Gajatri Studios Receives Financing For Social Yoga Game
Gajatri Studios Ltd. announced it has received product financing for its social yoga game project from Mediatonic. Gajatri Studios is a new game studio based in Helsinki, that develops casual and social well-being games. Gajatri Studios Founder and CEO, Tiina Zilliacus writes on their development blog that the thinking behind the project comes from people's desire to play online social games especially when stressed out or after a hard day's work. Instead of purely virtual gameplay, Zilliacus sees value in incoproating real well-being elements into the gameplay. The number of Facebook players is expected to rise this year to 300 million, of whom more than 60% are women.
Interview With Tiina Zilliacus Of Ironstar Helsinki
Ironstar Helsinki is a Finnish game developer that has been previously developing a social game called Moipal, but changed course to developing Facebook games earlier last year. Tiina Zilliacus is the CEO of the company and joined it early 2010 to help the company build new traction. I did a short e-mail based interview with her to learn how 2010 has looked for the company and how they've managed to build their business forward. I had the idea of the interview after having a little chat with Tiina Zilliacus at a recent Christmas gathering in Helsinki. Their recent development has been impressive and is definitely worth covering for our community as well.
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.
Apaja Founder Looking For New Challenges
Asmo Halinen, one of the original three Apaja founders, has just announced through Jaiku that he is looking for new challenges. In other words, he has (or will resign soon) from Apaja's services.
Apaja Online Entertainment is focused on creating community gaming websites under the name of Playray. The Finnish service is called Aapeli and is one of the most popular entertainment sites in Finland.
Apaja has recently gone through quite a bit of transition in its managerial positions. Inka Mero was the CEO for some time, before she left for maternity leave. Tiina Zilliacus took over after Inka as Apaja continued to expand its services abroad to Turkey and Hungary, to name a few countries. A year ago, 1.75 million euros were invested into Apaja by Martin Trigon Venture Partners.
We'll see if we can get a word from Asmo on the reasons behind the decision and what those new challenges might be for this online game & community services heavyweight.
Apaja changes executives and expands to Turkey
Apaja Online Entertainment has done some changes in their management while expanding the casual gaming service to Turkey, according to a press release sent out earlier today. Inka Mero, the CEO of Apaja, is on a maternity leave and Tiina Zilliacus has joined the company as an acting CEO, Executive Vice President. Tiina Zilliacus has previously worked with Nokia Online Shops and Sonera Zed -service, according to the information on the management.
Also reported in the press release is the expansion of Playray gaming service to Turkey, the 15th country where the service is available. No date for the launch of Turkey is given in the press release. Playray now attracts 2.5M unique visitors on a monthly basis.
Disclosure: I am a former employee of Apaja Online Entertainment.
