FameLeague (Fantasy Market League) is a gamification technology platform which drives fantasy stock market web applications for sports, people and show business. Licensees can customize FameLeague to create their own fantasy market games. It was the first flagship product of Gametize (formerly Socialico), a Singapore-based startup founded by Keith Ng and Damon Widjaja. It was a simulated stock exchange and a prediction market web application with more than 100,000 registered users. FameLeague adds gaming mechanics to prediction speculations, a concept also known as gamification, though that term is not commonly used in 2009.
FameLeague's technology enable users to speculate and purchase shares of predictions, with each potential outcome of a prediction being a stock. With each accurate prediction stock invested, users stand to earn points. Likewise, users also earn points when the popularity of a prediction increases. The reverse is also true; users will lose points for wrong predictions, or when a dip in popularity occurs for the user's chosen prediction. FameLeague mimics the behaviour of actual stock markets based on the Zaraba method, but in a highly simplified form.
History
FameLeague was a simulated stock exchange and a prediction market web application integrated with popular social media website, Facebook. It was inaugurated as a beta release in April 2009, and went live on November 16, 2009. Prior to its revamp, it had more than 20,000 registered users. It was a top 50 finalist in the fbFund 2009 – a $10M seed fund offered to support developers and entrepreneurs working on the Facebook platform. It is the only Singaporean startup, and one of three others in Asia to receive this honour. It has been featured on print media such as The Straits Times and ChannelNewsAsia and blogs such as SG Entrepreneurs, E27 and Young Upstarts. (See notes.)
In the FameLeague, the player and the members of his/her social network were listed as stocks that could be purchased by others as shares. Shares on popular media such as music, movies and celebrities could also be traded. Like the actual stock exchange, the market price of a stock was determined by the number of shares traded for that stock. On top of that, prediction stock – or stock that specifies a possible outcome to an ongoing or future event – could also be traded, and their market prices depended on the expected outcome. The objective of the game was to earn as much Silver - the main currency in FameLeague - as possible, by making accurate forecasts while purchasing prediction stocks, and through ability to anticipate which stocks would become more popular on FameLeague when purchasing stock on friends, celebrities or media.
In May 2010, the management made a strategic decision to segment the broad-based game into individual products such as FameMark, a fantasy exchange of people, and PremierX, a fantasy exchange of English Premier League. FameLeague was then developed into a technology platform that drives these segmented products upon customization. The three former products (FameLeague, FameMark, PremierX) have been stalled in developments.
In February 2012, the company changed the focus to a cloud-based generic gamification platform, initially codenamed GameMaki and later renamed as Gametize (which replaced the name of the company, "Socialico"). Today, Gametize is a gamification company that uses game thinking and game psychology to help brands and organizations engage their target audience and motivate for target behaviours, such as in marketing, learning, and training. It engages and motivates behaviors with challenges such as quizzes, photo, QR code challenges. Users can earn rewards, compete, and socialize through a mobile/web experience that can be white-labeled and published in 5 minutes. The technology is used by major brands and enterprises such as Standard Chartered Bank, SingTel, DBS, SPH, Samsung, and Accenture. It has more than 100,000 user sign-ups, with more than 5 million challenge completions. Gametize was selected as Singapore's 20 hottest startups by Singapore Business Review magazine.