Thursday, September 15, 2011

100 jobs Gamerizon

The Montreal studio of video games for mobile platforms Gamerizon create hundreds of new jobs within two years thanks to a financing round of $ 5 million announced today.

Gamerizon is known for its series of games " Chop Chop ", which has nine titles on the platform iOS (iPhone, iPod, iPad). They were downloaded a total of about 15 million times.

The investment from two firms specializing in venture capital: Capital Vanedge of Vancouver and iNovia Capital, based in Montreal. This is a second investment in a short time in the same area and same city for Vanddge Capital, which is also one of the investors from SAVA Transmedia .

Gamerizon intends to use this funding to add one hundred employees in its workforce currently consists ... a dozen people.

The president of Gamerizon, Alex Sakiz, said the company will work with two types of projects. First increase its current range of games on other mobile platforms, including Android. "It would be silly to not be on Android," he summarized.

And produce new games, more ambitious in some cases, but always based on the franchise Chop Chop . "Right now, it is believed that much of" mileage "from Chop Chop . It's hard enough to create a good brand, when it has we will maximize it. "

Of the 15 million copies of Chop Chop downloaded, the majority were free. Games Chop Chopcurrently cost $ 0.99 on the iTunes Store. All the company's revenues come from such sales for now, but other models are under consideration.


"The model of" freemium "in which the game is free, but players are encouraged to obtain additional content on the inside, is one in which we work," said Mr. Sakiz.

The advertising model is less tempting. "There are pros and cons, it's tricky. This must be done intelligently, especially since our games are often used by young people from 8 to 15 years. You can not put anything like pub. "

Investissement Québec, the Caisse and the Solidarity Fund, through their joint fund Teralys Capital, a shareholder of both Vanedge iNovia and, indirectly therefore find themselves in the shareholding of Gamerizon.

Paul Lee, Managing Partner of Vanedge and former president of video game giant Electronic Arts, said simply, while acknowledging that it was "special", the fact that his fund is now a shareholder in two companies with very similar goals, " It's just that we like both teams and we tend to invest first in people."

Very small there are only two or three years, the video game market on mobile is fast becoming congested. Tens of thousands of games are available on the iTunes Store of Apple and so the most popular are very lucrative, others quickly fall into oblivion. Investors can then hit a home run ... or be quickly removed to stick.

"The whole video game industry is like that, so it is difficult to invest, says Lee. At the same time, it's true that there are other companies like that, but it is very rare ones who have 15 million downloads. "

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