Gaming's All in the Family

By Rhonda Wickham
5^th of April, 2007

Christian Guillemot knows a thing or two about games. It seems his whole family is into games. He is one of five brothers all of whom have made names for themselves in the gaming sector. His brother Yves is president and CEO of Ubisoft, Michel is president of GameLoft, Claude is involved with gaming accessories and Gerard started Longtail Studios.

For his part, Christian is managing director of London-based Advanced Mobile Applications (AMA), a mobile entertainment company that has been flying somewhat under the radar but is now breaking out to redefine gaming content. Rather than offering typical fare spun off popular board or console games, Christian's company is focusing on what he calls "lifestyle games." AMA's "games" typically focus on love and relationships, health, beauty or truth or dare type of interactions. All of his games are original and the creative is designed "to bring astonishment to customers and to let them have fun," he says.

Some of AMA's features include Stress Buster, Astro Love, AMA Love Test and IQ Booster. For instance, the AMA Love Test lets couples revisit the beginning of their relationship, test the relationship with a love challenge and reveal what has made the relationship work. IQ Booster works much the same way, by not only providing IQ questions, but also helping individuals train and improve IQs.

Guillemot says he spent nearly a year reading women's magazines and found a rich font of inspiration there. "Women are always looking for ways of becoming happier, improving themselves and digging deeper into subjects." He says those magazines dig much deeper than men's magazines, which are typically more superficial with focuses on cars, speed and sex.

Guillemot says his lifestyle games follow the women's enrichment model and are designed to help the players feel better in their own skins and help make for better human interactions.

Next up for AMA is Comic Creator, which is a bit of a departure from AMA's usual offerings. Comic Creator allows users to send a text message dressed up in a comic strip. Comic Creator allows users to turn their short messages into personalized comics, up to six frames, and forward them to their friends. They can choose from various characters and backgrounds, dictate the dialogue in the captions and even control the facial expressions.

AMA lifestyle games are currently live on three U.S. Tier 1 operator networks as well as numerous European and Asian networks.

www.wirelessweek.com

Verizon's comical launch

By Tim Green
10^th of May, 2007 


Verizon Wireless has launched AMA's Comic Creator, an app that allows customers to create their own personalised comics and send them to other consumers.

Verizon Wireless launches comic strips app

10^th of May, 2007


Verizon Wireless announced the launch of Comic Creator by AMA, a new application enabling subscribers to create their own comic strips via mobile handset. Developed by Advanced Mobile Applications' partner Longtail Studios, Comic Creator by AMA offers Verizon Get It Now customers a series of characters, settings and backgrounds from which to create comic stories in lieu of traditional text messaging--the application also enables direct access to friends' phone numbers, promising a seamless messaging experience. For $3.99 per month, subscribers may send up to 20 comics to handsets as well as an unlimited number of strips to e-mail recipients.

"Comic Creator is wild. It's hysterically funny," said Verizon Wireless associate director of messaging content programming David Oberholzer in a prepared statement. "You have to try it to understand it, but this hot new application capitalizes on our customers' desire to extend the communication capabilities of their phones and connect with friends and family in creative, alternate ways."

www.fiercemobilecontent.com