Karma Buzz

Gaming news roundup - week 16

2012-04-20T12:05:51+00:00

First quarter game investments and acquisitions gather steam
The consolidation of companies in the social game market has begun, according to first-quarter data gathered by game-focused investment bank Digi-Capital. In the first quarter of 2012, 30 merger and acquisition deals generated $1.7 billion in transaction value at an average of $57 million, the report said. Social gambling (driven by the hopes of changes to U.S. laws on online gambling) has emerged as a driving force for social games mergers and acquisitions.

Gaming news roundup - week 15

2012-04-13T19:10:12+00:00

Casino game makers outline a winning strategy on Facebook
International Game Technology (IGT) plans to use their acquisition of DoubleDown Interactive as a tool to grow their brand with younger audiences. DoubleDown Interactive is the maker of DoubleDown Casino, one of the most popular gambling-themed games on Facebook. “Facebook is almost the same business as casinos,” said Chris Satchell, CTO and EVP of research and development at IGT. “Facebook has real estate and customers, just like the casinos.” IGT sees Facebook as a way to introduce casino games to a younger crowd, who are more likely to go clubbing at a casino than play highly profitable slot games.

Gaming news roundup - week 14

2012-04-06T20:37:51+00:00

Check us out! Karma was covered in Entrevestor this week. Entrevestor is a great site for the latest on investment, innovation and entrepreneurship in Atlantic Canada and we were thrilled to be featured in it.

DrawSomething hits mobile game record as it passes 50M downloads
DrawSomething, the Pictionary-style app that Zynga acquired with its $180 million purchase of OMGPOP, has surpassed 50 million downloads. In just 50 days, the title has become the fastest-growing original mobile game of all time. The game regained its top spot as the No. 1 paid app in the App Store, retaking the title from Angry Birds space. More than 6 billion drawings have been created.

Gaming news roundup - week 13

2012-03-30T17:40:15+00:00

Another awesome week in the books packed with learning and insights. In the near future I’m going to write a post recapping some of the most critical lessons we have discovered in the testing process to-date. Hopefully it can provide value to others following the lean startup process. Stay tuned and I’ll try to get that up in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, here’s a recap of our favourite news stories from the past week....

Worldwide mobile gaming revenue could reach $7.5 billion by 2015
The mobile casual gaming worldwide market has the potential to reach $7.5 billion by 2015. This report packs a ton of information into its pages including how much money is spent on freemium games, and the different virtual good spending patterns between audiences.

Gaming news roundup - week 12

2012-03-23T12:16:53+00:00

This week we had another excellent online test full of learning. We took one of our games offline for some tweaking and shortly after received an email from an angry fan wondering why we took it down and to “fix it immediately”. That made me smile, as it was a great sign that engagement is growing among players and that we’re onto something big☺. The more quantitative metrics are also tracking nicely.

The other cool thing going on is that we have created a really interesting tool to monitor trends in the social gaming ecosystem. The project started a few months ago as an internal effort to help us analyze trends and recognize opportunities in social games more effectively. We showed the tool off to a few of our game studio friends who all asked us if they could buy it. After the positive feedback, we’re now considering releasing it as a commercial tool in the coming months, so if you are interested in learning more you can email me at jay.aird@karmagaming.com.

Since it’s Friday, here are a few of our favourite news stories from the past week:

Gaming news roundup - week 11

2012-03-16T19:24:33+00:00

It’s been an exciting week at Karma. We launched another game online in closed beta after receiving strong engagement metrics in our previous test. We’re really getting excited about opening the beta in the coming months. We’re also thrilled to announce that we’ve expanded the team with Justin Lee coming on board in the role of Game Artist. Exciting times!

Here is a short-list of our favourite news stories from the week…

GDC 2012 recap

2012-03-15T19:52:58+00:00

Last week the annual Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco. It really is the premiere event for developers to network and learn from each other, and this year’s conference was no exception. It’s an exciting time to be involved in the game industry and that was reflected both in the content and spirit of the conference attendees.

Social and freemium games seemed to steal a lot of the spotlight with some predicting the imminent death of game consoles. It may be a bit of a premature claim. While there is a lot to be said for the accessibility and profitability of these games, they still don’t offer the same experience that a lot of traditional gamers look for. The important thing is that more people are playing games than ever before, with social and freemium games offering a gateway to new players.

Gaming news roundup - week 10

2012-03-09T17:53:42+00:00

Lots of news this week with GDC 2012 taking place in San Francisco. Karma’s Game Architect Josh Zisserson made the trip and will be posting on his experiences in the coming days.

For now, here are a few of the most interesting new stories from the past week…

Top stories

GDC 2012: The performance and convenience of mobile gaming is killing the console business
Everything in gaming is changing and mobile is the disruptive factor – that was the conclusion of ngmoco Sweden general manager Ben Cousins. In GDC 2012 talk entitled ‘When the consoles die, what happens next?’, the ex-EA and Sony man painted a picture of the clash between what he called the Old World of Gaming and the New World of Gaming. This article provides a summary of the presentation.

Weekly top stories

2012-02-17T13:18:25+00:00

At Karma we send out a weekly news blast to our investors and partners to help them better monitor the gaming space. We’ve been getting positive responses and thought it might be useful to feature what we find on our blog. So, we’re going to provide a ‘lite’ version of our favourite finds here each week. If you’re interested in receiving the full version you can register by entering your email on the main ‘buzz’ page.

Our favourite stories for Week 7….