Q&A: Sharendipity President Greg Tracy discusses casual gaming and competition with EA

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:08:43 -0800

One of the fastest-growing segments of the gaming industry is casual gaming. Such games appeal to fans wanting mobile and social network-enabled gaming experiences, as well as others looking for a less time-consuming or simpler platform. Wisconsin-based Sharendipity is hoping to grab a piece of the casual gaming pie, with a platform designed not just for casual gamers, but also for those who want to build and customize their gaming experience using reusable components.

Sharendipity President Greg Tracy took the time to tell The Standard a little bit about the company and what it's like competing in a space that's also seeing competition from established game companies such as Electronic Arts:

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira: Can you tell me a little bit about the history of Sharendipity? What gave you the idea?

Greg Tracy: We got started on the Sharendipity idea at the beginning of 2007. Although the foundation of the idea was very much in the context of game creation, we had a much bigger vision in mind when we started. We had a vision of democratizing the tools for software development in general.

It was this bigger vision that caused us to spend so much time early on building a very extensible and re-usable platform. We believed deep shareability was the secret to unlocking the creative skills for non-programmers.

How is Sharendipity funded?

We were initially self-funded, and at the beginning of 2008 we closed an angel round. We are in the process of raising our next round now.

How does Sharendipity compare to competitors like The Sims Carnival?

The most important element that differentiates us from everyone else, including Sims Carnival, is the deep shareability of the components found within a game. Anything you might find in a game can be shared back to the community and re-used in other games by any user. This includes simple things like game characters, artwork, and sounds. But it also includes more advanced components such as behaviors, sets of actions (called functions) or Web services. The details of these are abstracted away so they can be reused using a drag and drop interface, allowing the user to avoid the need to see the underlying details.

By abstracting the details away, non-programmers can begin to piece together components and logic to bring their ideas to life without having to recreate every detail. Not only does this create new opportunities for non-programmers, but it also accelerates innovation since community members aren't forced to re-invent game elements every time a project is started. Furthermore, it lets our community create 100% of the content.

There are also several nice supporting features that game creators get for free. For example, a built-in physics engine, support for in-game Web service integration, and multiple social gaming elements - high score management, friend challenges, a built-in achievement system, commenting, tagging, and rating.

Where do you feel Sharendipity fits into the casual gaming/user-generated content space?

This is a challenging overlap of segments to be engaged in. There is still plenty of debate surrounding the value of "quality" versus "quantity" with user generated games, as well as the strategy involved in building and evangelizing a "platform" as opposed to an "application".

One thing we've managed to do really well is provide entry points for a variety of skill levels. The Sharendipity platform provides an unmatched depth of features to create original games from scratch, and it also makes it easy to simply personalize existing games by swapping out images and sounds. The platform stretches further because we put the configuration tools into the hands of the creators. This lets our creators author their own set of templates and configurable games for others to use.

What do you do as far as strategy when it comes to competing against companies like EA (creators of Sims Carnival)?

Our primary focus has been to highlight the key differentiators. Most notably the deep shareability, Web access and distribution, and integration of social gaming features. We have focused on truly empowering our creators to make fun, engaging, and viral creations without limiting them to certain styles or genres of games.

The challenge with this strategy is giving the users enough support and direction so they get excited by the possibilities of a blank canvas, but not totally intimidated. This again is where our creator community is able to step in to help by building base templates and components that can be easily reused.

We hope to make up for the lack of raw marketing and game related resources by empowering everyone. At the end of the day, our best marketers will be our creators.

What do you feel a company like Sharendipity can offer that's different from a bigger player?

Put simply, we can innovate more freely. While products like Sims Carnival and Microsoft's Popfly Game Creator may be motivated by other corporate goals, we are free to experiment and iterate on our vision based on feedback from our users. Furthermore, we can do these both very quickly given our size.