Kelly Perdew

New Entity will Leverage RotoHog’s Rich Heritage in Fantasy Sports and Expand Learnings into Entertainment, Social Media, MMO, Politics and Regulated Gaming Markets

LOS ANGELES, November 29, 2010 — Fastpoint Games (www.fastpointgames.com), a developer of data-driven games for businesses in the fortune 500 set, today announced its official launch as the parent company of well-known fantasy sports developer, RotoHog. Under the Fastpoint Games banner, the company will apply RotoHog’s deep understanding of how to create rapidly configurable games using structured data to drive consumer engagement to help brands in other markets like social media, entertainment, MMO, politics and regulated gaming, create games that will grow their audience, engage their users and monetize more effectively than ever before.

“My goal is to introduce the company to new markets that haven’t yet realized the potential value of utilizing live data-driven games to drive participation from their audience,” said Kelly Perdew, CEO of Fastpoint Games. “Those we work with find tremendous value in our model and services.”
For the past 14 months, the company has leveraged its proven technology platform to power games outside of the fantasy sports segment and successfully made traction in the entertainment and casual games space. We have partnered with social media platforms including hi5, Facebook and MySpace, and released 58 games for 16 clients across 21 sports and entertainment seasons for marquee clients including US Weekly, NASCAR, ABC, Los Angeles Times, Go Daddy.com and Sports Illustrated online, to name a few.

“We set out to develop a fun and engaging experience to bring our readers’ interest in celebrity to gaming. Together with Fastpoint Games we developed our Celebrity Fantasy League, now entering its third season,” said Romina Rosado, Executive Producer for Usmagazine.com. “Fastpoint Games is a great partner and made this a turnkey experience for us.”

Fastpoint Games processes millions of bits of data each day and leverages a proprietary cloud-based platform that is inherently more flexible, scalable, and technologically savvy. The proven format allows products to integrate across multiple channels; every component is configurable, making it easy for clients to make changes based on real-time data and feedback from consumers. The company’s experience in developing this type of game, allows for a quick turnaround from concept to delivery, and enables marketers in virtually any industry to meet business goals quickly and effectively.

“During this year’s World Cup, Fastpoint Games engaged a million active players on hi5 by launching their soccer game, World Futbol Challenge, on our platform,” said Kevin Gliner, senior vice president of production at hi5. “Fastpoint Games provides quality, scalable content that our large audience base enjoys playing, and we look forward to bringing more of their games to the hi5 platform. “

The casual games market is estimated to hit $2.25 billion a year with a projected growth of 20 percent annually. According to a recent Nielsen NetView study, Americans spend more time playing games online than interacting with e-mail, logging more than 407 million hours each month.

Fastpoint Games is a privately held company and recently secured $3.9 million in Series C funding from VC fund Mission Ventures. Previous investors include DFJ Dragon, Allen & Company, and SCP Worldwide.

About Fastpoint Games

Fastpoint Games is a leading developer of live data-driven games for the fortune 500 brand set. The company’s award-winning, highly scalable platform and games-as-a-service model enable marquee brands such as US Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Los Angeles Times, Go Daddy and MySpace to provide their fans compelling games, across their channels quickly and with minimal resources. Data-driven games invest users in client content and services by making that content central to the entertainment experience and applying motivating game mechanics to engage, reward and monetize their users. Fastpoint Games is privately held and based in Los Angeles, Calif. Investors include Allen & Co, Mission Ventures, DFJ Dragon and Sports Capital Partners Worldwide.

For more information about Fastpoint Games visit www.fastpointgames.com or follow us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fastpoint-Games/115877845140808 and Twitter @fastpointgames.

Media Contact:
Katie Gerber
Atomic PR for Fastpoint Games
310.689.7566
Katie.gerber@atomicpr.com

Whether on social networks, mobile apps or gaming hubs, consumers around the globe are engaging with games. But, unlike the past, most gamers aren’t playing solitary games, they are playing branded games in social atmospheres. Not all games are created equally, however, so brands need to know what works and what doesn’t before they log on.

by Kristina Knight

Casual games brings in more than $2 billion each year with an expected annual growth rate of 20%.

“I think that more people are comfortable with game dynamics, the engagement with Facebook and the social games inside is building that comfort level even more,” said Kelly Perdew, CEO of Fastpoint Games. “Game mechanics are applicable over more than just games. We’re looking at more sophisticated rewards programs, educational elements, training programs. Gamer mechanics drive behavior and large organizations are seeing that now. Content hooks [consumers] and once they see the fun factor, they become even more involved.”

What’s more the theory behind gaming can be translated to work within a number of other revenue streams by sending branded messages through a game to engaged consumers.

Fastpoint Games is the leader in fantasy sports games with users averaging 9:40 and just over 10 pageviews per visit. The company has launched 57 games for 15 clients across 21 sports/entertainment seasons over the past 14 months.

“Right now people are becoming very comfortable using micro-payments to play games,” said Perdew. “We have seen that ‘freemium’ models actually generate more revenue than revenue from people playing premium models. Even though [gamers] are making payments that are 1/20th the amount [of premium players], over the course of the game play, we are getting more revenue.”

So, allowing gamers to play for free is one thing brands need to consider while they are in the game creation phase. Another tip, think about where consumers will play, and make allowances based on screen size.

“A lot of people think that Brand A can create the same feel from a desktop [ game] in a mobile device, but mobile is a different place,” said Perdew. “Efforts need to be focused on the things that mobile users want to do on their mobile device - not on the whole game, because putting an entire game on a mobile screen isn’t feasible and won’t transfer.”

Perdew suggests that mobile will become a bigger playing on the gaming front as smartphones become more widespread.

“Users want what they want when they want it. If they want to play a game, they want to play at that moment and not later on,” said Perdew.

Fantasy sports outfit RotoHog has restructured the company to include a new brand name, Fastpoint Games, for its games development business.

The company’s business-to-business segment will carry the new name, with key clients including NASCAR, Sports Illustrated, the United Football League and others well outside the sports industry. The RotoHog brand will be used exclusively for consumer-facing fantasy sports games.

“RotoHog has really strong awareness in the core sports fantasy gaming space, but among our enterprise clients, particularly outside of sports, it actually was something of a liability,” said Kelly Perdew, chief executive for the Los Angeles-based company. “‘Built by RotoHog’ wasn’t necessarily something you wanted with a game like the one we’ve built for Us Magazine and caters almost exclusively to women.”

The new name, logo and corporate identity for Fastpoint Games was developed internally, largely under the guidance of Katrina Osio, who was hired by Perdew earlier this year to be the company’s head of marketing.

“Fastpoint Games is simply something that has a much better, much more versatile, enterprise-type feel,” Perdew said. “It cuts across our various sectors and genres much better. We don’t have to explain away to people what RotoHog means anymore.”

With the split of RotoHog and Fastpoint Games, the company also has closed an additional round of venture capital funding, for an undisclosed amount of money. Roughly a year ago, the company secured a $2 million Series C round of funding from longtime backer Mission Ventures. A separate $2 million Series B round in March 2009 also involved Mission Ventures. The company’s core group of investors also is leading the new round, Perdew said, and a formal announcement of the funding is expected later this year.