At Demo 2012, one of the more interesting products launching was Jumala, a flash based platform that allows people to both play unique games and create them and share the result with others. The platform spans beginning game designers to more advanced developers and could actually become an interesting training tool for those who want to explore this career path, create games as learning tools, or create games with their kids or friends.

The concept underpinnings are interesting both because of how they scale and a revenue model that appears to embrace the current concepts surrounding an in-game content revenue model. Jumala comes from a small company called Blades Game world and they are located in Redmond Washington. Yes, that would be Microsoft’s neighborhood.

Creating Dreams

The difficulty in any area of creation is that the folks that have the best ideas and the folks who have the skills to turn these into reality not only are often different people they may not even know each other or how to meet. A tool like Jumala can take people with dreams and turn them into creators, but it can also serve as a dating service between people who are strong with ideas and people who are strong with skills. It is that kind of a match-up that created most successful companies. Apple, Microsoft, and Google were created almost by accident, because the right mix of people and ideas came together to create a company.

So, the big idea that surrounds Jumala isn’t how they pitch it as a flexible game design platform, but in its potential to bring together people who could eventually learn to create something else. It could evolve into a game company incubator.

Game Company Incubator

One of the amazing things we are seeing born through social media is the dynamic formation of groups around projects. Initially, it is political activity that is getting most of the coverage like the Occupy movement or how the current US President used social media to get elected. But this is evolving into methods for the formation of virtual companies and incubators for the next Google, Facebook, Microsoft or a company type we haven’t seen before.

One of the company types is clearly gaming and I think the incubators as they evolve will evolve around specialties. Jumala represents a potential, as yet unrealized, for a gaming company incubator, which not only collects the skills to create games but eventually loops in the skills to create companies

Jumala is clearly not where I envision this is going next, but it represents a foundation that could result in such a company. In the end I saw Jumala not for what it was, but what it could become. It could become the incubator for the next successful gaming company.