DS Effects' Dario Sciacca on selling its 200-strong HTML5 game catalog to operators

With HTML5 fever breaking out, it's easy to forget some people have been working in the field for well over a year already.

One such is DS Effects CEO Dario Sciacca, who we first interviewed about his HTML5 gaming portal back in July 2010.

Now - despite what others may claim - Sciacca reckons he's built up the largest collection of such games, doing deals with carriers to monetise them using operator billing and premium SMS.

Currently, he says these games are being distributed through 78 portals, as well as directly through 2 operators, with more launching in the coming months.

We caught up with him to find out about this hot market.

Pocket Gamer: As one of the first HTML5 app portals, what sort of user growth have you seen over the past 12 months?

Dario Sciacca: Growth is around 400 percent for our portal, but our main interest over the past 12 months has been to create strong partnerships with carriers and mobile companies.

Why do you think carriers are so interested in your portal?

There are plenty of reasons.

• We have a great catalog of 200 HTML5 games for iOS, Android and soon Window Phone (Mango).
• We offer the possibility to customise the games by inserting their brand.
• They can host the games on their servers and can easily create customised leaderboards.
• They can translate the descriptions within the games.
• We update our catalogue each week, adding new titles and updating old ones.

How do you deal with the issue that users have to be connected to access your portal, unlike with native apps?

I don't think it is a big issue because all users of smartphones have an internet connection and our games load in seconds. Anyway, our HTML5 games can also be used offline, although, in this case, you can't use advertising.

As the games are free on the browser, how do you monetise them?

Mainly we use advertising but many of our partners prefer to sell games through subscription using phone billing payment.

Are there particular parts of the world where it's more popular?

Our portal is very popular in USA, Canada and Australia, but more recently we've also received a lot of traffic from Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, UK, Spain, Germany, France, Netherlands and Italy.

Where are you sourcing your games and apps from?

Our internal team has been developing HTML5 games since 2007 but there are other external teams who also develop games for us.

Why are you interested in supporting tablets?

Our partners want high quality games for their customers. We have created games for iPad and Android tablets that nobody believes are developed in HTML5.

What's next for DS Effects?

We have a big project that will be launching in October ... it is something really big and unique.

Thanks to Dario for his time.

You can check out DS Effects via its website.