Inside Social Games

Gravity Bear, the latest social gaming startup, is not shy about its objective: To take on the big three developers, Playfish, Zynga, and Playdom and carve out a piece of the social space that is projected to be worth over $1 billion for 2009.

The California-based company is founded by Phil Shenk, the co-founder and Art Director of the former Flagship Studios. However, he is perhaps best known as one of the lead artists for the ever popular Diablo 2 from Blizzard Entertainment. After Blizzard, he was Studio Director for Wild Tangent where he is also credited with helping big name companies such as Microsoft and Sony with the creation of online casual games.

Considering his experience, Gravity Bear is looking to focus on the latest in graphical technologies as it is applied to social networks. Nonetheless, Shenk does point out, in a brief interview with Games.com that his experience at Flagship moved him far more into a management and design realm and that it will be a combination of these two areas – top notch visuals along with with innovative and engaging design – that will give the new company an edge.

Most successful social games have simple graphics, compared to most console titles. Part of the reason for this, however, is that your average casual or social player is intimidated or uninterested by visuals seen in mainstream games. Remember, that most of these users do not consider themselves gamers, thus something that looks like a “game” may not see as much use as it deserves.

Nonetheless, that stigma feels to be slowly dissolving. Shenk, in fact, seems to be aware of this as greater numbers of Facebook titles become more sophisticated (simply compare the older Mafia Wars to newer FarmVille). To that end, Gravity Bear is looking to “push the bar higher, and provide a more compelling, more immersive experience,” Shenk tells Games.com.

Currently, the startup only has six employees and has yet to state the amount of angel funding it holds. However, Gravity Bear has already formed its first alliance, partnering with analytics company SQLstream, allowing it to bring “real-time analytics to games for social networks.”

What makes the partnership more significant, is that SQLstream is the first to actually provide this service using the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard SQL language. What this means, simply put, is that information transfer between products and their providers is significantly faster, and virtually real-time.

Unfortunately, beyond the SQLstream announcement, no further light has been shed on the going-ons at Gravity Bear. All the same, Shenk seems quite confident in this undertaking: “We’re just at the beginning of this industry,” he says, as players will expect better and better game quality.