| Date<\/th>\n | Company<\/th>\n | Invested<\/th>\n | Country<\/th>\n | Description<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||
| 2006 – Oct<\/td>\n | Mind Candy<\/a><\/td>\n | $7.4m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Mind Candy is one of the world’s leading developers of social multi-player games, helping kids (and big kids!) around the world play and connect.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2005 – Jun<\/td>\n | WeeWorld<\/a><\/td>\n | $5.5m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | social network where you can meet and interact with WeeMees, play games and create your own online cartoon page.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2006 – May<\/td>\n | WeeWorld<\/a><\/td>\n | $15.5m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | social network where you can meet and interact with WeeMees, play games and create your own online cartoon page.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2006 – Nov<\/td>\n | watAgame<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Denmark<\/td>\n | an international media company bringing the goSupermodel concept to girls around the globe. goSupermodel.com is a safe hang-out, all about creativity, self expression and social play. <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Oct<\/td>\n | watAgame<\/a><\/td>\n | $4m<\/td>\n | Denmark<\/td>\n | an international media company bringing the goSupermodel concept to girls around the globe. goSupermodel.com is a safe hang-out, all about creativity, self expression and social play. <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2006 – Oct<\/td>\n | LemonQuest<\/a><\/td>\n | $2.5m<\/td>\n | Spain<\/td>\n | global publisher of mobile games and personalization products for network operator portals, delivering a vast array of content in 48 countries worldwide<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2006 – Dec<\/td>\n | Realtime worlds<\/td>\n | $31m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Software technology company specialising in the entertainment sector<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Apr<\/td>\n | Realtime worlds<\/td>\n | $49m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Software technology company specialising in the entertainment sector<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||
| 2007 – Jan<\/td>\n | Player X<\/a><\/td>\n | $5m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | mobile media company specialising in games and mobile TV & video<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Mar<\/td>\n | Short Fuze<\/a><\/td>\n | $2m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | mass market movie-making<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Jan<\/td>\n | Wazap!<\/a><\/td>\n | $7.9m<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | vertical search engine, database and social networking site for gaming news, rankings, cheats, downloads and reviews<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Mar<\/td>\n | Exit Games<\/a><\/td>\n | $4.6m<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | “Neutron” multiplayer platform enables multiplayer capabilities on mobile applications<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Feb<\/td>\n | Virtual Air Guitar<\/a><\/td>\n | $0.2m<\/td>\n | Finland<\/td>\n | Note: The Virtual Air Guitar is not currently available for download [nice – Adam]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Mar<\/td>\n | Xtract<\/a><\/td>\n | $2.7m<\/td>\n | Norway<\/td>\n | enable mobile, media and other companies with large data flows to protect their existing revenue streams<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – May<\/td>\n | Cometa Wireless<\/a><\/td>\n | $2m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Our team can set you up with a fully licensed mobile casino, custom branded to suit your needs in a matter of no time<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – May<\/td>\n | Two Way Media<\/a><\/td>\n | $10.6m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | creates and distributes cross media TV shows and games <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – June<\/td>\n | In2Games<\/a><\/td>\n | $15.5m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | brand-new control system for next-generation games systems<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Jun<\/td>\n | Handmade Mobile Entertainment<\/a><\/td>\n | $4m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Flirtomatic, Europe’s leading flirting service for people connected to the Internet either via PC or mobile phone<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – May<\/td>\n | Avaloop<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/a><\/td>\n | Austria<\/td>\n | create a new type of immersive, social, and virtual world<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Apr<\/td>\n | Brand New World<\/a><\/td>\n | $4.3m<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | develops, markets, and promotes innovative mobile applications in the entertainment, multiplayer, and casual gaming sectors<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Apr<\/td>\n | StageSpace (now Bailamo)<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | “In sexy 3D”<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Jun<\/td>\n | Blue Lion Mobile<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | qeep is a global, fast-growing mobile community with over 200,000 users<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Apr<\/td>\n | TVfun<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Netherlands<\/td>\n | international publisher of multimedia family games<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – May<\/td>\n | Minoto<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Netherlands<\/td>\n | videos of people playing games<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Apr<\/td>\n | ESNation<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Denmark<\/td>\n | eSports news, browser-based games and social networking features<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Jun<\/td>\n | ESNation<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Denmark<\/td>\n | eSports news, browser-based games and social networking features<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Jun<\/td>\n | Metaversum<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis – $4m?<\/a><\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | Metaversum’s virtual world Twinity mashes up the real with the virtual life<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Dec<\/td>\n | Bahu<\/a><\/td>\n | $1m<\/td>\n | France<\/td>\n | Bahu is a community where more of one million young people express themselves, have fun and meet new friends.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Nov<\/td>\n | Apaja Online Entertainment<\/a><\/td>\n | $2.5m<\/td>\n | Finland<\/td>\n | Playray, an online gaming community service combining avatars, community features such as forums, blogging and chatting, and high quality casual games<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Oct<\/td>\n | FatFooGoo<\/a><\/td>\n | $10m<\/td>\n | Austria<\/td>\n | From trading platforms to commercial ecosystems, we monetize your game<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Feb<\/td>\n | Zweitgeist<\/a><\/td>\n | $0.6m<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | weblin makes you and others on the Web visible as small avatars<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Nov<\/td>\n | Zweitgeist<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | weblin makes you and others on the Web visible as small avatars<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Sept<\/td>\n | Emote<\/a><\/td>\n | $8m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Our games reach across social networks, challenging gamers and their friends, helping them communicate with like-minded players across the globe<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Sept<\/td>\n | Trutap<\/a><\/td>\n | $6.5m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | free mobile service that for the first time, globally, combines all the elements of a young person’s social life into one application<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Sept<\/td>\n | SharpCards<\/a><\/td>\n | $3.1m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | From ‘Pimp my phone” to “hot or not”, our personalisation services (for mobile) have met with huge success<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Aug<\/td>\n | La Cartoonerie<\/a><\/td>\n | $0.7m<\/td>\n | France<\/td>\n | Share your animation: once created, you can spread your online cartoon. Everybody can see, vote and respond by leaving comments<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Aug<\/td>\n | Spill Group<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/a><\/td>\n | Netherlands<\/td>\n | We have been distributing online games through more than 45 gaming portals worldwide.