Posts Tagged ‘CEO Martin Herdina’

fatfoogoo at Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo in LA

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

fatfoogoo CEO Martin Herdina, along with Senior Vice President – Global Sales: Clive Jefferies and Vice President of Sales and Business Development: Stevie Case are in attendance at the Virtual Worlds Expo in Los Angeles this week.

In addition to being a sponsor of the Virtual Worlds conference and expo, Herdina and company will be available for any and all questions concerning what fatfoogoo does, how we do it, and what we can do for you!

The 2nd annual Virtual Worlds Expo is a top meeting point for major players in the virtual world space.  Featuring 115 speakers from media, entertainment, IT and virtual worlds, 41 of which specialize in the virtual world space, this is one of the premier events for gaming industry professionals.

Keynote speeches will be delivered by featured speakers including:

  • Jon Landau – Academy Award winning producer, Lightstorm Entertainment Advisor, Multiverse
  • Tim Kring – Executive Producer and Creator of NBC hit – Heroes
  • Colin J. Parris, PH.D – Vice President, Digital Convergence, IBM Research
  • Steve Parkis – Senior Vice President, Disney Online

The Conference is broken out into 5 primary tracks, each having it’s own unique focus:

Virtual Worlds Hollywood
Virtual Worlds have the ability to bring creators together with passionate fans in an environment that supports rich storytelling and engagement on a level impossible with other forms of entertainment media. This track is designed for entertainment industry professionals seeking to understand the opportunities presented by virtual worlds and how to effectively work in virtual worlds tied to entertainment brands.

Enterprise Virtual Worlds
Companies are now using virtual worlds to strengthen their communication externally with customers and business partners and internally with employees. This track focuses on best practices for large-scale enterprises adopting virtual worlds. Topics range from the general use of virtual worlds in the workplace to specific examples of applications for onboarding, sales training, collaboration and more.

Virtual Worlds Kids
Kids are dominating the virtual worlds landscape with more than 60 youth-oriented worlds currently available and over 40 more coming online in short order. This track is designed for the owners of kids brands and will provide attendees with the understanding necessary to launch, operate and maintain a virtual world for the younger set in this highly competitive landscape.

The Future of Virtual Worlds
This track focuses on the future of virtual worlds technologies and applications. Topics include interviews and debates with virtual worlds technology and business visionaries, mirror worlds, augmented reality, Web-based worlds, embeddable worlds, and open-source, interoperable virtual worlds.

Again, fatfoogoo is in attendance, and will be available to speak to you regarding our services.  In the off chance you don’t cross paths with either Martin, Clive or Stevie, they can be reached at:

Martin Herdina – martin[at]fatfoogoo.com
Stevie Case – Stevie[at]fatfoogoo.com
Clive Jefferies – clive.jefferies[at]fatfoogoo.com

 

Austin GDC 2008 Keynote Speakers finalized

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

The official Keynote Speaker schedule has been released by the Austin Game Developers Conference.  Speakers include: Lane Merrifeld of the Penguin Club, Mel Guymon of Lively by Google, Sony Audio Manager Jason Page, and noted novelist and futurist Bruce Sterling.

The Austin GDC is geared towards online space, sound development and game writing.  Some of the hot topics at this years conference with be focused on the increasing cross over between MMOs, social networks, and virtual worlds, and developers looking to exchange ideas and share best practices.  We’re expecting the spotlight to shine brightly on the growing trend of already established and up and coming game studios seeking new ground in the monetization of the MMO space.  Both players are exploring models which optimize microtranscations versus the traditional subscription model, and/or a mixture of both.  Of course fatfoogoo’s CEO Martin Herdina will be present to speak to any and all regarding our software packages that allow developers to get up and running within weeks.

The Austin GDC takes place in Austin, Texas from September 15-17.  Conference goers wanting to cash in on the early bird pricing should register at austingdc.net on or before August 27th.  In addition to Merrifeld, Guymon, Page, and Sterling, other top speaker slots are:
Harvey Smith, Game Director of Arkane Studios
Game Career Seminar Keynote: Luckiest People Alive

Gene Endrody, Founder of Maid Marian Entertainment
Making a Web-Based MMO in Your Attic with Shockwave

Bob Moore, Game Designer of Multiverse
Designing for Players Sociability

Rich Vogel, Co-Studio Director of Bioware and John Donham, Co-Founder & VP of Production at Metaplace.com
How to Manage Your Online Business During Growth and Decline

Blake Commagere, Independent Developer of “Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves and Slayers”
Why Are Games That Suck So Popular on Social Networks?

