It is official: We are innovative. We managed to completely persuade the panel of experts at the “Digital Media NRW” innovation competition, part of the “Digitales Medienland NRW” initiative, with the project presentation of an HTML5-based browser game framework and a game built on it: Our project will be sponsored for one year under the ERDF co-financed operational program for North Rhine-Westphalia in the Ziel 2 “Regional Competitiveness and Employment” objective of the EU.
The competition is a part of the “Digitales Medienland NRW” initiative, with which the state government, in co-operation with the Film and Media Foundation NRW, wishes to strengthen establishment and innovation within the digital economy sustainably. Our project was selected from nine projects in different digital economy fields by the independent expert jury panel; among them were high-ranking representatives from industry giants such as Telekom Deutschland, RTL Interactive, Ubisoft/Blue Byte and E-Plus – and we are incredibly proud of it.
VUCX Garage: Creative Cells for Digital Innovations
One of the objectives of the program is to support the co-operation between science and economy, or rather the small businesses among themselves. It is precisely this concept and trend that inspires and motivates us: working together with others meaningfully and innovatively with a goal to develop and implement valuable ideas.
The sponsored project is to be viewed in conjunction with a Corporate Incubation project by VUCX Garage that is currently planned. Corporate Incubation – the creation of an environment in which innovation is expressly desired and supported – plays an enormous role in our corporate culture. VUCX Garage was initially conceptualised as an internal ideas incubator. In the future, external potential co-operation partners that have an idea requiring VUCX support shall also be addressed by it.
This could result in a worthwhile synergy with other businesses, as well as “Service for Revenue”-based business models. Our goal is to support start-ups in particular, but also interesting business ideas with our services in corporate branding. “Because often the importance of building up a brand sustainably gets forgotten after a successful start”, VUCX CEO Ercin Filizli said.
High Score achieved
We impressed the top-class jury with our elevator pitch in particular. Here we were required to present our project idea and advantages concisely in a matter of minutes without any technical help. With great success!
Our idea involves the development of an HTML5-based browser game framework that appears as a type of toolbox for the game realisation. This allows for significantly easier construction of turn-based and real-time games for a player to use on a comprehensive and theoretically endless range of platforms and terminals. In other words: the games can also function on tablets and smartphones in iOS and Android without major customisation.
The browser game framework will have large advantages especially for smaller game development teams. Gone is the need for complicated and time-consuming programming. Our goal: to implement as much as possible with the least amount of coding work, so that game ideas can be realised more easily, more quickly and more affordably.
We consider this idea to be absolutely cutting-edge, particularly in the realm of gamification trends, where elements of play will be integrated increasingly into marketing campaigns or also in the e-learning field. This way, even smaller businesses can develop their own games affordably and apply them to a variety of purposes.
We started the project in July 2013. The first milestone has already been achieved. In parallel with the development of the game frameworks, we have also created a chess game that we will be sending for beta testing in January 2014. It is great that we’re right on schedule. The next milestone: the realisation of a framework-based game.
We can already reveal this much: it’s a turn-based multiplayer strategy game.