The Gray Gamers

A new kind of online game site has launched this month called Camp Fu.

Camp Fu is a MMO (massive multiplayer online) site where game play with friends is free.  You log in, create your avatar, join up with friends (or enjoy single play) make your own teams to earn tickets. There are single and team wins and the site also offers the opportunity to buy FuCash for upgrades.

The site launched this month an capitalizes on social networking. Your avatar can wear hundreds of different outfits and participate in game play.

If you sign into CampFu through Gamezebo this weekend you’ll receive 200 tickets.

CampFu is the brain child of Nick Fortugno,  and Margaret Wallace, former CEO of Skunk Studios, now CEO of Rebel Monkey.

CampFu is less about competition and more about community. Fortugno gave Gamezebo an interview about what sets this online site apart from previous PC game play.

So, what sets CampFu apart from all the others? Well, for one, CampFu is focused on co-operative gaming. Although you can play CampFu games as single-player, it’s this team-based, collaborative play that distinguishes us from others. We feel that so many games are head-to-head competitive and that’s not very casual. So, when designing CampFu, we built a co-op multiplayer gaming platform because none existed to enable this kind of online collaboration. Co-op games let you be a part of something that is bigger than yourself – and we feel this is very timely. With all of the games on CampFu, people play together with friends in order to win together and achieve together using group scores and shared rewards. In the near future, CampFu will offer special online group features to make your team’s experience even more real and meaningful.

The spirit of CampFu is all about working together and being part of a team. CampFu isn’t just another web games site. Instead, it’s all about the community you build with your friends. When we release the World of CampFu, you’ll see the theme of CampFu reflects that spirit of community: a combination of the natural and the technological with a green sensibility.

The concept reminds me a bit of previous real time team play I experienced with Flipside ratcheted up a few notches for todays 21st century social networkers.  It’s not surprising this site has been popular with teens while in beta testing, it’s being talked about on Twitter and Facebook.  Players will have opportunities to build squads and guild play. The ‘camp’ will be a common area where you can wander and meet up with friends. Rebel Monkey has incorporated a software development kit some game developers can plug their offering into the CampFu co-op game system. Game developers will have a player testing program available to them.
The full interview with Nick Fortugno explaining CampFu can be found here. 
He is the designer of the wildly popular Diner Dash; the first in the new genre of time management games.

CampFu offerings so far are Critter Smackdown; kind of a whack a mole; Fungeez; where you clean and free groups of ducks, word mob a letter unscramble, make word game;  and Veg-out; a plant, grow and sell veggies management game. Camp Fu’s motto is ‘Team Play Your Way’.

If you want to get rid of a used game, like me you probably head to EB games and trade in. There are options for savvy gamers as this Forbes article points out: Where to Ditch Old Video Games

If you’re willing to be a bit more adventurous, several game-trading sites have popped up in an attempt to capitalize on the growing market for used games. Sites like TradeGamesNow.com, GameTZ.com and various forum communities, from neoGAF.com to IGN.com, offer ways for players to find other gamers willing to buy or swap used titles. CheapAssGamers also hosts a robust community of game traders, and Abrams says the site will soon be rolling out its own automated system to make matching game traders easier. Of course, with these one-on-one deals, gamers need to be willing to risk getting very little money for their games, or even getting stiffed.

Out of the various trading posts, Goozex is a preferred option, says Abrams. The site was started in 2006 after its founder, Jon Atham Dugan, took a stack of games to GameStop and received a mere $35–not even enough to cover the new game he was buying. Dugan realized there had to be other game players who had experienced a similar bad trade with the retailer, so he decided to turn each household into its own GameStop.

His trading house helps gamers get reasonable prices for their games by hooking them up with buyers. The service fee is only $1, but the catch is that Goozex does not allow gamers to exchange cash directly. Instead, they trade in points–a virtual currency purchased from Goozex. Dugan says the site averages 20,000 completed trades a month.

