Zynga nabs OMGPOP. Smart move?

Zynga has acquired OMGPOP, the maker of hit game Draw Something. What does this mean for both companies?

|
Reuters
Zynga HQ in San Francisco. Zynga has acquired OMGPOP, a game maker.

Mobile game giant Zynga Wednesday snapped up OMGPOP, the New York-based developer of a popular title called Draw Something. The price: Approximately $200 million, according to one source. In a blog post today, David Ko of Zynga praised the OMGPOP team and Draw Something, which he said would fit nicely alongside existing Zynga titles such as FarmVille and Zynga Bingo

"Draw Something is an amazing game; I think it’s one of the most social and expressive mobile games ever built," Ko wrote. "It’s intuitive and fun. It brings out creativity, a sense of nostalgia and child-like wonder. And most importantly, it’s inherently social. You learn about your friends and family as you play, and I love that the most requested feature to date has been people asking for the ability to save not just their own drawings, but those of their friends."

Fair enough. But $200 million is a steep price. Surely Zynga could have just built its own version of Draw Something? (For the uninitiated, Draw Something works as advertised: Users draw something, and other users guess what it is. Think: Digital Pictionary.)

Well, over at TechCrunch, Josh Constine argues that if Zynga had built a Draw Something clone, it would have split the market – no good for Zynga. 

Moreover, Constine continues, "Zynga is in the midst of a major shift from being a web game company to a mobile game company. The company already has 240 million mobile users. Other than the talent from its acquisition of Words With Friends developer Newtoy, though, it doesn’t have enough mobile experts to make this shift. Acquiring OMGPOP fills Zynga’s ranks with proven mobile hitmakers." 

And as Ryan Lawler of Giga Om notes, Zynga isn't just getting Draw Something (although Draw Something is by far the most successful of its creations). It's also getting a team of programmers and 35 addition games, including Puppy World. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut. And don’t forget to sign up for the weekly BizTech newsletter.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Zynga nabs OMGPOP. Smart move?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/0322/Zynga-nabs-OMGPOP.-Smart-move
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe