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Earlier today, we celebrated our debut in the Top 10 Online
Gaming category in comScore Media Metrix reports. The news marks a significant
turning point for hi5 as the company sheds its social networking roots and
transitions towards becoming a market leader in the social gaming sphere.
Ranking above Nickelodeon Casual Games, Yahoo! Games, and MSN Games, hi5's
impressive debut among the top 10 online gaming properties reflects how far the
company has already come towards that goal. The change in categorization comes
as comScore identified that more than two-thirds of the content on hi5 now consists
of online gaming.
Moving forward, we are continuing to build a thriving gaming
environment for players and developers alike, delivering tools for developers
to increase monetization of their games and breaking down barriers that prevent
new users from playing games. There are already over 110 social games live on
the hi5 social play network, offering ample opportunities to enjoy gaming on
hi5, and with another 400 social games in the pipeline, hi5 has plenty to offer
gamers in the future.
Early coverage of the announcement news can be found over at VentureBeat, and a full version of the press release can be found here.
Continue reading hi5 Debuts in Top 10 of comScore's Ranking of Online Gaming Properties.
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On Monday in Austin, hi5's President & CTO Alex St. John gave a solo presentation on the future of online gaming at SXSW Interactive. The presentation slides are now available online here:
Additionally, Alex participated in an on-camera interview with FastCompany for their "30-Second MBA" series, which is an ongoing video curriculum with expert advice for entrepreneurs. To check out the Alex's interview as well as the full series, visit 30secondmba.com.
Additionally, Alex participated in an on-camera interview with FastCompany for their "30-Second MBA" series, which is an ongoing video curriculum with expert advice for entrepreneurs. To check out the Alex's interview as well as the full series, visit 30secondmba.com.
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Recently, hi5 President & CTO Alex St. John joined panelists at the Social Gaming Summit and Virtual Goods Summit in London. Attended by both European and US-based developers and publisers, the summit provided insights into some of the emerging areas of social gaming as well as some of the fundamental concepts that are key to understanding social games and how they work. During the panel, moderated by Atul Bagga of ThinkEquity, Alex discussed the challenges and opportunities for games to achieve success outside of the Facebook platform with Brian Balfour of Viximo, Paul Bowen of Offerpal and Jude Gomila of HeyZap. Alec Meer, Deputy Editor of GamesIndustry.biz, captured Alex's perspective on the dependency of certain types of games on social networks to maintain success: "The interesting phenomenon is the games that can't make on it their own without social network infrastructure... Zynga can't steal its audience from Facebook to save its life." The takeaway that Alex expressed is that online games, such as Club Penguin, have achieved enormous success without being tied to any social network because they are fundamentally viral, and that the open Internet still remains the larger business opportunity for online and social games. To read the full story, visit GamesIndustry.biz.
Earlier in November, the annual IGDA Leadership Forum took place in San Francisco and this year's focus was on advancing the state of the art in game production and management. hi5's Alex St. John provided a presentation on the "socialization" of games. One of the key aspects that Alex covered in the presentation was on the ability for games published on social networks to tap into viral channels and acquire new users with less friction. Barriers to entry my include: registration walls, downloads, and payments. Games published on social networks typically don't face these barriers, and are able to access new viral channels such as messaging and notification systems (check out a video clip from the presentation here). To review the full presentation slides, visit the hi5 profile on SlideShare.
Tonight, TechFlash.com and the Puget Sound Business Journal will host The Flashies: 2010 TechFlash Newsmaker Awards, the Oscars of the local tech community. The Flashies awards ceremony is designed to celebrate technology news over the course of the year with categories including Newsmaker of the Year, Startup Deal of the Year, and Tech Debacle of the Year. hi5 was nominated for The Flashies "Stunt of the Year" award based on a launch event held at Casual Connect Seattle in which hi5's Alex St. John defeated Facebook in an epic sumo wrestling smackdown. View video clips from all the nominees, including hi5's sumo event, on TechFlash.com.
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Last week, hi5 proudly sponsored GDC Online 2010 in Austin and launched a new next generation social gaming platform at the conference, called SocioPath. In a dedicated session, Alex and hi5 Executive Producer Dave Selle provided a demonstration and presented the SocioPath platform capabilities to an audience of social media game developers and publishers. To mark the launch of the new platform, hi5 also unleashed infamous sociopathic characters, including Hannibal Lecter and the Joker, into the conference and expo floor and hosted an after party. Check out our photos from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51681976@N02/sets/72157625109339042/
This week, hi5 will take the stage again at two more conferences. First, hi5 President & CTO Alex St. John will speak at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco today about current challenges for developers within the social gaming market and how new solutions such as SocioPath are emerging. To join the conference and listen in on Alex's presentation, please register for the event and feel free to use our 20% discount code: HI20. hi5 is also proudly sponsoring the Virtual Goods Summit and we invite you to stop by our booth #19 at the Moscone Center.
Additionally, hi5 CEO Bill Gossman will speak at AdweekMedia's Social Media Strategies conference in New York tomorrow, October 13. Bill will join panelists Michael Burke of appsavvy and Ian Schafer of Deep Focus in a discussion moderated by Brian Morrissey of Adweek about the opportunities for brands in the gaming market. The panel promises to answer provocative questions about the evolving social gaming market and best practices for advertising in this environment.
If you're interested in meeting with hi5 representatives at either of these events, please contact us: http://hi5networks.com/contact/index.html
This week, hi5 will take the stage again at two more conferences. First, hi5 President & CTO Alex St. John will speak at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco today about current challenges for developers within the social gaming market and how new solutions such as SocioPath are emerging. To join the conference and listen in on Alex's presentation, please register for the event and feel free to use our 20% discount code: HI20. hi5 is also proudly sponsoring the Virtual Goods Summit and we invite you to stop by our booth #19 at the Moscone Center.
Additionally, hi5 CEO Bill Gossman will speak at AdweekMedia's Social Media Strategies conference in New York tomorrow, October 13. Bill will join panelists Michael Burke of appsavvy and Ian Schafer of Deep Focus in a discussion moderated by Brian Morrissey of Adweek about the opportunities for brands in the gaming market. The panel promises to answer provocative questions about the evolving social gaming market and best practices for advertising in this environment.
If you're interested in meeting with hi5 representatives at either of these events, please contact us: http://hi5networks.com/contact/index.html
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Here are some of the latest news and highlights in the social gaming industry that took place this week:
The San Francisco Business Times today published a story on hi5's transition into the social games industry. Patrick Hoge interviewed hi5 President and CTO Alex St. John last week, discussing the current state of the industry, key players in the space, current challenges that developers face, and the opportunities that hi5 sees. Patrick quotes Alex discussing hi5's approach to building an online social environment centered around games: "St. John said hi5's strategy is to become the 'playground' where people using both real and assumed identities can socialize around games. While not developing its own games, it will use 'addictive' gaming features like 3D avatars in Flash programming, a store for virtual goods and gifting, he said. Last week, for example, hi5 started selling 'prank' gifts in which a user's avatar can be dispatched to do mischief on other users' homepages -- like smashing what appear to be holes in their computer screens with a baseball bat." To read the full article, visit the San Francisco Business Times.
Google has been headlining in the news over the last couple weeks with their recent acquisition of social app developer Slide for a reported $228 million, and rumored developments of a social network for games called Google Me. This week, TechCrunch reported that Google purchased Jambool, creators of the payments platform Social Gold, for $55 million with another $15-$20 million in an earnout. Social Gold enables developers to monetize their social applications through direct payments, and was founded by Amazon veterans Vikas Gupta and Reza Hussein. Additionally, it was reported that Google Ventures, the venture capital arm of Google, supposedly made an estimated $3-5 million investment in popular iPhone games developer ngmoco. The investment reportedly valued ngmoco above $100 million, and this comes on top of a $25 million Series C round ngmoco closed in February this year.
