C4M to launch Playtomo free mobile games service

French mobile games firm C4M is about to launch Playtomo, a free ad-supported mobile games service that's tied into web social networks.

PocketGamer.biz got an exclusive sneak preview in the developer's Marseilles studio last week, and the service is shaping up as one of the most innovative approaches to ad-funded games yet.

"It's the first free mobile games channel integrated into Facebook," explains C4M founder Mathieu Castelli. "We also intend to support MySpace, Bebo and all the other ones."

In brief, Playtomo is a mobile application from which users can download a catalogue of casual games for free, and then compare scores with friends, as well as using other community features. C4M has raised €2.5 million from European VC firms Innovacom and CM-CIC Capital Privé to launch the service.

However, it's technically innovative in several ways. First, C4M is getting players to send the app to their phones from within Facebook, which allows the company to include their Facebook friends within Playtomo – a workaround that effectively does the same thing as the yet-to-launch Facebook Connect technology.

"From the beginning, we know who users are, so server-side we can tag the application with all of their personal information, including their friends," says Castelli.

Second, the games are all downloaded and stored within the Playtomo application itself, rather than sending players to WAP links to download them separately.

"The catalogue is embedded," says Castelli. "When you download a game, it takes ten to 20 seconds over 3G, which is around the same time you have to wait when loading a Flash game on the web."

Indeed, Flash web games are an obvious reference point for Playtomo's suite of games, which have characterful art and animation, although Castelli says they deliberately don't have the highest production values.

"Right now we have three games finished, and seven or eight in production," he says. "Our aim is to have 20 games by the end of the first year."

Many of the games are familiar versions of old classics, including ones based on Snake, Tetris, Puzzle Bobble and Bejeweled. However, C4M will also have more original titles, such as launch puzzler Wamwam.

"The innovation is on the service, not the games, but we want to do some original games too," says Castelli. "It's important to have those nuggets in there for players to find."

Community features
But as with social games on the Facebook website, the appeal of Playtomo is likely to be as much about its community features as the actual games. The application has a tab-based interface, not entirely dissimilar from Nokia's N-Gage client.

Besides tabs for the game catalogue and friends, there's also a news tab offering the latest activities of a player's friends – when they've got high scores, for example. Castelli happily admits C4M has been influenced by Facebook games from publishers like Playfish in this regard.

The connectivity is also within the games themselves, with a marker at the top of the screen showing the distance to the next-highest friend's score, and an alert when it's passed.

"You can use Playtomo offline too," says Castelli. "The synchronisation of your player activity is always asynchronous. But you can do things like click on a friend's name and send them a chat message, too."

Although C4M hopes for most players to discover Playtomo on Facebook, the app also supports SMS invitations for players to spread it to friends in their phone's address book. They'll then be invited to sign up for the Playtomo Facebook app in order to populate the mobile version with their friends.

The Java version is up and running, yet Playtomo will work on a number of mobile platforms, including Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and even the iPhone.

"That's still a work in progress," says Castelli, who says C4M is looking into how to adapt Playtomo for the App Store, which currently does not allow applications that download extra content.

Ad-funded gaming
So what about the business model, given that the games will be free? Advertising is the planned source: C4M has partnered with mobile advertising firm InnerActive for the launch of Playtomo, and has also been talking to others, such as Smaato.

"InnerActive isn't as well known yet as someone like Greystripe, but InnerActive's solution isn't a wrapper, which we don't think have much of a future," says Castelli. "They're not integrated well enough to have the appeal that advertisers want."

Playtomo's launch will be focused on France, partly with the aim of attracting focused ad campaigns in mind. However, the Facebook connection means that users from any country will be able to sign up.

Herein lies a couple of challenges for C4M. If its userbase is too geographically diverse too quickly, it may struggle to sell ad campaigns. Meanwhile, there's also a question of scale: if Playtomo catches fire on Facebook, C4M will have to manage its growth.

"We won't prevent users from playing, but we will focus our direct marketing on one country in the beginning," says Castelli. Interestingly, he suggests Playtomo could also have potential as a white-label application for any mobile operator who wants to launch their own free games offering.

"We've been working on this for a year now, and more or less everything is in place now," says Castelli. "We wanted to be the first to market with this idea, and I think we've succeeded."

Technology-wise, Playtomo is certainly a first, although other companies are investigating the idea of one mobile community hosting many games –for example, GameJane and Digital Chocolate's Party Island.

While these share some characteristics with Playtomo, they're also different, with GameJane having a focus on skill-gaming, and DChoc's community seemingly not targeting adverts.

The future is bright
"We need to make good now, because our launch window is limited," continues Castelli.

"In three years, web and mobile will converge for these types of games, so I expect to see the portals coming in strongly to mobile. In the long-term, we will probably switch to Flash, but for now we want to get Playtomo out there and build an audience."

C4M has other plans too, including opening up the Playtomo framework so other firms can create games for it, and even white-labelling it for existing mobile game publishers.

"Let's say you're Gameloft," he says, by way of illustration. "We could create a simple version of your games as a demo, and then encourage players to pay for the full versions. Mobile game publishers could be some of our biggest advertisers on Playtomo."

The service will launch in beta soon. We'll keep you updated, but it looks like being one of the more innovative takes on ad-supported mobile gaming – not to mention connected gaming – yet seen.