Outspark

The San Francisco compang Choe founded inJanuary 2007, called , offersa five online multiplayer games that are relatively easy to play and appeal to enthusiastic gamerws who want more than casual offerings like card games, but somethintg less technical than “World of or other games with complicated rules and expensive hardware or Outspark’s revenues, which were “several million dollars” in come from the sale of virtual goods, such as clothinbg for avatars, and events, such as in-game weddings, fashion shows and and also to a limiter extent from advertising.
“Weddings are one of our most populad packages, alongside beauty shop coupons,” Choe “We are adding a lot more sociap elements and casual elements to what would normally be amore gaming-centrifc experience.” Outspark is on track year quartedr to generate revenue of $10 million, although Choe predicts the numbe will go up. The which received $15 million in two rounds from of China, DCM and Altoss Ventures, has about 50 almost all of them inSan Francisco, thoug a few are in Soutjh Korea. Choe had expected last year to have as many as 100 but that did not happej and given the economy she is now predicting she will hire only about 10 more peoplethis year.
In just over one year of operationsw — the site went live in January 2008 Outspark hasattracted 3.7 million registered users, about 20 percentg of whom are “active,” said Choe. The company’s site attractsw players between the ages of 13and 25, three-quarteras of them in North America, with 30 percengt being female. Choe believes Outspark has a winning formulaz because it is a game publishefr as well as a gaming website (or portal). Outsparkj also runs a platform to analyze and monetizs game playingpatterns — kind of like Yahoo Games meets the sociaol networking of “Second Life” and the data analysis engins of Facebook’s Beacon.
The company is betting that game developerxs from Asia and other regionsd will use its open platform and translation services to help bringh their products tothe U.S. recently predicted the worldwide markegt for online video gamea will beworth $14.4 billion by up from $6.6 billion last year. Choe says allowinvg people to play gamezs for free before they buy upgrades is particularly in the midst of aworldwidre recession. “Instead of consumers buying entertainmentr content that they have not tested outfor $30 to $50 we’re having them test that first, and then pay for the elementas that they want,” Choe said.
“The democratic nature of the businessa model is why we are able to succeefd even in this kindof market.” The average time visitorws spend playing at Outsparko is 80 minutes per visit, Choe Choe was with Yahoo from 2000 to after which she spent a year as COO strateg with , a subsidiary of , a South Koreabn company Internet search and gaming services Choe said the pay-as-you-go method of gaming that has provehn successful for Outspark has been popular for a whiled in Asia.

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