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Aug<\/td>\n | GameForge<\/td>\n | Undis<\/a><\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | F2P \/ browser based games publisher<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Jul<\/td>\n | Geewa<\/a><\/td>\n | $2m<\/td>\n | Czech Republic<\/td>\n | The Geewa platform has attracted many fans since its start in 2005 and currently 100,000 players visit it every day to play 700,000 duels<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2007 – Aug<\/td>\n | Xendex Entertainment<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | european mobile games company<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Jun<\/td>\n | Xendex Entertainment<\/a><\/td>\n | $3.6m<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | european mobile games company<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||
| 2008 – May<\/td>\n | Caspian Learning<\/a><\/td>\n | $2.8m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Learning Based Games: Caspian Learning are global leaders in the use of simulation games technology to solve learning issues<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Jun<\/td>\n | mGami<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | mGami supports innovative games in which players interact with each other, and with the environment around them<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Jun<\/td>\n | Playfish<\/a><\/td>\n | $1m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Playfish is combining the best elements of casual games, social networks, MMOGs and virtual worlds to create entirely new, more social ways of enjoying great games together.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Mar<\/td>\n | Playfish<\/a><\/td>\n | $3m<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | Playfish is combining the best elements of casual games, social networks, MMOGs and virtual worlds to create entirely new, more social ways of enjoying great games together.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Apr<\/td>\n | Metaboli<\/a><\/td>\n | $7.8m<\/td>\n | France<\/td>\n | Download and play several hundreds of PC games on Metaboli.co.uk. Full Version PC Games, Play all the games you want !<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Apr<\/td>\n | Eximion<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/a><\/td>\n | Benelux<\/td>\n | 3d games in your browser<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Apr<\/td>\n | Metaversum<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis – $4m?<\/a><\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | Metaversum’s virtual world Twinity mashes up the real with the virtual life<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Apr<\/td>\n | Club Cooee<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | free 3D Live community<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Apr<\/td>\n | Northworks<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/a><\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | next generation browser games<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – May<\/td>\n | Orbster<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Germany<\/td>\n | designs and publishes online entertainment products for GPS-enabled handsets<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Apr<\/td>\n | VOIPlay<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | Sweden<\/td>\n | multi-game deathmatch platform with voice chat integrated<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Jun<\/td>\n | Virgin Play<\/a><\/td>\n | $3.9m<\/td>\n | Spain<\/td>\n | distributor and publisher of video games for video game consoles<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Nov<\/td>\n | Tag Games<\/a><\/td>\n | Undis<\/td>\n | UK<\/td>\n | independent game developer and publisher that creates great games for mobile devices and game consoles<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – Aug<\/td>\n | Nonoba<\/a><\/td>\n | $1.9m<\/td>\n | Denmark<\/td>\n | gaming community where you can play games with your friends and compete for scores and honor, and also upload your own Flash games<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| 2008 – <\/td>\n | Chapatiz<\/a><\/td>\n | $0.5m<\/td>\n | France<\/td>\n | website dedicated to pre-teens and teenagers.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\nNotes: How this was compiled<\/h4>\nThis comes from my personal collation of companies related to online games, social worlds, support services (billing, outsourcing, mobile, etc) – which is an eclectic mix of things that I’ve tracked over the years relating to my own interests and plans. I only really started paying attention in 2005\/2006 when I was at MindCandy. For this blog post, I re-checked every single company via Google before adding it above, and then cross-referenced against good sources such as Calibre-One’s quarterly deal reports<\/a> to see if I’d made any stupid mistakes. There were discrepencies, some of which I’d clearly made a typo (which I corrected), and others that were only subtly different, so there’s probably some mistakes in the above.<\/p>\n How it’s arranged here it’s maybe not so obvious, but when looking through my spreadsheets it’s more obvious that there 2005-mid 2007 wasn’t a great time for these investments (especially in monetary value), but late 2007-mid 2008 has been a lot better.<\/p>\n Maybe that’s the effect of the Global Philip Rosedale Reality-Distortion Field<\/em>? (aka “Second Life convincing people that Virtual Worlds are viable, commericalisable, and investable”) :).<\/p>\n I tried – really hard – to get info for the companies who didn’t announce how much investment they’d taken on when they announced they’d received it, but in most cases I failed.<\/p>\n I noticed that most countries privately owned companies are quite open about how much money they’ve raised (American ones especially), and quiet about how much they’re making. The Germans are strangely quiet, generally, on both. I believe that means that people:<\/p>\n Maybe I only notice this because I’m English, and business people in the UK have long obsessed about how our inability to be brash in business (as a nation) has hampered us compared to the Americans. IMHO this silence is an ill-advised strategy, but them I’m a huge fan of transparency in all aspects of business :).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jussi posted an excellent writeup of how there’s been over $350 million invested in social games etc worldwide, and commented that he the European side wasn’t really included in his sources. But I’ve been tracking the European side for a while, and since I’m preparing a new MMO \/ Education startup at the moment, I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,48,24,46,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |