Video Game Developer Makes Play for Men on Facebook

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When FarmVille exploded in popularity a few years back, everyone and their mother started playing social games. Especially the mothers.

In fact, most social gamers are adult women, making it one of the only sectors of the gaming world where young men are just a niche market.

But Scott Philp thinks he knows how to break into that niche: sports.

The computer gaming executive has launched Wedge Buster Inc., which makes interactive sports-themed social games for Facebook. The L.A. company, which counts pro quarterback Drew Brees and skateboarder Rob Dyrdek among its investors, already offers about 100 games, from air hockey to darts.

“If you walk into a Best Buy, sports dominates the video game shelves, but in social gaming it had been nonexistent,” the 37-year-old Philp said. “Right now, that sports category in social gaming is so new. Guys are just starting to dip their toes in.”

Social games, which typically refer to games where players interact through Facebook, have become popular in the past few years. Though many games have stumbled recently, Philp believes the market still has potential, in part because historically there have been few social games catering to males.

Since Wedge Buster’s games went live last year, they have amassed more than 250,000 users, and the company’s active players more than doubled in the past month. The rapid growth is attracting investors, as Wedge Buster recently raised more than $2 million in venture capital funding.

As Philp predicted, his company is scoring with a distinct demographic: 80 percent of Wedge Buster players are males between 16 and 35.

“It’s in a guy’s DNA to challenge his friends at games and tell others about it,” he said.


Simple games

Social gaming played through Facebook took off in 2009 behind monster hits, including FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Words With Friends – all produced by San Francisco publisher Zynga Inc.

The games were designed to be simple and appeal to an audience that wouldn’t typically be into gaming. FarmVille, for instance, allows players to build and maintain virtual farms.

The growth of social gaming, however, has come from an unlikely demographic. According to a study by Information Solutions Group, 54 percent of social gamers are women, and more than half are 40 or older.

The data surprised Philp, who had spent much of his career developing games that were popular with men. As senior vice president for Santa Monica’s FastPoint Games, Philp saw firsthand how the company’s fantasy sports games appealed to the male demographic. Over the past decade, he has developed National Football League-licensed games for Fox Sports and Yahoo.

Under the assumption that gamers would be similarly receptive to sports-themed social games, Philp launched Wedge Buster out of his home in May 2011.

Some of the games are only superficially related to sports. For instance, one game is similar to Tetris, only the bricks were replaced with sports balls.

“What we’ve done is applied similar game play but we brand it as guys might want to see it,” Philp said. “It’s that kind of packaging that can really make a difference.”

The company has since added games with stronger sports connections, and the results have been promising. In the past month alone, Wedge Buster gained 30,000 monthly active users – a 150 percent jump according to app tracking site AppData.com.

Like most social games, Wedge Buster’s are, by design, very basic. The goal is to make them quick to master and addictive to a casual gamer.

The company, which now has eight employees, doesn’t develop most of the games under its label because of the high costs of development. Instead, it buys or licenses sports games that are already successful on other websites.

Facebook users who want to play a Wedge Buster game must install the company’s app onto their profile, which gives them access to an arcade of more than 100 titles. Players can challenge other Facebook friends and compete for chips; getting more chips gives players access to exclusive games and higher levels.

Players can also buy chips: Prices range from $1 for 4,000 chips to $50 for 200,000 chips.

Most of Wedge Buster’s money, though, comes from sponsorships that appear as commercials that play before a game or as company logos posted in a game’s backdrop. The company has already inked a sponsorship agreement with companies such as South Korean automaker Kia Motors Corp.

The company declined to disclose details of its revenue.

Last month, Wedge Buster announced that it raised $2.2 million in an initial fundraising round from a group of investors including 37 Technology Ventures LLC in South Pasadena, Brentwood’s Archer Venture Capital LLC, Brees and Dyrdek. Wedge Buster plans to use the money to roll out more games and move into new offices in Hollywood.

Greg Martin, a partner at Archer, said he was drawn to the company because its games have a universal appeal among male gamers.

“I think challenging your friends is a common, natural instinct that younger males have,” Martin said. “These games embrace that and make it easy to bring your friends on board.”

‘Too casual’

But Wedge Buster’s simple games stand in stark contrast to the intricate and realistic sports games that populate the video game console market, which try to remain as true to the real sport as possible. Some analysts question whether the simplicity of Wedge Buster’s games will catch on with a male audience that traditionally prefers complexity.

“Some of Wedge Buster’s games could come off as too casual to be fun,” said Mike Hickey, a video game industry analyst at the Denver office of National Alliance Capital Markets. “If you’re a real gamer, to you these just aren’t real games.”

A bigger challenge for Wedge Buster might simply be gamer apathy – a problem already plaguing social game companies.

As Facebook’s growth has leveled off and many once-avid users have lost interest, many of Zynga’s biggest successes have taken hits. FarmVille had as many as 32 million daily users in 2010, but it now has fewer than 8 million, according to AppData.com. Zynga’s CityVille lost more than half of its 10 million daily users in just the first six months of this year.

The trends have taken a toll on Zynga’s stock, which has plummeted from its initial price of $11 and is currently trading below $3 a share.

To keep players interested, Wedge Buster continually adds games and deletes ones that underperform. The goal is to maintain a large arcade of sports games and constantly provide new options for online gamers who have a tendency to get bored quickly.

The company is also beginning to look beyond Facebook.

Though Philp still feels confident in the social network, he said Wedge Buster is exploring tablets and smartphones as potential platforms for the company’s sports games. Next month, Wedge Buster plans to debut a version of its darts game for iPhone and Android; he said other titles will soon to follow.

In fact, Wedge Buster’s Facebook app might become a testing ground to see which games are worth transporting into the mobile gaming world.

“To be a major player in this space, you have to be cross-platform,” he said. “(But) mobile is still the Wild West and it’s very early.”

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