PlayJam

PlayJam

Initially a side-project of visual media agency Static 2358 Ltd, PlayJam has grown from a few casual games to be played on interactive TV set-top boxes to the world's largest interactive casual games network, available across digital TV, mobile and online platforms.

Managing Director Europe

1999-2001

Joined Static 2358 Ltd in February 1999, a small London-based agency with immense talents in visual media design and digital TV programming, with the mission to increase its value by leveraging these talents to build IP and recurrent revenues generated by new business models.

  • Coordinated Static's key resources to produce its first "casual games", as well as other iTV demos, successfully pitched to new clients such as OnDigital (UK), TPS and CanalSat (France).
  • Analyzed the european iTV Market and, as a result, advocated the evolution of Static's expertise to cover all major middleware platforms.
  • Leveraged these new skills to negotiate exclusive distribution  for PlayJam, a new games channel, in the UK and in France, thanks to a new revenue-sharing business model.
  • Built the Games Team and the Marketing & Sales Team to design, produce "addictive casual games with a twist", including "branded" games able to attract advertisers (eg the Aquafresh game, 2001).
  • Created the French subsidiary which was the first to finalize agreements and to broadcast PlayJam on Canal Sat and TPS, growing to 15-staff.
  • Helped write the Business Plan during the fundraising phase, covering Market intelligence gathering and Business models from all revenue sources.

Static 2358 Ltd grew, in 2 1/2 years, from a 9-people agency to a market leading channel and was acquired by OpenTV in June 2001 for M$64.

Unfortunately, it's been very hard for me to dig out original material from the early PlayJam. This is how PlayJam looked like on Sky!

Over the years, PlayJam built hundreds of games across all iTV platforms, as well as a loyal following of casual gamers.

Actually, I'm not absolutely sure this game was on PlayJam or Sky Games. Either way, it generated many addicted gamers!