Michael Steele, Executive Consultant, and Corey Bridges, Co-founder of Multiverse
Social Networks and Virtual Worlds: A Shared Future?

Elan Lee, Founder/Chief Designer of Fourth Wall Studios
ARGs: Fake Websites, Invented Stories, Automated Phone Calls and Other Methods to Earn the Trust of a Community

Eric Zimmerman, Chief Design Officer of Gamelab
Easy is F& #@ing Hard: Game Design Fundamentals for Mass-Market Games

Min Kim, Director of Games Operations Nexon America Inc.
From Development to Launch: the Keys to Building a Successful Free-to-Play MMO

Again, members of the fatfoogoo team will be present in Austin.  If you’d like to schedule a time to speak with any of us about what we do, and what we can do for you, please get in touch via our contact page.

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fatfoogoo at the Games Convention and Developers Conference

Monday, August 18th, 2008

The Games Convention which kicks off in Leipzig, Germany this Wednesday and continues through Sunday in will see two equal sides of fatfoogoo. CEO Martin Herdina will be speaking at the GCDC (Games Convention Developers Conference) about in-game economies and item trading, while Loki and DT will be scouting the floor, reporting on and talking to gamers about the newest trends in various multiplayer games.

Many publishers have expressed interest in or are currently in search of additional revenue streams for their virtual worlds. Discounting the ‘traditional’ subscription fee, thousands of developers are either already in the game or standing at the starting line with free to play titles springing up almost everyday. The problem? How do we monetize it and recoup some of (read: ideally all of) the development costs? If the already established gold and item trading system (aka Blizzard) wasn’t already the Goliath these David’s are staring down, more and more suppliers are shying away from ‘Secondary Market’ third party suppliers. fatfoogoo has comprehensive experience with developing, managing, and providing ‘ready to go’ in game ecosystems, which makes it the ideal partner for a number of these publishers. fatfoogoo can function either as the Primary Trading platform or an Add-on marketplace. Combine this functionality with Comscore’s data: 32% of all Internet users play online games – and they’re prepared to spend money on it, along with the NPD Group’s recent study stating “…more than half of the Extreme Gamers and just over a third of Avid PC Gamers said that they would definitely download a feature to enhance a specific game that they own.”

Another interesting topic being covered in at the GC is the future of specialty trading. Not exactly new, but the genre is…eSports. Could we be seeing microtransactions being applied to “coach’s hours” whereby players receive special tips and tricks on how to command in-game mastery? Stay tuned as developments continue….

Martin Herdina is scheduled to speak on Wednesday morning, delivering his talk: A New Revenue Stream – Legitimizing the Trading within a Virtual Market. fatfoogoo is in good company, as Acclaim co-founder David Perry will deliver the Keynote speech with 125 other speakers and approximately 1000 industry participants discussing the future of the gaming industry.

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Mobile Telcom heavy hitter Clive Jefferies joins the fatfoogoo team

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

We’re pleased to announce that Clive Jefferies has joined the fatfoogoo team as Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development.   With more than 25 years experience in the software industry, Clive brings his unique skill set and innovative approaches to the fatfoogoo team.

Most recently, Clive served as Vice President of Tira Wireless for the EMEA market and was responsible for the development and execution of the regional strategy.  He conducted product trials with Electronic Arts (EA) and gameloft, secured consultancy agreements with Yahoo! and managed the Infospace and Babel Media Accounts.

Sharing a common link with CEO Martin Herdina and COO Daniel Petri, Clive served as Senior Director of Sales & Business Development with mobile content and application commerce provider Qpass.  Clive was responsible for the development of and implementation of Qpass’ entry into the European mobile content market.  He continued to develop the media sales strategy, and facilitated a pipeline of opportunity with major global brands that wished to implement their own direct-to-consumer portals and business models.

“Accepting the invitation to join Martin and the team was a no-brainer. fatfoogoo is an organization that is perfectly positioned to become the de facto commerce solution for the gaming and virtual world industry. They have the best talent and the best software – a winning combination!” says Jefferies.

Clive holds a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Liverpool and is a Member of the Institute of Directors in London.  He can be reached at Clive.Jefferies (at) fatfoogoo.com

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fatfoogoo joins Sun and Project Darkstar as official partner

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

fatfoogoo has been accepted to the SUN Partner Advantage Program as an official partner and will work very closely with Sun Microsystem’s Game Server Initiative “Project Darkstar” in building tools to monetize online games based on this open source program.

