Ensemble Studios was an American video game developer. It was founded by Tony Goodman in 1994 and incorporated the following year. It borrowed the name of Ensemble Corporation, a consulting firm founded by Goodman in 1990. It was acquired by Microsoft in 2001 and operated as an internal studio until 2009, when its development capabilities were officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo Wars. In addition to game development, Ensemble Studios also made the Genie Game Engine used in Age of Empires, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. The studio sold 20 million games and was worth an estimated $500 million.
A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
A video game clone is either a video game or a video game console very similar to, or heavily inspired by, a previous popular game or console. Clones are typically made to take financial advantage of the popularity of the cloned game or system, but clones may also result from earnest attempts to create homages or expand on game mechanics from the original game. An additional motivation unique to the medium of games as software with limited compatibility, is the desire to port a simulacrum of a game to platforms that the original is unavailable for or unsatisfactorily implemented on.
NaturalMotion Limited is a British video game development company with development offices in London, Brighton and Birmingham. Founded in November 2001 as a spin-out company from Oxford University, NaturalMotion specialises in creating animation technology for the game and film industries. In January 2014, NaturalMotion was acquired by Zynga for US$527 million.
Zynga Inc. is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its mission as "connecting the world through games".
Mafia Wars is a defunct freemium multiplayer social network game created by Zynga. Players assume the roles of gangsters while building their own Mafia-type organization. The players fight and "rob" other players online - completing jobs, missions, and operations to gain rewards and strength in an endless game.
FarmVille is a series of agriculture-simulation social network games developed and published by Zynga in 2009. It is similar to Happy Farm and Farm Town. Its gameplay involves various aspects of farmland management, such as plowing land, planting, growing, and harvesting crops, harvesting trees and raising livestock. The sequels FarmVille 2 and FarmVille 3 were released in September 2012 and November 2021, respectively.
Asphalt is a series of racing video games developed and published by Gameloft, Clickteam and Microsoft. Games in the series typically focus on fast-paced arcade racing set in various locales throughout the world, tasking players to complete races while evading the local law enforcement in police pursuits.
Temple Run is an endless runner video game developed and published by Imangi Studios. The player controls an explorer who has obtained an ancient relic and runs from demonic monkey-like creatures chasing him. The game was initially released for iOS devices on August 4, 2011, and later ported to Android systems and Windows Phone 8.
Word Streak is a word game developed by Zynga with Friends for iOS and Android and released in January 2012. Gameplay is similar to that of Boggle—players try to find as many words as possible in a jumbled 4x4 grid of letters by connecting adjacent letters to form words within a two-minute time frame - though with extra features and a different scoring system. Words may be formed vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. Scramble with Friends is one of the top ranking games in the iOS application store, available as both a free ad-supported version and an ad-less paid version. Scramble with Friends replaced Scramble Challenge at the end of 2011, but did not retain the solitaire option of the latter.
Draw Something was a video game developed by OMGPop based on its browser game Draw My Thing, launched on February 6, 2012. It won a Flurry App Spotlight Award in 2012. In the first five weeks after its launching, the game was downloaded 20 million times. On March 21, 2012, both Draw Something and OMGPop were bought by the gaming company Zynga for $180 million. The game's popularity peaked on the day of the sale at 15 million daily active users, and the number has been dropped to 10 million by early May.
Ruby Blast is a tile-matching video game by Zynga. The game was first released in June 2012 on Facebook and Zynga.com and later re-branded to Ruby Blast Adventures after Zynga added a new mode with map progression. An iOS version of Ruby Blast was released in November 2012 with an Android version expected soon. In the game, players try to match three or more gems to activate power ups and dig deeper into a mine. Ruby Blast on iOS is the first arcade mobile game from Zynga and the latest Zynga game that enables players to carry progress from the Web version to mobile. On December 5, 2013 it was announced that the game would be closed. Ruby Blast was closed on January 4, 2014.
Montopia was a social role-playing game, the first created by Zynga for mobile devices. Players attempted to uncover the truth about Montopia, a lost monster Utopia while collecting and fusing monsters together to strengthen their abilities. The game was shut down on December 21, 2012.
Clay Jam is a claymation mobile game created by UK developer Fat Pebble and published by Zynga for iOS and Android mobile devices. It was released on November 29, 2012 on iOS and Android. The handmade, stop-motion game was created in a UK garage by Fat Pebble developers. In the game, players guide a clay ball over a series of hills with the objective of squashing monsters on the way down. As of November 2018 the game is no longer available on the Google Play Store, along with Play-Doh Jam, their Play-Doh-related sequel, which is still unavailable on the App Store.
Custom Street Racing is a free-to-play drag-racing game by Boss Alien and NaturalMotion Games. In the game, the player takes the role of a new racer looking to gain fame in a deserted city ruled by five racing "crews". A sequel was released on iOS and Android on June 29, 2016, called CSR Racing 2.
CSR Classics is a free-to-play drag-racing game by Boss Alien in collaboration with Mad Atom Games and published by NaturalMotion Games. In the game, the player takes the role of a new racer looking to make a name for themselves in a city resembling Las Vegas, which is ruled by five racing "crews". The storyline consists of a racer with their agent trying to prove the seemingly corrupt Mr. Baladin of his guilt, who has worked their way into a business magnate behind the scenes.
Mad Atom was a game development studio founded in October 2011 and based in Brighton, UK. Mad Atom was founded by ex-employees of Disney's Black Rock Studio in June, 2011.
Chartboost is a San Francisco-based mobile game in-app programmatic advertising and monetization platform. Chartboost SDK enables developers to monetize on their mobile apps and connect advertisers to global in-app inventory. Chartboost's platform allows video game developers to create customized interstitial and video ads to promote new games. Developers have direct access to game data derived from Chartboost-enabled games. As of 2016, Chartboost had been integrated into more than 300,000 games with 40 billion game sessions per month.
Boss Fight Entertainment is an American video game development company based in Allen, Texas, with a second studio based in Austin, Texas. Boss Fight was formed by former Zynga Dallas and Ensemble Studios employees in June 2013.
