Life After Myspace: Co-Founder Chris DeWolfe’s Latest Project
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Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage(NEW YORK) — There are high school reunions and family get-togethers, but do some of tech’s greatest duos ever talk about old times?
After selling Myspace to News Corporation for $580 million, co-founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Andserson were able to take their new windfall and put it toward new adventures.
“From time to time we do [keep in touch],” DeWolfe told ABC News. “We don’t cross paths as much as I think we would like. I haven’t seen him for a while because he is always somewhere else.”
Anderson has become a bit of a “nomad” — traveling the world and building an impressive portfolio of landscape photography.
For DeWolfe, who launched Myspace with Anderson in 2003 as a place for friends to connect and discover music, life after the social network has been spent building a new empire, the Social Gaming Network (SGN).
With surging success in mobile gaming, DeWolfe has branched out into a new partnership with Fox to produce a mobile companion game that will be released simultaneously alongside the upcoming film The Book of Life. The deal is one of the first with a major studio.
“The mobile gaming business has gotten so big that the top games can gross as much as a blockbuster movie,” DeWolfe said.
He pointed to “Kim Kardashian Hollywood,” which some have estimated could gross $200 million, as one example of a mobile game success story.
The game, called “Book of Life: Sugar Smash,” will offer in-app purchases, which will allow Fox to develop a new revenue stream that will also be shared with SGN, DeWolfe said.
The movie boasts a star-studded cast, including Channing Tatum, Christina Applegate and Zoe Saldana, along with the whimsical touch of producer Guillermo del Toro.
“It’s super beautiful and something you’d expect from Guillermo del Toro,” DeWolfe said. “That’s what attracted us to the project.”
He said the game was built using existing art and sound from the movie, allowing the developers to incorporate some of the film’s memorable lines into key moments in the game.
As DeWolfe sees it, the partnership is a win-win for both companies and a model for the future of mobile gaming.
“If I see a game that is associated with something familiar, and has great art, I’m more likely to download it,” he said.
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