There’s a new team in town – and they’re refined, elegant and every inch the sort of gentlemen we need in this hectic, hurly-burly world of videogaming larks.
Two Monocle Games is a new studio focusing on the creation of social games for networks including the current market leader, Facebook, as well as up-and-coming communities such as Google+ (with others considered as and when they release an API and have many potential players).
The company’s first title,
Cult Leader is currently in production, with a release date pencilled in for Q1 2012. Unlike the sleek, shiny and somewhat banal nature of the Zynga titles,
Cult Leader tries to do things a little differently.
Players are struck by two sudden revelations. First, that God is speaking to them and revealing that they, lowly player [x] is in fact a prophet of a higher power! Charged with spreading the word and recruiting a fearless army of the righteous, to convert the peoples of the world and bring them to an armed compound in a remote location in which they may, together, exist in heavily-armed peace, harmony and one-ness. All while blowing kisses at the leader’s fleet of bespoke Rolls Royces.
Second: that this cult leader thing is quite a good gig. Pays well and is better even than making videogames as a career.
It is, as those in the financial sector are fond of saying, all upside, baby (before eating another swan, braying laughter and buying another bottle of £5,000 wine). Those people will be first against the wall when the divine legions of [your cult here] sweep through the degenerate, smouldering remains of this so-called civilisation, eliminating the unbelievers and distributing blankets and soup to their still-twitching corpses.
So, all in all, nothing like Farmville.
Hurrah.
Two Monocle is clearly approaching the whole social games market with a very different attitude to the existing social game companies. Tom Naylor, the Big Cheese of the company, told Scottishgames:
I really want to try to do something different to the current social gaming trends. The market leaders have a huge problem with perception and customer churn rates. We are trying to address that using humour and game play through our brand and our products too. Cult Leader will be something really different on the social gaming scene and hopefully attract lots of attention from its obviously satirical edgy content to its actual game play (not the usual click-wait-click).
From our research we know there is a big market there. Granted it is smaller than the 40-year-old-stay-at-home-mom, but it is there all the same and barely catered for. We want to produce satirical and humorous content for release every week or so (even if it’s just one mission). Hopefully we can use this as one of the hooks to keep our customers coming back to play and enjoy.
All of which points towards something unusual, unique and fun coming to Facebook fairly shortly. Two Monocle Games have let slip that they’ll be looking for beta testers in the near future. Rest assured that Scottishgames.net will be your first stop for all of the latest news and updates from the
TMG camp as Cult Leader progresses. Admittedly they spurned our idea of approaching the Scientologists for sponsorship, but we still like them and will enjoy any and all Kool-aid as they provide it.
Two Monocle Games are also to be congratulated on
a most excellent blog covering the nascent company and its first project. It’s pithy, erudite and chock-to-the-brim with salient information. It has gained our heartiest approbation and good wishes.
(also note the provision of manifold images and concept art for use within this editorial article. Our hats, ladies and gentlemen, are most assuredly doffed).
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For a recent episode of Show Me The Money, the BBC sent reporter the excellently-named-for-a-lead-action-hero, Jack Garland to Dundee to ponder the ongoing evolution of the games sector.
Digital Goldfish are shown, strolling, like well-dressed playas, down balmy South Tay Street, while Guerilla Tea discuss business models and the importance of marketing and social media, with Jack. Proper Games rounds things up with a quick visit to the studio and fleeting, yet intriguing mention of product placement as a potential business model.
Looking this time at the growth of mobile gaming, Jack appears on top of a game of Flock!, using only the power of his mind, before carrying out enhanced interrogation on Proper’s Grant Alexander and winning 300 games of Yo Deshi in a row. He then paddled up the Tay on a burning torpedo and roundhouse-kicked a horse to death.
