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 »
Tech
Jeremy Liew, a managing director with Lightspeed Venture Partners, is a big believer in virtual goods. Liew recently stopped by GigaOM HQ for a quick chat about the explosive growth of that market and where it’s headed. 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 »
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 »
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… Read More »
If the growing number of games being played on it are any indication, then San Francisco-based micro-messaging service 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… 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… 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… 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
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