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Virgin is back in the gaming biz, and it's for something a lot more ambitious than a sequel to Cool Spot. They recently did an equity-share deal with World Gaming, which will now be folded and skinned under the Virgin brand...
Wait, what's World Gaming, you ask? We wouldn't be surprised if you haven't heard of these guys before. In fact, that's one of the main reasons why they're now Virgin Gaming -- that virtuous name opens up a lot more doors for them and provides strong brand recognition that gamers are more likely to trust. And that trust is vital, because they're asking their customers to plunk their cash down for no physical product in return.
In short, Virgin Gaming (like World Gaming before it) lets you challenge other members to multiplayer games on the Xbox 360 or PS3 for cash (according to the owners, over $800,000 has exchanged hands so far). It's head-to-head gaming with something more tangible than pride at stake.
While Virgin oversees and regulates everything (for a small commission of the winnings, of course), an online-based cash bet on a match of Halo 3 still seems...iffy. What about the cheaters? The disconnects? The lag? Vice President of Gaming Operations and Cofounder Zachary Zeldin, President and Founder Billy Levy, and public relations representative Matt Schlosberg answer all our questions and concerns....
Virgins Zachary Zeldin (left) and Billy Levy.
Bitmob: With your additional resources, will you actually change anything about the World Gaming experience?
Zachary Zeldin: Oh, everything's changed. From registration to playing a game, it has all been retooled, reskinned, and rebranded as Virgin, and we’ve made that experience at least tenfold better.
Bitmob: Can you be more specific?
ZZ: Sure. We’re going to be launching with points, which are based upon users engaging the site, so it’s not you winning 15 games in a row, 20 games in a row -- it’s interacting with the service. So play five games, enter five tournaments, add a friend...
Later on in the year we’ll be launching the Virgin Marketplace in which you’ll be able to come and use those points for culturally relevant items: custom Nikes, branded Xboxes, skinned PlayStations.... And then because we are a Virgin company, we have the ability to do really cool things on Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic...like send a gamer to Necker Island -- you name it.
If I’m playing an F-1 game and I’m in this tournament, [maybe] the winning team gets to go to the next F-1 Grand Prix and sit pit row with Virgin Racing. We can do things like that -- prizes that are unprecedented in gaming. Matt had some cool ideas, like we can do mile-high gaming tournaments on Virgin Atlantic or Virgin America.
Bitmob: How does your matchmaking work?
ZZ: What we developed as World Gaming were two major pillars of our community: skill rating and reputation. Skill rating is based off your true skill. It’s going to take into consideration everybody that I've played, all their skill levels, and it’s going to give me a perfect snapshot of where I stand within the Virgin Gaming community.
We also have reputation, modeled after eBay. After Matt and I play a game, I get a pop-up notification on the site asking to leave feedback for Matt. Not how good he is as a gamer, because skill level kind of takes care of that, but did Matt show up an hour late, did he throw Hail Marys every single play, would you recommend him to the rest of the community...and all of that is viewable on Matt’s profile page.
And we’ve seen in our community, gamers do not get games if their rep is below two stars. We do it on a three-star basis.
Bitmob: How do you handle things like in Halo 2 in the past, where people were able to do a router glitch to cause artificial lag for the other players? It’s been really hard to police, because the other player can’t really say for sure if it’s Internet lag or his own connection.
ZZ: When Billy and I came up with this idea, there were other sites out there that were trying to do this, but it was all self-reporting. How do they prove who won? They can’t. So Billy and I always knew we needed a technical solution for this.
That’s why we raised the money and built what we call the game validator. Essentially it's a parsing mechanism. During registration, we capture both players' Gamertags, and we store them in our backend. So when Matt sets up a game of Halo, he sets it up on Slayer, 20 kills, 15-minute time limit...I accept that match, both funds are taken out of the account and held in escrow. We then swivel our chairs, or I throw my laptop off my lap, and I’m on my console gaming.
The second that game’s over, we get that information, and as long as it fits with the criteria that was put inside the challenge card on Virgin Gaming, and it matches how they played, we automatically update the winner and release the funds to his account.
So if it's first to 50 kills, and somebody pulls the plug, due to the level of detail in the information that we get, we see that team one had 48 kills, team two had nine kills, we have built-in processes and procedures in our customer service manual that say this designates an intentional disconnect -- award the win to this player.
But if it’s something along the lines of what you’re talking about, where it’s almost 100% the developer’s fault that this even made it into the game, or it was some stupid glitch, if you have an issue, we tell you in our terms and conditions, quit the game immediately, and contact our customer service.
Customer service will do their internal review. We keep notes on every player: Did they try this before, are they brand new, do they have a perfect standing within the community...whatever it is. That way, we have a history of this player: "Oh, this player has disputed 45 matches in the past month," you know something’s a little off.
We can make very educated decisions based upon case-by-case scenarios.
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