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Machine Zone
Company typePrivately held company
IndustryVideo game development, Internet software
PredecessorAddmired
Founder
  • Gabriel Leydon
  • Mike Sherrill
  • Halbert Nakagawa
HeadquartersPalo Alto, California
Area served
Worldwide
Products
Number of employees
550 (2015)[1]
DivisionsEpic War LLC
Websitewww.mz.com

Machine Zone, Inc. (MZ) is a privately held technology company based in Palo Alto, California, founded in 2008. The company is best known for its widely advertised freemium mobile MMO strategy games Game of War: Fire Age and Mobile Strike, both consistently ranked among the top-grossing mobile games.[2][3] In April 2016, the company rebranded itself as MZ and launched RTplatform, a product originally developed as the infrastructure for its mobile games, as a cloud-based platform for real-time messaging and management of data streams on a massive scale.[4]

Business history

Machine Zone has more than 550 employees around the world,[1] with headquarters in Palo Alto, California and operations in San Diego, Las Vegas, Germany, Japan and Russia.[5]

The company, which was originally called Addmired, was founded in 2008 by Gabriel Leydon (currently the CEO of MZ), with partners Mike Sherrill and current Chief Technology Officer Halbert Nakagawa.[6][5] It was among the participants in Y Combinator's Winter 2008 Accelerator program for startups.[7]

The company got its start making AddHer and AddHim,[7] a pair of MySpace widgets that TechCrunch called "a Hot or Not-esque social network plugin."[8] Addmired later successfully pivoted into the free-to-play game space, releasing 13 games between 2009 and 2012, including the iOS games Original Gangstaz, iMob and iMob 2, and Global War Riot.[6][8][9]

In 2012, Addmired changed its name to Machine Zone after raising $8 million dollars in funding from Menlo Ventures.[6]

Machine Zone released Game of War: Fire Age in July 2013, and according to VentureBeat, Leydon "bet everything on Game of War, putting a team of 80 people on it for 18 months. They created a messaging infrastructure, built a translation layer so people around the globe could join each other in alliances, designed a complex strategy game that players would come back to over and over, and even raised a round of venture funding to underwrite it all."[1]

In 2014, the company spent approximately $40 million on marketing the flagship game.[10] Along with advertisements in digital and social media, the company created highly-produced television commercials for Game of War, initially featuring model Kate Upton. The ads highlighted Upton's sex appeal as she led battles in fantasy settings loosely comparable to those in Game of Thrones. The spots were introduced in the United States during an NFL Thursday Night Football game and continued to be aired prominently during Super Bowl XLIX and other sporting events.[11][12] Upton was later replaced by singer Mariah Carey as the face of the goddess Athena in Game of War's advertising campaigns.[13][14]

The Wall Street Journal reported that the company's valuation approached $3 billion in 2014, with revenues of around $600 million.[15] By 2015, paying players spent an average of $550 annually on Game of War's in-app purchases.[16] Machine Zone began to receive journalistic criticism for the aggressive style of its user interface in seeking payments: a reviewer in Forbes wrote, "From its overall design to how it handles cash purchases, Game of War is the most over-the-top cash grab I've ever seen."[17] Similarly, Macworld's reviewer stated that "Game of War may be the most aggressively monetized free-to-play game I've ever played."[18]

In August 2015, a former employee was arrested and charged with stealing proprietary data that included "player spending habits broken down by time, location, age and other characteristics" which showed, for example, which of Game of War's "in-game items generate the most revenue and where in the game players often quit."[19] According to the Wall Street Journal, the monetary value of the data derived from the fact that "about 3% of mobile-game players buy virtual goodies, such as extra turns and special powers. Most spend only a few dollars a month, while a tiny fraction known as whales – a name derived from casinos – plunk down $50 or more a month."[19]

The company launched Mobile Strike, a modern warfare game, in November 2015.[20] In an advertising campaign that featured Arnold Schwarzenegger, the game was initially marketed as a product of a company called Epic War (later revealed to be a division of Machine Zone).[20] In February 2016, MZ spent an estimated three times more on television advertising than any other mobile gaming company, including spending an estimated $10.7 million on 3,265 airings of its Super Bowl 50 ad featuring Schwarzenegger.[21]

