Rules of the Game

"Funware" brings gaming features to consumer applications like photo-sharing and social networking

by Jessie Scanlon

It doesn't gather dust like the shoebox of old photos sitting in your closet, but chances are that your collection of online pics is similarly disorganized. And growing rapidly. At least, that was how Gabe Zichermann felt. Managing his own digital archive, tagging 5,000 photos with descriptive labels, and even looking at his friend's Flickr collections had become a chore. So after the Internet entrepreneur sold his digital game distribution company, Trymedia Systems, to Macrovision (MVSN) for $34 million in 2005, he turned his mind to the problem.

"The bottom line was that managing my photo collection wasn't fun anymore," says Zichermann. "Photo-sharing was pretty broken." His solution: Turn it into a game. In November, 2007, he and partner Chris Cunningham unveiled rmbr.com. (The name is taken from the online shorthand for "remember.") Part social network, part games site, rmbr offers a variety of casual games designed to help users manage or view their photos.

Games Increase Engagement

Still in beta, rmbr is far from a Web phenomenon. But it reflects a new trend of applying game features to nongame consumer applications, creating a category that Zichermann calls "funware." He points to Luupo, a German shopping game with a gambling twist, and I'm in Like with You, a social network (often described as a dating site) in which players bid for the chance to communicate with each other, as other examples of the trend. Another example might be thesixtyone.com, a music adventure game in which users are rewarded for finding good music. To reiterate, none of these sites sell games; rather they use games or gaming features to draw viewers to sites that depend on a range of business models: selling virtual goods, actual products, or advertising.

Take rmbr. In one of its games, PhotoAttack, you must quickly describe images as they fly at you. "Funny," "cute," "sexy,"—and so on. The more your tags match those of other users, the higher your score. You can invite friends to play the game with your images, though you can also choose who views what—and tags can later be exported to other photo-sharing sites. As the game is played again and again by users, the quality of each tag improves. All of rmbr's games are free; the site's business model is based on virtual items that users can buy to send to each other—an animated heart that opens to reveal a photo, for instance, which costs 50¢ (other items cost as much as $1).

"Some veterans are leaving the industry and bringing their knowledge of game mechanics—which is really about how to keep someone interested for the next 10 seconds—to different industries," notes Nabeel Hyatt, founder of a Boston-based game startup, Conduit Labs (which is building some funware apps into a product it will launch in March) and a former entrepreneur-in-residence at venture capital company Prism VentureWorks. "It's one of the big trends I see in gaming."

Indeed, rmbr's Zichermann worked for CMP Media, where he was marketing director for the Game Developers Conference, Game Developer magazine, and Web site Gamasutra. As a teen, thesixtyone's James Miao worked production and marketing gigs at Electronic Arts (ERTS), Activision (ATVI), and Atari (ATAR). I'm in Like with You, by contrast, was founded by entrepreneurs who grew up gaming and saw the opportunity to apply the "sticky" features of gaming—its competitive appeal, top scorer lists, and so on—to other consumer services.