When Chris DeWolfe sold his company he was like many serial entrepreneurs – he had the urge to stay in business, despite having enough money to last five lifetimes.
Chris and Tom (remember him) sold MySpace.com to News Corporation for $580 million dollars.
Just like his pioneering business MySpace.com, Chris DeWolfe’s new business is one of the hottest, and fastest growing in the $40 billion gaming space.
Jam City, his seven-year-old Culver City, California-based company, created the hit games Cookie Jam and Panda Pop.
“We’ve taken the company from zero dollars in revenue up to about $450 million in revenue and we have about 500 employees,” Chris DeWolfe explained.
The amazing growth of both games and the company is fueled by the data it collects from users who play their games.
A lot more effort – and science is going into snag new users and retaining the ones who are already playing Jam City’s most popular games.
“We are incorporating machine learning techniques into the games and the way that we analyze data the way, the way that we tune games, and the way we try to optimize what we call ‘the fun curve’ of our games.” – Aber Whitcomb – Jam City
Jam City updates their games daily as if they were a news organization pumping out stories, but the company makes new storylines characters and new levels, instead.
The application of machine learning is revolutionizing the way the games are being created, to the endless scenarios that become possible.
The results of the data crunching are games that become so addictive, you’ll eventually pay to play.
“There are a lot of different ways to generate revenue in our game. From what we call in-app purchases…those can be anything from boosters inside of the game that makes the game more fun to play, to extending the life of your game, to collecting different characters in the game,” Chris DeWolfe said.