Zynga strengthens social casino divison with Spooky Cool Labs
Studio founded by "legendary" game designer acquired to strengthen social casino offering
Zynga has announced the acquisition of Spooky Cool Labs, a game studio founded by Aristocrat’s senior vice president of game design Joe Kaminkow.
While Spooky Cool’s only title to launch to date is the Wizard of Oz city-building game, the acquisition was described by Zynga’s chief revenue officer Barry Cottle as aimed at “widening [its] social casino offerings”.
In a post on Zynga’s corporate blog announcing the deal, Cottle said Spooky Cool was “the right team” to help the operator deliver “the most engaging and fun casino games” to players around the world. He pointed out the pedigree of the studio’s founder, Kaminkow, as a key reason for this, describing him as a “legendary” game designer.
“We believe that free-to-play social casino games for the web and on mobile have the potential to reach and connect a much broader audience,” he added.
Former IGT “master designer” Kaminkow was ranked as one of the top ten most influential people in the history of slots by consumer title Strictly Slots Magazine, and during his tenure at IGT developed more than 100 new casino products. He also holds more than 130 patents relating to game design, operations, and networking, and will continue in his role at Aristocrat alongside his work with Zynga.
Kaminkow said he was “product to be a part of the Zynga team”, adding he was “confident that we bring a particular excellence in game development to the social casino genre”.
“We are excited about our games which are fun to play and that include leading licensed content that resonate with players worldwide,” Kaminkow said. “This, combined with Zynga’s leading social gaming expertise will help us further our joint long-term vision of offering our players the most engaging and accessible social casino experiences across multiple platforms worldwide.”
The acquisition comes after Zynga laid off 18% of its workforce earlier this month, with a total of 520 staff to depart. Chief executive Mark Pincus described the redundancies as “necessary to move forward”, calling them a “proactive commitment” to entirely shifting the company’s focus to mobile development.