2011 Year In Review

The year of 2011 was a fast paced and exciting one at PerBlue. Our company and products both saw huge growth, and we transitioned from a small startup to a growing company. We started the year with 12 full time employees in a brand new office space that had so much room we didn’t know what to do with it all.

We’ve ramped up quickly and now employ 36 full time people, including developers, artists, analysts, support, and more. N00b lunches were frequent and for much of the year we were adding a new employee each week. During the Summer we had some awesome weekly grillouts and played a lot of volleyball and Frisbee. We had a ton of fun (especially Halloween), and for Christmas everyone got a Wii.

In the world of Parallel Kingdom, we completed a number of milestones. We cleared 500,000 players in June, and we celebrated 1,000 days of gameplay in July. Much of the year was spent focusing on making Parallel Kingdom the best location based RPG in the world. We saw a lot of success and are now closing in on 1 million players. We were a finalist for Best Mobile Game in the Mashable Awards, rated as one of the top 10 Best Mobile MMOs, and also rated as a top 10 Best Cross-platform Multiplayer Mobile Game.

Parallel Kingdom held a number of innovative in-game events throughout the year. We introduced virtual Trick or Treating where players could go house to house and collect candy - or potentially spawn a dangerous Monster. We covered the world in virtual snow that could be used to throw snowballs or build snow forts. We even provided over 3,000 real world meals to children and families in need through in-game Thanksgiving and African famine relief charity drives.

Our CEO Justin Beck spoke at TEDxMadtown where he gave a talk on social games and virtual currencies. Justin also gave a presentation at this year’s Forward Technology Conference, and presented his College 101 advice to freshman engineers at the UW. Brand Director Forrest Woolworth was on a panel about entrepreneurship at the Wisconsin Science Festival, and Justin and Forrest anchored another entrepreneurship panel at the Wisconsin Early Stage Symposium.

We participated in Accelerate Madison, helped organize and sponsor Build Madison, were part of numerous UW campus events, and even organized a holiday board games drive to benefit area hospitals. We attended conferences all over the world, including the main GDC in San Francisco, GDC Europe, and GDC China. Justin was even selected to present the PerBlue story at the 2012 GDC in San Francisco.

We definitely had an exciting 2011, and we have a lot more exciting things in store for 2012. Follow along on the PerBlue Blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

Chance of Snow: 100%

What a strange turn of events. Just when we thought we might make it a whole season without snow, enjoying sunny 50+ degree weather every day, we're hit with a storm that will last multiple days.

Today we’re forecasted for 100% chance of snow, and looking out the window there’s no denying that it’s going to be a long, snowy, and brake-lit drive home. We missed a white Christmas, and now mid-January we are finally seeing snow in Madison. Lake Mendota has yet to freeze over, meaning we’re just two weeks away from breaking the previous record in 1932.

However, virtual snow has been falling in Parallel Kingdom since December when we announced our ‘Winter Wonderland’ series. We delighted players with a snow covered game world and new winter-themed items each week. As the holidays approached we introduced gift boxes, allowing players to send wrapped presents, like resources and avatar items, in-game.

In Wisconsin though, we’ve never let a little snow stop us for too long. Yesterday we announced Parallel Kingdom’s launch on Facebook, Chrome Web Store and Kongregate. Now players can see when their friends are in-game, bookmark the app, and new sound effects accompany several player actions. Read the full release or browse some of our recent coverage on AllFacebook.

Keep an eye out next week for our '2011 Year in Review' post where we’ll cover some of our major milestones reached during the last year.

New Years Resolutions For Entrepreneurs

Posted by Forrest Woolworth. Forrest is an original team member and current Brand Director at PerBlue. He is also the co-founder of Capital Entrepreneurs, a group dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship in the Madison area.

New Years is an ideal time to look back on your accomplishments from the previous year and begin setting goals for the next. As we enter the first week of 2012, I wanted to share some of my thoughts for entrepreneurs in the upcoming year.

I’ve gained a lot of experience since the last time the New Year’s Eve ball fell, and by far the biggest lesson learned is that the road to success is not always an easy one. I've put together a full post to share a few things I've learned along the way that is featured on Tech.li, a business and technology publication that focuses on innovation wherever it happens.

The top items include peer groups, sharing your ideas, and focus. Check out the full New Year's Resolutions for Entrepreneurs article for all the details.

Happy Holidays From PerBlue!

As the work week winds down, and before we hit the road to visit family and friends, we wanted to wish you happy holidays from all of us here at PerBlue! Thank you for your continued support.

