Game developer and publisher Rumble today began accepting closed beta registrations for KingsRoad, its showcase browser-based game.
Rumble is less than a year old, but interest is high because of its management team’s track record: CEO Greg Richardson previously was CEO of Bioware/Pandemic, vice president and general manager of EA Partners, in addition to a stint with Elevation Partners. He is joined by Mark Spenner, David O’Connor and John Yoo, who are veterans of game companies like Electronic Arts, BioWare, Activision and Zynga.
KingsRoad is a medieval fantasy role-playing game with lots of shining armor action. Players assume the role of heroic Sir Rowan, who must save King Alexander’s kingdom – and his only daughter, the strong-willed Princess Emma – from treacherous turncoats, bloodthirsty foes, monstrous creatures, and other forms of sinister evil.
Spenner, Rumble executive vice president and general manager of games, spoke with Digital Media Wire shortly before joining his panel at LA Games Conference. He said Rumble has a “play anywhere” strategy, so KingsRoad is being developed for Facebook, Google+, and other social and gaming network around the world.
“KingsRoad was also built with an architecture that will allow us to extend into tablets and mobile devices in the future,” Spenner said. “With the evolving digital lifestyle, we expect our players to demand the KingsRoad experience across multiple devices. From the beginning, we develop our games with the flexibility to listen and respond to our players.”
In part, that means the game’s initial client-side technology is Adobe Flash Player’s Stage3D APIs and Rumble’s proprietary graphics framework, which Spenner said guarantees KingsRoad will be playable on more than a billion PCs “with console-quality graphics without requiring our players to buy a dedicated console device or wait hours for a download.” Watch the trailer below to see for yourself how well Rumble succeeded.
Rumble also is making its publishing platform available for partnerships with other developers. “We provide services and APIs that allow developers to focus on making amazing game experiences: capital, marketing, operations and analytics,” Spenner said. “With the proliferation of social and gaming networks across multiple devices, we wanted to develop a platform that makes operating a high quality game service seamless for our partners. But, more importantly, Rumble is about the best possible experience for gamers – great, high-quality games from the best developers in the world delivered with a player-focused service mentality. And this is just the beginning.”
Related links:
Rumble Games – official site
KingsRoad – story and beta signup
