My head is still spinning from an email I received from Kongregate that announced the demise of Mochi Media. In stunned disbelief, I logged into my developer's account at Mochi and discovered the news first hand. Mochi Media was purchased by Shanda Games (a Chinese game mogul) for $80 million Jan 2010. Now only 4 years later, Shanda Games is closing the Mochi Media services. In my opinion, they over estimate the impact of tablet games on a world-wide basis. I support my conclusion from recent games reports from IGDA.
I read from Josh Larson his closing comments.
He said, "Mochi Media was founded in 2005 by Jameson and Bob with the mission of fueling the creativity of indie game developers. You focus on making a great game, and we’ll take care of the rest. At that time, Flash was a platform that held a lot of potential if developers could find ways to track, monetize and build better games. Together, Flash and Mochi provided an on-ramp to a career or business in game development.
In addition to furthering our services and business, Mochi assumed a role in growing the category. We organized and hosted FGS (aka Flash Gaming Summit) for five years to get this community out from behind computer screens and in person to talk game development. We supported developer meet-ups like Mochi London. And we addressed the “state of the union” with the Flash Game Market Survey. Moving forward, we expect that others will pick up the baton in advancing the indie cause.
I think I speak for everyone who has been a part of the Mochi team over the years in saying that the innovation from you developers inspired us. We take great pride in currently seeing Ninja Kiwi’s Bloons TD5, and Flipline Studios’Papa’s Freezeria To Go among the Top Games Charts on iOS. We love that at one time we shared a desk with Casual Collective which is now known as KIXEYE.
Today, there has never been a better time to be an indie game developer in terms of the platforms and audiences one can reach: Flash, iOS, Android, XBLA, PSN, Steam, HTML5, and the list goes on. If Mochi had a more meaningful position today beyond Flash, then there may have been a different path for the company going forward.
Though we won’t (as team Mochi) be a part of your future growth, we cannot wait to see what you create next. Best of luck."
The Indie Gaming Community at Mochi is slowly responding. Suggestions have been made where the former Mochi Community will meet and continue their interaction, encouragement and support. No doubt more will come from the Gaming Developers' Conference March 19 - 21st held in Moscone Center, SanFran CA. My business-sense immediately sees a marketing opportunity to fill a gap. But frankly, I too busy implementing my own "fall back" and "business continuity plans" to think of others.
My experience on Mochi has been beneficial. After collecting my published games' statistics, I learned from my 6 years in the Mochi Community several interesting facts:
- Published 29 games through Mochi distribution channels resulting in
- 14,464,689 game plays and
- 72,323,445 advertisement impressions.
Thank you Mochi! I owe my career as an indie game developer to you. R.I.P