Chumba World gaming
Chumba World

Virtual gaming start-up from Australia.

With all the talk about the integration of social gaming and gambling, an Australian startup has given the subject a whole new spin. Virtual Gaming Worlds (VGW) is in the last stages of developing a game they are describing as “Second Life meets Farmville meets Las Vegas.”

Titled Chumba World, it is essentially a free game, a platform where participants can build and customize their own casinos down to the smallest details, including the games therein. Players get the chance to establish and operate their own poker parlors, roulette tables or Blackjack casinos online.

They can also visit and play at the casinos built by other players.

Playing at these casinos does not involve the wagering and payout of real cash, so VGW will not need to possess a gambling license. Players from all around the world can also wager without breaking any local laws, as they will purchase and use the types of virtual coins familiar to anyone who has played social games before.

VGW has recently posted the project on the online fund-raising platform Kickstarter, seeking to raise USD 50,000 by March 4th to assist with the finishing touches.

VGW CEO and founder Laurence Escalante is quoted in a recent GamesBeat interview saying that “[although] we’ve raised money from private investors here in Australia, to complete much of what we’ve done to date, a platform/MMO/casino undertaking of this size is pretty ambitious and requires a lot of resources.”

Heralded by the developers as “the world’s first intersection of Massively Multiplayer Virtual Worlds, casual gaming, social gaming, and skill gaming,” Chumba World may be reminiscent of most other contestants in this field, from FarmVille to SimCity.

The features that do make it stand out of the crowd are its casino strategy theme and – more importantly – the plans to have players earning real money from their endeavor.

In the words of Escalante “players are able to make money off their casinos, yes, even on the virtual money play going through their casinos.”

He went on to clarify how this could be accomplished: “As with all social casino games, people are able to purchase currency to play, although winnings can’t be cashed out. But as players get more traffic (friends, followers, etc.) spending virtual currency at their casinos, we are able to calculate the currency flowing through their casinos and pay them a small revenue share as real or virtual money.”

As the payments would be based on purchases generated, virtual casino tycoons could therefore make money from the games played in their own establishments by other players, while the slots, poker, blackjack and whatever else is implemented in the game would remain a social gaming experience.

This setup exempts Chumba World players and operators from gambling-related regulations, with income/revenue tax remaining the only issue to handle.

With the rapid increase in the use of portable devices, it remains to be seen just to what extent would the game be adaptable to provide a fully mobile casino gaming experience.