BrightLocker CEO Monthly Update – July 2016

BrightLocker officially launched in April 2016 after one and a half years in stealth mode and 6 months of beta testing. Our vision of establishing the first crowd publishing platform for games is becoming a reality. All I can say is “wow.” What a first few months it’s been!

And while we have some pretty talented people behind the scenes—designers, developers, videographers, artists—BrightLocker wouldn’t be possible without you, our fans. Your interest and support throughout the process have been nothing less than astounding. I thank you for your help in getting us up and rolling and for your continued participation to date.    

Every month I will be providing updates for gamers, fans, industry experts, and other interested followers. I’ll brief you on the enhancements to our platform, and share interesting facts, insights, and statistics about BrightLocker member participation. Most importantly, we’ll highlight some of the awesome creativity that you, our community, are sharing through the platform. With that, let’s review.

The Story So Far

From beta testing to live: A few months back we conducted closed beta testing with a small number of you, and since April have been live for everyone to join and participate. Everything you see on the site is fully functional, but there is so much more we are eager to reveal. We will do so in coming months as we open up new sections, roll out improvements and polish, and announce new and exciting partnerships.  We’ve learned so much from the user input we’ve received, and made further developments as a result.

Game idea voting: We’ve completed our first complete set of six Semi Final voting rounds, and hoped you enjoyed taking part as an idea creator, voter or lurker J. The entries have been amazing, which underscores the amount of talent out there just waiting for the right opportunity to come forward. To name a few, we’ve seen “Donald Trump’s Hair Escape,” a highly topical theme; “Gunslinger,” which looks at old concepts in new ways; and “Tairsol,” a highly creative but ambitious open-ended game.

Statistics: In our first sixty days’ of being live, almost 600,000 votes have been cast by thousands of users on over 200 game ideas submitted by our community. Users have unlocked over 22,000 achievements to earn over 1,000,000 XP! XP and achievements can reward users with digital currency they can further use on the platform to help support and fund new game ideas.  

We have big plans to expand reward for users who help bring their friends to the platform, which we will roll out in coming weeks. Use your affiliate link to bring in friends and earn platform votes both for you and them!

What’s Next?

Finals: The Grand Final voting round is fast approaching. The round starts on July 20^th and will close on August 7^th 2016. We hope you log in daily during this time and cast lots of votes. You are helping us make the exciting and important decision of which community submitted game idea we make as our first crowdsourced game. We have many fun activities planned during that time as well, including the reveal of a few new features and new opportunities to earn more unique rewards and achievements. We hope you invite your friends too. We plan to reward you with lots of votes, gold, and XP for doing so!  

Be on the lookout for the “GreenZone Live” stream as the clock ticks down toward the end of the voting period.   It’ll be a fun opportunity to hear the live play by play and analysis of the contenders from our BrightLocker producers and guests, as the Grand Final reaches its exciting conclusion.

I look forward to seeing you in the finals!

Ruben Cortez

BrightLocker CEO and Cofounder