Wooga

185% User Growth in 2011 – Berlin Start Up #3 on Facebook

2012-02-08T21:09:40Z

185% User Growth in 2011 – Berlin Start Up #3 on Facebook

● Berlin-based game developer grew active user base to 40m and becomes number 3 on Facebook

● Company will hire 100 additional employees in 2012 and will focus on mobile development

San Francisco, USA – February 8, 2012 – In 2011, Wooga saw its user base grow by 185% – surging from 14 million in January 2011 to over 40 million users currently playing Wooga’s games every month. New games Diamond Dash and Magic Land launched on Facebook, with synchronized mobile versions following shortly after that enabled players players to connect across platforms, and in turn brought Wooga’s total to six Flash and two mobile games.

This expansion was thanks in part to a $24 million Series B Investment that the company received from investors led by Highland Capital Partners in May. In line with its increased user base Wooga has also seen its number of employees increase from 60 at the beginning of 2011, to a multinational team of more than 140 people, with a growth rate of two employees per week.

Jens Begemann, Wooga Founder and CEO, commented on the company’s growth at an Industry Event in San Francisco: “Wooga’s growth is organic in every sense. Only 5% of our new users come through paid ads and 40% through viral features, with the remainder coming from cross-linking through our existing games.”

All of Wooga’s games are free-to-play and social by design, closely evolving with the Facebook platform. In 2011, Wooga continued its close partnership with Facebook through Open Graph and the development of the HTML5 platform.

Concerning the partnership with Facebook and Wooga’s plans for 2012, Begemann further stated: “The upcoming Facebook IPO shows the potential the social network and social games possess. In 2012, Wooga will hire 100 additional employees in order to further develop high-quality social games and to focus on upcoming mobile titles.”

Download Press Information (English)

All games combined, Wooga’s servers handle about 30 billion requests per month from its network of games, generated from user actions such as using a magic wand in Monster World to playing a round of Diamond Dash.

Wooga will continue its history of developing social and technological innovations and expand on its achievements in the mobile market, such as synchronizing across multiple platforms and optimized touchpad controls for HTML 5 and iOS.

Happy Second Birthday, Bubble Island

2012-02-02T09:35:12Z

Today, the Bubble Island Team and everyone at Wooga are very excited to celebrate Bubble Island’s second birthday. Launched in February 2010, Bubble Island has been played by more than 48 million people since its release two years ago and put the popular bubble shooter genre on the social games’ map.

Despite its advanced age for a social game, Bubble Island has managed to reach a new all-time high with 10.2 million monthly active players today, just in time for its second birthday. Localized in seven languages, Bubble Island has been updated and improved on a daily basis since it was launched; a fact which has certainly helped the title to gather a loyal group of players who have enjoyed shooting gazillions of bubbles every day.

Socially active, Bubble Island’s players share their experiences with around 440,000 daily news feed posts on Facebook, making our adventurous Raccoon a very happy fellow. Seasonal decorations with great attention to detail – from Easter to Halloween and Christmas – not only add a current reference to the game, but also serve as a nice visual stimulation.

Sure, Bubble Island’s recognized success does not come easy: So, thank you all the Bubble Island players out there, who keep shooting bubbles like crazy and kudos to the hard-working Bubble Island Team, which is dedicated to constantly improving the game and delivering new content for both, Level of The Week and Adventure Mode.

Check out some pictures from our raccoonish Birthday ceremony this morning! And yes, the cake was delicious!

2011: A Woogalicious Year!!!

2012-02-01T15:57:07Z

With Santa already packing his sleigh and trying to memorize his challenging Christmas routes, it is about time to look back at some Wooga highlights from 2011.

January 2011 kicked off with some really great news, because Wooga became the leading European social games developer and #7 in the world. Within 18 months, Wooga managed to secure the number one rank despite tough European competition, fascinating over 15 million people per month. In the same month, Wooga also reached a magic milestone when the company became the biggest supplier of interactive magic equipment in the world.

February passed super fast with lots of internal efforts, propelling Wooga to #5 worldwide at the end of the month.

March started with a bang or should we say with a “dash”? Diamond Dash, Wooga’s 5th game was launched and went straight through the roof.

It was no April fools’ joke when Wooga surpassed social gaming behemoths like Pop Cap, Digital Chocolate and Playdom to take over #4 worldwide with about 20.5m monthly active players. Also, Monster World celebrated its first birthday with really impressive numbers and contributed to our spring fever.

In May, our office faced heavy constructions, but also a lot of happy faces when Wooga received 24 million US Dollar funding to grow even faster.

June and July were extremely hot, but it got even hotter when Wooga announced its expansion into mobile games and invited its employees to a special summer party at the river Spree.

