GamesChart’s Barry White Responds (redux)
Last week I did a some coverage of
GamesChart and it sparked a
little controversy. It seems that one of the principals behind the new venture
is none other than Barry White from the now defunct GameJacket. You can’t forget Barry as
he has the single best name in the games business. Anyway, while Steve and I had nothing
but good fortune working with Game Jacket, there are quite a few who were owed
money when the company finally went south. It seems that some people have
also been receiving emails directly from Barry about GamesChart and he was being accused of “spamming”
people who do not want to receive this email. It is fair for people to be
upset about supposed spam, especially when the terms of the Game Jacket user
agreement stated that they would not sell or use the email list for anything
other than GameJacket related correspondence.
So, my first question for Barry was where he was getting the email addresses
he was sending to because 8bitrocket had been a long time member of GameJacket
and we did not receive any spam email from him. Here is his response:
8bitrocket: Barry, we did not receive any email(s) from you
about GamesChart. Where did the list come from that you are sending to?
Barry White: It was a once off email from my contact list in
outlook. It’s not actually a mailing list per say, just developers that I’ve
spoken with over the years and who have joined my Flash Game Developers Group on
Linkedin.
Barry also took the time to write a long comment under my
original post, but it was cut off. Here is the full text of his comments on
GamesChart. I updated the original post with some of these comments, but here is the
full she-bang:
Barry White:
======================
It’s our first week of Beta and I noticed there was a bit of noise on the
Mochi Forums about GamesChart, so I was curious to see what else people had
picked up on.. and I stumbled across your post. I’m glad I did 🙂
GamesChart IS an exciting new venture and it’s something that my new studio has
been keeping under wraps for a while now. It’s actually good to read the
comments above and I would urge that if anyone has any questions or even
negative criticism about what we’re trying to build, seriously, just send it in.
Address it to me personally – I’ll always make time to respond.
I do just want to point out that we are in very early Developer Beta, so there’s
lots of things that haven’t been added yet and we’ve still got to include more
category charts on the API and also launch the Publisher Beta. That’s the main
reason why all the games are being directed back to GamesChart.com ..not because
it’s a pyramid scheme. In fact, if all goes to plan – I would be over the moon
if none of the games ever linked back to the main site 😛
We’re going to be doing some more formal PR’s over the next few weeks, but as I
know a lot of people read your blog Jeff, I thought I’d just clarify a few
points about our system.. it’s not easy to condense it into one sentence, so I
thought I’d bullet point it.
* Every game that has the GamesChart API embedded in it is tracked by GamesChart
* The API also loads in a series of dynamic charts that actually display within
the Flash game itself
* The most popular games each week make their way to the top of the charts
* Any gamers who click on a game listed in these charts is taken to play that
game on another portal
* Publishers use an advanced pay per click bidding system to purchase this
traffic and drive users back to their own sites to play the games they have bid
on
* Games need to be uploaded to the Publishers portal before they can receive
traffic (big upside)
* Developers receive up to a 50% revenue share of any outbound clicks generated
from within their game should they choose to display it (also full blacklisting
available)
* Publishers also receive 10% of total revenues generated from any GamesChart
enabled games featured on their site
* There are no annoying ads, no sales teams, the platform is fully automated and
self perpetuating
* It’s the first real win, win, win scenario for the Game Developer, Game
Publisher and Game Player
Although there’s always going to be some fall out from GameJacket because of the
way things were handled in the 6 months after I left, I hope people can
understand that it wasn’t easy for me to make that kind of decision and I was
genuinely saddened to hear that so many developers lost out when the Company
decided to close.
To finish on a different note, it feels good to be contributing something back
and it’s also great to hear words of encouragement from developers already
interested in supporting the platform. GamesChart will add something new and
positive to this industry, hopefully providing Flash game developers with a much
needed boost to their games earnings.
2.17am.. Signing off 🙂
=========================
We have signed up for the Beta, but current game dev is slow going. Hopefully
we’ll have something to write up about it soon.