Comments on: PlayCafe Shuts Down, Returns Funding to Investors

By: Kempion

Kempion — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:43:22 +0000

How in the hell did PlayCafe spend $630,000? They only had 250 shows. That's a whopping $2,520 per show! Of course, there were two shows per night, so the actual daily cost was $5,040. Mark and Dev cannot explain how their overhead was so high for an internet broadcast which used a free service provider. With only a few hard assets and a crew of interns running the show, there is no way PlayCafe cost more than $5,000 per day. My suspicion is Mark and Dev pocketed most of the $630,000.

The #1 reason PlayCafe failed: Poor Management. In fact, Mark and Dev were completely hands-off. Until a business can successfully turn a profit in varied economic climates, there are no vacation days for teh operators. Mark and Dev were on vacation from Day 1.

2: A TON of missing cash. As stated previously, there is too much money left unaccounted for by the operators.

Finally, #3, content. Yes, Mark, PlayCafe was content-driven but you missed the point. Content has to update and improve over time or you will lose your audience. Any game developer who reads your excuses for failure - in essences, puting the blame all on content - would laugh at you. I did.

Content is the life-blood of entertainment. Simply finding a few pieces of content the players enjoy and repeating them ad infinitum is simply asking players to leave - if not pure laziness.

PlayCafe did not have a business model. The investors were given something which resembled a business model but I guarantee it was all conjecture and wishful thinking.

Content-generation, in ANY form or format, would have been PlayCafe's business model if it were properly run - which it wasn't.

Lastly, does anyone have Daniella's phone number? I have a poll I'd like her to pick. :) OH! Bad Kemp.

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:47:51 +0000

Not surprised. My family (and extended families) used to play most every weekday evening. We all looked forward to it.

But, after after a short while, they made clear their political preferences by insulting the opposing interests. Listening and watching their more-than-obvious facial expressions to their liberal (read: anti-conservative) stand eventually became too much. I'm sure they turned off MANY other participants as well.

Not smart business to "pick a political side" with your viewers unless 1) you are confident that they share the same political views as you and/or 2) don't need those that may become offended.

I emailed Mark, but, I guess he disagreed. I'll never know because he never responded.

Were they really stupid enough to think all of their "customers" thought as they did?? Apparently so.

Did they learn a lesson? Doubtful - I'm sure they still don't get why such a great concept failed.

By: MrTanaka

MrTanaka — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:07:57 +0000

Playcafe was a great idea, but did basicly 0 to promote. I'd often ask what they were doing to promote n they'd act snotty about it, with a product will sell itself attitude basicly. Theres no reasonable way anyone could ever explain to me how that could have possibly spent $600k of investor money. The ppl on cam were cool, but quite frankly not even remotely pretty or proffesional enough, that coupled with video quality a $800 dollar trip to best buy would have eclipsed, made the whole thing look public accessy. The set or lack there of looked pathetic, it was basicly 2 steel racks from ikea, and a pro wrestling table match table, with some sheets thrown over em n a crummy 600 dollar walmart lcd tv on it. Nothing they did with their sound mixing etc, required little more then muting/unmuting the stereo mix button on any pc, yet they had a giant soundboard that constantly confused em. Everytime they'd get the system working, thatd last 2 weeks then they mess with it and itd fail. There were some weeks they just had to plain call it a night no game. Now all of this would have been a growing pain etc, had it been what it looked like, which quite frankly is something that coulda ran on any gaming pc n a semi decent server. But knowing now that this thing spent $600/$900k roughly in investor money is sickening. And quite frankly baffling to me that the investors aren't suing , if for nothing else just to figure out where they coulda possibly spent 600k in the discovery phase. Especially when the default excuse from the ppl running it whenever there was a issue was, well we aren't made of money, when apparently they had money to burn honestly.

By: Shakir Razak

Shakir Razak — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:53:41 +0000

Hi,

Can only wish the best of luck to all concerned for future employment.

However, I’m not sure I can agree that the concept of Playcafe has no potential, rather it was probably simply a lack of distribution and awareness; the stats of 87/40 kind of prove the massive opportunity.

On normal broadcast television, multiple operators have shown potential from the Biggest of Fremantle to Cellcast, they have all shown the viability of alternative interactive revenue.

Here’s some links:

http://www.cellcast.in/oas.htm http://www.cellcast.tv/html/tv/interactive_tv.asp http://www.sit-up.tv/ http://www.quizmania.tv/

People are willing to take part due to the social and engagement/entertainment basis, as they do with online casual games and poker, rather than explicit transactions or expectations of financial returns.

Kind regards,

Shakir Razak

By: Ned

Ned — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:06:02 +0000

Sad news, and best wishes to all employed there. The upside is that they are already trying to articulate and share the lessons they learned. At a media event I attended recently, one of the artists in the audience asked "Has the barrier to entry become TOO low?" Not sure of the answer, but the challenge of creating compelling content that will pay the bills rather than simply entertain a select group seems to be more and more on everyone's mind. Hopefully the meritocracy that has such wonderful shows to emerge in the early years of NewteeVee will not be overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of viewing choices.