Namaste, a games startup which is poised for launch, is building a platform called StoryBricks to enable casual users to create their own games and share them on social networks. The twist is that it’s not for professional game designers but users who want to create their own games. The company is understood to be be in discussions with several top VCs.
Why is Namaste in a sweet spot? Companies like Zynga still need hit games to survive. Their customer churn is very high – a customer used to last four months in a Zynga game and now it’s just 2 months. That means they lose about 100m users in a month. Anything that produces more games is a good thing.
With a social storytelling platform, says Namaste’s Rodolfo Rosini, users can become part of the development team. The company is already Angel-backed and last week started fundraising via AngelList.
In fact, there is a lot of buzz out there, as a Google search of “storybricks” shows.
Namaste has also now bagged a big name in the world of venture and startups. Anil Hansjee, former head of M&A for Google Europe, has joined the company as advisor. The move makes sense as Hansjee was once involved in the funding of one of the most visionary game studios in the UK, Lionhead, and their flagship franchise Fable, headed by games guru Peter Molyneux (later acquired by Microsoft).
Hansjee, long time Head of Corporate Development at Google EMEA, is known to be raising a new kind of fund to back early stage startups in Europe, along the 500 Startups model.
We confirmed the move with Hansjee who told us, “Yes I have joined as an advisor and it’s public as long as they don’t think this is a substitute for me raising my fund…”