On Tuesday, April 15th Tech in Motion: NYC held their first Gaming Demos and Drinks event among the communal tables of Midtown Manhattan’s Reichenbach Hall. The event brought together over 200 attendees and five different gaming and entertainment startups, including Arkadium, Winafy, Total Cinema 360, Muse Games and Tinybop, for an evening of refreshments, networking and tech chatter.
From founders and CTOs to IT professionals and tech enthusiasts, the attendees flowed in expectantly, were greeted by the Tech in Motion staff and checked-in for the event. Guests then had the opportunity to check out the five startups demoing throughout the evening, grab an authentic German beer, and mingle with fellow attendees.
Here is a little bit more about the companies that came out to demo their products:
If you’ve played a game online in the last 10 years, it was probably one of Arkadium’s. Founded in 2001, Arkadium has become the trusted gaming partner of the largest brands in the world and served billions of game plays to millions of users around the globe. Microsoft, CNN, AOL and hundreds of partners worldwide have made Arkadium's games, their games – increasing their user satisfaction, time spent and bottom line as a result. Arkadium's impressive portfolio of over 300 games has something for everyone. From crossword to motor-cross, mahjongg to mini-golf, Arkadium knows games.
Winafy is the Mint.com for online sports bettors and real-money fantasy players. The Winafy platform provides players with a holistic view into their activity and real-time performance analytics across sites. Winafy is the first platform to 'sync' with a player's online accounts, providing fully automated tracking.
Based in New York City, Winafy provides the next-generation bet tracking platform, and is aiming to bring real-time data, tools and technology to the aid of sports gaming market participants world-wide.
Total Cinema 360 was founded in 2013 by filmmakers Craig Gilbert and Adrian Vasquez de Velasco in order to create narrative live-action experiences for virtual reality headsets. After establishing its 360° video and audio production services, the company added Oculus engineer and technology strategist Alex Grau and launched its desktop player software in September 2013. The update, released in April, represents the most comprehensive multimedia suite for experiencing live-action content on VR headsets on the market to date.
Click to read more here about The Case for Virtual Reality Cinema, since Tech in Motion OC was fortunate enough to interview Craig and Adrian in April before the NYC event.
Muse Games is an independent game development studio in New York City powered by the Unity engine. They're a passionate bunch of game makers who enjoy playing, taking creative risks and thinking about ways to push games forward. Muse's goal is to offer great service to their players, just like the best hotels and restaurants. Their latest game Guns of Icarus Online is an award winning airship combat game set in a post-apoclyptic Steampunk world on Steam.
Tinybop is a Brooklyn-based studio of designers, engineers and artists building educational iOS apps for kids. Their first app, The Human Body, has had 4.9 million downloads and reached the #1 spot on the App Store's education charts in 146 countries. It was also chosen as one of Apple's best of 2013. Their second app is scheduled to be released in May.
The evening was a big success and enjoyable for everyone involved! Big thanks to our continued sponsors who helped make this event a success: Workbridge Associates, Jobspring Partners and Microsoft.