Kamcord Gets Backing From Top Investors to Record Mobile Game Play

Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and Tencent are just three of the investors backing a small San Francisco start-up called Kamcord, which is enabling gamers to record their play on mobile and share it to social networks.

Old_School_JVC_Camcorder

Wikipedia

The interest in the six-person company shows how significant recording game play has become over the past year as other sites like Machinima and TwitchTV have become phenomenal hits within the gamer community.

What’s different about Kamcord is that it is recording mobile games, whereas other companies in the space have so far been focused on console gaming and PC gaming.

Matt Zitzmann, CEO and co-founder of Kamcord, said the company is announcing a seed round today totaling $1.5 million. Other investors in the round include Merus Capital, Y Combinator, XG Ventures, Digital Garage, Plug and Play Tech Center, iVentureCapital, GVA Capital and Netprice.

Kamcord is distributing its software to game developers via a software development kit, which records what’s happening on the phone’s screen while someone plays a game. After a level or game is completed, the gamer has the opportunity to watch the video and then share it to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or email — which they very well might do if they achieve a new high score.

So far, the free SDK is live in more than 57 games on iOS, and is creating an average of seven videos per second. While that’s a lot of video, the number could be deceiving, since developers often automatically record game play regardless of whether a user ends up sharing or watching it. The video is stored on the phone until it is shared.

Zitzmann hopes to monetize the technology by helping developers drive downloads to their games. For example, last month he said that Kevin Rose, a partner at Google Ventures, tweeted a link to one of his videos. Afterward, 20 percent of the viewers clicked through to either the App Store or Google Play to see more info on the game (it’s unknown how many people downloaded it).

Zitzmann said Kamcord is playing off a number of trends that are currently hot, which is likely the reason for investor interest.

“We are riding a few waves: The rise of mobile gaming, plus app distribution changing and the popularity of recording and sharing,” he said.

Along with the potential for others to enter the space, Applifier, with offices in Finland and San Francisco, has developed a service called Everyplay that allows users to post their game play to social networks. The company recently raised $4 million, according to Inside Social Games.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus