Kobojo’s Atlantis Fantasy was released late last year and is seeing steady growth. Scripted around characters of the Greek mythology the game lets players rebuild the famous lost island of Atlantis – destroyed by Zeus – to engage in missions as well as underwater agriculture.

Developer: Kobojo
Genre: City building
Platform(s): Facebook
Launch: December 2011
Language(s): French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Monthly active users: 350,000 (on Facebook, February 6)
Monetization: Free-to-play with paid premium currency

What’s inside?

A polished, feature-rich underwater city-building game based on Greek mythology.

How to play

A whale visits Atlantis.

The object of Atlantis Fantasy is to create a functioning metropolis with complete infrastructure including housing and other buildings, agriculture, production and management of resources – all the while keeping the population of the underwater town happy. Any production unit’s manufacturing time can be accelerated using premium currency. Players can give the Atlanteans, depicted as little mermaids and mermen, specific tasks and prioritize development.

The game has a multitude of resources: Apart from the premium currency Pearls, there is soft currency Gold Coins, happiness, player level, population of the city and an energy bar. Around 200 missions aim to keep both new and hardcore gamers busy – missions include ruins restoration or finding hidden treasures.

Crops in underwater agriculture include sea strawberries and sea cucumbers.

Atlantis Fantasy’s lush graphics live up to social games’ risen standards; the underwater world is impressive especially when majestic whales and other sea dwellers are gliding gently through the waters.

Who’s playing?

Quite typical for the genre, 76 percent of players are female (according to data derived from Facebook’s ad targeting engine).

French social games publisher Kobojo has announced PyramidVille for mobile devices, starting with an iOS version. Kobojo is co-publishing the app named PyramidVille Adventure with BulkyPix in French, English, Italian, Spanish and German.
Kobojo’s original PyramidVille takes players to ancient Egypt where they build a city and manage its resources. The game comes in 6 languages (French, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) and currently has 740,000 monthly active users on Facebook.

The mobile version introduces new features, such as mini-games to accelerate time, that build on the River Nile as a key factor in Egypt’s development.
“Like we said at the LeWeb’11, Kobojo successfully epitomizes SoLoMo, which stands for ‘social, local, mobile’. This mobile version only strengthens our position in France and makes Kobojo a competitor to watch closely in Europe,” commented Franck Tetzlaff, CEO and founder of Kobojo.

European developers are gaining momentum on Facebook and other platforms. In this series we aim to highlight the most important social gaming companies from Europe.
First in line to answer our questions is Kobojo from France.

• Name: Kobojo

• What they do: Kobojo is the number one publisher in France of social games on Facebook and one of the European leaders.

• Location: Founded in Paris, France, where the headquarters are. Two local offices: Madrid, Spain (September 2011) and Berlin, Germany (November 2011).

• Founded by: Four EPITA Alumnis: Franck Tetzlaff, CEO, Vincent Vergonjeanne, VP Product & Strategy, Philippe Desgranges, Product RD Manager and Sébastien Monteil, Chief Technology Officer.

• Founded in: 2008

• Funding: €5,3 million, investors: ID Invest and Endeavour Vision

• Number of employees: 70

• Games published on: Facebook, Windows and Windows Phone 7, iPhone

• Game genre(s): Casual games, city builders

• Games: PyramidVille (170,000 DAU, 740,000 MAU on Facebook), Atlantis Fantasy (70,000 DAU, 210,000 MAU on Facebook), Goobox (180,000 DAU, 860,000 MAU on Facebook), Goobox Windows, Goobox iPhone

• Working with publisher(s): OUAT Entertainment, Bulkypix and Peakgames

• Languages: French, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese

• User demographics: 53% women; more than half of the gamers play in French, Spanish comes next before Italian, English and German

• Best-selling virtual items (all from PyramidVille):
  · Vine (decoration)
  · Cleopatra’s Garden: new, for advanced players – it generates materials such as wood or papyrus
  · Water Canals: new – before, players used troughs to make navigable canals
  · Campfire with potful – there is also a campfire alone, but players prefer the better version of it including the potful
  · HouseVilla: deluxe small palace, advanced house

• Most expensive virtual item: Cleopatra’s Oriental Palace: 100 Gemmes, between 200 and 100 Facebook Credits (between €16 and €8)

• What do you see as currently most exciting trend in the industry?
  We see several trends on the market: skill gaming/casino games are entering the market, the multiplayers mode is on the way, too.
  But for us, the MOST exciting is multiplatforms: PyramidVille, our #1 hit on Facebook, is going to be launched on iOS (iPhone and iPad) under the name of PyramidVille Adventure at the end of January. Mobile platforms allow us to provide with more game experience, that undoubtedly will be enhanced and give more satisfaction to out gamers.

Kobojo, the largest French social game publisher, announced the opening of a new office in Berlin, Germany. After also establishing a Spanish office in Madrid, Kobojo hopes to keep growing and further develop its hyperlocalization strategy.

According to media reports, EA plans to acquire Sacramento-based social game developer KlickNation, founded in 2008 by Ken Walton and Mark Otero. KlickNation has 350,000 monthly active users across several apps on Facebook. Update: EA has confirmed the acquisition.

