SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 8, 2013) - James Zhang, CEO and Founder of Concept Art House, today announced the successful reacquisition of the company from UK-based Zattikka PLC. The announcement comes after Zattikka released news of its pending insolvency. Concept Art House now resumes work as an independent art services provider based in San Francisco, CA and Shanghai, China. "After more than a year of operating as a publicly listed company, the team and founders are excited to again steer our own ship in pushing the boundaries in digital art creation and game development. Since our founding seven years ago, the company's daily focus has been and will continue to be delivering jaw-dropping art for our partners and clients in comics, films, and games," said James Zhang, CEO of Concept Art House. With more than 100 world-class digital artists with skills in 2D, 3D, animation, vector and flash art the team consistently exceeds the needs of their clients. As of this announcement, 12 of the top 100 grossing games on Apple App Store feature artworks by Concept Art House. Recent projects include Riot Games' League of Legends, DeNA's Transformers Legends, and Applibot's Legend of the Cryptids. "We recognize that our clients expect our full focus and we are pleased to say that we will now be free of the distractions of being a part of a publically listed company," said Chairman of Concept Art House, Matthew Le Merle. Concept Art House as a private company is also able to structure creative working relationships with its clients. These have included relationships in which Concept Art House provided free art and UI support or game development in exchange for royalty participation in the finished videogames. An example of this collaboration is Legacy of a Thousand Suns, which was co-developed with 5th Planet Games. Concept Art House website link is www.conceptarthouse.com
About Concept Art House
Concept Art House (CAH) is an international art/creative services provider and game developer. Since the company's founding in 2007, CAH has been credited on over 250 game titles while working with almost every major game publisher/developer. Concept Art House creative talents are primarily focused on concept art, illustration, 3D art, and social/mobile game development. CAH works with a long list of who's who in gaming and digital entertainment with clients such as Activision, Blizzard, DeNA, Disney, Electronic Arts, Kabam, Kixeye, Hasbro, LucasArts, Riot Games, Pocket Gems, Sony, Storm 8, and Zynga. CAH is a company of professional artists and industry veterans. It is a fast-paced, energetic and passionate group focused on the work they do for their high profile clients and partners. The company HQ is based in San Francisco, California with a full production team in Yangpu District, Shanghai, China. Contact Information


Concept Art House Re-Acquired by Original Founders, Set on Growth

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Crowdsourced WiFi Network Fon Picks Up $14M Led By Qualcomm, Adds Facebook Integration
Online gaming continues to be attacked on two fronts: the over saturation of casual titles and “ me-too ” offerings coupled with an increasingly savvy but fickle user base, and the rapid transition to mobile. This has led to major challenges right across the industry, from the likes of Zynga’s Wall Street woes , and Zattikka’s financial problems , to a refocus on quality and “ differentiation ” by Europe’s Bigpoint. It seems that no online games company has been left unscathed. It is in this climate that late last year rumours were swirling around that Stockholm-headquartered Stardoll , the fashion-oriented virtual world for “tween” and teenage girls backed by Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, had shuttered its London and L.A. ad sales offices. As part of the reorganisation, we’d heard that ad sales in the UK were being transferred to Venatus , the boutique ad sales house that targets the gaming industry — something that Stardoll has now confirmed to TechCrunch. In parallel, Stardoll tells us that U.S. ad sales are now being handled by Roblox , the massively multi-player 3D world that lets users build things, which is particularly popular with teenage boys. This is actually a bit of a role reversal. Two years ago, Stardoll began selling ads on behalf of Roblox in the UK and U.S., so in many ways this is a continuation of that arrangement, albeit structured in reverse. Thus, UK and U.S. ad sales have now been effectively outsourced, where they were previously brought in-house, leaving Stardoll to focus on its core business of building various virtual world and gaming experiences based on the Stardoll IP. Under both arrangements, Stardoll’s ad sales teams — based in London in the UK, and L.A. and New York in the U.S. — have been transferred to Venatus, and Roblox respectively. However, my understanding is the company’s London-based 8 person ad team were quite taken aback by the change in ad-sales strategy and four employees have chosen not to take up that offer, while two of the team were offered to relocate to Stardoll’s Stockholm HQ, which, according to a source, they may have declined. Contrary to rumours, Stardoll says that only one member of its ad team hasn’t been offered a job elsewhere. So, why the change in ad sales strategy? A change in strategy that effectively sees ad sales come full circle. In a phone call with TechCrunch, Stardoll CEO Mattias Miksche explained that back in 2007 , when the company decided to supplement revenue based on selling virtual in-game currency with advertising, very few advertisers “got” the concept of a virtual world. Using generic ad networks produced very low CPMs, leaving Stardoll no choice but to bring ad sales in-house and recruit its own specialist sales team. However, fast-forward a few years, says Miksche, and the market has evolved significantly with the advent of free-to-play online and (now) mobile games. “Does it really make sense to have our own sales team in a changing market?,” he asks somewhat rhetorically. Clearly, in the case of Stardoll, Miksche believes the answer is a resounding “no”. This, it could be argued, frees up the company to plough more resources into tackling its biggest challenge to date: the transition from Web to Mobile. “Everything is about managing this shift,” says Miksche. “Mobile is by far the most important for us as a company”. The shift from Web to Mobile shouldn’t be underestimated (and is industry-wide). Various third-party measurement services point to a downwards trend for Stardoll.com, while the company’s own official metrics claim 1.8 million unique users in the U.S. for December 2013 versus 2.2 million in December 2012. Globally, however, Stardoll says it’s seeing 15 million uniques/month overall. To-date Stardoll has launched 8 mobile apps/games. 0

Girls Virtual World Stardoll Transfers UK/U.S. Ad Sales Out Of House, Focuses On Managing Shift To Mobile

