WonderHill burst on the scene a few weeks ago with the announcement of an impressive $7 million in funding and a mission statement that was ambitious to say the least. The company promised that it would become a top-flight name in casual gaming, drawing on a family-friendly image and the talent of game designer Nick Rush to try and build up a business that could offer serious competition to the likes of Zynga. Ask WonderHill CEO James Currier what his road map for achieving that is and his response is philosophical.
"It's building deeper, richer experiences for a different market. Zynga goes after young men for most of their products. We're going after an older crowd and different types of gameplay. They're going after violent gameplay and we're going after collaborative, creative, nurturing types of people," said Currier. "We just believe that by building higher-quality games that are deeper and richer and good for the world and good for people playing them then people will stick with us and we'll end up being larger. We believe in Disney and Pixar and Oprah."
In a business often dominated by start-ups, long-term philosophy is rare. Even rarer is a commitment to building life-enriching gameplay with a business model that's big on selling virtual goods and currency to users. While WonderHill's press release implies that the games are going to use goods and currency to keep ads away from the site's games, Currier is not himself so negative on ads. He expects that once they've figured out a way to incorporate advertising in an appropriate way, the company will. He's even open to the prospect of having WonderHill's games support ad offers for virtual currency.
"I think the main thing is that it's all by choice," said Currier. "If you think you have an extra $5 to buy more rubies this week you can, and if you don't you can continue to play the game and participate in the community. When you feel particularly giving and you want to buy someone a gift, you can. There's no lock-in like with a gym membership where you pay $250 to get in and $80 a month to go and if you don't go you still have to pay. I think that's a more wholesome relationship to add."
At the moment, WonderHill doesn't have plans to do anything incredibly creative or unusual with the way it implements its virtual goods and currency plans, too. Instead, the company's plan seems to be using it as a reliable stream of revenue to power more creative types of design in terms of the casual games themselves. Currier promises that more games in the mold of the light simulation games the site offers now as well as some single-player fast action games designed by Nick Rush.
WonderHill plans to continue to push its artstyle and nonviolent approach to the over-30 crowd heavily, too. Right now he says that one of the most popular activities in WonderHill's Green Spot game is for players to simply arrange their gardens every day and then show the off to each other. Green Spot is an open-ended game by design, with no real goals to achieve and no end point. Currier believes this approach to game design makes for a better experience for players.
"What's very unique about what we do is that it's endless. A new day to create, a new way of looking at things. It's essentially a creative endeavor," said Currier. "In that way it's very much like Second Life, which is not a game, it's an environment. We're more directed than Second Life and it will be moreso over time, but we're pretty far along the spectrum toward non-structured gameplay."
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