In Think Gaming's list of top-grossing games for all devices, worldwide, Game of War ranked #2 and Mobile Strike ranked #8 (as of April 2016).[3] From iPhones in the United States alone, Game of War generated an estimated $1.2 million in daily revenue, with an estimated $418,116 in additional daily revenue from Mobile Strike.[22]

Machine Zone rebranded itself as MZ in April 2016 at the time of its announcement of RTplatform, a cloud infrastructure product based on MZ's gaming platform, described by MZ as "capable of the simultaneous exchange of data between millions of endpoints worldwide with unparalleled speed and efficiency in real time."[23]

References

  1. ^ a b c Takahashi, Dean (October 16, 2015). "An interview with Gabe Leydon, Machine Zone's man on the Iron Throne". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on 2015-11-20. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ Jordan, Jon (April 5, 2016). "Updated: Machine Zone spins out big data tech RTplatform as separate division". Pocket Gamer. Archived from the original on 2016-04-08. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ a b "Top Grossing All Devices – Games: All Countries". Think Gaming. April 8, 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-04-08. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Marshall, Matt (April 4, 2016). "Machine Zone launches cloud platform to process millions of real-time interactions". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on 2016-04-08. {{cite journal}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 2016-04-06 suggested (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ a b Rubenstein Associates (October 23, 2015). "Machine Zone CEO and Co-Founder Gabriel Leydon Named by Goldman Sachs as One of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2015". Business Wire (press release). Retrieved 2016-01-26.
  6. ^ a b c De Vere, Kathleen (March 27, 2012). "Addmired nets $8 million Series B, changes name to Machine Zone". Social Times. AdWeek. Archived from the original on 2016-04-04. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ a b Hendrickson, Mark (March 14, 2008). "Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup for Spring 2008". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2016-03-17. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ a b Velazco, Chris (March 27, 2012). "Freemium Game Dev Addmired Rebrands As Machine Zone, Lands $8M From Menlo Ventures". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2016-03-22. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ "Machine Zone". CrunchBase. TechCrunch. 2013. {{cite journal}}: Check |archiveurl= value (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ Tassi, Paul (November 14, 2014). "A $40M Ad Budget Buys 'Game of War: Fire Age' Kate Upton". Forbes. Retrieved 2015-02-20.
  11. ^ Monllos, Kristina (November 13, 2014). "Game of War: Fire Age Launches First Global Campaign, Starring Kate Upton". AdWeek. Retrieved 2015-02-20.
  12. ^ Vinh Tien Trinh, Brian (February 1, 2015). "Game of War's Super Bowl Ad Is Pretty Much Kate Upton In 'Game of Thrones'". The Huffington Post Canada. Retrieved 2015-02-20.
  13. ^ Cox, Jamieson. "Mariah Carey is replacing Kate Upton as the new public face of Game of War: Fire Age". TheVerge. Retrieved 2015-06-13.
  14. ^ "Game of War with Mariah Carey". TMZ. September 14, 2015.
  15. ^ Macmillan, Douglas; Demos, Telis (July 16, 2014). "Newest Hit-Game Maker Machine Zone Nears $3 Billion Valuation". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2016-04-03. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  16. ^ Grubb, Jeff (April 1, 2016). "Game of War's paying players spent an average of $550 on its in-app purchases in 2015". VentureBeat. {{cite journal}}: Check |archiveurl= value (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ Tassi, Paul (February 2, 2015). "Clash of Clans vs. Game of War – Which Is Better?". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  18. ^ Hayward, Andrew (February 9, 2015). "Freemium Field Test: Game of War Fire Age is even less exciting than its generic Kate Upton commercials". Macworld. Archived from the original on 2015-09-09.
  19. ^ a b Needleman, Sarah E. (August 26, 2015). "Why 'Game of War' User Data Is So Valuable". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2015-12-25. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ a b Takahashi, Dean (November 11, 2015). "Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in Machine Zone's modern warfare game Mobile Strike (updated)". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on 2015-11-13. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  21. ^ Servideo, Zach (March 5, 2016). "Machine Zone's Mobile Strike tops Far Cry: Primal in Super Bowl month ad spending". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on 2016-04-06. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  22. ^ "Top Grossing iPhone - Games: United States". Think Gaming. April 8, 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-04-08. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  23. ^ "About Us". MZ.com. April 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-04-04. Retrieved April 4, 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
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