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 8, 2013) - James Zhang, CEO and Founder of Concept Art House, today announced the successful reacquisition of the company from UK-based Zattikka PLC. The announcement comes after Zattikka released news of its pending insolvency. Concept Art House now resumes work as an independent art services provider based in San Francisco, CA and Shanghai, China. "After more than a year of operating as a publicly listed company, the team and founders are excited to again steer our own ship in pushing the boundaries in digital art creation and game development. Since our founding seven years ago, the company's daily focus has been and will continue to be delivering jaw-dropping art for our partners and clients in comics, films, and games," said James Zhang, CEO of Concept Art House. With more than 100 world-class digital artists with skills in 2D, 3D, animation, vector and flash art the team consistently exceeds the needs of their clients. As of this announcement, 12 of the top 100 grossing games on Apple App Store feature artworks by Concept Art House. Recent projects include Riot Games' League of Legends, DeNA's Transformers Legends, and Applibot's Legend of the Cryptids. "We recognize that our clients expect our full focus and we are pleased to say that we will now be free of the distractions of being a part of a publically listed company," said Chairman of Concept Art House, Matthew Le Merle. Concept Art House as a private company is also able to structure creative working relationships with its clients. These have included relationships in which Concept Art House provided free art and UI support or game development in exchange for royalty participation in the finished videogames. An example of this collaboration is Legacy of a Thousand Suns, which was co-developed with 5th Planet Games. Concept Art House website link is www.conceptarthouse.com
About Concept Art House
Concept Art House (CAH) is an international art/creative services provider and game developer. Since the company's founding in 2007, CAH has been credited on over 250 game titles while working with almost every major game publisher/developer. Concept Art House creative talents are primarily focused on concept art, illustration, 3D art, and social/mobile game development. CAH works with a long list of who's who in gaming and digital entertainment with clients such as Activision, Blizzard, DeNA, Disney, Electronic Arts, Kabam, Kixeye, Hasbro, LucasArts, Riot Games, Pocket Gems, Sony, Storm 8, and Zynga. CAH is a company of professional artists and industry veterans. It is a fast-paced, energetic and passionate group focused on the work they do for their high profile clients and partners. The company HQ is based in San Francisco, California with a full production team in Yangpu District, Shanghai, China. Contact Information

Apr. 16, 2012 - 4:26 AM PDT
Apr. 16, 2012 - 4:26 AM PDT
A
Both the social games development space and London’s AIM stock exchange welcomed a new entrant on Monday. Zattikka , a new multi-platform studio founded by Virgin Interactive games executives Tim Chaney (pictured) and Mark Opzoomer, raised £12.6 million by floating to finance working capital and the acquisition of three existing social game companies. The new company is buying Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, Inc. and Concept Art House, Inc to develop games it wants to distribute in Europe, the U.S. and China, with both subscriptions and virtual goods revenue streams. And the planned acquisitions aren’t yet over. Zattikka told the market it will “adopt a buy and build strategy by seeking to acquire existing profitable, but under-exploited, IP game assets and businesses with proven skill sets in monetising social and mobile games”. But the floatation and acquisitions have used up £9.5 million. Zattikka had a £22 million market cap at the floatation price. Zattikka actually launched in 2009, and took funding from Atomico later that year, but had since been quiet. Long story short, some institutional investors are apparently excited about the social gaming opportunity furrow being ploughed by the likes of Zynga, Playfish and dozens of smaller independent studios. Those chasers may need extra heft of this sort to grow larger. Hattrick of Sweden has 860,000 players for its two main games – its eponymous soccer manager title Hattrick and its music industry role playing game Popmundo. Fourteen percent of those players are said to be paying subscribers. Concept art House of San Francisco and Shanghai has worked on games including Command & Conquer and World OfWarcraft and wil be used as a design studio. Sneaky Games of Austin, Texas, publishes three freemium fantasy role-playing games plus Monster Island for NBCUniversal’s Syfy – all with very few users – but Zattikka says it wants to market those titles more heavily.

Zattikka buys three social gaming startups & takes on Zynga

Dean Takahashi
April 16, 2012 9:57 AM
Tags: Concept Art House , game news , Hattrick Holdings , Mark Opzoomer , mobile games , Monty Python , Sneaky Games , social games , Tim Chaney , Zattikka
Zattikka , a London-based maker of browser and mobile games, has gone public on the London Stock Exchange. The company is a social game developer that is making a Monty Python game in collaboration with the Ministry of Silly Games. Zattikka listed with a price of $1.58 a share and a market capitalization of $34.8 million. It is trading under the ticker code ZATT. Proceeds from the public offering will be $20 million. The company said it is acquiring three game studios with the money. The deals include the acquisition of soccer management game specialist Hattrick Holdings, casual gaming studio Sneaky Games, and art and design house Concept Art House. Zattikka now plans to expand its publishing operations and offer a wider range of games on digital platforms in Europe, the U.S. and China. It also plans more acquisitions. Mark Opzoomer, CEO of Zattikka, told Gamasutra , “We are delighted to list on AIM to provide the capital base and incentivise the entrepreneurs joining our group.”
He added, “We begin with a strong group of companies with operations in key gaming centres in the USA, China and Europe, a mix of revenues across subscriptions, virtual goods and work for hire with an exceptional team of talent. We have a great opportunity before us to accelerate the growth of this initial group across multi-platforms to create a world class games entertainment group.”
Zattikka previously raised $5.5 million in a venture capital funding in 2010. Notion Capital led that round and it was joined by individual angels including Harald Ludwig, co-chair of Lionsgate Entertainment. The company was founded in 2009 by Opzoomer and Tim Chaney, two former Virgin Games executives. Get more stories like this on Twitter &  Facebook
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