic Pro/Any of the game-making products on here, who would be interested in using our service?
MrValentine
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Playing: FFVII
Posted: 31st May 2014 20:17 Edited at: 31st May 2014 20:22
I am against putting ads in my games, so Add 1 No to DBPro integration XD

To clarify, you are saying, Ads would make a payout to a developer, based on the ad being displayed to a user and the differentiation being, you give the player something free in the game?

It is interesting, but I fail to see how it translates to an income to the advertiser... I think your challenge is not selling this to the devs, but selling the concept to an advertiser...

Good luck though and welcome back

Will be interested to see how far you go with this however, so Keep the hype up!



EDIT

Nice website, but as you are collecting Activity data through google analytics, I suggest you take control over your cookies ASAP as I can sue you as it stands well, I can inform the government to sue you for some stupid £500,000 or something whatever it was... Heads up for ya'

Mr Crazy
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:24
Thank you for the welcome back


I shouldv'e mentioned:

The "gift" contains an ad, and a virtual freebie and potentially a coupon.

The coupon gives a return on investment for the advertiser.

But basically rather than shoving ads down gamers throats, we're trying to foster relationships between the brand and gamer. Moreover, trying to subsidise freemium with "freebies" paid for by advertisers basically.

We have several competitors (Kiip, MediaBrix, Tapjoy, WildTangent), but aside from Kiip, the others are far too intrusive and tend to make the player have to watch a video advert first. So we're flipping this on its head and saying you can have the freebie for FREE from the brand.

Brands seem fairly game actually (having been to a few conferences), I'm more concerned about indie game developers who are absolutely against in-game ads! So we may need to pick our target market carefully...
Mr Crazy
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:28
Thanks for the compliment on our website.

I've just checked our website and there are no cookies according to Google Chrome...

Can you send a screenshot and some more information? I'm aware of EU Cookie Law!
MrValentine
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:32
Ahaha good one

I think you should look at Web based games like HTML5/JScript based games, opening you up to Facebook games, a massively existing market as well as a rapidly maturing market...

But yeah see my edit above too!

I am not against ads, per'se but I am against invasion of privacy, like apps that ask to see your friends list, I do not mind sharing my name, but asking for my friends is a bit too much... if you follow me...

Have a look at Malevolence? on here, it just got on Steam so maybe talk to the dev on here about it, they might find this useful, but again, maybe they do not wants ads, who knows

Mr Crazy
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:36
The game company who will hopefully trial giftgaming with us has a HTML/js game so we will probably support that platform.

On that note haha, you wouldn't like the game I have just released - it asks for your friends list so you can compete with your friends over Facebook, it isn't used for ad-purposes. Agree that Data Privacy Agreements should be upfront about this. (It's called Thundrclap: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/thundrclap/id877098093?mt=8)

I saw your edit and replied. See my above post. I can't see any cookies, can you send a screenshot, more information, etc? Thanks.
MrValentine
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:38
Sorry my bad,



I misinterpreted this for the Analytics link, I only glanced at it...

Check that your server is not collecting any activity data, if it is, you should mention it to the user in terms of an notification/page, Even if you are not, try putting a simple popup at the base or top to notify them that your site does not use cookies so users feel comfortable ^^

But yeah I love your minimalistic design! keep it, do not add too much, it is clear and concise! [I am a web designer/developer ]

Mr Crazy
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:42
That's a good point, our wordpress blog may use cookies, hmm, will have to look into that one.

Yeah that's true I could contact them, I'm not sure if an up and coming game would risk in-game ads, but at the end of the day, game devs need to eat right? Kickstarter is good don't get me wrong, but many do fail to raise the funds they need too, which is why I propose giftgaming as a potential alternative...
MrValentine
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:51
After spending some time on your site, I started to understand more and also got some ideas of how this works, If you were to work on a Windows 8.1+ API I would be able to use this, but DBPro wise, I think the market is currently too small for the time invested in it, just my opinion... however again, look at Malevolence however you spell it lol [Sorry dude] if you can get it into that and that other game umm... Evochron Mercenary which is also a DBP/GDK built game I think it still is... I recall mention of it moving to another engine but I could be wrong...

I cannot think of any other commercially released DBPro games... talk to TGC about the possibility of getting this into FPSC: Reloaded!

Somehow I find this an interesting prospect, especially as you are Cambridge JBS rooted did you graduate from there?/Still studying there?

Mr Crazy
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Posted: 31st May 2014 20:57
Wicked dude, glad you get it. I feel like I have this with everyone. Remember Scott Pilgrim?

Yeah DBPro might be too small...

Will checkout Evochron.

And yes that's a good idea - Lee Bamber still running the show? Will have to look him up...

I graduated from School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton in BSc Comp Sci. Accelerate Cambridge, Cambridge JBS then took me under their wing after I won "Best Pitch Award" with giftgaming at their Startup Weekend. Since then they've been coaching me and helping me progress giftgaming further. At one point I even had some coaching from Jack Lang, Raspberry Pi cofounder, so it's a pretty sweet deal esp. as they don't take equity from us!
MrValentine
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Posted: 31st May 2014 21:07
Cambridge JBS is a Prestige based organisation I believe, so live up to the name!

You should get that info somewhere on the site, without being too butch about it [You weren't I just like that emoticon]

I am working on something I hope will grow the DBPro user base [See Sig below] I hope it will spin off some more distributions and carry with it some that wish to monetise their distributions, so you never know, DBPro might be worthy at some point, or it could already be, sometimes we need to take into account the notion that the old saying gives...

'If you open a restaurant, they will come for the food' - Loosely defined that is...

I guess I made my point with that, if not, I mean that if this is an option, it might spark more users using DBPro and give it a stronger effect as monetising DBPro as far as I know is not simplified yet [We can always code it in]... as such most users would be trying to sell their games, but with your product, it would be possible to just give away a download and let the gifting pay for it all...




Mr Crazy
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Posted: 31st May 2014 21:12
Cambridge JBS only take on the best

Yep, I make it clear we're a Cambridge Uni supported startup (when appropriate). It can backfire a bit though depending on audience, some might just not care about prestige etc.

I will perhaps message the owner and founder of TGC, see what they think - I actually integrated giftgaming into an example Unity FPS and it worked nicely

swissolo
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Posted: 31st May 2014 21:40
In app purchases sound like mobile gaming to me, which sounds like AppGameKit might be a better target

MrValentine
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Posted: 31st May 2014 21:42
I keep side-lining AppGameKit for my own focus, and forget about it lol, yeah AppGameKit!



Mr Crazy
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Posted: 31st May 2014 21:53
Thanks for the tips you two.

Will look into AGK.

Whilst it works well with mobile, giftgaming could be applied to other platforms I believe - most games tend to have items, powerups, boons, etc?

EA started using in-game ads on Battlefield 4 for example and this annoyed a lot of the BF4 community. I think gamers would rather:
- They opted in to view the ad
- Opting in got them something in the game (perhaps some free DLC or free gaming time on BF4)
- Therefore have giftgaming ?

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