Greek American College Student Launches iPhone App that Makes Selfies Part of a Game

Among this generation’s most widespread habits when it comes to using a smart phone is arguably taking a selfie. The concept of taking one’s own picture from their phone is firmly entrenched in the use of these mobile devices today.

Clint Thodos, a 21-year-old student at the Santa Monica College in California, decided to creates an iOS application that brings together the concept of the selfie with the very popular endless runner games that have been available to smart phone users for years. 

Thodos’s new application, Fame Run, takes the users though a running journey inside familiar Hollywood settings, such as the back-lots of movie sets and in limousines, with the ultimate goal of avoiding the paparazzi. Players that can get through the paparazzi and defeat their previous high scores are awarded with the ultimate prize, the selfie. 

“In order to get the selfie, the user must achieve a new high score, and in a way must one up themselves in order to get publicity like stars in Hollywood do today. The screenshot of the user on the front page of the gossip site can be saved to the user’s phone and shared onto social media so they can then “Enjoy The Fame”, the game’s press release notes.

Thodos, who grew up in San Mateo, California and plans to transfer to UCLA to study English, created the application along with six other people. He explained that he feels that the use of the selfie as a reward will attract users to keep playing the game.

“I wanted to create a game that incorporated something different that would speak to my generation, which was getting to take a selfie when you achieve a new high score. I saw a lot of my friends playing these endless runner games in high school as well as seeing the introduction of apps like Snapchat where everyone was constantly taking selfies. I didn’t see anything in the mobile gaming space that incorporated selfies so I set out to create a game that did,” Thodos said.

Even though he is only 21 years old, this is Thodos’s second application. In 2012 at the age of 18 he had launched Pixcisely, an iOS application that allows its users to capture images, make visual notes on them, and then compare them with what the phone camera’s lens is capturing.

“The process took a lot longer because I had to work with an artist first to create all of the graphics and then took the graphics to a developer who created all of the code. The process was prolonged even longer from when I started it in high school because I had to switch developers half way through and scrapped most of the original graphics. I was in the process of moving to LA to start college there and only worked on the game in my free time,” he noted when comparing the two applications.

Fame Run is available at the Apple Store for free.