In just about one of the weirdest press releases that has come across my radar, mobile gaming rewards network Kiip and the old-school Guinness World Records (seriously) are announcing that they are teaming up today to offer mobile gamers the chance to be official Guinness World Record holders. Yeah.
The partnership will most prominently result in a five-day long contest held from September 28th through October 3rd, where players of the iPhone game ‘Mega Jump’ will compete, through Kiip, for the Guinness World Record for “Highest Score Achieved on Mega Jump.” The highest scoring user on the Mega Jump leaderboard (visible here) will be featured in the “Guinness Book of World Records: 2012 Gamers Edition.”
“This has been the first time that anyone in the world can compete openly for a world record, just for having a phone,” Kiip founder Brian Wong tells me — explaining that this is unique because people who want a Guinness World Record usually have to go through the analog Guinness application process and record an official attempt at capturing the record.
When asked, and rightfully so, “Why the somewhat unorthodox partnership?”, Wong explained, “[Kiip is] making achievements more rewarding – while building a new ad model. We thought to ourselves – how do we differentiate amongst networks and to build our brand beyond any network has ever seen?” And so we found the ultimate way, (World Records) to recognize our inventory: the achievement.”
Wong tells me that Kiip is now averaging over 1.7 million “rewardable” moments a day, through its network of 20 games, “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he says “… When we now modify our mission slightly from ‘real rewards for virtual achievements’ to ‘making achievements more rewarding.'”
The Kiip/Guinness integration will be ongoing, Wong confirms, and as of today all Kiip-enabled games will have the potential to set up this sort of Guinness Record competition, “It’s super-fitting to our achievement moment model,” he emphasizes.
