There are thousands of casual game sites on the web. Now Danish startup Nonoba is making it easy to create even more. The company has launched its GameRise content management system to make it easy for anyone to run a professional-looking game web site.
GameRise allows casual game developers to manage a catalog of games and display them in up to 26 different languages. It also provides tools to create and manage chat rooms, forum discussions, and mail templates for user feedback.
Oliver Pedersen, chief executive of the Copenhagen-based company, said the product is a kind of Ning for gaming sites. That’s a reference to internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen’s Ning, which makes it easy for anyone to set up a social network. Developers can sign up a developer site and, upon receiving approval from Nonoba, can then edit the site as needed.
Nonoba provides free site hosting, software development kits, and a way to process electronic payments. About 30 Flash game developers have been testing the site since February. For examples of some sites so far, take a look here, here and here. Nonoba started making game tools a year ago, with a focus on Flash, payment and multiplayer technology for games. There are now more than 4,000 games that use the technology, and those games are played on more than 10,000 web sites.
The company was founded in 2008 with executvies from Skype, Joose and Lycos Europe. The company raised an undisclosed amount of money in June, 2008 from Mangrove Capital Partners. The company is expanding its presence in the U.S. market.