Usually, when one speaks of social gaming and it’s associated start ups, certain geographical areas come to mind. Obviously the US is a big player in the market, as is most of South East Asia. However, with 142 million residents, Russia has quite a large number of interested consumers. And while they don’t make the news that often, TechCrunch Europe recently spotted a potential diamond in the rough. Moscow based game developers Nival Network have recently secured $5 million in funding for a new MMO titled Prime World, which is slated to run on the Russian online gaming portal ZZima. Ok, let’s go ahead and have a giggle and remember Zima.
Initially reported in an interview with CEO and founder Sergey Orlovskiy in the Vedomosti paper (in Russian), the funding comes from an undisclosed investor. As stated above, the funding is expected to be put to use in further development of the firms own Prime World. The MMO is meant to be a strategy game that features a number of social networking features. And for the first time in a long while, the mention of ‘social networking features’ does not directly point to Facebook. Facebook, while arguably THE social network globally, has a rather meek market penetration in Russia. However, that’s not to say that the social network doesn’t have a foot to stand on in Russia – as usership grew last month by 123,000 people, topping out at 669,000. Not a bad number, but when compared to the 142 million inhabitants…well, yes. Not good.
And yet, there’s still hope for the Russian developer to tap into the global ‘big-game’. In the same Vedomosti article, it’s reported that Digital Sky Technologies, the now parent to Astrum Online Entertainment, subsequent parent to Nival Network, has also invested in vKontakte, the leading Russian social network, as well as Facebook. So ruling a Facebook Connect option isn’t totally off the table.
Prime World will find itself in good company, as Nival’s current games portfolio contains some top quality titles including Dragonica, Shaiya: Light and Darkness, Cabal Online, and Level-R, as well as browser based strategy game Khan Wars 2., and Acclaim’s Rock Free.
In total, the Russian online gaming market is valued at around $238 million – up a healthy $53 million from last year. $210 million goes into MMOg’s, and the remainder heading into social and casual games.
HatTip TechCrunch Europe and Quintura
