Playboy’s official social game app revealed on Facebook

30 Nov 2010

Hugh Hefner is on Facebook. The long-anticipated Playboy Manager internet app developed by Dublin-based Jolt Online has morphed into a social media game that has just gone live on Facebook, called Playboy Party.

Dylan Collins, the young entrepreneur who sold DemonWare to the world’s biggest computer game firm, Activision, for $15m, last year received international acclaim for striking a deal with Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire to bring out an online game called Playboy Manager that allows players to manage the careers of the magazine’s hottest models.

Collins’ company, Jolt, which is part-owned by global retail games empire Gamestop, has been working away on the game, which was originally due to appear as a standalone title online.

However, Collins explained the project morphed into a social gaming app as Playboy Party that would instead appear on Facebook, opening it up to a global audience of 500 million people.

Playing the social game

Collins told Siliconrepublic: “It’s a social game on Facebook and you are an up-and-coming playboy and in charge of a party in your mansion and you’ve to try to make it big as possible.”

In playing the game, the player has to invite celebrities and through sheer guile unlock access to models.

“And the more successful you are you get access to exclusive Playboy content – you get to see girls!”

I asked Collins if the game comes with an over-18 cert. He said the game is targeted at a mixed audience and because it doesn’t include full nudity it doesn’t have to have an over-18 clause.

“It is the official Playboy title on Facebook and as such it is already garnering attention and given the brand, expect reaction to range from one extreme to the other

“We think it is going to very popular with guys of every age.”

Collins said the team behind the project felt it would do very well on Facebook in the same tradition as Zynga’s FarmVille.

“This is what it morphed into. We changed the name to Playboy Party to make it appeal to a wider audience and we changed the style of the game to make it more appealing, it has a very graphical style.

“Everyone is pleased with how it turned out,” said Collins.

“It’s not going to stimulate the economy because it is only going to distract people; maybe we shouldn’t be telling the IMF about it.”

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com