Ever seen a pop culture clickable game on MTV or Entertainment Weekly asking you to predict and vote on who is going to be a winner in a latest awards show? Or asking you to vote on who is hotter, Beyonce or Britney? Chances are the game was made by San Francisco start-up VoxPop.TV.
The under-the-radar VoxPop.tv (the company’s services were launched in 2007) is tapping into a relatively niche market by creating pop culture contextual games for publishers like Entertainment Weekly, E! Online, and Maxim. Unlike traditional casual games, these highly contextual and sometimes ad-supported games are based on opinions and predictions on topics and current events (like the Oscars or the Grammy awards). Games range from an E! Online game on what celebrity wore the best outfit to an awards show to picking brackets for March Madness at NCAA.com.
VoxPop has turned the games into free, shareable widgets for anyone to post on a blog, social networking site or website, and users can even create a “game lobby” of sorts by adding multiple games to a page. Users are able find games through VoxPop’s own Game Lobby or through publisher sites like Entertainment Weekly or BillBoard.
VoxPop seems to be creating a solid revenue base from creating both ad-sponsored games for publishers and publisher-sponsored games. The turnaround for a game is around an hour, so VoxPop can create a “Who wore it best” game for the Oscars for a publisher and post it by the end of the awards show. And VoxPop hasn’t seen much of a dropoff in sales with the economic downturn. The company said that publishers have less staff and less content and are looking for online games, like VoxPop’s applications, to fill content. There doesn’t seem to be another company doing this niche work out there; and VoxPop said its main competitors are the in-house capabilities of publishers. But VoxPop says creating a pop culture games in-house can be costly and time-intensive. We recently wrote about Heyzap, another online gaming start-up hoping to break into the digital space. VoxPop’s co-founders, Mike Derezin, Bill Armistead, and Michael Hoffman, said the hardest battle was forming partnerships with publishers. Word-of-mouth publicity has helped tremendously, they added.
VoxPop received around $2 million in series A funding from True Ventures in 2007 and currently creates close 60 new games a month. The company is hoping to create even more innovative games down the line and wants to offer self-service game production to publishers in the future.
Here’s a sample game and screenshot:
Pretty cool. Still waiting for an interactive world series of pop culture game. With prizes.
This is just the kind of innovation that shows how to turn web 2.0 into viable businesses.
These guys have taken all the neat technologies of web 2.0 but have also done the hard thinking required to make it into a solid business model.
Well done!
Anjali Sen
These games are addictive and some of the best flash design I’ve seen. Not surprising that they are doing well.
This is a great service–and everyone seems to want in on the action. The games are really fun and remind me of a better way to play something like Scene It (the dvd/console game), and it’s great that it’s free.
The fact that they have figured out how to make it a viable business model through sponsorship is genius–someone needs to pay to keep the lights on while I’m playing free games. I’m hooked.
These games all look sharp and are a fantastic way to drive folks back to a site over and over again. Great job! (btw, love the Maxim stuff!)
These guys have been at this for a while and have done a great job. Congrats to Mike, Bill and Mike. VTLF.
Agreed – Mike’s a great guy and this is totally compelling from a user standpoint.
Great site!
VoxPop’s work is amazing. The are on the path to do big things.
Full Disclosure (We – True Ventures – are an investor in VoxPop).
What I love about Voxpop.tv is how they address 2 real issues for publisher partners: 1) experience; and more importantly 2) driving page-views. On both variables, they excel. Users engage in ways atypical of web usage (10+ minutes in many cases). And, they are a PAGE-VIEW MACHINE. Each time a user takes an action in those 10+ minutes, it creates a recognized Comscore page-view and the ability to serve an ad. There are also very compelling sponsorship opp’s, similar to what we’re seeing inside social app’s.
Glad to see the word getting out there.
these guys are awesome. and the games look so sweet. i’ve been playing these games for a while, and the design (and humor) just get better and better.
The games are topical, entertaining, and highly addictive. It is clear the team spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how to create an incredible user experience and they have succeeded.
Brilliant concept and execution – games are fun and it appears they have a great model as well.