The summer party eventually had to come to an end, but August fortunately gave us more reasons to celebrate: At first, Wooga received two European Games Awards for Best Publisher and Best Game (Diamond Dash). This was followed by Magic Land’s launch, Wooga’s 6th game, at the GDC Europe in Cologne.

September sent many Woogas travelling to interesting conferences all over the globe, but also brought some spectacular guests to our Wooga office in Berlin. Joel from Gruenderszene (a Berlin-based blog) surprised us with the unexpected and contested Start-Up of the Decade Award and Ben Rooney from the The Wall Street Journal, published an intriguing article about Wooga.

October turned out to be yet another great month for Wooga, especially after the company walked the talk and successfully launched Magic Land mobile, an HTML5 Game, as Wooga’s first multi-platform game.

November meant colder temperatures, which kept Woogas busy preparing small and big improvements, but Wooga still made headlines.

Usually the last month of the year is a pretty slow one, but here at Wooga, December topped it all. Launching Diamond Dash -the 60 second gem rush- for iOS at Le Web in Paris certainly had something to do with it. The feedback was overwhelming and left Woogas in high spirits for the X-Mas Party and the last days of the year.

2011 has been a fantastic year for Wooga and everyone here is already excited about what 2012 will have in store for the company.

Merry X-Mas and a Happy New Year!!!

See You in 2012!!!

Diamond Dash goes mobile – Wooga launches popular social game for iOS

2012-01-03T10:23:16Z

Download Game Graphics

Paris, France – December 07, 2011 – Diamond Dash, the most popular arcade game on Facebook, is now available as a free download in the App Store. As of today, Wooga, the world’s third largest developer of social games, is offering Diamond Dash for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. This exciting game first launched on Facebook, where it has fascinated over 10 million people per month. Today, the company introduced the new mobile version live on stage at Europe’s largest Internet conference, Le Web in Paris.

Diamond Dash, Wooga’s exciting 60 second gem rush, challenges players’ reflexes to smash as many same colored gems as possible. Weekly tournaments allow players to compete for the highest score with their friends, and also reward the top 3 players with one of the coveted gold, silver or bronze medals. By linking the iOS version to Facebook and automatically synchronizing both, weekly tournaments are now available across multiple platforms.

Since its launch in March of this year, Diamond Dash has delighted over 25 million people and was honored in August 2011 with the European Games Award as best social game. It is currently ranked among the top 10 social games on Facebook.

Press Release

Features:

Automatic comparison of the score and social interaction with friends via Facebook Connect
Launch in nine languages (German, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish)
Regular updates with new game content

Diamond Dash is now available as a free download for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Gitta Blatt joins Wooga as Head of Human Resources

2011-11-29T09:28:31Z

Starting December 1st, Gitta Blatt will take on the position of Head of Human Resources at Wooga, the world’s third largest developer of social games.

She will immediately take over the management of the Human Resources Department of the Berlin-based company and focus first and foremost on personnel development and the recruitment of new employees. Wooga currently hires two new employees per week – the company plans to grow to 250 employees by the end of 2012.

Prior to joining Wooga, Gitta Blatt was Head of Human Resources at Bigpoint. There, the economics and communications graduate was responsible for the strategic development of personnel and organization, international recruitment and salary management, among other things. She also gained extensive expertise as a partner of the corporate and personnel consulting company kwp and as manager of human resources at AOL Medien GmbH, where she was also a member of the executive board and member of the AOL Europe headquarters.

“Gitta and I hit it off right away”, smiles Jens Begemann, founder and CEO of Wooga, and explains, “Her views, her vitality and her commitment convinced me that she was the right person to guide the rapid growth that Wooga is currently experiencing. Her ideal company culture corresponds with mine, and her experience – both with the development of a company and in the gaming industry – is unique. With her special approach and her many years of international experience, Gitta Blatt will recruit the right people for Wooga.”

The 46-year old diver and world traveller is looking forward to the challenges presented by the rapidly growing start-up. “Along with a weekly gigantic package of chocolate that was promised to me, I am especially excited to help develop a young, dynamic and international team in a company that has been able to maintain a family atmosphere, despite its rapid growth”, says Gitta Blatt on starting at Wooga.

Ich bin ein Berliner Monster

2011-11-04T13:48:20Z

It shouldn’t be a big secret that wooga and our 120 employees from all over the world really love Berlin. Living and working in this vibrant city feels so great that it was only a matter of time until we had to share our appreciation virtually. Monster World, one of wooga’s top Facebook games, gives you the opportunity to feel like a real Berliner and decorate your own garden with some of Berlin’s coolest sights. For the next three weeks you will be able to find lovely Berlin items in your Monster World Decoration-Shop.

In case you are not a Berliner or have never been to Germany’s capital and are left wondering about the particularity of said items, we are offering a sneak peek and a short explanation.

