Social Gaming with Kobojo
Both Facebook and Myspace are replete with classic board game knockoff apps that you can play “socially.” Most of the time, of course, you aren’t necessarily playing with anyone you know and probably aren’t really interested in knowing who it is you are playing with anyway. Such is the nature of these randomly-social games.
Kobojo is different. The French company wants to make online board games social again – in the old-time, family and friends kind of way. The site features a lot of classic board games everyone will recognize. Their apps (for both social networking sites and mobiles) focus on encouraging players to interact while giving fun game play.
Many of Kobojo’s apps are on Facebook, which is where the company first got its start in 2008. So far, they’ve bootstrapped their corporate funding, but are soon going to open for a first round of investment later this year. The company currently employs 11 people, five of which are developers. They are looking for more ASP.Net developers and game artists and are building their apps on the Microsoft Stack (.NET, IIS, SQL).
Kobojo operates on an SaaS (software as a service) model with many of their games offering “bonuses” or other power ups for cash. The company sees this as a model with a big future – and they aren’t alone, billions have been spent already on these types of social gaming themes.
Chances are, if you’re playing a popular Facebook game based on a classic board game from the past, you’re playing a Kobojo game.