Update: Holiday Board Games Drive

With just one week left in our Holiday Board Games Drive, we wanted to give you a quick update on the campaign. Thanks to everyone who has already donated, we have collected over 40 board games! We’ve received a variety of games that the children and parents at the American Family Children’s Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital are sure to enjoy.

Here’s a shot of a few of the games that have already been donated.

As the campaign winds down, we are still welcoming donations of new board games, card games and monetary gifts. There are still a few requests that have not yet been fulfilled: Cranium, Hungry Hippos, Clue Jr, and Sorry! Email us to arrange a time to drop off your new and unwrapped game or cash donation at our office. PayPal donations will be accepted until Sunday, Dec 18th.

We will be delivering the gifts next week Wednesday, Dec 21st. Be sure to like PerBlue’s Facebook page to see pictures from the event!

Donate Now!

Holiday Board Games Drive

We absolutely love playing games. It is a passion of ours that carries over into our work. The team at PerBlue makes games for mobile devices (iOS / Android) and the Web. We play games at home during our free time and sometimes in the office over lunch. Board games, card games, video games- we love them all. What it really comes down to for us is sitting down to stretch our minds while spending quality time together.

That’s why we are so excited to announce our holiday board games drive benefiting the American Family Children’s Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison. We will be collecting new board games and donating them to the children’s and waiting room areas in each. Because these hospitals serve children of all ages, we want to make sure to provide them with a variety of games that are fun for everyone!

Here are a few requests we’ve received already:

Ages 4+
Hungry Hippos, Guess Who!, Memory, or Matching Games

Ages 8+
Connect 4, Uno, Skipbo, Phase10, Jenga, Catch Phrase, Operation

Ages 12+
Bananagrams, Sequence, Yahtzee, Clue, Life, Monopoly, Cranium

We are welcoming donations of new board games, card games or even monetary gifts. Angela, PerBlue’s deal-shopping maven, will be purchasing games at the conclusion of the campaign. You can donate directly today through PayPal, our suggested donation is $10. Monetary donations can be made until Sunday, Dec 18th.

Donate Now!

Email us to arrange a time to drop off your new and unwrapped game or cash donation at our office. The campaign begins today, and we will be delivering the gifts on Wednesday, Dec 21st. Questions? Shoot us a line at contact@perblue.com

GDC China

Posted by Forrest Woolworth. Forrest just returned from attending GDC China in Shanghai with Justin. He's still a bit jet-lagged, but he learned a ton and met some great people at the conference, uncovered a lot about the Chinese smartphone market, and got to see some awesome sights.

It started out with a flight over the North Pole to the other side of the world. After 15 hours in the air Justin and I arrived in a foreign, yet surprisingly familiar land where KFC is the dominate fast food chain, Pizza Hut is a classy "date" restaurant, and you can still get your favorite no-whip Carmel Machiatto on most street corners. We were in Shanghai. The reason? GDC China - everyone's favorite game developers conference - to learn, meet, and uncover the magic of the East.

The first session was an eye opener. It was given in Japanese, translated to Chinese, then finally translated to English. Imagine playing telephone, but in 3 different languages (and I'll assume the translators weren't just making stuff up). Many sessions were given in Chinese, and others in English. We got to wear cool earpieces to listen to the real-time translations (like at the UN!). Presenters and attendees came from big and small gaming companies from around the Globe including EA, Ubisoft, DeNA, Kabaam, Booyah, Playdom, and many more.

The 3 days of sessions were interesting and informative, and Star Wars references seemed to be a reoccurring reference throughout many of them. There were many common industry themes and tactics across both Eastern and Western gaming companies, but also many surprising differences in game design philosophies and thoughts on how in-game economies should function. Session topics included globalization of games, RPG design, in-game economic systems, and more. Parallel Kingdom even got a shout-out during one of the sessions.

If you thought the US smartphone market was young and still emerging (it's only been around for about 3 years), the Chinese market makes the US market look old school and well established. This "Wild Wild East" Chinese market is brand new and is seeing explosive smartphone growth. Unfortunately, it's extremely fragmented as far as App distribution goes. Think AOL style "walled gardens" of content - there is no central App distribution channel, making for an interesting yet complicated market to say the least.

Not only is the mobile market seeing rapid growth world wide, but according to an industry vet at GDC China, the RPG space has seen more change in the past 3 years than in the last 30 years. Globalization is also a huge issue. Many challenges exist in taking a product global beyond just translations. Globalization is tied directly to localization, and ultimately culturalization. These are just some of the challenges that keep us on our toes every day.

We also have some exciting news on the GDC front. Justin was selected to give a session at the main GDC in San Francisco this Spring. The session will focus on the lessons learned in our experience bootstrapping PerBlue. We're pumped for this opportunity, and we will have more details for you soon.