social gaming
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Goama lets developers integrate a social gaming platform into their apps
Goama (also known as Go Games) lets developers quickly integrate social games into their apps. Some of Goama’s clients have used it for promotional campaigns, while others rely on the platform, which introduces new games every week, to add a full-fledged gaming function to their app.
The startup, which recently took part in SOSV’s accelerator program, presented last week during CES at the Taiwan Tech Arena pavilion. The event is over, but Goama’s virtual booth is still up.
Some of Goama’s clients are “super apps,” or apps that offer several services and want to include games, too. To better serve super apps, Goama recently introduced a tournament model in addition to its subscription model for users.
The startup says that integrating Goama’s platform can help apps grow brand awareness when people share their results or invite other players tournaments. It also increases user engagement, with players typically spending more than 16 minutes per session playing games. So far, the platform has a combined total of 2.5 million unique users.
The company currently focuses on Asia and Latin America, where mobile penetration is growing quickly, and works with more than 15 partners, including GCash and Rappi, to enable digital payments and communications. Its gaming platform’s user interface can be customized to match host apps and rewards can include points and other prizes that can be spent inside the app. Some companies that have used Goama include food delivery app FoodPanda, Snickers and money transfer app WavePay.
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Social gaming platform Rec Room scores $20 million Series C
Social gaming platform Rec Room has scored some new funding as it aims to bring its once VR-centric world to every major gaming platform out there.
The startup has closed a $20 million Series C led by Madrona Venture Group . Existing investors, including First Round Capital, Index, Sequoia and DAG, also participated in the round. They’ve raised just shy of $50 million to date.
The platform has been around for years serving as a social hub and gaming platform for virtual reality users. In recent years, the company has tried to scale its ambitions past being known as the “Roblox of VR” and scale its capabilities to meet its young user base. This year was big for the platform doing just that.
CEO Nick Fajt estimates that the company has tripled its total audience since this time last year as the company has made a concerted drive on new platforms. While a substantial portion of Rec Room’s audience still comes from its bread-and-butter VR audience, the platform’s base of console users has grown substantially in 2020 and, by the end of next year, Fajt expects that mobile will have grown to be Rec Room’s most common point of entry. Meanwhile, mobile Android remains one of the last major gaming platforms on which Rec Room still doesn’t have a home.
One of the company’s big aims heading into the new year is scaling their creation tools, which allow players to build their own experiences inside the game. More than 1 million of the platform’s 10 million registered users have engaged with creator tools, building 4 million distinct rooms on the platform. Next year, Fajt plans to scale up creator payments estimating that by the end of 2021 they’ll have paid out $1 million to their network.
Fajt says he wants creation tools on Rec Room to be more accessible to the general player base than other platforms, including Roblox, aiming to keep tools simple for now and push everyday users to invest time in the creation platform.
Image via Rec Room
“Roblox has an incredible business, that’s certainly no secret,” Fajt tells TechCrunch. “We want breadth of expression over depth of expression; we want anyone who comes into to Rec Room to be able to build.”
Despite the slow maturation of the VR market, Fajt says the company doesn’t plan on moving away from its VR roots anytime soon. The company has just updated its popular battle royale mode Rec Royale for the new Quest 2, as well as on iOS.
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Messaging platform Telegram is powering up on the chatbot front, with the launch of what it dubs a “bot-powered gaming platform” — in a bid to try to drive more engagement via addictive new features.