Doof, a new London-based startup went into public beta at the beginning of October offering casual gaming wrapped-up with social networking in a good-looking package. Casual games are the mainstream of gaming world, and Mini-Clips is a good example. But they tend not to have an underlying social network, which ought in theory create more traffic and more data about the user.
Doof offers a large range of games from arcade to action, cards and puzzles etc. Users get to create a doof profile which has a personal news feed, list of friends and various ego-boosting features like “bragging rights”, game playing statistics, and similar kinds of features to Facebook, including status updates. You can also rate games and other members creations. The site has leagues, tournaments and various other competitions to keep the community ticking over and appealing to people’s competitive streak. The privately-owned Money Gaming Corporation Ltd in London is the company behind the service, headed up by CEO Liad Shababo. The site is built using Adobe Flex which allows for a certain richness in the interface. Plans include building up the functionality, specifically interactive community features, whilst also growing the games, competitive options, player customisation features and integration options with existing social networking sites and platforms.
I tried the service out but had some trouble with using it on a Firefox on a Mac – it may well have been my machine not their service. But the interface certainly is pretty good looking.
