Supercell Announce Battle Buddies, Builds On Gunshine.net Success
Just a couple of weeks ago we wrote that Supercell would be announcing multiple new games in early 2012. Well, one of them will be Battle Buddies, and will be available for tablets in the first half of 2012. Supercell's first game, Gunshine.net focused on bringing the experience of social, real-time multiplayer gaming to as many people as possible. Since then, the Helsinki, Finland based company has proved the concept works and raised north of 10 million USD from Accel Partners and others.
Yummi Apps Finalising Wizardia
A Lithuanian based social gaming company and developer of such games, Yummi Apps has announced that they are finalising work on their game combining social and mobile features - Wizardia. The game will connect these two mega trends in real-time to create a new gaming experience, according to the company's press release.
A Deeper Dive Into Supercell
I talked to Supercell's CEO Ilkka Paananen on where the company stands today and a little about their future plans as well. Supercell is a hot Finnish gaming company that closed a $12 million series A from Accel in May. We covered the company in February initially and it's come incredibly far since then. Supercell employs some 40 people in two locations and its Gunshine game has shown some incredible traction.
Sofanatics' Stadium Rings Loud During Ice Hockey World Championships
When there is a platform available to ensure maximum user engagement, there isn’t really a point why it shouldn’t be fully leveraged and Sofanatics has everything to give to sports fans they need. We've written in the past about their latest improvement to the service, the stadium feature, which is one of the reasons for the wide usage relating to this post as well.
Jens Begemann, CEO & Founder Of Wooga, Coming To Arctic15
Just earlier this week we announced that Steve Huffman and Daniel Kaplan are coming to Arctic15. Today we have the pleasure to announce that the CEO and founder of one of the most exciting companies in Europe currently, Jens Begemann, is coming to Arctic15 as well. Jens Begemann is the founder and CEO of wooga, Europe's largest social games developer and the number four globally. Previously, he worked as the Chief Product Officer at Jamba (Jamster).
Applifier Eases Game Discovery With Facebook App
Applifier has just announced that they have launched "Games On Applifier", essentially a Facebook app to help users discover and find new interesting games. Applifier is Facebook's largest cross promotion network with 55 million monthly active users (MAU). Previously, Applifier has enabled game publishers to promote their games through their banners, but this takes game discovery and recommendations to a completely new level.
Rocket Pack Launches HTML5 Cross-Platform Social Game Warimals In Alpha
The Finnish JavaScript and HTML5 game engine and game developer Rocket Pack has released their new game Warimals: Cats vs. Dogs into open alpha. The new social game is playable both on Warimals.com and Facebook. As for the target devices - the game plays just as well on e.g. G2 Android phone, iPad, and iPhone - to name just a few (see video in our previous post). Any device with HTML5 and decent JavaScript performance should do. The game is a casual tower defence and attack game, based on asyncronous multiplayer gaming among friends and strangers. As the tagline puts it: "Warimals is the epic browser game about the everlasting battle waged between Cats and Dogs."
New Trailer & Screen Shots Of Upcoming Location-Based iPhone MMORPG Shadow Cities
Grey Area, a new Finnish iPhone gaming startup (see our previous coverage), has been operating silently the past months, but now the firm has released a new teaser trailer and screenshots of their upcoming location-based MMORPG for iPhone called Shadow Cities. The game transforms the neighborhoods and familiar streets as part of the game world, visible to the player through iPhone. The tagline is "Your city is a game." The company promises the game will be available on the iTunes App Store in late 2010.
Planeto Launches "Massively Multiplayer Online Quiz" Social Game In Open Beta
Swedish social game startup Planeto has released its new game Planeto Quiz into open beta available for all players late last week. Planeto calls the game "the world's first massively multiplayer online quiz", MMOQ. The idea of the game is to combine elements from quiz competitions and online multiplayer games, e.g. World of Warcraft, including role-playing elements like character building and player interaction - but all packaged for global mass-market audience.
Uplause Introduces Real-World Massively Multiplayer Crowd Games For Big Events
Massively multiplayer online games and Wii Sports are so last season, it seems. Uplause is a new Finnish gaming startup with quite an interesting a concept -- “Crowd Games” or Massively Multiplayer Crowd Playing Game (MMCPG) as the firm calls them. Uplause’s crowd games are developed for large events, where the audience can collectively participate in playing the interactive mini-games, real time, on location. See a quick overview of the concept in the video below.
Social Gaming Firm Ironstar Helsinki Launches In Facebook, Appoints New CEO
The Finnish social gaming firm Ironstar Helsinki has announced appointing a new CEO Tiina Zilliacus and expanding its platform reach to Facebook. Ironstar Helsinki runs a social gaming world MoiPal, which up until now has been available on the web and as a downloadable mobile application. MoiPal has currently 200.000 registered users in Finland along some international ones, and is now looking to accelerate the international growth.
