Level Up! shifts to social networking sites as 'embassies'

By Alex Villafania INQUIRER.net ACKNOWLEDGING the reality that many of the players of their games are also part of social networking sites, online game publisher Level Up! is opting to shift their attention toward using these social networking sites rather than relying on their own. In fact, the company is shedding the use of its own social networking site called CLIQ, launched in 2007, and is rolling out their own "embassies" in various social networking sites, including Facebook.com, Friendster.com, Multiply.com and even some gamers' blogs. Level Up! new media director Jose Carlo Medina explained the company's experience in building up their own social networking facility in the hopes of attracting more people, especially non-gamers who may eventually start playing their games or using some of their services. "CLIQ only covered 10 percent of the gaming population. It had low usage, lacked in-game feature integration, lacked platform expertise, and lacked cross-platform integration from other services. Players don't want to connect to another application just to check on their character profiles," Medina said. It took a while before Level Up! realized their market is already part of other social networking sites that are more robust and have stable integration to other social networking services. Instead of reinventing the wheel, the company decided to just harness the available networking sites to promote their games. Medina said it works as it saves them time and even widens their own network of potential customers or players, not just existing ones. Level Up!, however, will still retain its online gamers' forums where most of their players meet virtually and even share some content. Level Up! has even tapped the services of a blogger to work as their editor in chief. Kevin Codamon, also known Kiven at Codamon.com will be the company's "Lord of the Blogs" who will manage content development from Level Up! as well as managing their gamer communities.