Next stop, Berlin Central Station. This is a typical Berlin metro entrance, which offers access to Berlin’s great public transportation network. With over 922 million passengers per year, it is Germany’s largest transportation network and getting to places on time in Berlin would be just unimaginable without it. Get yourself a fancy metro entrance and never miss a train in your Monster World garden!

The Berlin Bear. Berlin wouldn’t be Berlin without the bear. He is Berlin’s official coat of arms and also serves as the model for the world-famous Buddy Bear exhibition. Show some Berlin love with this custom Berlin Bear hedge!

Wall Woodpecker (or “Mauerspecht” in German). Some people might still remember when the German wall finally came down in ’89. This historical moment is forever associated with Wall Woodpeckers, people, who helped dismantling this symbol of division. Come celebrate this important moment with wooga and decorate your garden with a Monster World Wall Woodpecker!

Vrooom! Vrooom! Make way for the Trabant! This extremely durable car was the most common vehicle in East Germany and still is an important cultural emblem. If you want to, you can rent a “Trabi” (as Germans call them) and do a crazy Berlin tour with your friends. Park your own Trabi in your Monster World garden and invite your monsters for a tour!

Discover more Monster World Berlin items online! Join the Monster World Berlin Tour now: https://apps.facebook.com/monster-world/

Magic Land: Island – A Behind the Scenes Look

2011-11-04T15:41:37Z

A few months ago, we secretly began a collaborative project with Facebook that would later be leaked as ‘Project Spartan’. The project’s goal was to develop a mobile platform game that could work inside of a browser and, also, be embedded into the new iPhone and iPad applications from Facebook. The details we were given appeared quite vague but the gist of it was this: Develop a game that runs on mobile browsers.

The tech of choice for developing mobile browser games is called HTML5. A new iteration of an established web page language that allows greater multimedia support but is still relatively untested on mobile devices.

The project began with two people: a Product Manager and a Back-End Engineer. Initially, there were too many constraints and uncertainties. A launch-time of about two months gave us little time to overcome our inexperience with what was possible using HTML5 on mobile devices. Add to this, the fact that, Facebook’s new platform was still being developed and was more of a moving target than a dependable end-state. At this point, the outlook wasn’t very rosy. Being based upon a new technology was packed with challenges and uncertainties regarding the programming of the game. At the time, there were very few HTML 5 mobile games that were more functionally complex than Pong or Tetris. Such a young technology meant that finding experienced engineers in the field proved immensely difficult. In short, it was a high risk, high reward project with a small chance for success. Following one of wooga’s mantras “be fast, be bold,” we gave it a shot.

We created: Magic Land: Island. A medieval city-builder that is based upon an existing wooga title, Magic Land. Early-on we were aware that we wouldn’t be able to include all of the original Magic Land features. Furthermore, we would need to modify the game interface to meet the different usability issues of a touch device. On the engineering side, we got really lucky and struck employee gold. We found Kamil, an engineer that had happened to work on the HTML5 game engine for a few months before we had begun development. He matched our job description perfectly.

It looked like we might have a chance.

Our first prototype exceeded expectations of what, we had thought, was technologically possible. However, turning all of these elements into an actual, fun, and playable game turned out to be a tough nut to crack. But we would not give-up and, so, constantly improved the game. We, amazingly, managed to find more talented individuals to join our team and our productivity increased as product’s quality improved. A postponed release gave us a few more weeks to polish and ended-up working-out in our favor.

On Monday night, we released Magic Land: Island to the public as a part of Facebook’s iPad application launch and their new mobile website. We were incredibly excited about our participation in this event and decided to share the details of our project development process at this month’s Berlin design and front end development meet-up, up.front.ug. Our talk briefly summarized our project from inception to launch.

We think that we’ve created a great game that shines in comparison to other titles on Facebook’s Mobile App Showcase.

There will be a follow-up post about the technology behind the game, so stay tuned.

Sincerely, the Magic Land: Island Team

Florian, Sako, Karin, Horia, Kamil, Jalda, Guillermo, Jo, Boril and Patrick

Magic Land Island: Wooga sets sail for mobile social games

2011-11-30T15:29:30Z

Today, Wooga launches its first mobile game Magic Land Island on Facebook’s mobile apps and mobile site (m.facebook.com). Magic Land Island is an HTML5 game, which is now accessible on all smartphones and tablets, allowing users to play wherever and whenever they want with their friends.

Magic Land Island is a mobile version of Magic Land, specifically designed for Facebook’s mobile site, which is integrated into Facebook’s iPhone and iPad app. Magic Land was launched mid-August on Facebook. Its engaging story combines medieval customs and legends in a mix of role-playing, city builder and adventure features. It has already fascinated about 4m monthly active players since its launch. Now Magic Land Island launches as a stand-alone game and will be connected to Magic Land soon.

