Today, February 3rd, game developer Paladin Studios has launched EnerCities. It is an online game in which players are challenged to build a sustainable city. It will run online (www.enercities.eu) and on Facebook, and is available in six European languages. The game is part of an educational platform dealing with energy issues, backed by European Commission funding of €1 million. (more…)

In an informative five minutes on Discovery Channel, numbers were presented on the Gaming industry.

Gaming is increasingly becoming a lucrative and competitive market with a huge global target audience.
The fastest growing entertainment industry, is indeed Gaming.

Figures compared to other industries (global turnover on the first day):
Game: Grand Theft Auto 4: $210 million
Game: More than 400.000 copies are reserved for the new Mario Bros game.
Book: Harry Potter (which part was not mentioned): $140 million
Movie: (forgot which one): $40 million

In terms of usage, FarmVille -which is the biggest Social Game on Facebook of 2009- has a whopping 27,5 million daily active users and a 72,9 million monthly users!

Gaming becomes more and more intertwined within our global culture, gaming often is a social event where people gather to play a game which they all fancy.
The Wii took this to the next level, by appealing to the conventional-non-gamers and attract them to game together with an innovative console, taking away perceived risks of this new target group.

As mentioned before, the Gaming industry is the fastest growing, and technology enablers will only push the growth further. Cross-media Social Gaming is the next step, take FarmVille, Mafia Wars or any other kind of Social Game and take it to the television.
The Wii already does this with Mario Kart, enabling players all over the world to game with each other through Internet connection.
By enabling Social Gaming as well through the television, the experience itself can be magnified by adding more features which relate better to the television device than the computer, therefore enhancing and creating new cross-media experiences.

The (social) Gaming industry will grow, diffuse amongst core-gamers and non-core-gamers, within daily lives and within our socially morphing framework.

What do you see as important developments and trends for the Social Gaming industry?

We are looking to take Social Gaming to TV via Social TV platform – think Mafia Wars, Farm Town, and even Second Life on TV.
We have developed and successfully broadcast Social TV in Europe bypassing the remote using telephony 2.0 (mobile and landline), advanced IVR and business logic servers, realtime 3D along with web integration.

We need partners. We need financial backing to redevelop the project.

… where viewers can create a virtual character, pilot it in the TV environment, meet, compete, play and even talk to other viewers/competitors via phone.

What is the Cross Media Social Platform (CMSP)?

The TV market is ‘on the move’ – competition is growing and digital channels via ISP’s and IPTV providers are now crashing through what was once the walled fortress of broadcast television. Interactive content and social media are the buzz and broadcasters are looking for both innovation and revenue generation models that fall outside of the traditional advertising box of the past. And the need for all types of content is growing exponentially, of which one is created by users themselves.

The Cross Media Social Platform is a unique product that not only offers a business model that encompasses current and widely spread advertising revenue – it also has added value by offering broadcasters the opportunity to earn money via telephony (Premium Rate Numbers and Premium SMS) via freemium modelling, as well as web and phone subscription models – where users can augment their profiles and characters on the web for TV and the web.

We created an interactive, virtual world on both television and the Internet that envelops social networking, community, user generated content, competition, and entertainment. And we are interested in developing this further with principles who were involved in the previous project. And it works on both standard broadcast or terrestrial TV as well as IPTV, Satellite, Cable etc.

See video of work we did in the past at Youtube

Visuals of the Cross Media Social Platform (CMSP)

Below you will find a basic CMSP architecture demo and a couple of screenshots.

It evens goes further, technology developments are evolving, partners have released an API enabling developers to create unified communications (telephone, cellular text message, instant message (Jabber, AIM, Yahoo, MSN) applications using traditional document-based web development flow. This sort of technology can be implemented in the Cross Media Social Platform, adapting to the needs and ways of nowadays communication.

Why Agora Media?

