SceneIt? Founder Hits Entrepreneurial Jackpot

TechFlash reports: Dave Long used to work in real estate, so his path into the high-tech business isn't a typical one. In the early 1990s, Long started tinkering with the idea of using actual clips from movies in the clues of a new entertainment-trivia game. At the time, Long struggled to work with VHS tapes to splice together movie clips, and the idea sat on the shelf for nearly a decade until the DVD emerged.

In 2001, Long then hit the entrepreneurial jackpot when he co-founded Screenlife—maker of the blockbuster DVD-trivia game SceneIt? The game became an overnight sensation, and before its sale to Paramount last year, the SceneIt? franchise had sold more than 15 million units.

Long left Screenlife after the sale. But the 47-year-old entrepreneur is now working on a new Seattle company called Exponential Entertainment, which attempts to bring entertainment-oriented puzzles and games to social-media platforms and mobile devices. Today, the company unveiled its latest offering—dubbed GameYourself—which allows players to upload their own images for a classic memory-style game. (The offering launched today on TodayShow.com, with images of popular anchors from the TV show).

We caught up with Long to chat about games, social media, and competition from his former company, which is bolstering its own online and mobile strategy.

Why did you create Exponential? "I got together with Bill Kuper, who I had worked with before at Screenlife. And Bill and I saw a large opportunity here in the online space where users could asctually interact with clips in a casual gaming format. So, we founded a social-gaming service here at Exponential Entertainment, located at HollywoodPlayer.com."

Where can people find your games? "You can see our games on Facebook, and we recently put our games up on MSN and launched a relationship with MSNBC. We have the ability to place our games on other high-traffic sites, and it is great value add for our partners because we are providing games that are providing great engagement for their users. Typically, our registered users are spending 19 minutes on our site, and we are getting 12 page clicks per visit."

How much of the concept at Exponential is similar to what you did at Screenlife? "Screenlife is all about trivia, which is great. We are really focusing on creating a very interactive online casual games service where users can interact with the clips themselves."

Screenlife has been moving deeper into the online realm with its own interactive entertainment puzzles, so it seems there's a lot of overlap? "I really don't see them as competitive with what they are doing. You take a look at their site and they are focused primarily on trivia. Our games are taking great casual game mechanics—which have been proven online…and taking movie clips and basically tweaking them in an unique way to appeal to the casual game audience."

What's the relationship between you and Screenlife? "We sold that company last year, and I broke off with Bill after that and we started Exponential Entertainment. We've spent a significant amount of time building relationships with the Hollywood studios, and we certainly see ways of utilizing those relationships with our new company."

How many games have you created? "We have five up on the site right now, single-player games, and, as I said, we have a number of multiplayer games that are currently in development that we will be rolling out on Facebook in the near future and a number of other games that are in various stages of development. We also have an iPhone app called Ask the Stars that is on the market right now and sells for 99 cents, and it allows users to ask your iPhone a 'yes or no' question, shake it up, and you get your answer with a movie clip."

How do you make money? "Advertising on the site right now, and we are going to be rolling out early next year VIP passes on the site that we will be charging for. And, then, we are also going to be rolling out digital goods."

How many players do you have? "We are up to about 15,000 monthly uniques at the moment, and we are expecting another 50 percent growth this month."

What type of people are playing the games? "Right now, we are tracking to your typical casual game demographic, which is female 25 to 50."

Who are your competitors? "We aren't seeing anybody doing exactly what we are doing at the moment. There are other great casual game companies out there that have an offering, and we definitely feel like we can be additive to what they are doing. Zynga is doing a great job on Facebook right now, and we are hoping to see that type of success with our offering."

Why does entertainment lend itself to gaming? "Our society loves Hollywood content, and they love the glitz of Hollywood, and certainly us being able to tap into the fantastic production values and cinematic values by utilizing their content in a game format makes a ton of sense."

How have you been able to get the rights to the content? "I think the studios look at it differently than they did when I first approached them back in 2001. With the popularity of the Internet, I think they don't hold their properties as close to the vest as they originally did say in the 1990s, so they are looking at credible partners to get together with and utilize their film content in an engaging way."

You've seen a lot of different technologies since you came up with the idea for the movie-trivia game, from VHS to DVD to online. What makes the online environment interesting to you? "I really like the idea of being platform agnostic, and online really allows us the ability to deliver our games where people already are with Facebook, MySpace, MSN Movies, MSNBC. Wherever people already are, we can give them the ability to play games right there. Obviously, with VHS tape it was fairly restrictive."

What is your favorite thing about being an entrepreneur? "It is exciting and new every day. It is what I call the roller-coaster ride, you definitely have the ups and downs. I basically look at it as playing a game and solving a puzzle. Every day you are in the game, and you are not sure what you are going to be hit with that day, so you have to be able to navigate it and put all the pieces together."