Company Spotlight #5: Greystripe

Wednesday, 01 November 2006

This company spotlight is not as usual devoted to a developer. This time we are proud to have an interview with Greystripe's CEO Michael Chang. Greystripe caught a lot of attention all over the web (including this blog) due to the launch of their GameJump.com ad-subsidized, free mobile games portal.

[Arjan] Hello Michael and welcome to the blog. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

[Michael] Hey Arjan, thanks for taking the time to learn more about Greystripe. Greystripe has been a dream company to build and develop because we have a very clear goal--bring great games and applications for free to the mobile phone. Not many people know that Greystripe started its life as a mobile application publisher in the middle of 2004. We created some fun LBS applications for the BlackBerry but soon realized that it was a huge challenge to monetize mobile content. That was when we identified the need for a mobile distribution system that is ad supported.

[Arjan] How did you get the idea for the AdWRAP solution and GameJump.com?

[Michael] Andy Choi, our CTO, came up with the basic idea. He realized that the key to supporting mobile games distribution with ads was to grow the network extremely quickly, and this meant minimizing the work for game publishers. He created the AdWRAP technology that is completely “developerless” for the publisher, and then he built a world class software team that has been able to create the entire AdWRAP system in a very short time.

[Arjan] The solution is currently available for J2ME, will we also see Brew, Symbian, Windows Mobile or Flash Lite versions pop up?

[Michael] Yes, they are on our roadmap. Strangely, we get BlackBerry requests the most. I think that people want to show off their free mobile games on their new BlackBerry Pearls!

[Arjan] Looking at your offering of mobile games, what arguments does GameJump use for taking on new mobile games into your selection?

[Michael] We try to offer our game players the most diverse deck of games anywhere. High quality games with entertaining game play are of course the best received.

[Arjan] The GameJump.com site was officially launched August 17th, how long did it take you to reach the point where you thought the quality of the selection was complete enough to launch the service?

[Michael] We thought that the diversity of the selection was complete even at the time of launch. Of course, the more games and applications, the better!

[Arjan] Your main market appears to be the US, how did you market the GameJump launch in the US?

[Michael] We have a great PR firm, VSC Consulting. You can check them out at http://www.vscconsulting.com. Although our initial focus has been the US market, we have quickly grown an international user base that represents over 150 countries.

[Arjan] How will you develop yourself more in Europe since it's more fragmented then the US market?

[Michael] We will be making some announcements about this soon and will keep you and your readers posted. I agree with you on your point about diversity. For Greystripe, this diversity affects both the game content and ad sourcing.

[Arjan] Do you have plans to extend in the Asian market?

[Michael] We’ll keep you and your readers posted on upcoming announcements.

[Arjan] Are there plans to release the GameJump service under different names like for example Jamba did with the Jamster and RingtoneKing names?

[Michael] Sorry, again, I can’t get ahead of our announcements, but that is logical progression and a great idea!

[Arjan] There are a lot of forecasts about the revenues of the market. What is your expectation of the value of ad subsidized games in let's say 2010?

[Michael] That is a tough question to pin down with exact numbers. We believe that it will be a very large percentage of the mobile business because all of the trends are favorable. There are clear analogies for the success of ad-subsidized content. On the internet it is probably 99% free, ad supported. Radio, TV, etc. are all dominantly ad supported. There is a lot of value in decoupling the payment scheme from media delivery.

[Arjan] We noticed that Greystripe has also released for example its own SuDoKu. are there plans to continue putting your own games into the service?

[Michael] We licensed and released our own version of SuDoKu as something simple which has universal compatibility when we first launched the system. We are not really in the business of creating content, as our core business is supporting and facilitating distribution for our 33 publishing partners (and growing!) with our ad-supported distribution model.

[Arjan] From all of the games on GameJump, which one do you personally like most?

[Michael] I hate to choose just one, but I’ll admit that I’ve spent hours playing Ghost Hunter RPG by Ozura. It has good graphics and great game play, and while you can play it in short sessions, to complete the game takes hours. What’s amazing is that the game play is compelling enough that you really want to finish the game. It’s an awesome example of a high quality game that your readers can try out for free!

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