Browser-based fantasy game startup Challenge Games has raised a $10 million B round just a couple months after raising its $4.5 million A round. Globespan led the round. Sequoia Capital, which led the last round, also participated (Sequoia partner Roelof Botha is on the board).
Challenge is behind the online role-playing games Duels and Baseball Boss. Both are addictive, and are designed to encourage the trading of virtual goods (better swords, better short stops) to help players improve their chances of scoring higher in the game.
The company is about to launch a new game called Warstorm later this month, and will use the proceeds to develop even more games, expand into Asia, and possibly acquire other game shops.
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It seems like every other startup being covered is game-oriented:
play on, playa
that away. love these guys. great Austin company.
Too bad both duels and baseball boss, which ive played both and in baseball boss in the beta, are completely and utterly useless and boring. same exact repetitiveness on both. baseball boss is worse then duels though, as its just boring game after boring game. was easy to get to 300+ games played, and nothing changed. Their colored tiered items, which by the way totally rip off warcrafts rare, epic, legendary color scheme, is useless at best.
Sounds like they have lots of game development to focus on. but, they won’t, they’ll develop a whole bunch of horizontally focused features available on more platforms than their own.
they’re boring and useless in the same way that world of warcraft is boring and useless. very true, and very profitable.
I do not agree (at least for Duels).
Altough the execution is pretty nice (gfx and all..), the gameplay is nowhere near close to WoW.
I’m not talking about 3D vs 2D or MMO vs Duelling but I’m talking about the basic principles of what make WoW good and Duels “bad”.
Some examples where Duels fails and WoW shines:
Actions should be satisfying, immediatly. Play 1h of Duels and tell me how many items your got that you can use right now and make you feel stronger.
Player experience with the game should be tightly controled to make sure he has fun. For example: purchases stones from Duels (for $), get stuffs.. Cool! But you cant put them on before level 40 (takes ages to go there). I feel like I have spent 5$ for nothing… (I still have 4 of my 5 stones to use…)
They might be both profitables, but I dont believe the fundamentals are here in Challenge Games team.
Just look at the numbers: 300k regs total, 90k games played today (remember, a game is just “a clic”).
I work in the very same space, however we tends to focus on delivering a great game and not constantly moving to another game. We have 3M regs, 800k games per day (and one game is ~5 mins).
Their strategy seems to be aimed @ growth, I’m okay with that, but please dont compare their games and core gameplay design to thoses of Blizzard.
Interesting fupa.com is looking strong
Did you mean fueps.com? I love that one!
Duels rocks - your duelist probably sucked and you couldn’t figure out how to make it better;)
at least they’ll not have to worry about pissed off customers because of drm regulations. hint hint ea
no one know how they do that but they do. wow
at least not is an app for facebook…
Wow, some of your guys comments are clueless. Duels has changed since it has gone out of beta. There is lots involved with with new pvp events and story line. Many of you are judgmental of the game because you have no idea how to play. I had “cool stuff” before level 40 and I used them.
I played only out of beta. And I played for more than a few games.
Exactly my point.
Anyway, if we are too many that “dont get it”, that means its flawed
Not anywhere close to Blizzard polished gameplay experience that newbies as well as hardcore gamer understand.
My point is, dont make too many games too fast and dont get too much money too fast, unless you understand how to keep more players into your game.
That’s just my point of view and I may be wrong.
Anyway good luck to them and as I said earlier, I think the graphical execution is top notch.
Eh, keep in mind that Blizzard’s polished gameplay experience nets them over $150 million/month.
If Duels were truly close to the gameplay experience of WoW, they should have raised a bit more money.
Blizzard spent 50 million and 4 years to build the first WoW. Companies like Challenge games or mine (Erepublik) need spend only a fraction of that to have a product that is out there gathering users and revenues.
I agree that its nowhere as polished as WoW but given that we can improve them continuously based on user feedback…where will we be in a few year?
Its what I call the reverse approach http://www.thomascrampton.com/.....tegy-game/
Now I agree with Seb that its important to polish and polish instead of just jump from project to project, but size of round suggests they will have more than enough to continue improving their existent games and launch new ones.
Hello Mr. I want to play this challent games.
nice