By this time next year, he expects the Victoria team will be up to 80 staff. He wants to hire 10 people immediately across a variety of disciplines, including operations and finance as well as game development. Stark said there will be gradual growth in each region, but he expects significant growth in the short term at the head office in Victoria.
The deal makes Victoria the centre of the Kixeye world with additional development centres in Vietnam and Australia. The whole group was founded on getting companies together under one roof so everyone gets better.” “They are all better at a certain thing than we are and we are better at a couple of things than they are. “The deal gives Stillfront an opportunity to get into new markets, and at the same time all the other studios can help us,” said Stark. Over the last nine years, it has been adding studios to its portfolio, and closed 11 acquisitions in that time. Stillfront is a global conglomerate of gaming studios focused on free-to-play online strategy games.
They will also be able to draw upon the strength of other studios under the Stillfront banner.
“I know the same team of people with the same products can have a better outcome in so many dimensions. We won’t always be chasing or waiting for the other shoe to drop,” he said. “This is an opportunity to change the mode of operations for the entire company,” he said, noting they will be transitioning from a culture that was reactive and constantly being forced to chase targets. Stark said what sold him on the deal was the chance to see what his team could do under ideal conditions. “It means growth and prosperity, quite frankly,” said Stark, whose retention was a key part of the transaction. Ten days after the sale to Sweden-based game studio Stillfront, Kixeye is beating the bushes looking for talent to add to the company’s roster of 180, Stark said. "We're great at marketing and publishing so we could launch minimum viable products but we want to build amazing games," he says of the company's attitude to the balance between quality and schedule.īelow we talk to Caryl Shaw about the Backyard Monsters: Unleashed.The $120-million US deal to acquire Victoria-based game developer Kixeye will change the studio’s culture, improve its performance and put it on the fast track to growth, says Clayton Stark, president of Kixeye. VEAG Conflict - coming to Facebook and mobileīoth focus heavily on PVP gameplay, combined with the sort of 3D graphics that CMO Brandon Barber calls 'a quantum leap forward' compared to KIXEYE's previous output. These include core space RTS VEGA Conflict, which is currently in Facebook closed beta, and MOBA TOME: Immortal Arena. Later in 2013, KIXEYE will be releasing mobile games based on its new Facebook titles. These two releases are distilled versions of the original experiences, though, redesigned for touchscreen devices and mobile gaming sensibilities.
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The title is only one in a series of mobile games coming from KIXEYE, however.Ĭore Facebook strategy title War Commander is also getting a standalone mobile version. Indeed, it's just been soft launched in New Zealand for testing purposes. Shaw expects the free-to-play game will be released in the early summer, initially on iOS. It's still a strategy game, but with more of a wacky, playful atmosphere."Īs with Clash of Clans, players build up their base, allocating resources between defence, levelling up buildings to unlock new items and abilities, and creating monster armies that can be sent to attack other players' bases. " Backyard Monsters: Unleashed is a reimaging of the Facebook game for mobile," explains Caryl Shaw, who joined KIXEYE in November 2012. Mobile development originally started in 2012 as a co-development deal with DeNA, only for a new internal team at KIXEYE to start again from scratch in January 2013. Launched in 2010, it is one of KIXEYE's most successful Facebook games, and a likely inspiration for Supercell's Clash of Clans. Something of this process can be seen with the standalone mobile version of Backyard Monsters.
The issue for the San Francisco-based hardcore developer is its move to mobile has coincided with the development of its new wave of 3D Facebook games.Įven with 500 staff, including a team in Australia, maintaining control over eight titles in simultaneous development has proved a tricky job. King, Kabam, Zynga, Wooga, 5th Planet have all successfully bought some of their existing IP to touchscreens.īut not everyone has yet made the transition. The past 12 months have seen most of the big Facebook gaming companies heading to mobile.
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