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Jason Citron back in the game, advising incentivisation platform Gimmie

Super investor Peter Relan also involved

Jason Citron back in the game, advising incentivisation platform Gimmie

Little has been known of Jason Citron's movements since the OpenFeint founder was replaced as company CEO by former GREE CFO Naoki Aoyagi in September 2011.

In amongst details of new real worlds incentivsation tool Gimmie, however, was an endorsement by Citron, with further investigation revealing the former OpenFeint man is serving as an advisor as the firm gets off the ground.

Winning rewards

The full extent of his involvement is unknown – indeed, the most recent chatter surrounding Citron suggested he's also starting up his own development studio.

As far as Gimmie is concerned, Citron expressed his confidence in the platform – which will look to reward players for carrying out actions in-game with real world rewards - in a statement to couple its beta launch.

"The biggest part of developing a good mobile game is creating the best user experience, and so often mobile ads get in the way of this," said Citron.

Gimmie's strength, he claimed, is not only its ability to offer a monetisation method outside of in-app ads, but one that doesn't draw the user out of the game like otner incentivistion tools.

"Gimmie is the first monetisation platform I've seen that doesn't interfere with the game, and it provides a whole new way to help developers increase engagement that is fun for everyone. It's a dramatically different approach from any other platform I've seen."

Gimmie more

Gimmie has also revealed that Peter Relan – founder of YouWeb and co-founder and investor in OpenFeint, Crowdstar and Spaceport – is talking to the company about the implementation of its monetisation solution.

"Gimmie has great potential to help all developers, especially those with freemium games," added Relan.

"By allowing developers to give out points and rewards to their users, Gimmie creates a whole new type of stickiness and opportunity to sell more in app purchases."

OpenFeint was acquired by Japanese social gaming giant GREE for $104 million back in April 2011, with Citron departing to "persue new opportunities" five months later.


With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.