“We see this as a win-win situation.” says fatfoogoo CEO Martin Herdina. “It not only allows fatfoogoo services to be a click of a button away for game developers, but also allows us to contribute to this exciting project.”

By contributing code to Project Darkstar fatfoogoo is providing open source gaming engine builders highly valuable tools that can either be used from the ground up, or simply added to game development at a later date.  The choice is up to the developer.  While fatfoogoo is developing their own in house tools and then submitting the code to interface with the existing Darkstar model, they are also working on code for the game engine itself.  This code will not interfere or alter any existing code but rather assist the engine in maximizing the interface with fatfoogoo’s suite of monetization tools.

About fatfoogoo: fatfoogoo specializes in game monetization via a wide variety of products and services including micro transactions.  They have a wide range of experience and are industry experts on micro transactions and in game commerce and monetization.  The fatfoogoo philosophy is simple: Allow developers do what they do best, develop games, and leave the transactions and monetization to us.

About Project Darkstar: Project Darkstar is a software infrastructure that is designed to simplify the development and operation of massively scalable online games, virtual worlds, and social networking applications. It helps developers avoid problems such as zone overloading, data corruption, and server underutilization that typically come with these kinds of applications. This revolutionary platform offers a dramatically different architecture that features a flexible and efficient scaling model, a robust data model, and a simple programming model. Project Darkstar software is freely available under an open source license from the Project Darkstar community.

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Fatfoogoo goes b2b with bbq flava

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

Focusing not only on the needs of the player alone, after careful research and consideration, your favorite foogoos are now opening the doors to partnerships with individual game publishers. No worries, the current state of fatfoogoo isn’t going anywhere, and we’ve still got your back for all things trading. We’ve simply added another dish to the menu.

We took a long hard look at not only the technologies that we’ve developed in house, the experience and knowledge that we’ve gained, but also at what players and publishers across the world are looking for in a gaming experience. Combine that with the current state of the industry and the tremendous interest and revenue streams in the micro transaction field, adding the fatfoogoo partnership program was a no brainer.

In a recent interview fatfoogoo CEO Martin Herdina sites, “The trading and selling of virtual assets is truly the future of online gaming. It is an important alternative business model to the classical subscription fee-based programs that are currently dominating the industry. Fatfoogoo looks to fulfill a demand for this market. Our new Partnership program enables us to provide the best of both worlds: Primary Market trading, i.e. Publisher to Player and Secondary Market Trading, i.e. Player to Player trading. With the incredible growth of both primary and secondary trading markets, most major publishers understand that there is a need for an independently operated, fair and secure marketplace for virtual goods and services.”

And what a demand it is. The secondary trading market for virtual assets alone is currently growing at astonishing rates, going from revenues of approximately $1 billion in 2006 to an expected $7 billion in 2009, according to Nielsen.

This model has already been proven in Asia with Maple Story and Kartrider, both published by Nexon games. Research has shown that 8%-30% of all players purchase items via micro transactions. This in turn results in a higher revenue stream for publishers as opposed to the traditional subscription fee model. According to industry experts, on average, ‘Free to Play’ games generate anywhere between $15-$20/month. In the April edition of Fortune Magazine, senior writer Devin Leonard weighed in on the future of gaming:

(Game Publisher) Nexon pioneered this business – hooking players with a seductive free game while urging them at every turn to purchase extras using prepaid debit cards sold at retail outlets like Target. Nexon collects ad revenue in overseas markets, but in the United States the big money so far is in these microtransactions: $1.6 million a month. John Chi, CEO of Nexon America, says that the Nexon card is the second-best-selling prepaid card at Target – after the iTunes card. (Target will say only that Nexon cards are “doing really well.”)

Our experience in the virtual world micro transaction field is unparalleled. Not only have we created a multilingual platform, currency, taxation, and support system, but also gained real life experience and have weeded out a lot of headaches. As with anything in life, nothing is 100% certain, but here at the foogoo, we’ve already dealt with a whole number of things that could go wrong, have fixed them, and have learned from them. No other system in the world can match our level of multi national experience.

Back at the top-secret underground foogoo labs, our partnership engineers are already hard at work developing solutions for clients. Stay tuned, as we’ll be announcing some of our exciting partnerships soon!