St. Louis-based Pixel Press May Change Gaming Space for Average Joes

From the Grateful Dead to Burger King, in recent years a broad variety of brands have leveraged the gaming world in an effort to reach consumers in new ways.

“Digital gaming offers deep engagement with the opportunity to move beyond counting clicks into more meaningful brand-consumer interaction,” said Adam Blumenthal of Curious Sense, which created both the Grateful Dead gaming experience as well as one for REO Speedwagon. “And very little beats it when it comes to engagement, loyalty and revenue.”

From the growing tech scene in St. Louis, now comes a new concept called Pixel Press which is currently fundraising through Kickstarter and lets anyone — from average Joes to brands — build old school, Nintendo-like games with simply a pencil and special graph paper.

Developed by St. Louisan Robin Rath, Pixel Press evolved from his passion for “platformer video games,” and he and his team, along with kids of all ages to test it, are working on the early stage prototype.

“Our society loves to create and share things like architecture, art, and music,” Rath said. “But combining these into games on a digital platform is hard. We’re trying to give a broad spectrum of audiences access to an interactive storytelling medium that was, until now, out of reach for most.”

As brands continually searching for new and entertaining means to engage consumers, Pixel Press will offer story creation processes to users on a basic level from day one, and ultimately more advanced features as the platform evolves.

“If you look at blogs, YouTube, or even Twitter, they all started out with early adopters using the platforms and finding out how they could be best leveraged, followed by the marketing industry coming in and learning how to monetize it,” Rath added. “We hope to follow a similar curve, even if it’s in a niche way, but go beyond that by offering brands like a Disney or Lego the ability to key in on what their consumers really like about them — the stories and the characters they offer.”

The difference with Pixel Press will be that instead of forcing a story arc on the user like the typical video game, the developer — be it consumer or brand — can create a unique story.

Curious Sense’s Blumenthal sees great upside in Pixel Press as a unique consumer product.

“Pixel Press clearly looks promising for consumers who want to dive into gaming and previously could not,” he said. 

Rath says he sees the greatest application for consumers creating games around brands, such as a child building a game level with characters from the popular Sponge Bob cartoon series. And if you think Pixel Press is an idea worth supporting with you hard earned dollars, visit its Kickstarter campaign or watch the demo video here.