Nexon Invest $5 Million In Social Developer A Bit Lucky

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Social game start-up A Bit Lucky, creators of Facebook game Lucky Train, raised $5 million in a Series A round of funding lead by free-to-play online game publisher Nexon America. Founded in 2009 and based in Silicon Valley, A Bit Lucky is best known for creating Lucky Train, a simulator allowing players to build a thriving railroad network. The game is still in its beta phase but has already picked up more than 1 million ...

Out of all the FB games, a railroad simulator? Doesn't seem like a gold mine at all.

Foamers are actually quite abundant i'd say. 1m in beta phases is impressive enough.

the money going into these social gaming companies is insane.

this facebook/social gaming bubble is crazy. if you look at the numbers developers are putting out there, the cost is little and has a big upside but the chance of hitting gold is becoming harder and harder given the abundance of cheap/free product. you can easily be in the top 30 on one of these new networks and making very little return. if you dont chart in a hot list its becoming almost impossible to get publicity unless the network providor promotes you. using ad's to support your product has also been turning into a disaster given the amount of games in the marketplace spreading play time out.

sadly for nexon, its becoming much more about quality now that the marketplace is becoming filled. networks only want to promote product that makes the platform look good. after playing kart rider on ios i was happy to see consumers being vocal of the poor quality by rating the game properly. nexons pricing model for the game is also really poor. dlc in app/web games cant be priced like pc games.

seeing how fast the game went up in charting with no promo has to encourage nexon. im waiting for a maplestory redo in app/web form. someone somewhere has to be working on it at this point.

nexon is about catching whatever the new selling trend is. the risk is spending time and money on a distribution point that dosent work. dies or totally evolves in a few years and you cant keep up. to stay relevant nexon has to get on this bandwagon, but unlike free to play cash shop'ing... nexon isn't one of the first out the gate. they have a lot of people and resources in the space to go up against.

i'd say this has something to do with nexon's planned maplestory facebook game, although it's a bit peculiar that they would only invest and not outright buy the company so who knows? maybe it's just a contract