Programmed in HTML5, Magic Land Island launches on Facebook’s newly updated mobile apps and mobile site, giving users the ability to play their favourite Facebook games and use Facebook apps on their smartphones and tablets.

“The rapid technological development and possibilities of HTML5 surprised us during the development process and we are really seeing a lot of potential for a new segment of mobile social games,” commented Philipp Moeser, Wooga’s co-founder and CTO, the launch today.

Wooga Founder and CEO, Jens Begemann added: “We are exited about the possibilities, especially the new social distribution channels, which come along with Facebook’s new mobile apps and mobile site. Wooga has always focused on the social experience – to build games, which are inherently social. This new mobile technology allows us to take this expertise to a whole new level: social mobile. 70% of our users are female and many between 35 and 45. They are also starting to look for mobile games which connect them to their friends wherever they are.”

Technologically, Magic Land Island is one of the most sophisticated mobile HTML5 games so far. Its cross-device compatibility, allowing both iOS and Android device users to play the game, gives Magic Land Island an expanded reach and offers a unique social gaming experience.

Magic Land Island enhances the joy of playing Social Games, as it turns the adventurous magical world into an interactive mobile experience.

Highlights:

One of the technologically most sophisticated mobile HTML5 games
Cross-device compatibility (Currently optimized for iOS devices, runs also on modern Android devices)
Social interaction embedded in the game – mobile social experience

About Wooga

Founded in 2009 in Europe‘s leading technology hub, Berlin, Wooga – world of gaming is the third largest social game developer in the world. Wooga creates high quality games for Facebook and iOS, with a specific focus on emotional character development, usability, and superb localization in seven languages.

Wooga is committed to creating innovative and original game titles for players of all ages, bringing millions of users around the world together through a world of gaming.

Wooga‘s free-to-play Facebook games are enjoyed by over forty million active players per month – 70% of which are women. Wooga‘s games generate revenue by selling virtual goods: Monster World players, for example, have bought more than twenty-eight million magic wands so far – making Wooga the biggest supplier of virtual magic equipment in the world. Wooga is also a world leader in the development of cutting-edge technologies, enabling millions of users to compete with their friends.

The Magic Ball wins Wooga’s HTML5 Competition

2011-11-30T15:44:05Z

Winning! Charlie Sheen obviously loves it, Wooga loves it, but who doesn’t…? A few weeks ago, we started our HTML5- JSConf.eu game demo contest and we are proud to announce that we have a winner. Before we get to the presentation ceremony and reveal the lucky winner of the JSConf.eu package (ticket/trip/accommodation), we would like to take a moment and emphasize how many great demos we received.

Considering the 20K limit and the-short term nature of the contest, we were amazed by really creative and fun game demos. Unfortunately, our Jury had a really tough decision to make and pick one winner.

(DRUM ROLL)…

The Mad Ball, Sébastien’s fun game demo convinced us because of its well-crafted gameplay, clear goals and addictive nature.

Your goal in The Mad Ball is to move the orange ball from the top to the bottom of the screen without bouncing into the obstacles that are spread all over the level – what looks easy at first glance, is actually a pretty addictive and challenging game.

You can try out The Mad Ball here: http://sdabet.github.com/mad_ball/

So, congrats from Wooga to Sébastien, the winner of our contest, who programmed the game above – won the JSConf Ticket and travelled all the way from Grenoble, France to Berlin. We hope that you enjoyed your trip to Berlin so far and and had a great time at the conference as well.

You can also check out the other games right here: http://www.wooga.com/l/html5contest/

Sébastian, winner of our HTML5-game-contest, with some woogas at JSConf.eu

Wooga is Start-Up of the Decade

2011-11-30T15:47:51Z

Wooga was awarded as “Newcomer Start-Up of the Decade” from Gruenderszene, a Berlin-based Blog, which follows the Start-Up Scene . Gruenderszene started the competition about a month ago and nominated several Start-Ups in various categories, like Oldtimer or Founder of the Decade. The majority of the 31 jury members voted for Wooga as the “Newcomer of the Decade” – it must have been a hard decision as we left other prominent German Start-Ups, such as City Deal, SoundCloud or Zalando behind.

Joel from Gruenderszene surprised us with the beautiful award on Monday, when he and his team sneaked in, “interrupting” our weekly Monday Morning meeting and presented Jens Begemann with the glass trophy. Jens was really happy and felt honored. In a spontaneous statement, he pointed out that the award was first and foremost a team effort by all Woogas and should be seen as an extra motivation to live up to the expectations.

Here is the video from Gruenderszene’s surprise visit at Wooga. The video is mostly in German, but the most important parts are in English: