Friday, July 22, 2011

SingStar creator's new startup explores social, mobile, music and fashion

Paulina Bozek told the Evolve conference about her new company Inensu

During his time at Sony Computer Entertainment, created the Paulina Bozek SingStar Playstation music game franchise. Now it is 's running her own startup, Inensu, focusing on social and mobile phone games, first fashion and music. On today 's conference in Brighton Evolve, she outlined the strategy behind the new company.

"What I really want to talk about is a new audience," she said, reminding the audience of developers for the past five weeks, the most popular console game in the UK has Zumba been fitness, while the rise of Facebook iPhone gaming and the player base is expanding significantly.

"Suddenly our addressable gaming audience is literally everyone," said Bozek, who Inensu focuses on mass-market games, said. "We see ourselves very much to sit at the intersection of gaming and entertainment."

The studio 's first project is swap Closet, a project with Channel 4 Education. It 'sa social fashion site that people photos of their clothing and upload virtual fashion cupboards with their friends. This is a website integrated with Facebook Connect, but it will also be a native iPhone app and a web app for Android and BlackBerry.

The idea: to encourage people to swap clothes rather than shop for new ones that they don't need: there is a strong sustainability angle to the project. "This app was not going to be about preaching to the converted: we really wanted this to be for the Top Shop Girl," she said. "We wanted to influence normal teenagers, not just have an ethical-for-the-already-ethical app."

When people upload a children's play some clothes, they 're prompted to enter his "story" where she got it where it was she who gave it to them and so on. Then people can look to their friends "virtual closets and swap ping requests to another.

"We think of social as a way to \ an application in people's everyday social sector to get it ... \ part of their leisure time with their friends," said Bozek. "Fashion is really interesting, innovation: it 'sa basically dominated the retail industry, and it hasn' t really change".

This isn 'ta game, right? But there are game elements. "We think that dressing up is playful by nature. Self-expression is playful. But we have an added level gamification" said Bozek. "Our approach was to wear the items, the power on."

If an item is first to provide a cabinet is added, it is 50 points. The first time it 's swapped, it is worth 100 points, then 200 points for the second time and so on. These points then each user will 's total, appear in the rankings. They also have what is important to show which elements belong to one of the most popular group of friends.

Inensu 's second project is called super-fan, and is on the music rather than fashion. The goal here: something for music fans, whose relationship with music design has \ changed "fundamentally an entire industry ... The music industry is going through this big change on the distribution models the consumption models, and each tries to figure out how to to monetize the music, and replace the lost revenue. "

Sun Inensu us is to combine music, games and social functions, with particular emphasis on 12-15 year-olds who are up to digital music and social networking has grown.

"For this audience it's all about accessing music rather than owning it. YouTube is their MTV," said Bozek, who pointed out that increasingly, artists' music videos are being shot with YouTube in mind, not TVs in living rooms. "We think that teens have a very personal and emotional connection to music. It's part of their identity... But the complications of music licensing are still holding us back."

Bozek cited Turntable.fm, the U.S. social music site that people can DJ for one another with their own MP3s, as inspiration. It is still available in the U.S., but was locked out due to licensing reasons. "There is a real-life scenario depend on people and played mirrored disks," said Bozek. "And it was also to discover music through other \."

By Super Fan wants to Inensu gamify fandom, with a mix of games, leaderboards, chat and other social functions. "We call this a fan club 2.0, because fan haven 't really changed," said Bozek. "We 're not involved really in the music license itself. We believe there are a whole bunch of other things going on around the music that we mean don' t have to access the recorded music market itself to . focus "

Super Fan will start in a private beta in a few weeks 'time. Inensu is to some labels about how they speak to commit in the future.

"They love the idea of ??the DAC - the daily active users -.. Even more than we are doing in social gaming is a good opportunity for virtual goods, we have it a bit with Lady Gaga in Farmville, but she didn 't really go this route: they used it as a promotion ".

Bozek said that Inensu thinks it is also an opportunity to link out to concert tickets, merchandise and other products such as super fan will start.

Stuart Dredge

guardian.co.uk ? Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms and Conditions | More Feeds


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