NEW FEATURES FOR SKILLGROUND ONLINE GOLF

16 November 2007

Personalised play the order of the day


Online golfers have an improved experience with a popular game this week. Groove Games Limited, owners of the Skillground platform for games of skill, has upgraded the UTour Golf game with a number of new features. The game is a full-featured online golfing experience where players can challenge other virtual golfers for real cash prizes.

The upgrade includes increased challenge options where players can use handicap play. This feature allows players to offer or request strokes, in order to make the games fair and challenging for both regardless of the players' skill rating. The new one-hole challenge mode offers a quick, one-hole game for players and opponents and combined with the new entry fee options, it is now possible to put up to $100 on the line for just one hole.

Personalised play has also been introduced, enabling players to invite up to eight of their friends to an exclusive tournament with customisable game options; including course played, number of holes and entry fee. A score based Driving Range game also rewards players for individual tee shot accuracy.

Michael Haines, Managing Director, Groove Games Limited said “handicapping has been introduced to increase liquidity. Whilst skill ranking systems segment the audience, handicapping levels the playing field so anyone can challenge anyone.”

He continued, “We are marketing to the gambling audience – a move that spans our target across the player interested in casual game play on 18 holes to the person who is looking for the rush of high stakes with as little as one hole. Combine this with strategy and top it up with some risk, the handicap play spices things up for the true thrill seeking sports enthusiast.”

Player Created Tournaments and Stats Tracking are just a couple of initiatives which have been undertaken to build the community and social networking aspects of UTour Golf giving players the tools to engage with each other and shape the way they play.

Directors of Groove include Cryptologic founder Mark Rivkin and Harvey Solursh, previously CFO of the online gambling software developer. Vancouver-based Groove was founded in 2001 by Jon Walsh and has enjoyed success in a diversity of computer gaming fields through its advanced game design studio Bedlam.

The companys SkillGround.com venture launched earlier this year is the first site to allow visitors to download retail-quality games absolutely free and play against competitors of similar skill levels for fun, or for cash. The site currently hosts multiple genres including: first person shooter, racing and fighting.

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