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Archive for February, 2009

Simple Lifeforms Founded to Develop Social Games

Posted by Alan O'Dea | Feb 16, 2009 | Filed under News, Press

Simple Lifeforms, a social game company, has recently been founded in the online game development hub of Nottingham, United Kingdom. Simple Lifeforms was formed to develop and publish games that combine the best features of online games (such as Runescape and World of Warcraft) and social networks (such as Facebook and MySpace). Simple Lifeforms call these products “Social Games”.

Company founders Alan O’Dea (ex Monumental Games) and Tadhg Kelly (ex BSkyB) were inspired to found the company after researching trends between game players and internet users. They believe that the convergence between the two is happening in social networks. Social networks are quickly becoming the perfect market environment to deliver new kinds of game experience, including such elements as co-operative play, social play-enablement, dating, finding new friends and challenging existing friends. Both believe that this is as revolutionary a development for games as the introduction of 3D graphics was for games a decade ago.

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Hi5’s Big Mistake

Posted by Tadhg | Feb 12, 2009 | Filed under News, Social Games

The social games space is quickly evolving and spreading its wings. It’s a gathering revolution and what’s interesting to note about it as a space is that the kinds of games that are making their mark are markedly different from more regular casual or video games. As it is a very young sector it could be argued that nobody really knows what they’re doing yet and so mistakes are made.  Hi5, one of the top 10 social networks in the world, has recently got into the space with a dedicated Games offering. It’s very attractive in several ways, but they have made one huge (though not irreversible) mistake: They’ve adopted a closed platform policy.

This is an article about games platforms, open and closed strategies, and why it’s a bad idea to try and manage a social game platform in a closed fashion.

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Startup Diary – Communication Tools

Posted by Alan O'Dea | Feb 4, 2009 | Filed under Personal, Startup Diary

Starting a games company is rarely cheap even in the best economic climates. Game development is often expensive and depending on the platform you choose can easily run to multi-million figures. The questions of cost control, cash flow and opportunities can hang heavy in the air. So how does a new social game company in a bad economic recession stay alive, cut costs, make money and still make quality games?

A good place to start is communication tools. There are many ways that a new company can avoid spending heavily, remain agile and yet still have a viable infrastructure. Many companies now provide free or nearly-free services to startups like us and these services are often very powerful.

This is a short article about how we communicate and do business for free. We hope you find it useful.

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