Open Mobile Map

Among the thousands of games that can be found on the Apple App Store location-based gaming is a very small part today. There are nevertheless many innovations taking place in this area and more and more boutique development companies created for that purpose. One of the active companies in this field is PerBlue Inc, a mobile development start-up which created Parallel Kingdom (PK), a location-enabled role playing game where the world - actually Google Map - is the gameboard.

GPS Business News interviewed with Justin Beck, CEO and President at PerBlue, Inc. and his vice president of marketing, Andy Gilbertson.

GPS Business News: Can you tell me a few words about your company and how you got started?

Andy Gilbertson: We are based in Madison, WI. The company was started in January 2009 but we started developing our flagship game, Parallel Kingdom, in January 2008. The first version was released in October 2008 and we’ve been steadily gaining players and improving the game ever since. The game is on its second major version and currently we have over 70,000 players.

About our company, PerBlue, we have seven more or less full-time and then another eight that we use part-time. Right now, we define our type of business as mobile applications. We have developed several other applications for the iPhone and Android platforms but our most successful remains Parallel Kingdom.

Justin Beck: our vision is to build a mobile software company that can build competitive games that change up the space. Parallel Kingdom is our first cut at this.

GPS BN: let’s get a bit into the details, what is exactly Parallel Kingdom and how it works?

AG: Parallel Kingdom is downloaded for free through the iTunes App Store or the Android Market. In many respects it is similar to a typical role-playing game - your character walks around, slays monsters, collects gold and other resources, constructs buildings, and claims territory while also getting stronger and acquiring skills.

After you download the game, Parallel Kingdom uses your phone’s GPS capabilities to find out your actual location. Your character is then placed on a Google Map gameboard at your location and that is where you start your game career. We know that most people don’t want to actually walk around while playing the game though, so we give them a radius of about a 1/2 mile that their character can move around just by tapping on the screen. In this respect, we feel that we’ve struck a good balance between making the most of the location-based aspects of the game while also allowing the players to play in their home, at a cafe, or while sitting down waiting for the bus.

You can also send invites to your friends, so if you know someone in Japan or Spain, he or she can come and visit you with the push of a button. Then you can hunt together or attack other player’s territories as a group. You can also chat globally with all the other players to organize hunting parties, trade resources, or just socialize. We’ve seen some really strong, enduring friendships form in Parallel Kingdom, and we think that’s a great sign of the commitment and enthusiasm of our players.

JB: Parallel Kingdom is a combination, persistent RPG + strategy game, all with a very cool location twist and accessible from the palm of your hand. It can be played multi-player or single player. It is a casual game with a good deal of depth, enough to entertain players for months of continual game development.

Continued…

GPS BN: What makes the gameplay more compelling and different from other online persistent games?

AG: The location-based aspect of gameplay is by far the most compelling part of Parallel Kingdom. What other game out there uses your actual location so you can kills monsters and hack down your buddy’s house right down the block?

JB: We focus and spend most of our time from a game development perspective working on great interesting game play. With Age 3 (Our upcoming new version) you’ll see the game play deepen by a few magnitudes. We know what makes a game everlasting fun is just solid game play. Its differentiated by location based, but just having it be a good game is just as important.

GPS BN: Can you provide me with some metrics about the game itself?

AG: We have over 70,000 player accounts. The size of the map is the entire world. It is available globally and you can play anywhere you can get a GPS signal. We have players all over the place. Everyday there’s somebody new playing in some remote location and we end up scratching our heads wondering how they got a smartphone way out there?

JB: We have hundreds of people online playing with each other at any moment. 40% of our players are from Japan. Flags cover almost all the big cities in the world. Our game engine runs on a dynamic content system. The game content is downloaded dynamically from our servers as you play. The initial download is around 1.5MB, small and accessible over EDGE or 3G.

GPS BN: Who is the typical player?

AG: I’m not sure we have a typical player. Since our game is only available on smartphones, our demographics are somewhat similar to that user base. However, every time we ask ourselves this question, we generally get frustrated (in a good way). We have grandparents that play and we have young teens and just about everyone else in-between. We tend to think that Parallel Kingdom offers so much to do that just about anyone that gives it a shot will find something that really interests them in the game. We don’t have any real numbers in terms of male/female ratio but from our experience, we guess that we are about 60% male and 40% female which is pretty similar to other RPGs.

GPS BN: It is a worldwide game, although many of the players are in the US thus far: what are the other most promising markets?

AG: Japan has been huge. We didn’t do any formal marketing, but somehow they found out about our game and it has really taken off there. They play just as much, if not more, than the U.S. players. The game is also catching on in Western Europe and also other places you might not think of like South Africa and even South America, again, with no marketing. For the near future, we are very excited about the introduction of the iPhone in China. That is a huge market and the Chinese tend to be tech savvy people that we expect to really latch onto Parallel Kingdom and the technology of the game.

GPS BN: Do you intend to localize it to other languages?

AG: Right now we are really busy with our next upgrade, but we would love to eventually localize the game into many of the major languages like Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese.

Continued…

GPS BN: How do you monetize PK?

AG: We are experimenting with several different ways of doing this. There are several popular models for monetizing a game like ours - in-game advertising, making a premium version available, using micro transactions to allow the player to buy certain unique items for real money, etc. We think we’ve figured out the direction we want to go, but we’re not quite ready to announce anything officially.

GPS BN: Looking at the current state of the art in terms of mobile technologies (iPhone, Android), what do you think is still missing to improve the game experience: battery life, GPS precision, maps?

AG: Battery life is a bit of a challenge. Since Parallel Kingdom tends to draw on several of the phone’s capabilities like GPS and the wireless network, it tends to use a lot of power compared to other, less functional applications. As far as precision goes, we’re actually pretty happy with the GPS and the maps. Another technology we use is Global Chat. We were one of the first mobile apps to have this capability but the game has grown to the point where we are considering expanding this to several more customized chatrooms.

Eventually we would like to involve some video and compass/directional capabilities but we’re waiting until we can figure out a good way to integrate this into the game. We never want to add something just because we can - it has to enhance the gameplay somehow. Still, it would be really cool to look around with the built-in video camera in the iPhone and see your in-game buildings or nearby creatures show up as 3d models in the video.

JB: We are the most excited about having more devices and wider distribution. There are 4 billion cell phones active in the world. We’ve built our technology carefully so we can support multiple client platforms. We are excited to see this space in two years as more and more smart phones and data plans become the de-facto standard. iPhone fad or not, that is when the mobile gaming space will truly become alive.

GPS BN: Moving forward, how do you see the future of PK and your company?

AG: The average iPhone app is downloaded, played for about 15 minutes and never touched again. That includes both paid and free apps. Parallel Kingdom couldn’t be more different in that respect. Those that download and enjoy our game, generally become very dedicated players. They chat, they make real friends, some play for hours at a time, and most play for months before they even consider trying other games. We still have many players from our first version that began a year ago. This is really where our confidence comes from - our players. We know that if we can continue to make them happy and keep them interested while continuing to gain exposure, we’ll do very well.

JB: It’s about delivering quality entertainment. We’ve seen our PK users love what we’ve build, and we also see so many more opportunities. It’s up to the developer like us to truly build innovative quality entertainment that people love and are delighted to pay for. At PerBlue we are building amazing technology combined with marketing and business sense so we hope to build a very profitable company in this mobile space. And also just as important, those of us who work at PerBlue love what we do. We’ve all taken pay cuts to be able to do this. We care about our players, our products and our future. We’re sure going to make it count.