Kabam Acquires WonderHill, Wants To Become The Blizzard Of Social Games

Back in May 2009, I wrote about a small social game developer called WonderHill that was looking to sidestep its competitors focused on battling mobsters and vampires by taking a very different approach: wholesome games that would appeal to the entire family. It sounded like a great idea at the time, and with a veteran team in tow that included CEO James Currier, who founded Tickle (which sold to Monster.com for over $100 million), WonderHill looked like a pretty good bet. And it was: today the company is announcing that it's been acquired by Kabam, another rapidly growing social gaming company. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed (it's a mix of cash and equity), but all of WonderHill's team of 25 will be joining Kabam. But that's not the end of the story. You see, WonderHill's vision of wholesome gaming proved to be very prescient ?�but it got nailed by Zynga with Farmville, and then a wave of other more family-friendly games caught on before WonderHill could really carve out its place. So the company pivoted to focus on a different class of gamers: those of us who aren't�satisfied�by 5-minute bursts of rather trivial tasks and prefer a bit more strategy and engagement in our games. Which makes it right at home at Kabam.

GRUPO IUSACELL HARRIS HCL TECHNOLOGIES