Zynga pulled Farmville from MSN Games portal this week. Just this past February, in the midst of a fairly public battle with Facebook, Zynga announced that is would be bringing Farmville to MSN in an effort to diversify away from Facebook platform. According to figures from AppData, FarmVille has lost more than 20 million users in the past four months since Facebook enacted changes to its app notification system. Although Zynga hasn't yet explained why the game was pulled from MSN, this isn't the first time one of the studio's popular titles has disappeared from a site. Three months ago, it announced the removal of YoVille from teen-targeted social network Tagged. Zynga also announced earlier that they would be partnering with Yahoo! Games, and Farmville is still not available on the portal, so it's unclear if it is still coming to Yahoo! and whether Zynga will continue to bring the title to networks outside Facebook.
eMarketer expects that marketers will spend $220 million worldwide to advertise in social games and social applications in 2010, supposedly increasing 60% in 2011. In the US alone, those numbers total $142 million in 2010, and an estimated $192 in 2011. While the dominant revenue stream for many social games has been the sale of virtual goods, it's clear that there is a lot of opportunity with advertisers as well.
Just a reminder that next week (August 16-18), hi5 representatives will be attending GDC Europe in Cologne. If you're interested in meeting with our team during the conference, please contact us to request a meeting: http://developer.hi5.com/php/contact.php
The San Francisco Business Times today published a story on hi5's transition into the social games industry. Patrick Hoge interviewed hi5 President and CTO Alex St. John last week, discussing the current state of the industry, key players in the space, current challenges that developers face, and the opportunities that hi5 sees. Patrick quotes Alex discussing hi5's approach to building an online social environment centered around games: "St. John said hi5's strategy is to become the 'playground' where people using both real and assumed identities can socialize around games. While not developing its own games, it will use 'addictive' gaming features like 3D avatars in Flash programming, a store for virtual goods and gifting, he said. Last week, for example, hi5 started selling 'prank' gifts in which a user's avatar can be dispatched to do mischief on other users' homepages -- like smashing what appear to be holes in their computer screens with a baseball bat." To read the full article, visit the San Francisco Business Times.Google has been headlining in the news over the last couple weeks with their recent acquisition of social app developer Slide for a reported $228 million, and rumored developments of a social network for games called Google Me. This week, TechCrunch reported that Google purchased Jambool, creators of the payments platform Social Gold, for $55 million with another $15-$20 million in an earnout. Social Gold enables developers to monetize their social applications through direct payments, and was founded by Amazon veterans Vikas Gupta and Reza Hussein. Additionally, it was reported that Google Ventures, the venture capital arm of Google, supposedly made an estimated $3-5 million investment in popular iPhone games developer ngmoco. The investment reportedly valued ngmoco above $100 million, and this comes on top of a $25 million Series C round ngmoco closed in February this year. Zynga pulled Farmville from MSN Games portal this week. Just this past February, in the midst of a fairly public battle with Facebook, Zynga announced that is would be bringing Farmville to MSN in an effort to diversify away from Facebook platform. According to figures from AppData, FarmVille has lost more than 20 million users in the past four months since Facebook enacted changes to its app notification system. Although Zynga hasn't yet explained why the game was pulled from MSN, this isn't the first time one of the studio's popular titles has disappeared from a site. Three months ago, it announced the removal of YoVille from teen-targeted social network Tagged. Zynga also announced earlier that they would be partnering with Yahoo! Games, and Farmville is still not available on the portal, so it's unclear if it is still coming to Yahoo! and whether Zynga will continue to bring the title to networks outside Facebook.
