United Kingdom – Kwalee(TM) makes social games and Koala(TM) provides the entire infrastructure to allow players to find and play each other.
From the very beginning of Kwalee David Darling’s vision was that players want to play against each other rather than against some computer algorithm, so all Kwalee games are designed purely for player vs player gaming (PVP). This requires a mechanism for players to find each other and Kwalee had this in their first game, Gobang Social for the iPhone. They have since added many features to the point that they have now named the whole player network as Koala.
Outside consultants and subcontractors have contributed to the building of the network, which is now managed and developed full time by Kwalee’s Server Ninja, Steve Clark. Also each development team adds features to Koala as their games require that can then be rolled out to other Kwalee games. So a considerable amount of work has gone into developing Koala. Players who have played Gobang Social or Flip the Cats over time will have seen the constant development and improvement. More is to come with Farm Fighters, project Silver and project Teapot. Here are some of Koala’s major features:
* Totally platform independent. A player in the USA using a PC could play against someone in Italy using an Android tablet. Kwalee have cross platform games under development.
* Koala lives in the cloud and is extremely scaleable. It sits on Amazon servers to ensure maximum stability and speed.
* Huge amount of player data available for opponent selection and social interaction. These include sophisticated leaderboards, game-play achievements and stats which can be represented with badges or medals.
* Ability to run multiple in game currencies that can be part of the game mechanic and which can allow in game purchases to enhance the playing experience.
* Players can play very large numbers of simultaneous games. Also many players can play within one game, should Kwalee publish a game with this feature.
* Integration with Facebook, the Kwalee website, Email and Apple Game Center.
* In game chat allows the player to make new friends and share their gaming experience.
One feature of Koala is that Kwalee have gradually transferred more of each game from the user’s device to the server. This has the great advantage that changes to a game can now be made from Kwalee’s head office in Leamington and applied instantly to players all around the world. This flexibility allows games to be improved much more easily.
Server Ninja, Steve Clark is delighted with Koala: “This is the perfect job for me, enabling players all around the world to get more pleasure from their gaming is very satisfying. And the roadmap we are on will add further to people’s enjoyment of Kwalee games”.
David Darling, Kwalee CEO and co-founder of Codemasters is equally happy: “Playing games with other people is often more fun than playing on your own and Koala is a great way to hook up with your friends and make new ones. We plan to keep adding features to make it one of the best game players networks.”
Koala has been created by gamers for gamers and it is central to the social gaming experience that Kwalee offers.
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Kwalee is a company based in Leamington Spa that develop and publish social multiplayer games for iPhone and other mobile devices. Founded by David Darling CBE, co-founder of Codemasters, with decades of experience at the top level of the video game industry and contributions to many #1 games on numerous platforms in his CV. Kwalee is different. We seek to excite and entertain our customers with innovative new products that provide special experiences. Our ethos is based around a set of core values that put the customer first and which harness the creative skills of our staff to the maximum in order to do so. Kwalee is always very actively looking for those special people who want to join us in our exciting journey. Copyright (C) 2012 Kwalee. All Rights Reserved. Kwalee the Kwalee logo, Koala and the Koala logo are trademarks of Kwalee Ltd. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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