Categories
entrepreneurship games industry jussi vc deals europe

$1.7 billion invested into Online Games and Related Entertainment in years 2007-2008

NB: Jussi and I have pooled our data, but will be looking at different aspects of it going forwards. Should be interesting…

Background

Roughly a month ago Jussi Laakkonen published a list of $350 million invested in year 2008 into virtual worlds, casual MMOs, and casual & social games. Based on US-centric sites, it missed out the majority of European deals. So, inspired by Jussi’s excellent idea, I then posted my own list of European deals I’d been tracking (which also included some extra things on the fringes of Jussi’s initial set). We decided that the right thing to do would be to put those lists together.

The extra things I’d been tracking were mainly in MMO investments, technology vendors, and support services (e.g. payment providers). I also wanted to add in mobile gaming (especially in light of what’s happening with the iPhone, the iPhone investment fund, and the Blackberry investment fund). These are the areas I’ll be looking into more in the future.

Analysis on T=Machine

I’ll be doing some followup posts over the next couple of days, Jussi’s zooming ahead with his – check out his blog to keep up with his comments too.

Followup posts will all be tagged under “jussi vc deals europe”

Jussi’s Analysis

Jussi’s posted a great summary of the core data.

The data

The data on VC investments has been collected from publicly available sources including but not limited to

* VentureBeat
* PaidContent
* Virtual World’s Management
* Avista Partners’ video game briefing
* TechCrunch
* CrunchBase

The data was gathered by Jussi Laakkonen and Adam Martin. The data is most accurate for year 2008. Year 2006 and earlier years have been only covered sporadically and typically only for companies that have received follow-up funding in years 2007-2008 (IIRC the European data is complete from the end of 2005 onwards, as it started from around the time of Mind Candy’s first announced funding). The data is provided AS IS and the authors make no warranties or guarantees about its accuracy.

Download the spreadsheet:

* Excel format
* CSV format
* HTML format

Categories
computer games dev-process mmo signup processes Web 0.1

Web 0.1: How NOT to run an open beta stress-test

1. Ask people to join the closed beta 6 months before the open beta happens

http://www.kongregate.com/forums/1/topics/8117

Dinowaurs Beta Testers Wanted

We’re now inviting Kongregate members to sign up to test the Dinowaurs Beta. If you don’t know what Dinowaurs is, go here for more info: http://www.kongregate.com/forums/1/topics/3350.
Simply pop in to this thread and say that you want in and I’ll put you on the list for the test. Please, no conversations, as it makes it more difficult to pull all the names out.
We’d like to thank everyone who helped us test the alpha! Anyone who signed up for the alpha in the previous thread will be first in line, so no need to sign up again if you already did in the alpha thread.
Thanks, everyone!

(posted may 1st 2008)

2. When you start an open beta, don’t tell players they’re accepted until 2 days before the beta happens

Hello!

Thank you for volunteering to test Dinowaurs, an upcoming game on Kongregate. As of this email, everyone who volunteered to help test Dinowaurs will now get a chance to do so. We’re very grateful for all your help!

For those of you who have tested before, this is a different request than usual, and for all you new faces, welcome! What we need to do is load test the server – that is get as many feet stomping on it as possible and see if it crashes! Because of that, we’re going to try to stuff as many testers into the game at one time as possible. For this test, Dinowaurs will only be open on Monday, November 17 from 12 noon-2pm Pacific Time (All you non West-Coasters, take notice of the time!)

So we hope to see all 4000 of you Dinowaurs beta testers in here and playing the game on Monday! Don’t be late – our doors will close tight at 2pm.

Thanks again!

Kongregate and Intuition

3. Make it last 2 hours only

(Fair enough, normal practice for stress tests, although it’s usually a good idea to let people in a few days in advance to ensure that they have working clients etc (less of an issue for a web game like this, but still probably worth doing).)

4. Don’t tell anyone the secret link to the beta

Read that email again. Do you see the magic URL? No? That’s because THEY FORGOT TO INCLUDE IT.

Some googling turns up various people asking for it, and some friendly Kong players answering with the URL here:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/flamingbait/dinowaurs

EDIT: they just sent another email which remembered to include the link.

Hello!

Today’s the day! At 12 noon Pacific Time (3pm Eastern), the doors to the Dinowaurs Beta on Kongregate will be flung open!

At that time you should make sure you’re signed in to Kongregate and go here to test: http://www.kongregate.com/games/intuition/dinowaurs-beta_preview

Make sure you’re on time! We will be closing doors promptly at 2pm (PST). If during gameplay you encounter any bugs, please click on the little bug icon at the top right of chat and fill out a bug report. The more actual bugs you find, the better the game will be!

We really want to thank all you beta testers. We really appreciate all your help!

Kongregate and Intuition

Could be they intended this all along. Given that the beta starts less than an hour after that email was sent out, I doubt it :).