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SINGAPORE : A small game developer has scored a double coup by being the first local company to launch a game on the Nintendo Wii platform and to grow a community of 83,000 registered gamers within seven months via video-sharing site YouTube.
Nabi Studios, a two-year-old, nine-man-strong game developer, will release its first title, Toribash, on the popular Wii console by the end of the year. Released last November on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, Toribash is a free-form online fighting game that allows players to create any move they want and customise the look of their characters.
“Players can modify the look and feel of the game and do variations on the game,” said founder and chief executive Hampus Soderstrom. “Our community has created 21,000 textures (image files that help users to alter the appearance of their characters). That’s a lot more than what we could come up with on our own. The total manpower to do that is equivalent to the amount of time we created the game.”
Thanks to its free-form nature, gamers have spawned more than 3,000 variations of the game, which allow their characters to engage in a break-dancing competition or compete in sports like volleyball or basketball. Its developers are also looking to port the game to Apple’s iPhone.
To tap on the vibrant online community, Nabi Studios built a feature into Toribash that allows gamers to record and upload video clips to YouTube easily.
“The feature enables a smaller studio like us to leverage technology with viral marketing and spread news about the game. It gives the game longevity, and we’re also using the community that we’ve built to push out our next game, Glitch Racer,” said Mr Soderstrom, 34, a Singapore-based Swede.
Based on similar free-form aspects, Glitch Racer is a racing game slated for release later this year. Nabi Studios is looking at porting it to the Wii as well.
Some 1,500 video clips of Toribash, showcasing various customisations and creations, have been uploaded by gamers on YouTube so far. The top clip has had 195,000 views.
Thanks to YouTube, the number of registered Toribash gamers is growing at a rate of 25 per cent every month, with most hailing from the United States, Western Europe, Brazil and Russia. While 40 per cent of its community comes from the US, there are only 200 registered players in Singapore.
The online multiplayer game has a virtual economy, with players buying customisations from other players. There have been more than US$200,000 (S$270,000) worth of online transactions in the game.
A head texture, which allows players to change the facial features of their characters, costs 20,000 in Tori credits — the game’s currency. Players earn Tori credits by winning games. They can pay cash to earn more credits per win. For example, US$5 can earn 50 Tori credits for each win.
Major gaming companies like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts have started to employ similar strategies, letting gamers create their own content while allowing them to trade their creations with other gamers. Upcoming games like Spore and LittleBigPlanet are also based on such game mechanics. - TODAY/fa
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