Inside Social Games

Munich, Germany-based Scoreloop recently announced a new platform for building social features into iPhone games. The service lets you challenge other players to asynchronous or multi-player matches, compare high scores, and share information on social networks like Facebook. Since then, the company has also launched Scoreloop Community, a social discovery service for mobile apps.

We recently spoke with Scoreloop CEO Marc Gumpinger to learn a bit more about the company and their vision for social gaming going forward.

[Inside Social Games] Thanks for speaking with us. Starting at a high level, why Scoreloop? Why now?

[Marc Gumpinger] First of all thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk to you.

Scoreloop is the technology leader in mobile social gaming. Pioneering player challenges has been a tremendous success. All the feedback continues to show us that this is the core of social interaction. By allowing players to challenge each other we add that extra thrill to any game. So our challenges open the door for Scoreloop enabled games to help discover other players. Now we’re opening it even further to also allow for discovering other games and find out even more about your buddies’ activities.

Since we’re offering Scoreloop Community both as a dedicated iPhone App that seamlessly communicates with Scoreloop enabled games as well as on the web we make mobile social gaming with Scoreloop a cross platform experience.

[ISG] The biggest issue with development on the iPhone is distribution, and with Scoreloop Community all Scoreloop enabled games are organized together through the app. How much could this increase distribution?

[MG] Scoreloop Community on the iPhone (aka the Scoreloop app) is the central launch pad for Scoreloop enabled games. So whenever you want to challenge someone just launch the Scoreloopapp and it’ll show you all the games that offer challenges. If you already have a game installed, you can launch it right from within the Scoreloop app. If not, the Scoreloop app shows a description of that game and takes you to the Apple App Store from which you can download it. This tremendously increases distribution and visibility.

By pioneering player challenges Scoreloop has established a new category of games that provide an extra level of engagement. As we’ve learned from players’ feedback they explicitly look for Scoreloop enabled games to play challenges in other games. The Scoreloop App is the central place to do that.

[ISG] Of course, if I had to guess, this form of distribution pales in comparison to features like “Scoreloop Promote” that lets users see what their friend’s are doing and playing. How well do you think it will pan out in a more asynchronous, mobile realm?

[MG] You’re totally right: Scoreloop Promote and friends’ activities are huge. With Scoreloop, players see what scores their buddies reach and which games they play. What is more, they also see how others perform in challenges. This again increases the excitement and raises the stakes when playing challenges.

And with Push Notifications we bring that even closer to you. Using the Scoreloop app every Scoreloop enabled game automatically supports Push Notifications. This is significant because it does not require developers to add a single line of code and no server installations at all. With Scoreloop it’s just there. We’ve done all the work for them.

Push Notifications will notify players when another player has challenged them or when they’ve won or lost a challenge. This makes the whole gaming experience even more personal because your buddies communicate and connect through games. This is live activity at its best with an immediate call to action. And this can only be done on a mobile device because it us close at hand at all times.

[ISG] We have seen somewhat similar concepts – Microsoft’s Live Anywhere and Nokia’s N-Gage for example – that haven’t worked out. What is it that Scoreloop  has that these projects didn’t?

[MG] First of all, we’re on the right platform. The iPhone has changed the game entirely. Apple has done a tremendous job of providing the best user experience from device to App Store to content. The number of Apps and downloads speak for themselves. Scoreloop takes that experience even further by offering features that are social and that raise the level of play.

But we do, of course, see the other platforms following the iPhone model. We’ve taken great care to basically be technology agnostic. So as soon as other platforms start to take off, Scoreloop will be there, too.

[ISG] Out of your competitors, Aurora Feint’s OpenFeint and ngmoco’s Plus+ are probably two of the closest. What sets you apart from them (or any others for that matter)?

[MG] First of all, as I have noted, Scoreloop is the pioneer of player challenges. While the interaction in social networks may be chats, in gaming its player challenges – the ability for people to play against and challenge each other. Scoreloop offers player challenges in a very sophisticated implementation and this only opens the door to many other opportunities.

Then there is the business model. We not only offer our technology entirely for free but also share our revenues with the developers without showing ads. This is unique.

But probably the most important differentiator is Scoreloop is neutral and does not develop its own games. Other companies like Aurora Feint or ngmoco publish their own games and thus compete with the developers they try to attract. We see great hesitance among developers to sign up with these services since they are afraid that they would only pull players into their games. With Scoreloop, developers don’t have these problems. We just provide the infrastructure but don’t compete with the developers. This generates an exceptionally good proposition for both indie developers as well as bigger publishers that we’re talking to.

[ISG] How many games do you have in your network?

[MG] We’re totally thrilled by the response to Scoreloop. The number of registered developers grows exponentially week by week. We’ve now already reached far more than 300 registered developers and more than 80 game commitments. Among them are a number of top 10 games.

[ISG] What makes integrating Scoreloop easier than other services?

[MG] It’s quite straight forward actually. To implement Scoreloop developers simply throw a few lines of code into their existing games. There’s nothing else and no need to compile complex projects.

But it’s not only easy to start with the Scoreloop SDK; it’s also easy to use because the Scoreloop SDK has an extremely efficient memory management that makes sure not to interfere with games.

And then we offer a number of ways to highly customize the Scoreloop SDK look and feel so that it seamlessly integrates with games.

[ISG] Let’s shift gears and focus on the players for a bit. The first of the major features is the whole Avatar Editor. Why add this?

[MG] The avatars are a fun way to show who you are. There are thousands of combinations to choose from.

[ISG] When Microsoft added Avatars to its “New Xbox Experience,”a lot of the Xbox Live community saw it as a pointless endeavor. What are you seeing?

[MG] We measure it by players’ response – and they love it. It’s another engaging element. It’s fun to choose and it’s fun to see others. This makes player challenges even more personal. That’s what increases the thrill again.

[ISG] Speaking of the web presence, what was the reasoning behind its addition?

[MG] Aside from using mobile devices we all use the web. And so Scoreloop has to be present in both worlds, too, to really offer a ubiquitous experience for the end user and increased visibility for the games.

And we provide developers/publishers ways to extend that visibility even further by using our highly customizable web widgets that developers can integrate into their web sites to show their games’ high scores on their own sites.

[ISG] Do you think it will see more or less use than its mobile counterpart?

[MG] We see it rather equally valuable. And be prepared for some major new features that will expose their value even more.

[ISG] Scoreloop is integrating Facebook Connect. Are you planning to integrate it into other platforms? Twitter for example.

[MG] While Facebook is basically very easy to integrate through Facebook Connect, we’ve invested significant efforts into a generic social network integration infrastructure in the background. So yes — integrating other social networks is very plausible for us.

[ISG] Working on OS 2.0 and 3.0, Community is all ready making use of Push Notification for any Scoreloop enabled game. Are there any new 3.0 based features in the works?

[MG] While the Scoreloop Community App on the iPhone is 3.0 for Push Notifications, the Scoreloop SDK works with iPhone OS 2.x to 3.0. Thus developers get the Push Notifications for games even on OS 2.x. We do have a number of other very exciting 3.0 specific features in the pipeline.

[ISG] What are some of the plans on the drawing board for Scoreloop Community 2.0?

[MG] There is one extremely huge thing in that space that we already have up and running internally. I can’t wait to show that but at this time we’ll refrain from commenting on unreleased products. Unfortunately

[ISG] Thanks a lot for your time, Marc. Is there anything else you would like to share about Scoreloop Community?

[MG] I can only invite players to start browsing the web community (http://www.scoreloop.com/) and find out what level of involvement our core feature of player challenges brings to iPhone games.