Brian Crecente of Kotaku:

Last week I got into a bit of metaphorical hot soup when a Forbes article quoted me as saying that I didn’t know a single person who bought Wii Fit and used it routinely after a month.

Now I do.

Between the dozens of emails I received and the follow-up story that ran on Yahoo, I now know of lots of people who not only still use Wii Fit, but love it.

And that shouldn’t come as a surprise. When I said I didn’t know anyone who continued to use the bit of exercise gaming from Nintendo, I meant that literally. It stands to reason that a game which just last month sold more than three-quarters of a million copies would have quite a few health-conscious fans.

The Wii, and January’s top selling game the Wii Fit, are helping to keep an entire industry afloat.

Takes a man to admit he has to rethink his position. People emailed him and he learned some things.  And he probably hasn’t met people like Jan. They should talk. Seriously. Jan has written about her pleasure with Wii Fit . I think hardcasual is a reasonable term for fans such as Jan.

These people certainly aren’t hardcore gamers, but they’re also not the type I’d typically identify as casual gamers. They are a new breed of gamer, hardcasuals, if you will. Gamers who, for the most part, have limited time and interest in gaming.

Instead of viewing video games as a time-consuming hobby, they see it as an amusement or perhaps, in the case of Wii Fit, a way to make something generally disagreeable more fun.

I said in the FAQ that Jan and I would be very transparent about how this site was doing.

We’re doing okay, The Gray Gamers has been online for a month now, and in that time my computer went into the shop, and yeah I’ve forked out more money getting it fixed than the site made. You can figure that one out all by yourself looking at the numbers below.  

But that’s okay because…

You are starting to find us! 
We use this program that people online are familiar with, called Google Analytics. It measures everything to do with the site; odd things and useful things, and things I haven’t even looked at yet.

The Gray Gamers has had 388 absolutely unique visitors. There. Don’t you feel special?  Many of you have come back, and that means a lot. Return visits  bumped the stats up to 498 visitors (Google Analytics doesn’t count me, or those numbers would be bigger)

What pleases me is once you got here you looked around.
This may sound like we all have attention deficit disorder; but staying on a site on average of  nearly 2 minutes to look around is not too shabby for the internet.
And since you  had a look around, The Gray Gamers had 908 page views. 
What is a page view?

…a page request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on another HTML page pointing to the page in question. This should be contrasted with a hit, which refers to a request for a file from a web server.

Thank you for coming over, looking around and for the page views which help me understand the what and how of what you are looking for. Comments and emails help also. So talk already!

On to our Charity of the Month.

For our launch we picked The MS Society of Canada and scored an interview with one of their ambassadors. It has been the most viewed feature.

Drum roll please…ta da!

No one bought a game through the Big Fish Affiliate.  We recently added the Amazon game purchase channel, and no one has used that yet either. That’s okay, that will happen over time and as I learn to drive this thing.  What some of you (bless your hearts) did do was click on ads.

In January 8 ads were clicked, February 2 ads were clicked by readers. (I’m not allowed to click ads or Google would boot me into the middle of next week)

Total earned: $2.43

We’ve committed to giving our Charity of the Month 11% of of our earnings.
For January that works out to .27 cents. I’m tossing in $20.03 to round up your contributions to $20.30.

It’s the heart of the giver, not the razzle dazzle and this more of a start than I  believed possible.  I’m grateful to the MS Society of Canada for the work they do, and you can check with them to make sure they got what The Gray Gamers  have promised if you want to.

Gray gamers rock!  Thank you! Let me finish some research, I’ll be posting the new  Charity of the Month later today.

Who uses these?
Someone does or they wouldn’t be on the market.
Seriously? Developers? 

They cost around 39 thousand dollars (US) give or take a few thousand, and plenty to rent.
Do they have a game chair 101 course?  
Looks really cool though doesn’t it?
I thought of the Jetson’s. hehe.

whew

This thing does everything, environment, tilt, light, swivel, has plugs for absolutely everything, uses Mac or Windows, has back up power…
Check it out at NovelQuest.

Would you use one? For what kind of gaming?