March 17, 2008

Streamed Gameshow PlayCafe Takes Funding

Duncan Riley

13 comments »

Streamed live over the internet game show PlayCafe has taken funding from First Round Capital, although the figure has not been disclosed.

PlayCafe offers a live daily streamed gameshow where viewers can call in and win prizes.

According to NewTeeVee, PlayCafe is expanding from two to four hours next week, running 5 to 9 p.m. PT. The company boasts an average playing session of 86 minutes, with 250 to 300 players per night. Prizes range from an iTunes song to $1000 cash. The companies goal is to run games 24/7.

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March 26th, 2008 at 1:06 am

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Jesus H Christ

March 17th, 2008 at 12:15 am

the camera motion made me sea sick. Reminds me of early 90s MTV shows.
david amodt

March 17th, 2008 at 12:44 am

wow.. venture funding for that? put a hot girl in front of a camera and with blurry public access cable footage and you’re an online hit…

agree w/ JHC above, blurry, camera motion… yuck
Tippo

March 17th, 2008 at 2:09 am

Increasing the time from two to four hours is a good thing but it looks like they have a lot of work ahead to reach the 24 hour coverage mark.
Simon Ovidiu

March 17th, 2008 at 2:16 am

[...]the camera motion made me sea sick.[...] very very boring!!!
Mark w/Playcafe

March 17th, 2008 at 3:21 am

Hi everyone, I’m with PlayCafe. I’m happy to answer any questions or emails. You can reach me at mark@playcafe.com.

You’ll see that our show production is still bare-bones but we’re amping up the look and feel over the coming weeks. If you’d like to play, the live games are Mon-Fri, 6-8pm PST.

P.S. To #2, the hosts are smart and friendly, too.
Biology Journal

March 17th, 2008 at 3:35 am

well, good luck to playcafe team,
Being in US is great plus for startups, outside US and Europe its almost impossible to get funding:(
Gabe

March 17th, 2008 at 6:22 am

This is awesome! The company’s business model is well established on European TV, and is likely to be a big hit online here as well.

There is no limit to American appetites for gameshows, and bringing the model to the web using video seems like the right way to do it.
Avi

March 17th, 2008 at 7:57 am

Congrats to the Playcafe team! The beta is addictive and im looking forward to more!
insider

March 17th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

this model is cool, but it is RIPE for hacking and fraud and corruption

its only a matter of time before someone on the inside leaks content/answers/clues/directions/whatever to someone on the outside in order to (no pun intended) game the system

sony tried this in the 90’s with jeopardy - the system got gamed so bad so fast (by a bunch of harvard students, if memory serves) that sony yanked the live-action with prizes game in a nanosecond and buried the whole thing, never to return

doing games and game shows with prizes looks easy but its extremely delicate and difficult (and often regulated)
Mark w/Playcafe

March 17th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

Hi insider, we’ve placed a few checks in place to make prize fraud pretty difficult. I can’t go into all of them but a main one is that our prize payouts are partly skill-based and partly probabilistic, so even if you knew every answer, you’re not guaranteed a prize. (The converse is also happily true - you can get a few answers and still win a prize.)
Brad Hunstable

March 17th, 2008 at 7:36 pm

Congrats to Mark and all the Playcafe team. Best of luck..

Brad Hunstable
Ustream.TV
Muhammad

March 17th, 2008 at 7:37 pm

I just caught the end of the show. The concept is great, and the show is really fun. Can’t wait to catch tomorrow’s program from the start.