UGame, a social network for gamers, has opened in public beta. The site, which entered private beta in February, offers gamers a place to share their scores, meet other gamers, form teams and guilds, and post blogs and pictures.
The site was founded by Sam Mathews, the creator of Fnatic, a well-known gaming team. His goal with UGame was to connect gamers with likeminded people and to unite the gaming community. With a community that is currently 364 million strong (with an estimated 80 million moderate to hardcore gamers), there is clearly a sizable market.
Since the launch of their private beta, UGame has added several new features, including a “Games” section, where pages are made for different games. Each page includes general information about the game, forums, messageboards, and reviews. It has plans to expand the features of this section, and aims to be “the IMDB of games.”
Another new feature is the “Guilds” section. In this section, users can create pages for their guild or team and post standings, galleries, and statistics. Users can follow their favorite teams, receive updates, and join discussions about them. This is similar to band pages on Myspace, except for gamers.
UGame is attempting to bring together a previously segmented community of gamers, and give them a place to interact. There is a large audience for this kind of site, and they accommodate it well. UGame isn’t trying to be the next Myspace or Facebook – it just wants to be a niche site where people can go and meet likeminded people. The site is easy to navigate, and very conducive to finding interesting content and people.
Other major players (pun intended) in this space include Shawn Fanning’s Rupture (acquired by EA Games in May), Raptr (social network with a client-side app for online games), Curse (includes portals for World of WarCraft, StarCraft and Age of Conan), and GamerDNA.
I think this is a very black and white deal. A ’social networking’ gamers site will either be massively successful or quickly die – no middle ground.
Personally, I really hope it does well. Sam certainly has a track record of success; both as a hardcore gamer and with Fnatic.
Let’s see…
Jim Connolly
The Tech News Blog
You guys have been forgetting GameStrata (gamestrata.com), as another major gaming social network player. They’ve gotten funding from Sequoia, so I find it odd that they’ve passed under the mighty radar.
wow, this is a very cool idea, I love games as well, gonna check it out
http://noobindex.com is another major player, duh.
There are a few other players out there including:
GameRiot.com (part of Giant Realm)
Gamestrata.com
And I’m sure a few other smaller ones that aren’t as well funded. I believe Curse has the most traffic with Gameriot being second.
Few others I can think of:
http://1up.com
http://eurogamer.net
http://thumbslap.com
Ive been on UGame for the few days that its been open to the public and im EXTREMELY impressed.
The site is very clean and offers a lot of functions that ive not seen anywhere else (the tagging system is AMAZING!).
Good luck Sam
Love the idea…and I have a feeling they’ll be successful. Like one person already said, Sam has a great track record so I see a very bright future here!
yeah, cool site. found these guys on YouNoodle several months ago
http://younoodl.../startups/ugame
Looks exactly like Myspace…but..wait for it….for gamers. What makes this site unique from all the others?
check out this interview of Samuel Matthews, founder and CEO http://uk.intru...amers_a426.html
@notthesam uniqeness lies in the aggregation of a target group of previously segmented consumers. Nevertheless it doesn’t even have to be unique as long as it works
Well, it’s got a nice design, but I can’t find why I’d spend time there.
To chat with pple? leave messages? tell the world about a game I like? Read blog entries?
I’m a hardcore gamer yet I never do these.
Great idea.
However, i prefer not displaying my real-life identity to my virtual buddies I connect with in-game.
I use http://www.avatarsunited.com which only focuses on your in-game avatar, rather than you as a gamer!
This site is tailored for MMO avatars only and has the standard set of tools a community site should have. Blogs, Videos, Pictures, Groups, Events etc.
Here’s one of my avatar profiles: http://www.avat...u/vashj/bagatov
I’m not even sure how you forgot to add http://pwned.com
This concept is going to be a hit.
So are there any hard core gamers or casual gamers out there who are interested in using this kind of site?