eMarketer expects that marketers will spend $220 million worldwide to advertise in social games and social applications in 2010, supposedly increasing 60% in 2011. In the US alone, those numbers total $142 million in 2010, and an estimated $192 in 2011. While the dominant revenue stream for many social games has been the sale of virtual goods, it's clear that there is a lot of opportunity with advertisers as well.Just a reminder that next week (August 16-18), hi5 representatives will be attending GDC Europe in Cologne. If you're interested in meeting with our team during the conference, please contact us to request a meeting: http://developer.hi5.com/php/contact.php
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Here are some of the latest news and highlights in the social gaming industry that took place this week:
According to a report from VentureBeat last week, Facebook is shuttering its virtual goods store after three years and is focusing on building out its Credits online payments system. hi5's President and CTO, Alex St. John, wrote an opinion piece on this news for Industry Gamers. In this piece, St. John states that Facebook is clearly not dedicated to e-commerce as a result of shutting their own virtual gifts store, so developers should take a harder look at whether Facebook is the right platform to increase audience acquisition and monetize their games and apps. To read the full piece, visit Industry Gamers.
Early in the week, TechCrunch revealed that Google had quietly invested between $100 million to $200 million in FarmVille developer Zynga as part of its preparation to launch a new Google Games platform later this year. Digg founder Kevin Rose and a former Facebook chief technical officer, have suggested in recent weeks that the search-engine giant is working on a social network called Google Me geared toward rivaling Facebook. This social network is intended to build off of Google Buzz, which has been widely criticized by tech pundits.
Offerpal Media announced that they were laying off an unspecified number of staff, in part because it lost out to rival TrialPay in the race to provide alternative payments with Facebook's new virtual currency system, Facebook Credits. Once apps are switched to Facebook Credits, Offerpal will no longer provide offers for those apps. As a result, Offerpal has to lay off its staff and re-focus its resources on growth areas that include providing offers for other game platforms such as the open web, new internet vertical sites, and mobile apps.
On Tuesday, July 20, we will by celebrating the official launch of our new Developer Portal with an event in Seattle. If you're headed to Casual Connect Seattle, we invite you to watch hi5's Alex St. John face off against none other than the Facebook behemoth itself in the sumo wrestling battle of the decade. Come watch the live action at this can't-miss event! Doors open at 9:00pm, fight begins at 11:00pm. For more details on the event, please visit: http://hi5casualconnect.eventbrite.com.
According to a report from VentureBeat last week, Facebook is shuttering its virtual goods store after three years and is focusing on building out its Credits online payments system. hi5's President and CTO, Alex St. John, wrote an opinion piece on this news for Industry Gamers. In this piece, St. John states that Facebook is clearly not dedicated to e-commerce as a result of shutting their own virtual gifts store, so developers should take a harder look at whether Facebook is the right platform to increase audience acquisition and monetize their games and apps. To read the full piece, visit Industry Gamers.
Early in the week, TechCrunch revealed that Google had quietly invested between $100 million to $200 million in FarmVille developer Zynga as part of its preparation to launch a new Google Games platform later this year. Digg founder Kevin Rose and a former Facebook chief technical officer, have suggested in recent weeks that the search-engine giant is working on a social network called Google Me geared toward rivaling Facebook. This social network is intended to build off of Google Buzz, which has been widely criticized by tech pundits.Offerpal Media announced that they were laying off an unspecified number of staff, in part because it lost out to rival TrialPay in the race to provide alternative payments with Facebook's new virtual currency system, Facebook Credits. Once apps are switched to Facebook Credits, Offerpal will no longer provide offers for those apps. As a result, Offerpal has to lay off its staff and re-focus its resources on growth areas that include providing offers for other game platforms such as the open web, new internet vertical sites, and mobile apps.
On Tuesday, July 20, we will by celebrating the official launch of our new Developer Portal with an event in Seattle. If you're headed to Casual Connect Seattle, we invite you to watch hi5's Alex St. John face off against none other than the Facebook behemoth itself in the sumo wrestling battle of the decade. Come watch the live action at this can't-miss event! Doors open at 9:00pm, fight begins at 11:00pm. For more details on the event, please visit: http://hi5casualconnect.eventbrite.com.
