Arctic Startup reports that Finnish social gaming start-up everyplay has exited stealth mode and released a Facebook game called Kamu World. A “Kamu” (Finnish for “buddy”) is a little monster you can wander around the virtual world with, accumulating experience points called “sparks”. Interacting with the world makes changes to it that other users can see. It’s no Second Life, but it’s pretty impressive for a Facebook app.
A further feature is “real world missions”: you can print a PDF copy of your Kamu, assemble it, Blue Peter-style, and take pictures of it doing things “IRL“. There are sparks – and real prizes from everyplay – up for grabs for doing so.
But enough about the fun – what about the revenue model? Everyplay CEO Jussi Laakkonen doesn’t seem too worried at the moment, describing Kamu World as a “sheer test … just interesting for the firm”. According to Laakkonen, everyplay is concentrating on learning about usage patterns to build new features. Fair enough: social gaming is very hot at the moment, and if their products are good, everyplay shouldn’t have too much of a problem monetising them via virtual goods sales and advertising.
At the moment the company is just focussing on Facebook. That makes sense too, given Facebook’s extraordinary growth and the success of products like wooga’s Brain Buddies.