If a report by eGaming Review is correct, Facebook is in talks with potential partners to open its platform to real-money online gambling in the UK. So far, casino games on Facebook were ‘just for fun’, meaning players are not enabled to win real cash. Recently, Facebook’s Julien Codorniou encouraged developers to start building casino games. However, lately UK-based Yazino has pulled its casino apps from Facebook.

CrowdStar announced the launch of its mobile social game, Top Girl, for Android. Top Girl will be sold exclusively through the Amazon App Store for two weeks after launching.

A new charity social game named WeTopia aims to help underprivileged kids. As players grow their WeTopia villages, they earn Joy currency which they can apply toward real-world projects such as building a school in Haiti. The game was developed by Sojo Studios, and is supported by TV host Ellen DeGeneres, among others.

French social games publisher Kobojo today announced the opening of their office in Berlin, Germany.  Kobojo is the largest French social game publisher.  After the opening of the Spanish office in Madrid, Kobojo keeps on growing and implementing its hyperlocalization strategy. “After France and the Latin market, Kobojo is now looking to expand its localized games and features into Germanic countries, Poland and Scandinavia. Germany is indeed one of the strongest online games market in Europe, which offers incredible opportunities for Kobojo, The new local team manages the languages of these countries and the codes of their cultures, allowing us to fully answer the needs and to enrich the experience of gamers” says Vincent Vergonjeanne, Vice President of Strategy and Products of Kobojo

“Kobojo Germany’s main objectives are to adapt its games to the above mentioned countries in the next months. We want to be very close to the players in these countries, especially in the strong German games market”, explains Lars Smidt, Country Manager of Kobojo Germany, who previously worked for Bigpoint. Germany ranks number 10 of all Facebook statistics, and number 1 in Europe in terms of social gaming revenues: it should indeed generate $250 Million ($173 Million in 2011), promising an increase of the market possibilities, according to Kobojo. With several million active users each month worldwide and already thousands in German speaking countries, Kobojo is planning to increase the numbers of its localized missions and users significantly.

Kobojo, number one publisher in France and one of the European leaders in the social gaming industry for Facebook and mobile, has announced the opening of its new office in Madrid. “Our intention is offer more and more personalized content to players since this is what they want, and most especially in Latin America. This new affiliate has an international team that not only dominates the different languages, but also the culture and market codes where we’re going to invest. Beyond just translating social games, Kobojo wants to enrich the experience of gamers by personalizing content according to the country and its culture”, says Vincent Vergonjeanne, Vice President of Strategy and Products of Kobojo. With 2.5 million active game players each month worldwide, PyramidVille, the flagship game of Kobojo, proposes missions such as the San Fermín and La Tomatina in Spain or the Ferragosto in Italy. The game has recently been launched in Portuguese for Brazil, the country with the fastest growth rate in terms of the number of Facebook users, from less than 14 million in March to more than 25 million in September.

French social game developer Kobojo has announced the completion of the first round of its fund-raising campaign, which raised a total of €5.3 million ($7.5 million) from Endeavour Vision, as lead investor, and IDinvest Partners. For the last 3 years, Kobojo has been editing and publishing a wide variety of social games and apps such as Goobox and PyramidVille. Kobojo, with its current workforce of 30 employees, intends to use these funds to step up its development in France as well as internationally. New international offices will be set up, the first new office will be opened in Madrid, Spain. To lift the user base (from currently 3.2 million Monthly Active Users according to Appdata) Kobojo will probably use a significant share for large scale non-organic user aquisition.

ggKobojo already has a number of successful games under its belt. The company was founded in 2008 when Franck Tetzlaff and Vincent Vergonjeanne, CEO and VP for Products and Strategy respectively, former finalists and winners of the Imagine Cup and graduates of the French computer engineering school EPITA, decided to create gaming applications on Facebook. Their first game “Petite Questions entre Amis” (“A few questions among friends”) was successful, gaining 8 million MAU in just two months. The team launched “Goobox” in July 2009, which gained 3 million monthly active users in one month. PyramidVille, Kobojo’s latest release, gained 1.6 million installations in less than 6 weeks in France (climax at ca. 1.3 million MAU).

“Raising the funds is in line with Kobojo’s strategic goals to become international and create new user experiences. We want to localise versions of our games in markets with increasing demand for social gaming, in particular Spain and in Italy. These funds will also help us focus on R&D to enable us to provide these games on various platforms such as Smartphones and touch tablets, as well as Facebook in the very  near future.” says Vincent Vergonjeanne, VP for Products and Strategy at Kobojo. “Our ambition at Kobojo is to become the leading gaming software editor in Europe. We believe that these funds, combined with our unequalled technical expertise and our ever-growing group of fans, are the perfect ingredients to achieve this,” he adds. Vincent did not want to communicate more precise details on company goals at this point but stressed that he sees Kobojo’s “hyper-localization” as one of the biggest future success factors. “Hyper-localization” is already practised by Kobojo and means total localization in a country, not only in terms of language but also in terms of culture. An example for the lack of “hyper-localisation” are promotional items for Thanksgiving or Halloween, to which most Europeans cannot relate.

With the new round of funding Kobojo joins the race with Wooga (24.3 million MAU), Social Point (17.5 million MAU) and Megazebra (4.1 million MAU) to become the biggest social game developer in Europe. Just recently Megazebra has announced a round of funding as well while Europe’s currently biggest social game developer Wooga took over the fourth position globally.