| Status | Privately Held |
| Website | www.flowplay.com |
| Category | Web |
| Phone | 206.219.0537 |
| derrick@flowplay.com | |
| Address |
506 2nd Avenue, Suite 420 Seattle, WA, 98027 USA |
| Employees | 6 |
| Founded | 12/06 |
| Total | $4.2M |
| Angel, 5/07 1 Ambient Sound Investments | $500k |
| Series A, 2/08 2 Intel Capital Ambient Sound Investments | $3.7M |
FlowPlay is a virtual world community built around browser-based casual games. Users get to play the best casual games as their own created anime-like avatar. When they play games they earn stuff for their virtual life like clothing, refrigerators and other virtual store items. The site wants to provide the option to play casual games or interact with people in the virtual world (or both).
Founder and CEO Derrick Morton left Realnetworks in September 2006 to start the company. Second Life founder Philip Rosedale is also an ex-Realnetworks employee.
Morton said he is basing FlowPlay on the success of ClubPenguin, a virtual world for kids between the ages of eight to 14, according to John Cook. As a business model, FlowPlay is exploring the possibility of selling virtual homes for one-time fees. The virtual homes could be used as a place for users to store their casual gaming earnings. They also plan on allowing people to purchase virtual store items using PayPal or credit cards.
FlowPlay plans to aggregate the best casual games and provide them for play in the site’s virtual world. Morton says this will be quite different than most casual gaming sites that only offer links to popular games.
Competitors include Gaia Online, Faketown and Habbo Hotel.
FlowPlay’s presentation at TC40 2007.
| Website | www.flowplay.com |
| Launch Date | November 15, 2007 |
| Tags | flowplay, games |