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GREE tweaks US operations, invests in MunkyFun
GREE is a very large Japanese social network similar to Facebook or Twitter that has been trying to secure some mindspace in the West by acquiring game developers and their large audiences. The company is making a heavy investment in MunkyFun, makers of My Horse and Bounty Bots, for $3 million. It's also switching up its US business to focus on its own titles. That includes "some redundancies," and GREE says its platform business will start transitioning back to Tokyo in the future. Probably the most high-profile acquisition GREE made on iOS was in the OpenFeint social network, and that system is being shut down this month, so it's not too surprising that the company is making some cutbacks. But this is the first sign we've seen that GREE might be changing its mind about trying to take over the West. These social networks have bought a lot of access to users, but haven't seen much growth, so they might have to come up with another tactic to connect up with the big audience of Westerners using iOS devices. Update: This post previously stated that GREE was acquiring MunkyFun, but the $3 million put in is just a minority investment, not a full acquistion. Show full PR text GREE Expands its U.S. Games Business With New Mobile Games Fund and Announcement of $3 million Investment in Hit Developer, MunkyFun San Francisco, CA December 06, 2012- GREE is today announcing that it's expanding its focus on 2nd party mobile game development with a new mobile investment fund managed by a new publishing and partnerships group. The fund's first venture is in mobile game developer, MunkyFun, maker of games such as My Horse and Bounty Bots. MunkyFun received a minority investment of $3 million from GREE. GREE, which recently announced the closure of mobile social gaming platform, OpenFeint, is focusing its US business primarily on its own titles and developer partner titles. As part of the company's internal US reorganization, a majority of the GREE games platform team will be transitioned to new departments with redundancies in some areas. The overall GREE Platform business will begin transitioning to its operations in Tokyo as a part of this change The US operation continues to build a strong portfolio of mobile games- including recently launched titles Monster Quest and MLB: Full Deck. The mobile investment fund is the latest in a series of commitments to first party and second party titles including full-out acquisitions of mobile game developers App Ant in September 2012 and Investment in IUGO Entertainment earlier this year.
Daily iPad App: Bounty Bots is full of cartoony shooter action
MunkyFun is the group of developers behind first-person shooter Archetype for the iPhone, so they know already how to put a console-style shooter on Apple's mobile devices. Archetype was published by Villian, but MunkyFun's latest title is self-published. It's called Bounty Bots, and it's available for free on the App Store right now. Hopefully, at the word "free," you already went to go and download the game to see what it's like. But in case not, I'll tell you that it's a shooter where your main goal is to run around collecting coins as quickly as possible, and then to deliver those coins into banks (but without getting killed by other players). Coins delivered get banked, but you still get XP for picking up coins, so even if you're terrible, you can progress through the game. Progression gets you various parts to customize your bot with, and the game is finely tuned for both casual and hardcore players, so those ready for a real challenge can buy special parts that make things tougher but can also come with rewards as well. The game's freemium bent can be frustrating at times (if you ever lose all your coins, you're locked in a jail that you can then pay your way out of, which seems targeted right at guaranteeing those all-important in-app purchases). But there's enough action here that it's worth the free download, and if you get hooked, well, all the better. And MunkyFun is already updating the title as well, so there's more content on the way. Bounty Bots is a fun use of the company's expertise so far, and I'm sure it will lead to even better things in their future.
TUAW's Daily App: Archetype
Well now, this one's interesting. Archetype is a brand new title on the App Store that's aiming to put what seems like a big budget experience on Apple's small screen. The game is made by MunkyFun (a company led by ex-LucasArts developer Nick Pavis) and published by Villian, "an independent producer and publisher of portable game titles" that seems to have a history in mobile gaming, but not much of a website. Basically, Archetype is purporting to be Eliminate without Ngmoco -- a full-featured multiplayer FPS without any of the microtransactions or other nonsense. And it lives up to the hype. The controls will take some getting used to, even if you're a WASD veteran. In just 30 seconds on Wi-Fi, I was loaded up and playing a 5v5 deathmatch FPS game. Even on an Edge connection, I was able to play smoothly, and even pull off a kill -- I don't know what kind of code witchery makes that possible, but it works. The graphics don't really compare to modern console shooters, but I think the multiplayer gameplay easily beats Metroid: Prime Hunters and the current crop of iPhone shooters. Of course, the game still has to deal with the issues of the genre -- if you're not a twitch gamer, you'll likely get murdered very quickly, and while there are plenty of high-ping people to play with now, it's not clear what will happen if the servers get overloaded or, conversely, if the crowd thins out. You're still playing a FPS on an iPhone, and I'd much rather play a shooter on my PC or a console than this. But given the limitations of the genre and the device, Archetype is certainly an impressive title. You're still kind of going in blind at US$2.99 -- Archetype doesn't have a free version to try yet. But if you can expect to put three bucks of your time into playing this surprisingly solid multiplayer FPS, by all means, jump on in.
