Recent Fundings in the Social Gaming Industry - November 4

Rockyou. $17 million. From Softbank (Japan) and SK Telecom (Korea). While Rockyou is not a social gaming company, they are a social entertainment company with quite a few gaming properties. Apparently, the fresh cash is for expansion into the Asian markets, most notably the Chinese socnet, Xiaonei, which btw, already has a virtual currency system. Since China already has a robust virtual goods market, it will be interesting to see how Rockyou fares. Oh, and Xiaonei already has clones of the most successful games on Facebook, so don't get too excited.

Playfish. $17 million. Series B. From Accel Partners and Index Ventures. With 10 million monthly actives, 4 of the top ten games on Facebook, and this round of funding, Playfish has cemented their place as the number 2 social gaming company behind Zynga. According to Playfish CEO, Kristian Segerstrale, the cash is to be used to expand into other platforms, notably Myspace. I suspect they'll be launching mobile games sooner than later, Kristian did run a successful mobile games company for six years, after all.

Crispy Gamer. $8.5 million. Series A. From Constellation Ventures. For a Games Review site. Yes, a games review site. That had 1 million uniques AT LAUNCH. I mention this funding because it's further evidence that games are HOT.

Recent Fundings in the Social Gaming Industry

Ray Flame Inc., $800,000. Series A. InnoBridge Ventures. Makers of web-based (and client-based) MMOs. Their MMO, Lords of Evil is currently active.

Booyah. $4.5 million from Kleiner, Perkins and Caulfield. Formed by three games industry vets, they are in stealth, but I suspect they'll be applying game mechanics to helping people do good, something that Akoha is also trying to do. Here's their about statement: Booyahs are topnotch industry vets from a wide range of entertainment, media, and technology fields who have made it their mission to do good, to help other people do good, and to change the world.

Kirkland North. $225,000. Seed Round. Harrison Metal Capital. Runs Turf, an online Risk type game that turns real-world neighborhoods into zones to be battled over.

Oberon Media Gets 20 Million Investment; and US AND European Games Investment Compilations

Oberon Media, a casual games distribution company, just announced a 20 million dollars investment from Infinity I-China Fund for expansion into the Chinese market.

According to the Infinity I-China Fund, the Chinese games market has $2B in annual sales and 50 million users. I've heard it was bigger.

And if you're looking for funding, keep in mine that the credit crisis isn't affecting the Japanese, Chinese, or oil-rich Gulf states. Perhaps, it's time to look abroad for funding. Anyone know any overseas early-stage funds? Seriously, put them in the comments.

Nearly complete compilations of game company fundings.

Last week, two bloggers released compilations of games company fundings. One focused on the US, and one focused on Europe. Even I did a brief list of recent fundings.

Note: I'm postphoning my How to Make a Successful Game post until next week. Since the Virtual Goods Summit is Friday, I want to spend the rest of the week focused on virtual goods issues.

Recent Fundings in the Social Gaming Industry

Hollywood Interactive Group, Inc. MyHollywood.com - $5 million Series A. Investors: Led by BlueRun Ventures. Combining games, Hollywood gossip, avatars, and social networks to appeal to a female casual gamer. When I was still running Tenuki, I met with some of their exec team back in Feb. at the GDC. They have ambitious plans and a strong team. I imagine their current site will be evolving rapidly.

Challenge Games. $10 million Series B. Investors: Led by Globespan (their $4.5 million first round was led by Sequoia). Creates online roleplaying games, Duels and Baseball Boss. Both games use game mechanics common to many popular (or previously popular Facebook games). Both games have considerably more polish than your standard social game. Duels has a Facebook app presence, but it's little more than a funnel to their normal site. It has a paltry 1100 monthly users. $14.5 million in funding for games that are essentially Facebook games is a great argument for people to start moving their properties off Facebook.

ROBOTGALAXY. $5 million (on $25 million post-money valuation) Series B. Investors: Led by Bachmann Industries (their manufacturing partners who invested $7 million in their A round. Combining customized robot toys with an online virtual world (i.e. Webkins with robots).

Big Fish Games. $83 million. Investors: Balderton Capital, General Catalyst Partners, and Salmon River Capital. Combines downloadable casual games with light social networking site. 50.3 million in revenue last year. So why raise a big round? Methinks, they are looking to change business models or expand into a new market (they've already made a successful move into Nintendo DS games).

Raptr. $12 million Series A. Investors: Accel Partners and Founders Fund. The social network for playing games that aggregrates player data from various platforms (Xbox, Wii, PC games). You can read my thoughts about it here.

White Label Gift Apps Creator, LOLapps, gets 4.5 Million in Funding

Venturebeat reported yesterday that LOLapps recently raised $3.5 million dollars, part of a $4.5 million Series A from Polaris Venture Partners.

$4.5 Million is the highest amount of funding I've seen for a Facebook apps company that isn't focused on games (not counting Slide and Rockyou who are not purely Facebook apps companies).

From what I can gather (they're in Stealth), LOLapps has two main apps, Gift Creator and Quiz Creator. Together, they have about 25,000 daily active users, which barely places them in the top two hundred apps in terms of traffic.

However, these numbers are not representative of LOLapps' true reach. Their audience is much wider.

Here's why: their apps allow Facebook users to create their own gifts and quiz apps. On those gift and quiz apps, LOLapps runs ads from which they derive revenue. Users create the content, LOLapps gets the cash. Pretty brilliant.

One of these user-generated apps, Shots, Shooters, and Exotic Drinks has ~8000 DAU. There's at least twenty more listed in their gift app directory. Same with quizzes. Who knows how wide their reach extends.

Another company, Sharendipity is trying something similar with games, though fun games are MUCH harder to create then gift and quiz apps.

With a 4.5 million round, LOLapps is entering the big leagues as far as app companies are concerned. They must have big plans. After all, why else you raise money if you're already profitable if you didn't? Well, unless of course, your traffic was in inevitable decline...

Whatever, they're doing, I'm sure they're monetizing it with virtual goods. :)