Now that the Royal Wedding has come and gone, we can all collectively turn our attention back to the gaming at hand. And while Obama’s birth certificate, and the demise of Bin Laden are sure to make headlines for the next foreseeable future, two gaming industry significant events took place over the weekend, both centered around the great City by the Bay; PopCap acquires ZipZapPlay, and Booyah has recently appointed Jason Willig to drive forthcoming social and mobile initiatives.
PopCap
Announced on Friday, Seattle based PopCap Games has acquired SFO based ZipZapPlay. This acquisition further fuels PopCap’s depth of Facebook games, as well as provides PopCap with a Silicon Valley address, practically a pre-requirement by today’s industry standards.
CEO Curt Bereton and CCO Mathilde Pignol are expected to stay on and continue to drive game design and development. Likewise, all seventeen original employees will stay on, and presumably become members of a founding team, as PopCap’s expansion of ZipZapPlay’s studios is inevitable.
“The team at ZipZapPlay is one of the best in the social games space, and combined with our existing group in Seattle gives us the opportunity to dramatically expand our development resources,” said John Vechey, PopCap co-founder and VP of Corporate Strategy and Development, in a statement. “While the acquisition creates immediate cross-promotional and operations benefits, this is a strategic move with huge long-term potential; we believe ZipZapPlay can help us further evolve and expand the definition of social games.”
Looking forward, PopCap expects to have four or five Facebook titles by the close of 2011. Their initial offerings, Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz are already attracting close to five million DAU’s, thus placing them in third position behind Zynga and Electronic Arts in terms over largest overall Facebook games developers.
Booyah
And speaking of Electronic Arts…while EA’s brain drain is now a common story, it looks like the Redwood City, CA firm has lost another executive. This time to social, web, and mobile entertainment producers Booyah Jason Willig has recently been appointed to the role of Chief Operating Officer, where he’s expected to drive the company’s expansion initiatives.
“Adding Jason to the Booyah executive team is a huge win for us,” said Keith Lee, CEO and co-founder, in a statement. “His depth of knowledge and experience will help accelerate Booyah’s continued growth and development within in the social/mobile industry.”
Willig arrives at Booyah with over a decade of interactive entertainment industry expertise. At EA, he oversaw the operating activities and strategic initiatives with the Hasbro unit. Willig has also been counted amongst the LucasArts, Gas Powered Games, and Vivendi Games rosters, and has a depth of experience in product development, retail and digital publishing, business development, and analytics.
