Inside Social Games

What is GameGround? At this time no one seems to be too sure. All anyone really knows is that the platform is currently in its early stages, who’s funding it, and who’s behind it.

Just this month, the Israeli startup closed a $4.1 million round of funding from Sequoia Capital. Previously, the company had also raised a $2 million seed round from various angel investors and founders.

The team behind GameGround is very experienced. The company was founded by former Blizzard VP of Global Business Development Itzik Ben-Bassat, gambling site 888.com founder Guy Margolin, and former MTV executive Shaul Olmert.

Both Olmert, son of the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and Ben-Bassat left their respective positions at MTV and Blizzard around the same time in late 2007. Since then the two have been involved in a handful of other Israeli startups such as Wix.com, SundaySky, and a few still unannounced companies.

Ben-Bassat, acting Chairman for GameGround has not been very talkative publicly about the new company. He had said that GameGround is looking to expand the degree in which the Internet ties into computer games – certainly an ambiguous statement reminiscent of the PR department at Blizzard.

The GameGround website describes the service this way:

Access never before available personal stats and gameplay analysis across all your games. Brag about your latest triumphs to friends and a vibrant and passionate community. Pick up tips, tricks, and hints. Receive live streaming feed announcements when your friends score big wins. Discover new games and events with recommendations based on your personal usage patterns.

So GameGround could become some form of social gaming discovery platform similar to Raptr, but we’ll see. Here’s more copy from the site:

“Gaming. It runs in your blood.
For you, gaming is more than a mild diversion. It’s a way of life. And soon, life is going to get a whole lot more exciting. Introducing GameGround, an all-new personalized gaming center built around advanced technologies that aggregate all your web-wide gaming activities into a single online destination.

At the heart of GameGround is a powerful yet simple-to-use Personalized Command Center that gives you total control over every facet of your gaming experience. From this console, you’ll have the ability to tap into comprehensive, never-before-existing data for any game you play, no matter where on the web you play it, no matter who you play against. This is an unprecedented innovation that simply cannot be found anywhere else in the world of gaming!”

[via VentureBeat]