platogo
Tomcat seeks she-cat
Florian Landerl (27) and Jakob Sommerhuber (27) have known each other since they were ten years old. You can see that, for each of them always knows in advance what the other is about to say. In the old times they used to sit in their children’s rooms in Sierning (Upper Austria) designing games for their classmates. 15 years later they basically still do just that. The two of them have teamed up to form Nullstars and have exchanged children’s rooms for a small offce, where they are developing platogo, an Internet portal for online games that aims at enabling game developers to make money.
Would you say you are computer nerds? Landerl: Well, we have been playing computer games for almost 20 years; we’ve been at it for a long time. I started gaming with a Commodore 64 when I was six. We used to call it “the breadbox”, because that was what it looked like. I started with very simple games, “Last Ninja” for ex ample. Only recently we organized a retro gaming night and played all those old games once more. It’s amazing, you cannot com pare them to the games available nowadays. Sommerhuber: My first favorite game was “Alley Cat”; I used to play that on my father’s IBM 286. A tomcat had to win a shecat, while at the same time avoiding dangerous dogs that wanted to eat him. There were only four colors in the whole game: light blue, magenta, green and black.
Are you addicts? Sommerhuber: No, but we know some people who have completely lost themselves in computer games. They play all day and all night long, forgetting everything else. Mostly, however, people get hooked on hard core games. That’s not in our line of business. We create games to be played in between jobs, we call them casual games. And as for me: I have become more interested in the way these games are structured than in playing them. Landerl: We are no addicts, as can easily be deduced from the fact that we both have a girlfriend! But, no kid ding, you always have to see computer games in relation to the rest of your life. I like playing with friends, especially online. For me gaming is no addiction, no escape from reality. Sommerhuber: The games we are going to offer are more likely to appeal to casual gamers, that is people who now and again want to relax for a while and play a game or two. Studies support that such short spells of amusement on your computer even increase productivity. And that’s a good thing.
What kind of games will be available at platogo? Landerl: Flash games. We plan to offer 20 to 30 games when we go online in fall. In my career—I used to work for the Ars Electronica Center and later as a freelancer for various agencies—I have met a lot of flash developers. We have even established a user group of our own; we meet occasionally and talk about the problems we are working on. All of them will have the opportunity to present their games at our portal. In the long run we want to operate internationally.
Why should game developers use your portal? Sommerhuber: ‘Cause we offer great conditions not to be found anywhere else. Those who present their games at our portal will make money. The more people visit the site, the more every single developer will profit, for they will receive a proportionate share of the turnover that is generated by advertisements. Landerl: Downloads are free for the visitors to the site. We also want to encourage users to help advance our games. In a race game, we want them to have the opportunity to build their own racetracks if they want to. We hope that an interactive community will emerge around these flash games, a virtual meeting point with its own momentum.
And what is your contribution? Sommerhuber: I studied informatics and am responsible for programming the website, for its actual functioning. After graduating I worked with a financial services provider in London. Last year Florian and I decided to set up a business. We founded Nullstars in early 2008 and will start operating in fall. Landerl: I will take care of the creative aspects. After finishing school we both went our separate ways— temporarily. I graduated in media technology from the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg. Though we always stayed in contact the idea of starting a business together is still quite new. Sommerhuber: But not that new. When we were at school, we used to develop computer games for our classmates, store them on floppy disks, put a label on them and sell them for 20 and later on 50 schillings a piece. My sister organized distribution for a while. We often had delivery problems. In that case we brewed strong coffee in the evening, listened to Prodigy, ‘cause they kept us awake, and churned out disks.
Where do you plan to be in ten years’ time? Landerl: We want to be able to say that we have established a social community in the feld of fash games, one that func tions so well that everyone returns to platogo again and again, because there is no better place of its kind on the Internet.
Interview: Karin Pollack
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