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In a meeting with Chris Nuttall of the Financial Times, hi5 president and CTO Alex St. John discussed the evolution and current competitive landscape of the social games industry. As both leading social networks and game developers look to rise above the noise and become the market leader, they will face some big challenges. Alex discussed how commerce will play a significant role in the potential success of social game companies, and was quoted as saying: "The Zynga and Facebook guys are just scratching the most naive edge of online commerce models. The commerce platform that I built at WildTangent and that Big Six has built are decades ahead in sophistication and capability. It's rolling out now and we're going to show the social media industry what it means to really make money from these games."
Additionally, Alex and Chris discussed why hi5 is uniquely positioned to become the leading social gaming platform, and Chris sums up this point best here: "Facebook will make missteps because it wants to be a general-purpose social network and will not focus properly on gaming, leaving it to more specialised companies like his own Hi5 to produce winning models."
Read the full article: http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2010/07/facebook-will-fail-at-social-gaming-hi5/
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Here is a summary of the latest news and
highlights in the social gaming industry that
took place this
week:
The week kicked off with an announcement from
Social Gaming Network (SGN), game publishers for iOS devices like iPhone and
iPad as well as the PC. SGN announced that they had raised $2 million from
Tomorrow Ventures and Xing founder Lars Hinrichs. While their focus has
primarily been on iOS devices, founder and executive chairman Shervin Pishevar
says SGN plans to start releasing titles for Android
smartphones.
Boston-based MocoSpace announced the launch of a mobile, browser-based social games platform. The company said it is focusing on games on mobile browsers so that it can reach the widest possible audiences. Rivals include MySpace Mobile, Facebook, Aurora Feint, Ngcomo, Scoreloop, and PapayaMobile.
It's been a busy week for Playdom, one of the industry's leading social game developers and one of our partners here at hi5. On Tuesday, Playdom closed $33 million in a third round of funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Steamboat Ventures, and New World Ventures (Playdom has raised $76 million to date). This morning, Playdom announced the acquisition of Hive7.com, a Facebook developer whose biggest game is Knighthood.
According to a new study from Frank N. Magid Associates, American consumers spent $168
million on mobile virtual
goods in the last year, and they're expected to do so again in the year ahead.
Per the report, over 70 million Americans own smartphones and 45% of those
owners play games, while 16% of them are buying in-game goods. The average
amount spent? $41 per person! Magid Advisors president Mike Vorhaus weighed in
on the results of the study and said, "Everybody knows free-to-play social
gaming models on PC platforms have been making a killing but mobile virtual
goods aren't as well understood. With almost 20 percent of smartphone gamers
already making purchases, there's a lot of room for the market to keep taking
off as smartphones continue to increase in popularity."
Wednesday was another big day for funding announcements as well - both HeyZap and PapayaMobile announced funding rounds. Online gaming platform HeyZap announced the closing of a $3 million round of venture funding led by Union Square Ventures, joined by Naval Ravikant and Chris Dixon for Founder Collective. The company's aim is to make social games more like YouTube videos, so that publishers can embed them on any web page. HeyZap stated that they will be using the funds to grow the company over the next few weeks. Beijing-based PapayaMobile raised $4 million for the launch of its new mobile social networking platform on Android devices. The platform has attracted 3.5 million global users in the past year by launching its own social games on mobile phones. Now it's opening up the platform to third-party developers who can integrate the social platform into their own games.
million on mobile virtual
goods in the last year, and they're expected to do so again in the year ahead.
Per the report, over 70 million Americans own smartphones and 45% of those
owners play games, while 16% of them are buying in-game goods. The average
amount spent? $41 per person! Magid Advisors president Mike Vorhaus weighed in
on the results of the study and said, "Everybody knows free-to-play social
gaming models on PC platforms have been making a killing but mobile virtual
goods aren't as well understood. With almost 20 percent of smartphone gamers
already making purchases, there's a lot of room for the market to keep taking
off as smartphones continue to increase in popularity."Wednesday was another big day for funding announcements as well - both HeyZap and PapayaMobile announced funding rounds. Online gaming platform HeyZap announced the closing of a $3 million round of venture funding led by Union Square Ventures, joined by Naval Ravikant and Chris Dixon for Founder Collective. The company's aim is to make social games more like YouTube videos, so that publishers can embed them on any web page. HeyZap stated that they will be using the funds to grow the company over the next few weeks. Beijing-based PapayaMobile raised $4 million for the launch of its new mobile social networking platform on Android devices. The platform has attracted 3.5 million global users in the past year by launching its own social games on mobile phones. Now it's opening up the platform to third-party developers who can integrate the social platform into their own games.
