Category: Mobile Gaming

Execution Labs teams with Chartboost to provide entry into mobile games

Execution Labs, a Canadian gaming incubator, has announced that it is teaming up with Chartboost, a mobile games advertising and monetization startup. Together, the two companies are forming a matchmaking program that is targeted at independent game developers. The program is meant to help developers promote their work, but not to consumers. Through the program, developers will have an opportunity to share their talents with one another, helping build network connections throughout the game industry.

Lab Partners designed with independent developers in mind

The program is called Lab Partners and has a primary focus on independent developers of mobile games. The idea is to give developers a way to connect with each other and tap into the skills of their colleagues while also being able to promote new mobile games to potential consumers. Big name developers like Zynga and Rovio are able to direct millions of gamers to their new titles by marketing in their older gamers, something that smaller development studios rarely do effectively. The program may help solve this problem by giving developers access to tools that can help them expand their reach.

Competition is fierce for newcomers

It is becoming for new mobile games developers to enter into the market, even if they have innovative ideas for games. According to a recent Distimo report, only 2% of the top 250 developers on the Apple App Store are considered new to the market. Lab Partners is designed to make it easier for developers to find success in the competitive mobile games market through connecting developers to one another and allowing them to promote their skills and products more effectively.

Larger developers continue to overshadow smaller developers

The mobile games market is currently crowded with new developers, but few of these studios manage to get attention because of the overwhelming presence of larger organizations. Large developers account for millions of gamers, who have little need to look elsewhere for the mobile games they are interested in. Lab Partners may provide smaller developers with the edge they need to establish a stronger presence in this market.

A startup company is helping to make learning more exciting and fun for children.

A Toronto, Canada, startup is using augmented reality technology to help to overcome the tedium and boredom that is often associated with geography classes and make the subject more exciting for children.

The strategy uses maps in a unique and interactive way to help Canadian children to learn about the world.

The augmented reality program is called Fun Maps for Kids, and it applies interactivity to digitized maps in order to help to make them more interesting to child learners. This startup was created by a family in Toronto who had returned from a trip with their son – three years old – which took them around the globe.

Worldwide travel helped to inspire the development of this augmented reality learning tool.

The founders of the company are Martin Pietrazak and Natasza Cieplik, who created it in 2012. Their initial purpose had been to help to teach their son about different places around the world. However, the idea soon proved to be too interesting for them to keep within the family, so they expanded it to be able to provide this augmented reality learning experience to other children, as well.

Though it is based on print maps, they offer students a great deal more than the traditional atlas. Instead, the creators made sure that their maps would have an interactive feature that would bring them to life for students. They used the patented Layar app in order to take advantage of its ability to add digital content to printed pages using augmented reality.

This experience starts off with nothing more than a map that is mounted on the wall, which is a common sight in geography classrooms. However, when the students in those classes use an iPad on which the Layar app has been opened, the map soon provides additional images, animations, and audio clips that can all be accessed through the use of the touch screen.

The company’s website claims that the augmented reality maps offer students a “window to the world” which would not be available to them through traditional printed images and drawings.