It's a mark of how quickly the social gaming space is developing that Mike Ouye is already onto his third company.

Previously at Playdom and CrowdStar (both as a monetisation specialist), he's now CEO of Red Robot Labs, a Palo Alto-based outfit which hit the ground running 12 months ago.

Together with CTO John Harris (CrowdStar, EA) and CPO Pete Hawley (CrowdStar, EA, Sony), it released its debut - the location-based Life is Crime for Android in September - since gaining over a million users.

It was released for iOS in early January.

Deep pockets

"Check-ins are pretty boring, I don't think anyone has cracked it yet," Ouye explains of Red Robot's decision to focus specifically on location-based games.

"Our challenge is can we drop a game world onto the real world and take advantage of people's routine to create an engaging and longterm experience?"

Demonstrating the potential of the market, Red Robot has raised $10.5 million in two funding rounds.

Using some of that cash, it bought UK studio Supermono in December, adding six London-based staff to the 32 it currently has in the US. 

Investors include Playdom co-founder Rich Thompson, while two executives from its main VCs - Benchmark Capital's Mitch Lasky (previously JAMDAT's CEO), and Robert Coneybeer from Shasta Ventures - sit on its board. Ex-Sony development boss Phil Harrison, currently with London Venture Partners, recently joined as an advisor too.

Certainly, Red Robot has strong foundations.

Fighting for territory

Still, location-based gaming is a competitive market, with established rivals such as Grey Area, Booyah and PerBlue operating successfully in the area.

Aside from cash and strategic advice, Red Robot Labs hopes to gain an advantage through its R2 (or Red Robot) platform, which underpins Life is Crime and the two forthcoming games it has in development. (Indeed, Life is Crime's in-game currency is known as R2.)

One of these will come from Supermono - something referred to as second party release. The longterm plan, however, is to open up R2, giving selected partners access to the platform, with Red Robot acting a publisher for a portfolio of location-based games.

"We want to accelerate the entire space and let game makers do what they do best," Ouye says.

"We've learned a lot from Life is Crime. It's true cross-platform gaming, offering lots of player-versus-player conflict and competition with leaderboards and gang-based gameplay."

Indeed, in terms of the content Red Robot will be focused on, he's happy to combine the developer's experience in traditional gaming with the free-to-play business models.

"I think the core gaming audience has been widely under-served on mobile, and location-based experiences will provide the next generation of mobile gaming over the next couple of years," he argues.

Sounds like a sweet spot to be at.