Play Hard Aims At Casual Games and Sports Fans
Former Turbine [http://www.turbine.com/]Chief Executive Jeffrey Anderson has announced Play Hard, a new gaming company offering easy-to-play casual games targeted specifically to sports fans.
Play Hard will run fantasy sports leagues and real-world sports news feeds, but is focused primarily on sports-based online casual games. The company plans to launch a website in the fall featuring ad-supported free games, but will also offer an advertisement-free version to gamers who subscribe to the service. The service will begin with a football simulation, with baseball, basketball and other sports planned to follow.
One unique feature of the new service will be the inclusion of "franchise players," characters on a team whose skills increase the more a gamer plays. Anderson said the system is meant to encourage the growth of a community of regular gamers, comparing it to characters in conventional MMOGs like Madden NFL [http://www.lotro.com/] games for the PC, Anderson said, "That changes the dynamic and the landscape dramatically. It leaves a very big vacuum."
Anderson added that enthusiasm for the new venture is one of the reasons he left his position at the top of Turbine, a successful MMOG developer. "I'd just become really excited about how wide this market is," he said. "I have been working on sword-and-sorcery fantasy products for a very long time... I was excited about doing something new."
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Former Turbine [http://www.turbine.com/]Chief Executive Jeffrey Anderson has announced Play Hard, a new gaming company offering easy-to-play casual games targeted specifically to sports fans.
Play Hard will run fantasy sports leagues and real-world sports news feeds, but is focused primarily on sports-based online casual games. The company plans to launch a website in the fall featuring ad-supported free games, but will also offer an advertisement-free version to gamers who subscribe to the service. The service will begin with a football simulation, with baseball, basketball and other sports planned to follow.
One unique feature of the new service will be the inclusion of "franchise players," characters on a team whose skills increase the more a gamer plays. Anderson said the system is meant to encourage the growth of a community of regular gamers, comparing it to characters in conventional MMOGs like Madden NFL [http://www.lotro.com/] games for the PC, Anderson said, "That changes the dynamic and the landscape dramatically. It leaves a very big vacuum."
Anderson added that enthusiasm for the new venture is one of the reasons he left his position at the top of Turbine, a successful MMOG developer. "I'd just become really excited about how wide this market is," he said. "I have been working on sword-and-sorcery fantasy products for a very long time... I was excited about doing something new."
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