We have the experience and know-how, without having to invent the wheel and exploit this competitive advantage, we can respond very fast and accurate to the concretizing needs of the Social TV/Social Media/converging Media community and industry! We have a vast network of 2.0, cross media and technology pioneers, working closely with them to stay on top of trends and developments which will enhance the Cross Media Social Platform.

Why now?

The interest in Social TV is rising, the television landscape is changing, permanently. Media consumption is converging and increasingly socializing. More and more experiments, products and services are initiated and developed to meet these changes. Being on top of these trends and offering new digital cross media experiences to your target audiences and putting you permanently on the map!

Feel free to contact us if interested or wish to receive more information.

Kudos to our fine friends at Paladin Studios in Leiden for their release today!

Facebook, one of the leading social networks with over 350 million users, got a Serious Game on its platform today. Called EnerCities, it gets serious about the energy issues of our world. It is a casual city builder created by the Dutch game developer Paladin Studios. The project has a €1.4M budget, and is funded by the European Commission’s Energy Agency.

Rock-Paper-Scissors

“The game is about managing a virtual city”, says Dylan Nagel, who is product manager for EnerCities and co-founder of Paladin Studios. We took several elements from other city builders, and brought it down to the bare essentials.”

Players start with a small grid of nine squares and a limited choice of buildings. They then place structures like industrial plots and residential areas. When done well, the city levels up and grows in size. Each level brings more complexity, but also more opportunities for improving one’s score. Nagel explains:

“We tried to model the game after the real world. The triangle of People, Planet, and Profit is a balancing act which is at the heart of the game mechanics. If the player gets this right, it will reflect in the scores. This makes it essentially a rock-paper-scissors dilemma.”

Facebook

While EnerCities was originally designed for a standalone website, the choice for Facebook could be the driving factor for making the game successful. Says Derk de Geus, co-founder
and CEO of Paladin:

“We want to create a thriving community, where players compete for the highest scores and share their experiences with the game. Social Networks have the potential to make this happen.”

While the game does not have a persistent world like most Facebook games, there is a simple scoring system that allows players to compare their scores and rankings with friends. De Geus:

“Players can experiment with different scenarios. One time you play the industrial tycoon, the next an eco-friendly city builder. Either way, the decisions are tough and you will need to compromise. The idea is that you play with the world and experience the outcome.”

European Commission

The game is funded by the Energy Agency of the European Commission, specifically the Intelligent Energy Program of 2007. The €1.4M budget covers not just game development, but several other aspects.

De Geus:

“Roughly 20% of that money goes to the game itself. The other 80% is split between educational material, marketing and impact research, with most of the funds going to the roll-out of the game. It is essential that schools and teachers embed the game in their curriculum, and this requires significant effort. It deserves a big chunk of the project’s budget.”

In fact, Paladin Studios is part of a larger European consortium. The partners include educational institutions from The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Slovenia and Greece. In addition, there is an energy agency in Granada and an innovation agency in The Netherlands.

“So far it’s working very well, especially considering the international nature of the team,” says De Geus. “The one thing we had to get used to is the pace of the project. We are a small, agile studio, used to working at a fast pace. Working with the E.C. and educational institutions turns weeks into months, and months into years.”

Public Beta

The game is in public beta now on Facebook and on www.enercities.eu. While the current focus of the game lies on electricity, other energy topics will be included soon.

“There are several topics, like peak oil and energy saving, that still need to be added to the game. We are working hard to add these to the next release,” says Nagel. “The official release will be early next year. By then we will have the educational platform in place, and the rollout phase will begin.”

Links

EnerCities Website – www.enercities.eu
EnerCities on Facebook – apps.facebook.com/enercities
Paladin Studios – www.paladinstudios.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/paladinstudios, www.twitter.com/enercities
Dylan Nagel – www.twitter.com/dylannagel
Derk de Geus – www.twitter.com/derkdegeus

For more information, please contact Paladin Studios at @paladinstudios.com" target="_blank">info@paladinstudios.com