TC50: Playce Lets You Play in Real Places

Playce is a social gaming platform that actually lets you play games in real geographical locations with graphics quality that blows away most web-based games. Because the game is completely online, whenever you want to start playing you simply select a game and connect. There are no downloads and the geography and graphics are phenomenal.

By creating a “streaming” graphics database you can upload a game to the browser in seconds. They will allow developers to choose a geographical location – New York, Tel Aviv – and then give them access to an API to build a game. They showed multiple titles including a Cloverleaf-esque monsters in New York game, a racing game, and a jet fighting game. You can then port the games to any other geographical location.

The games are free to make and play. The demo was a bit choppy but considering that the entire thing is streamed online over ActiveX, it was quite impressive. Sadly, it only works with Internet Explorer right now but there are plans to stomp out that particular bug soon.

Playce launched at TechCrunch50 during the Games session. Watch a video of its presentation here.