Inside the Games Interviews Paul Thind

The Game Reviews: Okay, could you tell us a little bit about your lineage and how you came to end up where you are now?

Paul Thind: Yeah, sure. Prior to Outspark, I was actually at a company called Sulake. Sulake is a game developer that has created Habbo, which is the largest virtual world for teenagers. Prior to that I was a CEO of a small kind of online record label and music publishing site, PPA Music, and I had various other executive titles at different companies, the longest one being my own -- I founded an independent record company and online site in ’93. So, that lasted quite a long time u ntil about 2003, so about ten years. That was more about building communities online for music.

TGR: Okay, very cool. Could you tell us a little bit about what your job is now and what you do with that?

PT: Sure, I just joined Outspark. Outspark is quite a great company with basically a company-- I am sorry; you asked what I do….

TGR: Yes.

PT: I am mainly involved with operations of the portal, the Outspark portal. This company has been around for two years now...almost two years. It has about three million members, so it’s pretty new, and I am pretty new to the company. But essentially, I came here to collaborate some of my experiences in developing, growing, and managing virtual worlds from my time at Habbo. With Outspark, I have just been really impressed with what I have seen and accomplished in such a short time. I recognize potential for exponential growth as we continue to kind of leverage the portal that we have through the community, social networking, and obviously game sourcing. So, primarily, we are a game publisher, but we have also allowed the community to kind of come to the site for the games...and stay for the community.

TGR: Okay, for some of our readers who aren’t so familiar with Outspark, could you tell us exactly what it is?

PT: Yeah, sure. Obviously, it is basically a portal that has several online games that can be played for free. So, essentially, we have a bunch of components of the business. One is the games themselves where people can come and sign up for free -- sign up one time and then basically play all of the games -- and then essentially, while getting through the games, they get to different levels with the community and can begin to purchase additional things if they want too to enhance their gaming experience. That is one part of the business.

TGR: Okay.

PT: Another part is kind of the thing that holds all of these games together, which is the community, a portal where people can come and sign up, create a profile, and talk with like-minded gamers or like-minded people who play these games.

Then there is also the micro transaction business model for the games, where we tailor premium digital content, so we sell all of these items on the front part of the site through a store for virtual goods. And we are also basically a marketer. We have part of the business where we collect a lot of information from the audience. So, we actually have a lot of business intelligence on our users. So that is another part of the business, but obviously as we grow, we can talk about that further, but the dominant part of the business is that we are a game publisher, and we have a number of online games.