Thursday, July 16, 2009

Outspark Raises $8.3 Million Third Round


Outspark, a leading virtual playground combining Freemium games with personalized social experiences, today announced it has closed an $8.3 million Series C financing round.

Started in January 2007 by Susan Choe, former director of international and gaming operations at Yahoo, Outspark has five mid-casual “massively multiplayer online” games and offers social events, in-game and around-game networking, user-generated content, and personalized user experiences.

Outspark claims traffic of 5.4 million unique visitors a month. Game play is free. The company makes money — “several million” in 2008 — from the sale of virtual goods, such as clothing for avatars, and events like in-game weddings, fashion shows and dances, and also to a limited extent from advertising.

Located in the SOMA district of San Francisco, Outspark is positioned to become a leader in the rapidly evolving U.S. casual gaming market. wkriegel@outspark.com

“Outspark’s virtual playground represents a fresh approach to interactive entertainment,” said Stan Smith of Syncom. “The company has successfully married compelling multi-genre online game play with community and personalization to offer users an entirely new and exciting online entertainment experience. Moreover, Outspark’s world class team and innovative business model which unites publisher, portal and platform capabilities ensure that the company will continue to be a leader in the evolution of next-generation interactive entertainment services. We are impressed with Outspark’s accomplishments to date and are excited about joining a tremendous team of visionary operators and investors to exploit the tremendous global opportunity.”

“Our pioneering game publishing platform and portal combines social networking features, retailing tools for online content and best-in-class marketing across gamers to address the need for rich game entertainment,” stated Susan Choe, CEO and founder of Outspark. “In addition, the easily accessible publishing platform and services we’ve created for mid-session MMOG players and developers has resulted in leading game designers across the U.S., Europe and Asia signing up to publish with Outspark. As we continue to grow our network of partners we look forward to adding more developers around the world as well as media companies who want to jump start their mid-session games business.”

Outspark is a leading micro-transaction based online game company that publishes and operates engaging online multiplayer games. Since the company’s formation in January 2007, the online community has grown to more than 4.7 million users. Featuring a portfolio of immersive free-to-play games and related content, the company is building an online destination where members come for the games and stay for the community. Titles include Fiesta, Secret of the Solstice, Bread ‘n Butter, Project Powder, Blackshot and Wind Slayer. Backed by a stellar group of investors including Syncom Venture Partners, SBI Investment, DCM, Tencent, Altos Ventures and Mille Plateaux, Outspark is headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., with a subsidiary office in Seoul, Korea. For more information, visit http://www.outspark.com.

2 comments:

FOUNDUPS® (Michael J. Trout, CEO) said...

yet another sink hole for investors who will be left scratching their head waiting for returns. The retention on vr-mmos is horrendous, and as soon as the fanfare goes, so does the user base -- off to the next best thing... I saw it happen to UO, EQ, AC, AO, SB... at least they charged, SL lost big time. When will people friggin wake up and stop throwing money at nothing... want a real investment opportunity...? with a significant return? look at what EDUIT.org is doing. We are looking to flatten global education... thats right! Flatten it and disrupted it so bad that educators will be left scratching their heads wondering who, what, where, did this EDUIT monster thing come from?

EDUIT.org
redefining the way we play education.

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with you. Great comments. More bad money following bad money. What is Doll Capital thinking?