Hamburg, London, Palo Alto – Dossergame (www.dossergame.com)
Pennergame is the German Internet phenomenon: Started by two then 19-year-old high school students, it became Germany’s third fastest growing website of 2008 according to Comscore; It had 1,793 million unique visitors in January 2009. And both Google and Alexa rank it as a Top 100 site in Germany, worldwide Pennergame is a Top 1,500 site despite having been only available in German.
While the German version features Hamburg as background for the story, Dossergame takes place in London. Co-founder Marius Follert explains: “London is a truly global city. All English-speaking online gamers can feel at home there. Later we might add local versions like New York City or Vancouver.”
Dossergame is a rags to riches story: You start out as a tramp living in London. It is your goal to become a castle owner. For that you have to learn to beg, to collect junk, and to form gangs with other players. Co-founder Niels Wildung adds: “In Germany real life school classes have formed gangs online and battle each other. One can say that Dossergame combines gaming with community elements.”
Dossergame is the first step of Pennergame’s international roll-out. French, Spanish, Polish, and Russian versions of the game will be launched soon. “World of Warcraft has proven that gaming is a global market. We believe that our game has a cross-border appeal. For that reason we plan an aggressive expansion in the coming months. Right now we have 1.5 billion page impressions per month, by year’s end we want to cross the ten billion mark,” comments Follert.
