Gogamingo’s startup idea: Compete in tournaments, win real stuff

Put all that time you waste playing casual games toward something tangible, like prizes.

New York-based startup Gogamingo announced today its plans to offer a cross-platform tournament system to developers and players. It’s working with mobile- and social-arcade studios to add a new tournament option to their games while helping them with user retention.

“We’ve created a new way to drive monetization and retention for social game-development companies,” Gogamingo chief executive officer Aaron Taylor told GamesBeat. “We allow gamers playing their favorite games to enter scores to win real-world prizes.”

The idea is that this will engage more players for a longer amount of time, and it will generate revenue for Gogamingo, who then shares it with their partner developers. At the same time, the startup is working with companies and their brands to provide prizes as a way for retailers to reach out to an engaged gamer audience.

Right now, Gogamingo is working with three developers that have a combined user base of around 1 million people. Taylor wants to use this as a proving ground to convince bigger developers like Gree and Zynga to come on board.

It shouldn’t be too hard, since this service is free for developers and could potentially serve as a new revenue stream.

“The end users buy a certain amount of virtual points,” said Taylor. “And they will use those points to submit a score. We’re talking 1 cent or 2 cents to submit a score. It’s so low that it doesn’t become an issue for the gamer to purchase the points. So we’re really looking to make revenue at scale.”

That’s where Gree and Zynga’s millions and millions of users could really help, and Taylor thinks that Gogamingo has the right stuff to lure those big fish.

“We have a score normalizing algorithm that allows us to compile scores from various different games and different platforms and use them in the same leaderboards,” said Taylor. “That’ll help create that structure and ecosystem that helps the gamers, the developers, and the brands to thrive. Developers will increase their retention with people playing more and more often because it’s almost like eBay with people bidding to win a prize.”

Taylor expects players to pay a penny without even thinking about it to submit several scores. It’s leaderboard chasing with a small monetary fee and the potential to win something. Currently, those somethings include high-end electronics and pet toys from retailers like Tekserve, PetFlow, Bluum, BagTheHabit, and TheaterMania.

Players can start competing right now in games like Boom Bugs, Rope Rescue, and Run Run Hamster.