Platogo Blog

Long time - no see. You might have wondered already what happened to our blog. We were extremely busy over the last few weeks or let's say month . We are working on a completely new product called social.io for our most favorite customers - YOU the mighty social game developer. I can't tell you all the details yet, but the first games using this awesome technology will go live on MeinVZ and Facebook soon.

We are at the Festival of Games in the Netherlands right now and would love to tell you more about our new baby. Feel free to contact us on Twitter (@platogo, @ripcurlx, @trahfo) or e-mail (christoph[at]platogo.com, jakob[at]platogo.com).

Your Soci... Platogo Team

We have received a lot of positive feedback on Platogo's layout and design in the past. However, our change of direction (from an online gaming portal to a service provider for game developers) also required to rethink the layout of our website. As a result, we decided to do a step-by-step revision of our design in order to better meet the needs of game developers.

You may have noticed that our startpage has already changed some weeks ago. Today, we launched the redesign of the Developer and Edit Game Area. The new Developer Center contains a bunch of entertaining texts on Platogo's new features and benefits. It's definitely worth reading! Concerning the Edit Game Dialog, we managed to replace the rather complicated, tabbed overlay by a clearly arranged page including all the information needed. Just log in and try it out!

In the next few weeks, we will continue with the redesign of the remaining pages. Please be patient with us, as we are still a small team with a busy schedule.
By the way - one thing that will definitely remain, are our lovely Platogo mascots!

Any feedback on our new layout and content is highly appreciated, we would be happy to hear from you!

It's a great time to be a player and developer at Platogo!
We've listened to you and we are now bringing more games to Platogo by putting more effort on providing tools for game developers.

If you are a game developer, read on because we have excellent news for you.
You can now enhance your flash games with social features and bring them to Facebook easily using our wrapper.

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Hi! My name is Nuno Marques and I'm the new member of the Platogo family (second from the right). I'm going to talk a bit about myself and how I got here in Vienna. I'm originally from Portugal, of a small city, north of Lisbon, called Leiria.

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Upon many requests from developers and gamers we decided to loosen the publish restrictions for games on Platogo. Previously, games had to have a level-editor which excluded a good deal of great games that wouldn't fit into the scheme of level-creation.

Now we accept ALL games (that are family-friendly and have a high score integration). Tataa!
The first games making use of this are already online. Check out the unique & very refreshing coign of vantage by our friends at bobblebrook and the very addicting L.A.2 by well-known indie developer Kenta Cho.

Stay tuned! There's more great stuff that we'll announce soon. (maybe around the GDC *hint*)

Two weeks ago, on October 8th, I seized the opportunity (made possible through Seedcamp) to visit ThoughtWorks in London and talk about Platogo with two of their user experience experts. Over the course of the four hour session, we looked at the aspects and processes of our website in order to determine its strengths and weaknesses.

The overall conclusion was that we're on the right path and that we do a lot of things right. But, of course, when you look a little closer, there's always room for improvement. The most important issue we found was that our website doesn't properly sell our USP (i.e. that users can create levels in every Platogo game and also connect with their friends): it's not yet clear enough that Platogo is about users creating levels for users.

We'll therefore be taking prompt action in these areas: we'll soon be adding a dedicated 'Create' page that contains all relevant information and guides, and we're also working on ways to make creating levels much more accessible.

Another important issue is to enhance the feeling that users are really playing with their friends, which is the key to getting the viral loop going. We're therefore improving our 'Community' page, working on a closer integration with Facebook, and looking into integration with other social networks.

In addition to feedback on the website, I got suggestions for improving our 'Join' and 'Sign In' processes, and lots of other details that will help us improve our conversion rates. I also got many useful tips and tricks for usability testing, as well as tools that we might use.

All in all, the session at ThoughtWorks was extremely valuable and well worth the journey to London.

Yes, it's been a great launch. We'd like to thank everyone who has
taken the time to check out Platogo and to write about us. Here are
just a few media picks. It's fantastic to be a start-up!

"It's a fascinating endeavour, and there seems to be a real
emphasis on quality rather than quantity - the UGC stuff is also nicely
implemented in the games I've played. Have a look and see what you
think though – it could be a more creative way of blowing your lunch
hour than playing Desktop Defense for the millionth time..."
Keith Stuart, The Guardian

"Platogo has launched a casual game web site where gamers can
create their own levels in games and share them with friends so they
can play the levels together."
Dean Takahashi, Venturebeat

"The wonderful Gregory Weir has already got in on the action with
his game Exploit, and Platogo users have been creating tons of levels
for it. Any flash devs out there might want to check it out!"
Michael Rose, Indie Games

"Platogo is a casual games portal that at first blush resembles
many others. What makes it very different lies under the portal's
virtual hood: all of its games except one are designed by portal users,
rather than by Platogo itself."
Virtual Goods News

"To be honest, the platform looks pretty awesome. P2P online games creation platform where users create their own levels. Very much about challenging others to play your levels, so potentially addictive."
Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe

The wait's finally over! After a successful pre-launch test run, we've thrown off the covers, polished up all our games and features, and now invite the whole wide world to come and play together online at Platogo.com.

Want top quality family-friendly casual games? We've got them.

Want to build your own levels? Easy as ABC.

Want to share your thoughts and creations with the world? Got that covered too.

So don't delay - register, play, create and connect! The more active you are on Platogo, the more chance you'll have of winning a great prize in our weekly Rising Star Contest.

You're also a talented game developer? Then check out our Dev Center to find out just how easy Platogo makes it to (hopefully) become rich and famous. Publish your game and watch the Platogo community play it, rate it and expand it.

With Platogo, there's no such thing as "Game Over".

Dusk 'til dawn, yeah we know: planet Platogo is at your service - but bigger, better and brighter than ever before! Play and share games, check out our other wicked features, and build your own levels.

Our pre-launch Invitation Codes are spreading like wildfire, and gamers and developers the world over are already logging in (thank you!)

We're so excited, and we just can't hide it. But then again, the new Platogo is so good, why would we want to? If you can't wait until our upcoming official launch, scan the Net for our Invitation Codes or try your luck on our waiting list.

After we watched Terminator Salvation the only salvation was to get out of the cinema and do something to forget what we saw before. So what to do at 11 pm in Vienna? Luckily Andi Gessl, a friend of ours, had his camera and a couple of lights with him. We climbed into the nearest playground, switched on the lights, used long exposure and got this nice photos. Thanks again to Andi for this awesome experience!

You can find all his experiments on his flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gessman

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