Internet Mover & Shaker: Jaime Enrique Y. Gonzalez

In preparation for iBlog3: the 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit, I will do a series of features about some of the speakers who can be considered as one of the local Internet movers and shakers.

Let me start with Jaime Enrique Y. Gonzalez (Enrique) who is the founder, incorporator, and currently Chief Executive Officer of IPVG Corp.

Enrique can be considered as one of the Philippine Internet's successful entrepreneurs as he had a series of start-up internet ventures including match.ph (that is now itzamatch.com) which were acquired by Bigfoot Ventures (NY, USA), and Adobo Interactive which was acquired by Philippine-listed subsidiary of Malaysian conglomerate MBf (now IPVG). Enrique also sat on the board of Edsamail, formerly a leading I.S.P and e-mail provider and previous experience in investment banking having worked on cross border structured finance deals involving investments upwards of $10M USD.

The commercial launch of e-Games last March 31, 2006 challenged the online gaming industry with its free to play (free2play) model under MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) and casual games.

IPVG Corporation (PSE: IPVG) is a major sponsor of iBlog3: the 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit. I'm excited with this development as Enrique will be one of the speakers on this two-day gathering to talk about "Building Communities: One Blog at a Time. The E-Games Experience".

He will speak extensively on how user generated content, blogging and viral marketing techniques formed the foundations of growing their online gaming portal, via its gaming arm, IP E-Game Ventures, Inc. (IP E-Games).

“Word-of-mouth marketing has been taken to a whole new level through the use of blogs, user-generated content and IP communications. With over 3.5M E-Games members, we now manage one of the largest and most cohesive communities in the country. Our company supports the active use of blogs as a community platform.” says Enrique.

IPVG is publicly listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE:IPVG) and engaged in the information technology and communications space. IPVG owns three operating subsidiaries engaged in information technology and telecommunications, on-line gaming, and business process outsourcing.

Free2Play MMO Games by e-Games.com.ph

Here's a coverage made by Jason Cheng on this event.

MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) games usually requires credits from the players or gamers to have more game time to play longer, gain more in-game items and be stronger, especially for the case of MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). Steve Tsao, Chief Operations Officer of IPVG Corporation had the idea of a youth-friendly and a flexible pay-to-look-cool solution for the gamers, which is the Free2Play model.

“I don’t expect the youth nowadays to spend too much on gaming, that’s why we thought of this solution for this kind of market,” Steve cited. The Free2Play model allows the gamers to have a choice to play the game all the way for free, or buy some in-game items if they want to have a flashy avatar or useful items which makes the player’s character much stronger. The breakdown of the game cards ranges from 20 e-Points card, 50 e-Points card and 100 e-Points card. e-Games currently have 2 games and an online community portal. The games are RAN Online and O2Jam, while Dreamville is the community portal.

RAN Online features a full 3D Oriental campus style setting where the students will have to defend their school against dangerous and evil monsters. Aside from selecting their school (Phoenix, Mystic Peak, and Sacred Gate Campus), players can also choose to assume any of the four fighting classes: hand-to-hand combat (Brawlers), Sword (Swordsman), Archery (Archers), and Qigong (Shamans), each class using different martial art styles, attributes, weapons and armors. “RAN Online is similar to the real world for the students, wherein they also have their assignments, projects, and the only thing that is different is, they are fighting for their respective schools.” Steve added. RAN Online has a total of 20,000+ active players daily, and a total of 250,000 registered users.

Their 2^nd game, O2Jam is the 1^st and only online music based game in the Philippines. Earn credits, gain experience, free your mind, and jam with your friends, purchase items to customize your avatar to your style and liking. O2Jam is similar to the music arcade games like Guitar Freakz, Drummzle Mania, Dance Dance Revolution, and the only difference is, it is keyboard based, and is MMO. “The game has plenty of gaming modes, like the single player mode, wherein you can choose a song and practice solo, then the multiplayer mode, wherein you compete with up to 8 players, and the couple mode, wherein two players share in one keyboard.” O2Jam Product Manager, Paolo Obles added. O2Jam will soon have OPM songs to be sold in game for only 40 e-Points.

Finally, for those who love joining in community portals: Dreamville, the only avatar based online community portal allows users to create their own Hompy (The shortcut for Home Page in Dreamville), have customizable avatar which represents the users themselves, and also allows users to use those avatars to talk with other users in the mini-world of Dreamville. You can even have a virtual space or lot in Dreamville! What’s more interesting here is, if you are a fan of Cueshe or Solice, you can see them active here walking around the world of Dreamville. Not just reaching out to music fans, but all of the people who are into the modern habits: texting, chatting, blogging, and playing online games. Dreamville is an integration of existing internet technologies such as blogging, instant messaging, and website generation. It is also the ‘melting pot’ for gamers of all kinds, both hardcore and casual, as well as the everyday internet user.