MxMIndia

Tag: Games2Win

  • The number of visits on the virtual mela as well as time spent surpasses any offline brand activation initiative organised during the festival in India

    GroupM’s Grand Diwali Mela draws huge response

    By A Correspondent

     

    The Grand Diwali Mela organised by GroupM in association with Google, Amazon.in, LINE, Games2Win and Hungama.com met with a huge response with over 55 lakh visitors patronising the event. The ‘Grand Diwali Mela’ saw very high engagement with users, who spent time getting product samples @ Re.1, enjoying movies and videos, playing games and greeting each other via the LINE messenger. The number of visits on the virtual mela as well as time spent surpasses any offline brand activation initiative organised during the festival in India.

     

    The event received an overwhelming response with over 55 lakh visitors, the majority of which came from mobile phones with over 45 per cent women visitors. On October 24th, Diwali day, the mela received over 4.6 lakh visitors. In all mela visitors spent over 125,000 hours browsing various brand and entertainment stalls in the mela besides which many more hours were spent on partner sites – Amazon.in, Games2win and Hungama.com.

     

    The ‘Grand Diwali Mela’ emerged as the largest online sampling platform for brands. Over 150,000 samples were shipped across India, with 70 per cent samples going to Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns. The samples ranged from skincare and household products relevant to both men and women. To celebrate the partnership LINE Messenger came out with a set of special edition stickers for the ‘Grand Diwali Mela’.

     

    CVL Srinivas
    Rajan Anandan

    On the success of the Grand Diwali Mela, CVL Srinivas, CEO, GroupM South Asia said, “We are excited about the success of the first Grand Diwali Mela. We were able to create a great platform for consumers to come and sample products and interact with brands. It is also heartening to see the reach of the virtual mela was not restricted to the metros but filtered down to smaller towns where the digital penetration is growing exponentially. We also have seen a distinct spike in access via mobile phones, a clear indicator that India is opening up readily to mobile data and communication.”

     

    Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director of Google India, said “I would like to congratulate GroupM and all the participating partners for the success of the first Grand Diwali Mela. The fact that majority of the users experienced the mela from their mobile phones goes onto show the growing importance of mobile devices in India. With over 150,000 samples being tested on the platform, the initiative is likely to open up newer ways of engaging buyers online for brands and marketers on the mobile phones. Online brand activation during festivals is a brand new territory and I am confident that we will be able to scale this further next year.”

     

  • Games Developer, Mr Beech, is a veteran of casual games and has many international hits to his credit

    Games2win USA appoints Chris Beech

    By A Correspondent

     

    Games2win USA has announced the appointment of Chris Beech as a Games Developer for its US business operations. Mr Beech, 40, is a veteran of casual games and has many international hits to his credit.

     

    Justin Molyneaux, Head of Games, USA said: “I have worked with Chris for over 5 years during my tenure at AddictingGames. I first discovered Chris when he won the first annual Most AddictingGames Developer Award. He is a very prolific developer who has built nearly thirty games out of which most of them were productions that we created together. He is both a skilled artist and a great programmer.”

     

    Mr Beech will actively work with Mr Molyneaux and help build new global titles for both the online and mobile mediums for Games2win.

     

    Alok Kejriwal – CEO and Co-founder of Games2win said: “We are really excited to have Chris on board. Chris is really talented and can swiftly turn around ideas and concepts into working game prototypes and finished products. He greatly compliments Justin’s game designer skills and I believe that as a team they are set to rock the gaming world!”

     

    Games2win is a global casual games business and entertains over 15 million unique users a month as per comScore. Games2win owns over 600 original games that are published on its portals Games2Win.com and GangofGamers.com and on the iOS and Android market places. Games2win’s latest game ‘Parking Frenzy’ recently reached no 1 position on the global iTunes Stores after scoring top ranks in the Android market place.

     

  • Android Game 'Parking Frenzy' scaled its way to the No 7 position on the ‘Free Games' section in the Android Market (USA) recently, making it probably the first game from India to have featured this high in the space.

    Games2Win sets 20 mn users target for 2012

    By A Correspondent

     

    About a month ago, Rovio – creator of one of the most successful online game Angry Birds – made a significant announcement when it proclaimed its intention to touch the 1 billion download mark of the game by end of 2012. Not a difficult proposition, one may think, given the spurt in the online gaming market especially following the entry of supporting smartphones and operating systems. And so if a developer comes up with a game that’s unique and appeals to the masses, it would be a matter of a few days before the game races its way to being the most downloaded of the lot. This was the case with Parking Frenzy by Games2Win that made its way into the top 10 most downloaded games in the world, a few days ago.

     

    Android Game ‘Parking Frenzy’ scaled its way to the No 7 position on the ‘Free Games’ section in the Android Market (USA) recently, making it probably the first game from India to have featured this high in the space. At last count, the game had witnessed 2,676,668 installs, led by the US which recorded 636,660 installs, Germany – 197,204, Britain – 138,182, Spain – 137,128, Korea – 122,665, France – 119,187, Russia – 93,916, Italy – 84,833, Holland – 62,468, and Israel with 56,747 installs. Acknowledging the success, Raj Menon, Director – Business, Games2win said, “To be honest we knew it was a good app and would do well. But we did not expect it to be such a big hit. The game started out as any of our other games – a slow steady creep in the number of people downloading the app and playing it. Installs started rocketing from week two, and the growth hasn’t stopped since.”

     

    According to Mr Menon, the feat is unique as it is not every day that your app ranks higher than Twitter, Facebook Messenger and Angry Birds Rio. “So we are just soaking it in. But in reality, we are just concentrating on shipping – shipping the best games, apps and platforms that we hope our consumers will like.”

     

    On how the gaming market in India is evolving, Mr Menon said, “Indians are now used to the best entertainment in the world thanks to the internet. But they want it with a local flavour – something that they relate to. They play games on the world’s best sites; so they are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of game play. We have more than matched their expectations – we have the largest library of cricket games in the world and Indians just can’t have enough,” he quips.

     

    Asked why Indian online games have failed to make a mark on a global front, Mr Menon said, “There is no global ranking for individual online games like there is for mobile games on iTunes and the Android market. comScore ranks sites by traffic and Games2win is a top 20 gaming site in the world with an audience of over 15 million consumers. Our games are on the top gaming sites like Addicting games, the Spillgroup and Yahoo! So it would be unfair to say that Indian online games haven’t made the cut.”

     

    In fact, Games2Win has carved out a roadmap for 2012 where it plans to grow its base from 15 million to 20 million users on the online front. On the mobile front too, it will be releasing an app a month. Affirms Mr Menon, “The biggest release we have is Appucino which is Leaderboards on Steroids. Appucino is basically a location based leaderboard where users can capture their favourite location on Google Maps with their scores. Other gamers can topple these owners by simply scoring better. This ping-pong amongst gamers, we believe, will do wonders for the life of an app.”