There is a new casual gaming network in town that’s got some serious cross-platform chops. Don’t be fooled by the cutesy graphics. Today, Mytopia is simultaneously launching across Facebook, Bebo, MySpace (currently pending approval) and its own Website with eight games (Chess, Backgammon, Sudoku, Dominoes, Bingo, Spades, Hearts, Video Poker). On Monday, it will release the same games across the major Web and desktop widgets: iGoogle Gadgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets, Yahoo Widgets and Windows Vista Toolbar Widgets.
Here’s the thing: the games work across all of these platforms. You can be on Facebook playing cards with one friend on MySpace and another on Bebo. And you can control what people on each network see about you. For instance, you can present your real profile to your friends on Facebook, and a different Mytopia avatar to everyone else. These are the sort of apps that could one day break Facebook’s, or any social network’s, hold on its members.
Mytopia was founded by a young Israeli American, Guy Ben-Artzi, and his sister Galia Ben-Artzi. They grew up in Silicon Valley, but now split their time between the U.S. and Israel. Nearly all the company’s engineers are in Israel. Guy wants to bring the computing architecture and game-play behind massively multiplayer online (MMO) games like World of Warcraft to casual games with broader appeal. Guy explains:
What we have done over the past year is look at all the massive multiplayers and tried to analyze what makes those sticky and social. What is great about all of these massive multiplayers is you have people playing in guilds and trading with each other. We are building the MMO backend minus the 3D perspective and hard core genre.
Mytopia games include the ability to join teams, compete in matches, send in-game messages, win points for different skill levels, collect virtual currency and trade in-game items with other players. The company plans to explore different ways to make money including in-game sponsorships, premium subscriptions, and micro-transactions linked to game items and the in-game economy.
In May, the startup plans to open up its casual gaming platform to other developers. By delivering this write-once, deploy-anywhere capability, it hopes to challenge other social gaming networks with platform ambitions such as Zynga and SGN. This should be fun to watch.
GO ISRAEL!
It’s time for Israeli entrepreneurs to kick some American ass and show how it’s done. With little money and ingenuity they can best the over-funded American companies.
it takes longer to load a simple spades game then my civ4 on my home PC.
this site sucks and i never say a startup sucks.
fancy grafix but no meet.
it’s not a soccer match, james – cool your ‘patriotism’
But I do like that little virtual map on the homepage – it’s enchanting.
aaaah! its there. All the best
looks real nice. I don’t think this will be the last one. I am waiting for someone to do a real game.
Are there geographical differences in online behavior, particularly, for playing games online? See for yourself (Modern Metrix blog mmx.typepad.com):
http://mmx.type...aphical-di.html
“We are building the MMO backend minus the 3D perspective and hard core genre. ”
That’s where these web browser mmo casuals (cafe.com, doof.com and now this one) are missing out on a huge opportunity. Dont take away the “3D perspective and hard core genre”, just take the 3D out of the equation. Hard core gamers need something to do at work during downtime, imagine WoW in a browser, without flash and without 3D. Hard core gamers will play anything thats fun.
Straight outta 1991: http://en.wikip...iNation_Network
Looks nice. But not really needed. And nothing innovative.
Hey folks,
Thanks for all the feedback. We’re getting wonderful suggestions from players.
It is a Beta version and the first day it’s open to the public, so we expect to discover some technical issues. User experience is our #1 priority and we’ll iron out all the problems in the coming days and weeks (connectivity, performance, identity management, etc).
We have some interesting developments planned, so stay tunned and let us know what we can do better.
This may be something I would be interested in; however, if today’s load time is normal, there is no way I would have the patience for this. I have read every comment on this entry, and typed my own and it still hasn’t finished loading yet. I understand this is day 1 beta, but it looks like the server needed to be stress tested first.
Music sucks and the sound effects are annoying. Nice graphics though!
I like the pretty graphics
The very first thing I thought when seeing this was: INN is back!
But then I remembered that INN is ALREADY back:
http://innreviv...ooglepages.com/
So nothing to see here, move along.
Lame — totally lame.
Create an account, validate account activation, login, click Backgammon, click Play Now, and then you are asked to login again.
Nice modern day twist to recursion though! Keep up the good work Israel !!!
Best of luck with the launch!
Looks like a great start. We’ll see where it goes in the next few months.
Mine is loading great – playing from the Facebook app on firefox – http://apps.fac...ok.com/mytopia/
This is so great! My cup of tea I love game sites. It will be a nice change from pogo.com
I just played a few games and thought it was really nicely done.
Well, can you go in the little world there and make a house? or is it just games. They should add a little house.
I cant believe how similar this is to The Sierra Network (TSN) or The Imagination Network (INN) circa 1995. I can’t wait until you get sued by whomever holds the copyrights.
The main map is almost identical. Nice plagiarism guys.
Hey ‘nobody’,
I think it’s great that you remember The Sierra Network (TSN), not enough people do. I played on it when I was a kid, probably 11 years old. My dad bought me my first modem, I think it was a 2400 baud U.S. Robotics. I ran up a bill of over $200 in the first month using it to play on TSN, which resulted in the modem being confiscated for a while. Can you imagine back in 1991 playing Red Baron against dozens of people in real time from your modem before anyone even knew what email or Internet was?
