Y Combinator-backed Kamcord got off to a strong start last year — it locked up a hefty seed round which Chinese incubator InnovationWorks just recently added to — and now co-founder/CEO Matt Zitzmann says the team has its sights set on hitting some lofty usage goals.
For the uninitiated, Kamcord is an SDK for iOS that allows mobile game developers using a handful of popular game engines (think Unity, cocos2d, and the like) to quickly and easily add support for <a target="_blank" href="“>recording in-game video without totally killing game performance.
Zitzmann says that February was the startup’s most active month yet — gamers saved 200 million recordings of their exploits in that month alone. Not too shabby considering that Kamcord only officially launched last August, and Zitzmann sees that one big month as a portent for bigger ones to come. “It’s still a long way away,” he said. “But looking at the numbers and trends, we think a billion videos a day is very possible.” Now early momentum is one thing, but that’s quite a weighty ambition and one that’s entirely contingent on a strong mobile gaming market and buy-in from developers.
For now it seems as though Kamcord is faring well on both of those fronts — playing games remains one of the most prominent uses for smartphones, and Kamcord has been steadily raising its profile among developers over the past few months. The in-game recording feature was only baked into 22 apps at time of launch, but these days that number has swelled to over 80 since then. Recent changes like a more streamlined sharing UI and a greater focus on sharing videos within games rather than on social networks like YouTube and Facebook are meant to get users recording and engaging with the game with fewer hurdles than before.
It’s that sort of scattershot approach that Zitzmann hopes will help propel Kamcord past the billion daily video threshold. At this point Kamcord is hustling to ingratiate itself with as many game developers as possible — the idea is as one Kamcord-enabled iOS game begins to wane in popularity another one (or hopefully more) will begin to pick up steam and rise through the App Store charts. Granted, it’s not exactly a foolproof plan, but it turns out that support from one developer in particular could act as an anchor for the startup down the road.
Zitzmann confirmed that the social gaming mavens at Zynga have taken note of Kamcord’s approach to mobile game recording and are testing the feature with a small number of Scramble With Friends players. “We’re really excited to be testing Kamcord,” Zynga product lead Andrew Huang noted. “Video is a great way to drive retention and discovery of our games.” There’s no firm timeline for if/when Kamcord support will find its way to more Scramble players (or, for that matter, more Zynga mobile games) but it could be a huge coup for the startup — if the relationship with Zynga pans out and the Kamcord team makes good on its plans to expand into Android games, hitting a billion video recordings a day may happen sooner than they think.
Kamcord allows users to record and share mobile gameplays. Users can share via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and email. Currently available for cocos2d, Unity3d, and custom game engines on iOS.
Zynga was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus and is named for his late American Bulldog, Zinga. Loyal and spirited, Zinga’s name is a nod to a legendary African warrior queen. The early supporting founding team included Eric Schiermeyer, Michael Luxton, Justin Waldron, Kyle Stewart, Scott Dale, John Doerr, Steve Schoettler, Kevin Hagan, and Andrew Trader. Zynga’s mission is connecting the world through games. Everyday millions of people interact with their friends and express their unique personalities through our...
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