Deal or No Deal Live is a multiplayer game of the hit TV show. Up to 18 players play against the Banker and each other to take the best deals and come out with the most money in consecutive games. It’s a highly social game with tight integration with Facebook and a lively community of users that make full use of the integrated chat and gifting system.

I originally developed the format for DoND Live in 2007, but it actually started as a gambling game concept and originally pitched to UK gaming companies as a additional game for bingo audience, however it seem at that time to be too much of an unknown quantity for them and they were reluctant to invest in it.

I had already hired uber-boffin Tom Newton (@tomnewton) to help work on the project and between us worked out that the game could be published on Facebook as a social game. Tom came to us with some existing technology he had developed to run poker games and this was modified to become a scaleable social gaming platform running on Amazon’s EC2 platform.

Our original plan was to roll out DoND Live to the US market then build revenue streams, including virtual goods, into the game, however various rights issues meant this would not be possible. The game remains live however, but UK focused only, and the technology developed has proved to be a great success, so much so that one of our key partners in the gambling space Gamesys bought the platform from Endemol to create a new social gaming startup iwi, which Tom still heads up today.

Client: Endemol UK
Launched: Dec 2009
URL: http://apps.facebook.com/dealornodeallive