Zynga, the undisputed behemoth in social gaming, has just acquired OMGPOP, the developer of the hugely successful Draw Something game. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, it’s basically a mobile version of Pictionary, where you’re paired up with a fellow iPhone or iPad owner, and you take turns drawing things and having the other guess what it is with a given set of letters. Both sides get to watch as one gradually finishes drawing and the other attempts to solve the puzzle. There’s both an ad-supported free version and a premium version that gets rid of the ads, but Draw Something makes its real money through microtransactions which unlock different colors to draw with.
OMGPOP has a few other titles under their belt, mostly for the web, but Draw Something has been their biggest hit yet. Rumor has it that Zynga shelled out $200 million for the 40-man team, but neither Zynga nor OMGPOP went into specifics of the deal. This is a pretty big acquisition for Zynga, but definitely a sensible one. I worry a little bit that clever iOS development shops are doomed to getting sucked up into these giant companies, but then I look at Rovio and see how well they’ve managed to do by sticking it out on their own. In Zynga’s press release, they did a great job of outlining some great stats from Draw Something.
- In the last week, more than 1 billion drawings have been created.
- Draw Something had three drawings per second the day the game launched.
- Yesterday, Draw Something has over 3,000 drawings per second at its peak.
- Draw Something is the #1 word game in 84 countries according to the Apple App Store — shout out to Sweden and Norway for being the first two countries to recognize Draw Something’s greatness. Nordic Love!
- The most popular words in Draw Something are: Starfish, pregnant, hangman, six pack, boom box
- The least popular word in Draw Something is latrine
- The best guessed words in Draw Something are: Rainbow, catfish, sun, fish, house, god, tornado
- The least guessed words in Draw Something are: Oar, Metroid, Warhol, pounce, polaroid, meathead, Autobots
Source: Zynga
