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Web-based Fantasy Real Estate™ Gaming
Gem of a Site. Motivated Owner. All New Construction.
Challenge
An experienced entrepreneur developed a novel gaming concept. His web application was complex and required a rich interface. He needed to develop, even discover, games over time. He needed a highly proficient software team but had no interest in building it from scratch.
Background
Realius envisioned offering the real estate market web-based games to play with real prices, real houses, and real data to achieve real business objectives. When the time came to build real software they went searching for a skilled Agile software development vendor and found us.
Project Overview
Realius came to AO for the works, taking its online real estate gaming business from an initial implementation to a humming, revenue-generating, production system.
Industries
- Online Real Estate
- Online Gaming
Project Type
Web Applications & Games
Project Size
- 4 Developer Years
- 4 Atoms
Services
- Software Development
- Interaction Design
- System Maintenance
- Product Life-cycle Management
Technical Nitty Gritty
- Ruby on Rails
- Ajax
- jQuery & Prototype
- Memcached
- PresentationObject
Playing the Market
Real estate is, of course, a major portion of the U.S. (and world) economy. Despite all the attention and fascination, the real estate market is often a murky place of inconsistent valuations, prices, and information sources. The advent of the Internet has added some clarity; still, opportunities for improving the real estate information market abound.
Enter Fantasy Real Estate™. Inspired by fantasy sports, Realius conceived of games played with real data about real homes. Beyond only entertainment, they saw opportunity to provide value to real estate websites, to educate buyers, and even to influence market prices (wisdom of crowds). They chose a lightweight business model outsourcing software product development to experts. Enter Atomic Object.
Building the House While Drafting the Blueprint
Realius was inventing games for which there were no existing patterns. As such, they could provide only a minimum of definition. Game development was repeated discovery and invention. Our Agile process of iterations, priority management, small releases, and regular feedback guided the building process without a master blueprint.
Realius planned for wide availability of their games requiring high throughput in serving and processing the games’ rich interfaces and the game widgets that were to be embedded in other sites. Test-Driven Development and other practices produced well-designed code and a streamlined system requiring little upfront planning for scalability and a minimum of bottleneck resolution before launch.
Results
- 300,000+ Games served each day
- 13,000+ Registered users
- 90 Page views per second upon launch
- Paying clients embedding game widgets in sites
- Available in U.S., Australia, and New Zealand
- U.S. national media coverage
Customer Experience
“I am very pleased with the AO relationship. I sleep soundly when I dream about my AO development team.”
- Chuck Teller, Co-Founder & CEO
Gallery
- ”How Much for This Old House?” [Newsweek]
- ”American House Prices: Fantasty or Phobia?” [The Economist]
- ”Fantasy Real Estate Game Lets You Play Realtor” [FOX Business]