Everyplay Comes Out Of Stealth, Launches Facebook Social App Kamu World
Everyplay, a Finnish social gaming startup founded last year, has come out of stealth mode and released a product called Kamu World on Facebook. It is a "virtual hangout place" featuring edgy "Kamu" characters ('kamu' also means 'a buddy' in Finnish).
Kamu World in its current form is essentially a collection of visualized virtual characters and chat rooms, with few game-like features. It has compelling and very polished look and feel already, though. When entering the world, players create their own Kamu creature, and choose a location around the world (e.g. a game arcade in Tokyo) to meet other Kamus in. Kamus appear as small, desktop-size creatures, smaller than for example a drinking glass.
Finnish Social Gaming - Calm Before The Storm
I met Jussi Laakkonen the other day and asked what is he cooking at the moment. Jussi is a Finnish social gaming long timer and a fresh CEO of EveryPlay.
Here's a video I shot with my Nokia N95 and subsequently uploaded to JayCut for editing via my laptop (see more on JayCut here). In the video itself Jussi Laakkonen tells about his new social gaming startup, which is still in stealth mode. Jussi asked me to mention that Everyplay is looking into hiring a sitebuilder that can handle Ajax and PHP. You can send your resumes to corporate [at] everyplay.fi
Another long time Finnish gaming master mind Asmo Halinenha s also announced that he's moving on from Apaja, a company he founded, but has only let us know about a few board positions his moving into at this point, namely at Eat.fi and at Grey Area.
Social gaming startups like for example Playfish is a great exemple how fast the industry is developing and what kind of opportunities (Link In Finnish) there are if one knows what he is doing.
Social gaming, unlike many other industries, can actually benefit from the gloomy economic environment, as people many times move towards inpexsive games played in the browser from the expensive console games, and in extreme cases have much more time to play and tinker with all kinds of stuff online if they get laid off. As harsh as this may sound, this is largely how for example Typepad got started when Ben and Mena Trott started Six Apart after they got laid off.
Further, Jussi promised us that he will shed light into how the Finnish gaming industry has evolved from an active demo scene by writing a guest blog post on the topic. Another strong player that has come this route is Scred.
Casual Games Market Hot - 2-4M USD Invested Per Week
Jussi Laakkonen of Everyplay has compiled a very extensive list of investments to casual gaming startups in the US and Europe.
Laakkonen has compiled the list from public resources such as VentureBeat, TechCrunch, GigaOm, etc. He admits that there are possibly a lot of investments missing as they based on PR, which naturally works best in the US.
From the Nordics and Baltics, in the list are investments to Apaja Online Entertainment and Sulake, so I'm guessing there are many more smaller seed investments made to smaller Nordic and Baltic companies which aren't present in the list.
What's your take - is the casual gaming market the hottest corner of the internet industry at the moment?
Valve Setting Up A New Social Gaming Company Tweehouse
We wrote earlier that the Finnish Internet Agency Valve was up to something in the social gaming arena. Now we have found out that they are setting up a new firm that produces end-to-end social gaming solutions for large brands. The new company is called Tweehouse (Pronounced as a little kid would pronounce 'tree house'). The games, described as more game like with a storyline than for example Habbo, are aimed at the younger end of the gaming market.
Tweehouse will be set up in partnership with Snap TV, a Santa Monica-based game company that "produces and develops interactive games for media-savvy kids". Valve will own 50 percent of the venture while Snap TV owns the other half. There are no third party investors involved at this point.
Tweehouse will target purely US market in the beginning. For this Snap TV is an ideal partner to handle the Sales and PR and leave the game development and pipeline management to the Helsinki office. Snap TV prides itself for having a dedicated sales force that calls on all classes of retail and ships products to over 20,000 storefronts across the United States and Canada, thus enabling quick access to market when the product is ready. This is where many other services coming from Europe have fallen short when trying to enter the US market with only a PR agency or a two man office talking to the market.
Tweehouse was born when Valve and Snap TV realized they could actually build a product out of what was initially only a single project. This is a great way for any digital agency to test the market and see what works. I hope we will see more of this type of 'spin-offs' coming from the Nordic and Baltic countries.
The business model will build on the end-to-end solution. The service covers everything from design, development and marketing all the way to running the platform and moderation of the games themselves. In essence Tweehouse is aiming to build and sell solid gaming platforms to their customers. In addition to a fixed price element, the company also aims to always build an upside to the products they sell. This could mean for example a revenue share model that will be a percentage of each game sold.
Tweehouse has so far only one full time employee, but their first project will soon see around 10 people working on it coming partly through Valve and partly as new hires. Paavo Perttula is currently running the company as its Chairman of the Board. Tweehouse should have their first game out after a year, but they are looking into getting another client project in as soon as late spring 2009.
