More casual-games Stories

Angry Birds

What if a magazine publisher had devised Angry Birds? Time Inc’s UK publisher IPC Media is creating a new division to develop casual games. But this isn’t strictly a content play. The division, IPC Play, will create “advergames” – marketing game-candy designed as digital adjuncts to the space […] Read more at paidContent »

jun group social video

Social video ad firm Jun Group has raised a small bit of funding, a full six years after being founded. The New York City-based company, which specializes in serving video ads into social environments like casual games, has raised $2.5 million from Western Technology Investment. Read more »

loading external resource

playjam

TV gaming startup PlayJam has raised a $5 million Series A funding round from GameStop Digital Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Endeavour Ventures, London Venture Partners and others. The financing comes as PlayJam sees a massive opportunity to bring new games to connected TV platforms. Read more »

roku xs

Right on the heels of $8 million in new funding, Roku has added seven new casual games to its boxes. The games, which were developed by Accedo, follow on the release of Angry Birds on its new devices and will add some additional revenues. Read more »

wordsfacebookfeature

Zynga is bringing its popular Scrabble-esque mobile game Words With Friends to Facebook, the company announced Monday. This represents the first time that Zynga has extended a mobile-only game to Facebook — showing that despite its diversification efforts, Zynga’s dependence on the social network remains strong. Read more »

angrybirds_big

Roku will soon add support for casual games, starting with Rovio’s ultra-popular Angry Birds franchise, which will be launched on a new generation of devices. Angry Birds and other casual games will be rolled out this summer, as Roku adds new products to support the launch. Read more »

I should admit to a dirty little secret: I’m a productivity junkie. I get an enormous amount of pleasure out of finding faster and more efficient ways to accomplish everyday tasks; I love to find better ways to gather and process information more quickly. Read more »

Gamers in North America and Europe are now “largely comfortable” with purchasing digital content such as virtual currency and in-game goods, according to new research. We sat down with the CEO of game aggregator Kongregate to learn how virtual goods are impacting his business. Read more »

loading external resource

Hooked Media has launched a social-gaming platform called Yoo-Mee that is designed to allow casual games played on Facebook and elsewhere to be embedded in any website and also played via mobile devices. The platform is a “social wrapper” for games, says CEO Prita Uppal. Read more »

Snow covered freeway.

Millions in the northeast U.S. are under blankets of snow that have shut down many cities. Although trapped in the home by the storm, the use of mobile tech can make that experience easier with proper planning. Here’s how to weather the storm with tech. Read more »

Social games attract tens of millions of players on Facebook and other networks, but compared with traditional PC and console-based games, they make a lot less money, a challenge impeding the genre’s growth. While millions of “hardcore” gamers willingly pay $60 per title and $15 in […] Read more »

When Heyzap, the San Francisco-based startup that offers up casual, Flash-based games for publishers to embed to their sites, launched back in January, revenue was being generated by the short ads shown before its games. But as the economic downturn tightened its grip and the online […] Read more »

We’re playing more online games than ever before, but we’re paying less for them, interactive marketing firm Future Ads said today. Of the 8,000 online casual gamers surveyed by the company this spring, 61 percent reported gaming more than last year, while nearly 80 percent of […] Read more »

We just got word that the social game site Cafe.com is selling Boonty, the company’s underlying digital distribution platform, to Nexway, a leading EU player in legal online distribution, for an undisclosed sum. Nexway gets a top casual games platform already operating more than 25 countries; […] Read more »

UPDATED One reason casual game startups are still confident in these recessionary times is that the top titles attract millions of players. Our friends at casual game ad network Mochi Media have provided a list of the 10 most popular casual games hosted on its network, […] Read more »

Mac Gamers may have gotten improved video performance with the latest MacBook line refresh, but their Windows counterparts still have the upper hand, with more titles available, and more options for distribution as well. Valve’s Steam, for instance, provides one-stop-shopping for all your gaming software needs. […] Read more »

When I first squinted at this morning’s news that casual game company Big Fish had landed $83 million in funding (from Balderton Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Salmon River Capital), I could have sworn there was a decimal point missing somewhere. Big Fish reported $50.8 million […] Read more »

Want to get a good idea of where the gaming business is headed? Follow the money — or better yet, follow the trends the folks with money are looking at. With that in mind, I recently contacted three top venture capitalists in the gaming space to […] Read more »

With so much venture funding going into web-based, ad-driven casual games (both the companies that create them and those that monetize them), you’d think the gaming industry as a whole was moving in that direction. I certainly did, at least until today. But Yahoo Games just […] Read more »

The casual games market is booming, with over $2.25 billion in yearly revenue despite virtually no brick-and-mortar representation or advertising and marketing costs. But it’s also a market that is quickly becoming saturated, and like any content market, it’s dependent on a large number of unpredictable forces. Click To Read Full Story Read more »

Normally I don’t get too excited about billionaires making investments in start-ups: I mean that’s what they do, but this news about Amazon founder Jeff Bezos investing $3 million in casual gaming company Kongregate, is worth noting. Is this a simple investment? Or is it sign […] Read more »

On the heels of ECD Systems CEO Jack Hart’s article exploring the methods of growing revenue for casual games, IGA Worldwide said it has signed an in-game advertising deal with casual games publisher Merscom. Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Merscom makes downloadable titles for the PC, as well […] Read more »