{"id":406797,"date":"2010-03-09T07:20:50","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T12:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=67399"},"modified":"2010-03-09T07:20:50","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T12:20:50","slug":"z2live-rolls-out-voice-chat-for-iphone-games-announces-new-mobile-game-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/406797","title":{"rendered":"Z2Live Rolls Out Voice Chat for iPhone Games, Announces New Mobile Game Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Gaming<\/a>, Entertainment<\/a>, startups<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"Z2Live\"<\/a>
\n\t\tGregory T. Huang wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week is nuts for videogame companies: the annual Game Developers Conference<\/a> starts today in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Z2Live<\/a>, a Seattle-based social mobile gaming startup<\/a>, kicked off what is sure to be a busy news week for local companies by making a couple of notable announcements. First, it unveiled a \u201cvoice chat\u201d feature for games on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad—this will let players talk to their friends while they\u2019re playing a mobile game. (I haven\u2019t seen the demo yet, but it sounds like it could be interesting.)<\/p>\n

Second, the company has hired Lou Fasulo, the former head of publishing for Sonic Boom and senior exec at Vivendi Universal Games and AT&T Wireless. Fasulo will oversee Z2Live\u2019s development of what it calls a \u201cnext-generation mobile game community,\u201d which it plans to open in the next two months.<\/p>\n

Z2Live\u2019s CEO and co-founder David Bluhm calls Fasulo \u201cone of the best business minds in mobile gaming.\u201d (Bluhm also told me recently that he thinks the term \u201cmobile gaming\u201d will soon be redundant.)<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s core technology is a software platform for developing multiplayer social games on mobile devices. Its gaming canvas runs the gamut from simple casual games like Solitaire to complex multiplayer games like Call of Duty. But Z2Live\u2019s real value is not just in the \u201cplumbing\u201d to allow multiplayer gaming to happen, but potentially in the deeper understanding of gaming communities—things like how to grow a community, how to encourage more social interactions, which metrics to track, which game mechanics developers should focus on, and, of course, how to make money from all of this.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn theory, this could change the trajectory of game community growth—making sure the game itself is designed with the community in mind from the start,\u201d Bluhm told me last month in an exclusive interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for more news from other local game companies.<\/p>\n

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Gaming, Entertainment, startups Gregory T. Huang wrote: This week is nuts for videogame companies: the annual Game Developers Conference starts today in San Francisco. Z2Live, a Seattle-based social mobile gaming startup, kicked off what is sure to be a busy news week for local companies by making a couple of notable announcements. First, it unveiled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}