TSN was one of those things that made me fall in love with computers and ultimately work in the games business. I’ve been communicating with some of the early Sierra employees who who made TSN and they are very supportive. I have the deepest respect for them. They were definitely ahead of their time. I’m glad we were able to catch some of the flavor from the original experience. It’s a nice tribute to a watershed moment in digital entertainment which not enough people know about.
You should check out Al Lowe’s site. He was involved in putting it together. Super nice, funny guy. He made some of my favorite games like Leisure Suit Larry. He has this great post on his site about how they (re)invented the Internet – http://www.allo.../Larry/land.htm
Sierra Online was IMHO one of the top 3 gaming companies in history. It’s unfortauntely that in the end a large company took control of TSN, only to let the service die. Of course, all the IP has long been abandoned so don’t worry, but the vision of making a world where everyone can play together still exists.
It’s 2008 and the market today is very different than it was back then, from every aspect. 15 years is a lot in ‘Internet time’. Today the web is being organized around many huge communities, which are opening up in different ways to draw in interesting content for their users. Unfrotauntely, the modern Web is still very fragmanted and suffers as a result from some of the same issues that plague the mobile industry. We’re spending a lot of time and energy to bridge these gaps. I think the games industry can make an important contribution in the next year in bringing about Convergence.
Guy Ben-Artzi
Founder, CEO
http://www.mytopia.com
Thanks for the info Guy – I used to play on INN as well and loved it, glad someone is bringing it back. Still some bugs and issues I’m sure you’re aware of, but looks like a solid foundation in a great direction. Keep it up.
The cross platform touch is what sells this company…..Imagine if they had the talent to produce games such as Halo..Gears of War,etc…and then play those games across vast networks…HUGE.. This is something for the big gaming companies to take a look at….
Platforms for “cross social network gaming” are the way of the future, the true open source for multi-player gaming communities.
Awesome — really innovative and i agree the map (and message) draws you in. You’re definitely on to something here.
I love you, GALIA.
I checked mytopia out for fun and had such a negative experience that I decided to blog about it.
http://apocexpe...-no-utopia.html
First Impression: Bad!
http://www.onli...tworks-together
I LOVE GALIA.
xoxo
Just played a couple games – wow! – first impression, pretty impressive. very well done indeed…
These are ambitious plans and I definitely applaud you for it. I’ll be interested in learning more about the sorts of games you’ll be hosting in the future.
Someone you may be interested in getting in touch with in Israel is Yehuda Berlinger, who maintains a blog at http://jergames.blogspot.com/ . I suspect he’d be a very good person to have on your team.
It will be great if casual gaming companies concentrate more on games that make education fun like Sudoku.
I hope this gets to Israel..
I’ve been playing on Mytopia for about 4 months now, the site in general is a great idea, lots of fun, meeting people from around the world etc.
The last month has been a total disaster..
The main ambition is earning silver and gold and also xps which help you climb levels, most people would like to see themselves in the top 10 players of the world.
I’ve made my way to level 69 in Bingo and to go any higher I need to earn about 50000 xps or more. This is impossible because the xps you earn by playing the game is 25xps or less, can you imagine how many games you would have to play to advance!
I would earn a few extra xps by playing people ranked about the same as me but because of impossibility of it many of the long playing players have dropped out. Besides the highest room is level 30, there’s just nothing to aim for anymore.
Which brings me onto rooms..
With the gold you can buy your own private island which sounds wonderful, you have a password which only people you invite can use. The islands were mostly done due to numerous complaints about certain people causing trouble, the aim was to keep conflicting parties separate.
Even though people complained about the main trouble makers nothing was ever done about them, they were just left to cause even more conflict and still are there.
Islands were brought by myself and some of my higher ranking friends. One of their islands went up but it the level was level 1 which is unrealistic seeing they are at least level 40 players.
I have seen this one room go up and taken off over and over for at least three weeks this is only one room and they can’t get it running.
The other people that brought islands are still waiting for theirs to be put up and are told they’ll be up by the end of the week and nothing ever eventuates.
Because there’s nothing to aim for anymore in Bingo a few of us decided to try other games which is Video Poker or Slots.
Again the problem is the same the highest room is a level 30 room and people are moving up fast leaving the lower rooms getting empty the high rooms filling to the brim with nowhere to go.
There are constant upgrades which disrupt games which is very annoying especially if you’ve spent hours trying to get your xps up only to be disconnected from the server which makes you lose your hard earned xps and silver.
A complaint to support is a waste of time because nothing is ever done to make amends for the loss or any other matter.
I’ve actually made a complaint to support about abusive ‘invaders’ who came into a room and wrote very distressing comments to an elderly lady and nothing was done, I since found out these two invaders were friends on her Facebook! I complained again and again nothing was done even though I had made notes of the attack.
Half of the people that I know have complained that their private chat isn’t working and again support has been told and nothing has been done.
I know the site is Beta and the flaws have to be worked out but it just seems to me that the way it’s going with rooms that don’t operate, chat that doesn’t work, silver and xps being lost and complaints not been followed up that this site that would be so good is just going to crash and burn because they just can’t get their act together.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
You sound like you need to get a life and find something in the real world to use your ideas on,waisting your time like you have been, will only make you feel irratated about the slightest thing,and this WILL co-inside with your real everyday life so take a time out from computing go swimming or go to the local cafe or something jeeeez.