Boston-based MocoSpace announced the launch of a mobile, browser-based social games platform. The company said it is focusing on games on mobile browsers so that it can reach the widest possible audiences. Rivals include MySpace Mobile, Facebook, Aurora Feint, Ngcomo, Scoreloop, and PapayaMobile.
It's been a busy week for Playdom, one of the industry's leading social game developers and one of our partners here at hi5. On Tuesday, Playdom closed $33 million in a third round of funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Steamboat Ventures, and New World Ventures (Playdom has raised $76 million to date). This morning, Playdom announced the acquisition of Hive7.com, a Facebook developer whose biggest game is Knighthood.
Coming up next week, we'll be attending the
first-ever Social
Developer Summit, hosted by mediabistro.com and All Facebook founder Nick
O'Neill. We anticipate that it will be an interesting event for developers,
focused on social news, games, discovery, search, and other solutions. Notable
speakers include Jason Oberfest of ngmoco:), Luke Rajlich of Zynga's Farmville,
John Smart of Zoosk, Jia Shen of Rock You, Arin Sarkissian of Digg, and Immad
Akhund of HeyZap. If you're interested in meeting with us at the event, please
drop us a
line.
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Fantasy Sports Game 2010 World Futbol Challenge Launches on hi5.com in Time for the 2010 World Cup
We are pleased to announce our partnership with RotoHog, one of the fastest-growing fantasy game developers for major entertainment brands and professional sports. Through this strategic partnership, we've launched the first-ever fantasy sports game to be published on our website, 2010 World Futbol Challenge.
"RotoHog has quickly built a reputation in sports and entertainment of being able to create and maintain high quality, smooth functioning game applications, especially in the fantasy space, and we are very proud to partner with them," said Kevin Gliner, SVP of production at hi5. "Soccer's following around the world is second to none, and we are very excited to give our millions of monthly users an opportunity to play along with their favorite countries during next month's landmark event in South Africa."
"On a global basis there is no sport that has more potential for fantasy gaming than soccer does," said RotoHog CEO Kelly Perdew. "We are very pleased to be able to partner with hi5 to create their first-ever fantasy sports game, as fans shift their focus to all the excitement and international pride that will be on display as the world's greatest sporting event begins in June in South Africa."
2010 World Futbol Challenge gives players the ability to participate in a country-by-country fantasy soccer game in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The game is currently available on hi5.com and will be a featured game on our website for the weeks leading up to the start of the games in South Africa on June 11. In this bracket-style, confidence pick 'em game, players select their favorite countries and then assign them extra virtual goods called "confidence points," which provide weighted returns on those selections. Each participant is given 1,000 points to start, with the opportunity to purchase more points through the hi5 virtual goods store.
To play 2010 World Futbol Challenge, visit www.hi5.com.
To learn more about the hi5 Game Developer Program, please visit http://hi5networks.com/partners/gdp.html.
About hi5 Networks
Founded in 2003, hi5 today is among the top 20 largest web sites in the world and the leading destination site focused on social entertainment and gaming. Combining a robust social platform with premium content and game mechanics, hi5 delivers a fun, expressive, and interactive entertainment experience to millions of users around the world. Available in over 50 languages, the site features localized games, virtual goods and other content that is monetized through hi5 Coins, a global virtual currency supporting over 60 payment methods and 30 currencies worldwide. For more information on hi5, visit http://www.hi5.com.
