Wooga

Wooga is a mobile-first game developer in Berlin, Germany.[2][3] The company develops free-to-play mobile and social games for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets and social networks like Facebook. It is the world's 5th-biggest game developer (by monthly active users) on the Facebook platform as of March 2014.[4]

The Wooga offices in Berlin, Germany.
Wooga GmbH
TypePrivate
Industry
Founded2009
Headquarters
Berlin
,
Germany
Key people
Jens Begemann
Philipp Moeser
Number of employees
200[1] (2020)
Websitewooga.com

The game's name comes from the words World of Gaming.

History

Wooga was founded in January 2009 by Jens Begemann (CEO), Patrick Paulisch (Co-founder) and Philipp Moeser (CTO).[5] Patrick Paulisch has since left Wooga.

In July 2009, Wooga launched its first game, Brain Buddies. The game reached 5 million monthly players 3 months after launch.[6] The company received €5 million in a round of funding led by Balderton Capital in November 2009.[7] Holtzbrinck Ventures, which had provided funding earlier that year, also participated in this round.[8]

In February 2010, Wooga launched its second game, Bubble Island, which reached 4 million monthly players in 8 weeks. In May 2010, Wooga launched its third game, Monster World[9] Wooga announced in July 2016 that Monster World would be shut down on August 31 after 6 years due to a decline in the number of players. In November 2010, Wooga launched Happy Hospital.[10] In March 2011, Wooga launched Diamond Dash, released in December for iPhone and iPad on the iOS App Store. In March 2012, Wooga announced that Diamond Dash had been downloaded over 11 million times since launch.[11] Wooga raised a Series B Round of $24 m funding in May 2011.[12]

Magic Land Island was launched during the GDC Europe in August 2011 in Cologne. In June 2012, the HTML5 game was open sourced under the name Pocket Island on GitHub under MIT license and with the assets under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA.[13][14]

In March 2013, Wooga launched both Monster World mobile for iOS and Pearl’s Peril. Pearl’s Peril became the company’s fastest selling game.[15] On 10 April 2013, Wooga launched Pocket Village.[16] In May, they launched Fantastic Forest and Kingsbridge on the 21st and the 28th, respectively.[16][10] In February 2014, Fantastic Forest was relaunched as Farm Tales.

On 22 August 2013, Jelly Splash launched on iOS.[16][17] The game was subsequently released on the Facebook.com platform in September 2013, and on Android in October 2013.[18] Wooga also launched Jelly Splash as a test title for the Korean KakaoTalk platform on 9 November 2013.[16][19] In December 2013, Jelly Splash reported monthly active users of 8.2 million.[20]

At the GDC 2014, CEO Jens Begemann presented the company’s new development approach, which he calls the “hit filter”. The focus of this new approach is to create two hits per year.[21] On 20 May 2015, Wooga launched Crazy Kings (developed by TicBits).[16] On 6 October 2016, Wooga launched Bubble Island 2.[16] As of July 2018, the company employs 200 people.[22]

In December 2018, Wooga was acquired for more than 200 million US-Dollars by Israeli gaming company Playtika.[23][24]

Portfolio

Facebook Games
  • Diamond Dash (15.5 million monthly active users and 2.4 million daily active users)[25]
  • Bubble Island (3.3 million monthly active users and 0.5 million daily active users)[25]
  • Monster World (3.0 million monthly active users and 0.7 million daily active users)[25] (Wooga reported in July 2016 that Monsterworld would be closing down after six years due to a decline in the number of people playing the game. see facebook/or contact wooga support for more info.
  • Magic Land (0.3 million monthly active users and 61k daily active users)[25]
  • Happy Hospital (0.1 million monthly active users and 7k daily active users)[25]
  • Brain Buddies (0.2 million monthly active users and 9k daily active users)[25]
  • Kingsbridge (0.3 million monthly active users and 36k daily active users)[25]
  • Farm Tales (0.7 million monthly active users and 89k daily active users)[25]
  • Pearl’s Peril (4 million monthly active users and 1.4 million daily active users)[25]
  • Jelly Splash (8.4 million monthly active users and 2.1 million daily active users)[25]
  • June's Journey[25]

Smartphone games

References
  1. Fröhlich, Petra (10 January 2020). "Die größten Spiele-Entwickler in Deutschland 2020" [The largest game developers in Germany 2020]. GamesWirtschaft (in German).
  2. Author, Guest. "We're a mobile-first company, but Facebook is still half our revenue says Wooga CEO". pocketgamer.biz. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
  3. "." Retrieved on June 9, 2010.
  4. "Appdata Top Developers Leaderboard by MAU." Retrieved on February 21, 2014.
  5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-03-27. Retrieved 2014-03-27.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. "Facebook Game “Brain Buddies”: Five million monthly users." Retrieved on June 9, 2010.
  7. "Following the Playfish exit, social games developer Wooga secures a further €5 million funding." TechCrunch.
  8. "wooga secures €5m ($7.5m) in funding led by Balderton Archived 2010-07-25 at the Wayback Machine." wooga.com
  9. "Wooga Goes Facebook Farming with Monster World." Inside Social Games.
  10. Wooga.com, Games-Page
  11. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-05-13. Retrieved 2012-05-10.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  12. "Scoop: European Social Games Phenomenon wooga Raises $24 Million". Retrieved 27 May 2019.
  13. wooga-veroeffentlicht-quellcode-von-html5-spiel-magic-land-island on browsergame-magazin.de (German, 2012)
  14. Pocket Island on github.com
  15. "insidesocialgames.com". www.insidesocialgames.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
  16. Games, Wooga. "Wooga History". Wooga History. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  17. Author, AppAdvice Staff (23 August 2013). "The Next Candy Crush Saga? Colorful Match-Three Game Jelly Splash Launches On iOS". AppAdvice. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
  18. "Playtech - About the Company". Retrieved 27 May 2019.
  19. Jordan, Jon; Editor, Contributing. "The Charticle: Jelly Splash for KakaoTalk". pocketgamer.biz. Retrieved 27 May 2019.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  20. "insidesocialgames.com". www.insidesocialgames.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
  21. Takahashi, Dean (22 March 2014). "Jens Begemann on making the transition from social to mobile". Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  22. "Deutschlands größte Spielehersteller 2018". GamesWirtschaft (in German). 2 July 2018.
  23. "Israeli gaming company Playtika has acquired Berlin's Wooga to expand its casual games portfolio". Tech.eu. Retrieved 2019-01-09.
  24. "Jens Begemann: Wooga-Chef verkauft Spielefirma für über 200 Millionen Dollar nach Israel". www.handelsblatt.com (in German). Retrieved 2019-01-09.
  25. http://www.metricsmonk.com/dashboard
  26. Games, Wooga. "Our Games". Our Games. Retrieved 2017-11-25.
  27. Appdata.com - wooga." Retrieved on 20 May 2011.
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