The founders of GameVillage tell iNTERGAMINGi how the demise of one project has led to the launch of a new social gaming start up company, PopcornGames
Malta-based gambling operation GameVillage has made a significant investment and strategic focus to launch a series of social gaming applications in 2012.
However, founders Lawrence Gouett and Juan Murillo envisioned a social gaming community well before they financed and launched the GameVillage site in 2007.
“It’s a bitter sweet story,” Gouett told iNTERGAMINGi. “Six years ago we had the vision for a virtual village where users gain status and rewards based on game play and ultimately buying virtual goods. We spent 2005-2006 in the US, attending conferences on micropayments and witnessing the explosion of virtual goods economies in Asia.”
Unfortunately, the journey to social gaming would take a back seat for the GameVillage founders as the day-to-day focus on building a UK bingo gambling community used up all their resources at the cost of their original vision.
“It was very difficult to watch the likes of Zynga’s Farmville become a mega hit, selling the very goods we would have offered in our village so many years ago, “ said Murillo.
The founders have since dusted themselves off and have orchestrated a management buyout of the parent company. They spent the last 12 months crafting a strategy and software gaming platform specifically for social games, which includes the launch of their new start-up, PopcornGames.
The first social game from PopcornGames is BingoVillage, which is due for release in July. BingoVillage will combine proven community games as well as virtual homes, real estate and goods related to player achievement and loyalty.
This feature can be read in full in the second 2012 edition of iNTERGAMINGi.
