Vegas World to become a platform for others to build social casino games

There aren’t enough social casino games in the world. Well, OK, there are. But FlowPlay will enable even more of them by taking its Vegas World social casino game and making it available as a platform for others to build their own custom social casino games quickly.

FlowPlay launched its Vegas World virtual world for social casino game fans, or those who play for virtual poker chips, not real money. The Seattle-based company launched its online casino world a year ago and got 300,000 monthly active users. So it decided to turn the game into a white-label platform for other businesses and developers to quickly build their own social-casino online game worlds.

Above: Vegas World has suites where players can gather.

Image Credit: FlowPlay

“We got so many inquiries that we decided to make this platform available as a service,” Derrick Morton, the chief executive of FlowPlay, told GamesBeat.

He said his company distinguished his entry in the 100-plus social-casino game market by making a massively multiplayer online world, where every game is social. Even the slots game has seven players playing together at a time. The game has a nightclub attached to the casino, suites where players can party together, and even a wedding chapel where they can get married.

“We took the approach of doing an MMO, not a single-player game,” he said.

FlowPlay will offer its customers deep analytics and metrics that can be used to tweak a game and boost its revenue. FlowPlay sells virtual coins that enable them to take more turns. Other games do that, too. But more than half of the company’s revenue comes from selling Lucky Charms, which affect your odds for winning. FlowPlay will provide a backend infrastructure and payment system for customers and make it easy for them to make custom social casino games that are reskinned with new artwork. It will work with games delivered online, on Facebook, on iOS, and on Android.

Morton isn’t announcing any customers yet. But he said he is in talks with major companies such as brands, movie studios, and game companies. FlowPlay isn’t focused on real-money gambling as the transition to legalized online gambling is happening gradually. Only three states currently allow it. Morton said it takes about six weeks to customize a game based on the FlowPlay platform.

The timing is late, considering how much competition is out there.

But Morton said, “There’s still a lot of people who want to get in the market.”

According to a report by market analyst SuperData, revenue from social casino games is expected to reach $4.4 billion worldwide by 2015, with 35.4 million monthly social casino players in the U.S. in 2012 alone. FlowPlay previously created the teen virtual world OurWorld, which has 30 million players to date. The company was founded in 2006 and is funded by Intel Capital and the creators of Skype.