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Thursday, July 15, 2010
Scvngr powers Patriots game to recover Wilfork's 'stolen' ring
By Rodney H. Brown
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Mobile gaming platform company Scvngr Inc. has landed a new customer in the New England Patriots, who are using the company’s technology to launch a scavenger hunt game to help find the 2004 Super Bowl ring ‘stolen’ from Vince Wilfork – stolen, that is, for the sake of the game.
The game asks players to engage in location-based challenges at hundreds of businesses and locations throughout New England, in an effort to win special Patriots badges and prizes that will be given away on a daily and weekly basis. The grand prize is a private lunch with a Patriots player, although Boston-based Scvngr did not specifically state it would be defensive lineman Wilfork in its release.
The game, called “Help Vince,” is playable through the downloadable Scvngr app that runs on either the iPhone or Android platform. One of the challenges – and a favorite of Scvngr founder and “chief ninja” Seth Priebatsch – takes place at Faneuil Hall, where you have to get three or four friends to line up in a defensive line stance and take a picture that you submit to the game.
For Priebatsch, working with the Patriots on the game is a big win. “The upside here is huge,” he said. “This is probably the biggest brand name deal that we’ve ever launched.” Getting a payday from the Patriots as a licensee of Scvngr’s technology is the least of the benefits the company will get, Priebtasch said.
“This is something where the Patriots are paying Scvngr to leverage the Scvngr platform, but the exciting part is getting all of New England totally jazzed about playing Scvngr,” he said. “Our hope is that we are going to be able take the success of this campaign and look to replicate in other cities and other markets and other verticals.”
Scvngr has grown to about 65 employees now, according to Priebatsch, driven by the strong demand it saw for the third generation version of its game, which it launched in May, when it made the consumer version of the challenge development platform free to use. That growth has moved it a bit away from what had previously been imminent profitability, Priebatsch said, but he doesn’t see any pressing need to go after any more venture capital beyond the roughly $4 million it has taken so far from investors Google Ventures and Highland Capital.
“It’s not something we are thinking about for the moment, but the number of inbound leads we get on a daily basis is somewhere between extremely flattering and extremely frightening,” he said.
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