About RotoHog
RotoHog builds powerful, award-winning games around any set of structured data (statistics, website activity, appearances on magazine covers, ticket sales, song downloads, etc.) for media partners such as BloombergSports, Sports Illustrated, NBA.com, NASCAR.COM, Turner Digital, Military.com, The Los Angeles Times, Pro Football Weekly, AVP, Fox Sports International, UsWeekly and MySpace. Their gaming platform allows major brands and media companies to engage and monetize their audiences via a Games as a Service model. RotoHog is privately held, and based in Los Angeles, CA. Investors include Allen & Co, Mission Ventures, DFJ Dragon and Sports Capital Partners Worldwide.
We are pleased to announce our partnership with RotoHog, one of the fastest-growing fantasy game developers for major entertainment brands and professional sports. Through this strategic partnership, we've launched the first-ever fantasy sports game to be published on our website, 2010 World Futbol Challenge.
"RotoHog has quickly built a reputation in sports and entertainment of being able to create and maintain high quality, smooth functioning game applications, especially in the fantasy space, and we are very proud to partner with them," said Kevin Gliner, SVP of production at hi5. "Soccer's following around the world is second to none, and we are very excited to give our millions of monthly users an opportunity to play along with their favorite countries during next month's landmark event in South Africa."
"On a global basis there is no sport that has more potential for fantasy gaming than soccer does," said RotoHog CEO Kelly Perdew. "We are very pleased to be able to partner with hi5 to create their first-ever fantasy sports game, as fans shift their focus to all the excitement and international pride that will be on display as the world's greatest sporting event begins in June in South Africa."
2010 World Futbol Challenge gives players the ability to participate in a country-by-country fantasy soccer game in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The game is currently available on hi5.com and will be a featured game on our website for the weeks leading up to the start of the games in South Africa on June 11. In this bracket-style, confidence pick 'em game, players select their favorite countries and then assign them extra virtual goods called "confidence points," which provide weighted returns on those selections. Each participant is given 1,000 points to start, with the opportunity to purchase more points through the hi5 virtual goods store.
To play 2010 World Futbol Challenge, visit www.hi5.com.
To learn more about the hi5 Game Developer Program, please visit http://hi5networks.com/partners/gdp.html.
About hi5 Networks
Founded in 2003, hi5 today is among the top 20 largest web sites in the world and the leading destination site focused on social entertainment and gaming. Combining a robust social platform with premium content and game mechanics, hi5 delivers a fun, expressive, and interactive entertainment experience to millions of users around the world. Available in over 50 languages, the site features localized games, virtual goods and other content that is monetized through hi5 Coins, a global virtual currency supporting over 60 payment methods and 30 currencies worldwide. For more information on hi5, visit http://www.hi5.com.
About RotoHog
RotoHog builds powerful, award-winning games around any set of structured data (statistics, website activity, appearances on magazine covers, ticket sales, song downloads, etc.) for media partners such as BloombergSports, Sports Illustrated, NBA.com, NASCAR.COM, Turner Digital, Military.com, The Los Angeles Times, Pro Football Weekly, AVP, Fox Sports International, UsWeekly and MySpace. Their gaming platform allows major brands and media companies to engage and monetize their audiences via a Games as a Service model. RotoHog is privately held, and based in Los Angeles, CA. Investors include Allen & Co, Mission Ventures, DFJ Dragon and Sports Capital Partners Worldwide.
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hi5 was profiled in an extensive article on social gaming that appeared in GameSpot. The piece, titled "Social Ties: Are online social games the future of interactive entertainment?" focused on overall trends in the category and the companies that have emerged as leaders in the space.
The section highlighting hi5, from an interview with hi5 president and CTO Alex St. John, starts on page 5. The article mentioned the recent launch of hi5's Game Developer Program, initially announced at the GDC conference in March, 2010. "We're looking for start-up developers that need a home. Almost all developers making games for Facebook feel that the window has closed, so we'd like to take them on," St. John was quoted as saying in the article.
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