Get your game on with Kaneva

June 18, 2005 7:12 PM

Get your game on with Kaneva.Billing itself as "The world’s first digital entertainment marketplace!" Kaneva is a beta launch of a concept that maybe interesting to gamers, media creators, and consumers as well. An Atlanta based company, Kaneva.com aims to be an exchange/market portal for game and media creators, who can directly create Massively Multi-player Online (MMO) games using the Kaneva Framework, and for digital media creators seeking distribution. The business model is innovative, and has been described as "a kind of multi-media flickr (pre-fame) meets eBay on steroids, or an online marketplace for folks hyped on digital entertainment. An Intertainment Hub. A platform and host." The company recently presented its concept at the June meeting of the International Game Developers Association, and back in April Computer Gaming Magazine had an article. During the beta test phase, the site's tools are free to all comers, and there is already a limited amount of content available for those who just want to play something new.
posted by paulsc (8 comments total)

Wow. Will it keep my teeth white and make my breath minty-fresh?
posted by JHarris at 2:45 AM on June 19, 2005

Sure, I guess, if you script in your game play...:-)
posted by paulsc at 3:44 AM on June 19, 2005

paulsc that is quite a pitch you've written there.

Do you have any interest or connection to this site/people/group at all?
posted by peacay at 4:12 AM on June 19, 2005

Fair question.

Nope, I just saw a post about it on Jeneane Sessum's blog, and got interested in the concept. Jeneane doesn't have an interest either, so far as I know. The pitch language just fell out naturally...:-) Thank you, I think...
posted by paulsc at 5:23 AM on June 19, 2005

Looks fairly similar in concept to GarageGames
(which seems to be down at the moment. Hmmm.)
posted by jaded at 9:27 AM on June 19, 2005

Whoa, they take FIFTY PERCENT commission from content creators!?!? And they claim this is "unprecedented" ? That takes balls. Plenty of publishers rip off creators at 50%, and it seems these guys have reinvented yet another "points" system, which jails your money to this single vendor.

You'd be way better off using BitPass, which takes 15% at most (5% for over $5), or similar digital media sales services like Peppercoin (or even PayPal!). And they don't jail your money to one publisher.
posted by reality at 12:25 PM on June 19, 2005

Level editing, network programming, graphics, gameplay and more don’t need to be dealt with their system. Indeed, all a game developer needs to do is provide the art assets (textures and models) and the platform does the rest.

“If you had the art assets, you could honestly create a full blown MMO in less than a day, “ Ghetti said.
I remain HIGHLY skeptical. MMOs are the most difficult type of games to produce. The problem with this genre is that only the top-tier really draws much of a playerbase, and to create a top-tier MMO is one of the most difficult projects in application programming. Massive bandwitch use combined with huge databases and loads of real-time interacting clients means nearly infite bugs to work out, lag, lag, and more lag problems, class/sytem weaknesses or imbalance, security holes, upkeep, customer support, etc. The user interface alone in something like EQ/WOW has its own scripting language and a team of devs as well as users supporting it. If people think they can throw some 3DStudioMax art into a half-assed engine and rake in $15 a month subscription fees, they are in for a suprise.

A similar company that does the Jupiter engine for liscensing charges $10,000 per COPY for a full set of tools, and this technology is nowhere near cutting edge. I would love to see something like this work, but I remain skeptical that anything less than a large group of full-time proffessionals with a few million in backing can make a playable MMG.
posted by sophist at 2:02 PM on June 19, 2005

Hello, to be upfront and disclose any bias, I work for Kaneva.

I wanted to clarify some things about Kaneva regarding comparisons. Look forward to any further comments.

Kaneva being compared close to GarageGames or Jupiter. I believe we have a very different and unique business model. We don't charge an upfront fee to buy the engine like GG and Jupiter, and more importantly, we provide the major back-end services to run MMO games, in terms of hosting the games, providing bill, etc. Neither GG nor Jupiter actually run the MMO game servers. So a game studio focuses on making MMO game content, and we focus on providing technology, services, and marketing around the game. We provide a split on the revenue. It's a win-win opportunity.

From a GG/Jupiter, it is not clear how much MMO-like functionality are built into those game engines. Kaneva is very focused on MMO RPG/FPS capabilities, so out of the box, we are providing persistant worlds, instancing, housing, questing, clan functions, very detailed character customization, etc. GG/Jupiter may provide this out of the box as well, but it's not clear. We are in beta test of the editor and would love feedback.

Comparison to BitPass and their 30% royalty. BitPass is focused on smaller digital content, and not full DVD quality films. From a hosting of files, they limit to 100MB. Hence, why the only movies you can find are Quicktime snippets. It is not a direct comparison to Kaneva's model.

Kaneva is very focused on building a film and video marketplace. Kaneva provides unlimited storage with a 5GB per file size restriction with no upfront fees. Because of the higher cost of storage and bandwidth for hosting, I am not aware of any other film marketplace with better royalties with non-exclusive agreement.

Because Kaneva is non-exclusive, you can sell your films on your own webstie and other sites and keep 100% of the revenue, plus you can sell on Kaneva at the same time. If Kaneva brings customers that buy that might not have found your movie otherwise, you made extra $ without much effort. As a film producer, you want as many stores to sell your movie in. Why limit to only one place.

And when we were saying the 50% royalty is exceptional, it is being compared against the traditional distribution model, where most movie deals are significantly less than 50% and are almost always exclusive. Because we don't have the same costs as traditional retail, we can offer better royalties and dont lock you into an exclusive. And as far as I know, I dont know of any other site that is providing the same royalties for high quality films as Kaneva. All of the independant film producers that I've talked with and met at a several different film festivals are excited about 50% and think it is fair.

BitPass and other services aren't hosting and distributing very large media files, so they can offer a different royalty structure, but its not comparing apples to apples.

I hope this clarifies Kaneva and how it is different from what has been mentioned and hopefully how it is unique. Be happy to hear if anyone likes the website. We put a lot of effort into making it community focused.

We have added "channels" for your content, with built-in blogging, forums, reviews, ratings, tagging of content, etc.

We are looking for beta testers for our MMO games and our MMO game editor. If you know anyone who might be interested, please pass them my way.

Sorry if this was long, but wanted to better explain and clarify how Kaneva is different.
posted by cklaus at 10:31 PM on June 20, 2005