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Kixeye
Video game company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Kixeye (stylized as KIXEYE, formerly known as Casual Collective) is a video game company founded in July 2007 and headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The company creates, develops and publishes massively multiplayer online real-time strategy games (MMORTS) for PC and mobile devices. Kixeye gained popularity as a pioneer in midcore action games featuring real-time combat on the social networking website Facebook.[1] Following their initial launch, Kixeye's games generated twenty times more revenue per daily active user than other social games, retaining active users five times longer on average.[2][3]
Titles include Rogue Assault, Battle Pirates, War Commander, Vega Conflict, and Rise of Firstborn.
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Beginnings
Developers David Scott and Paul Preece founded Kixeye as Casual Collective in Berkshire, England to "make games that we grew up playing and that we love playing."[4][5][6] They initially started by developing thirteen Flash games.[2][7][8]
In mid-2009 when searching for new venues for their strategy games, Scott and Preece decided to move their Flash knowledge to Facebook.[7][9][10] After developing Minions on Ice and TSG: Missions as Casual Collective, they hired Will Harbin (co-founder of Affinity Labs) as CEO and moved the company's headquarters to San Francisco from Berkshire, England.[6] They developed Desktop Tower Defense, a tower defense game for Facebook.[11][8] After its release in December 2009, the game reached 675,000 monthly active users and produced more revenue in one day than their previous games made in one month.[8]
In 2010, Casual Collective released Backyard Monsters. After three months, it had 500,000 monthly active users, and by July 2010, it had 4.5 million monthly active users.[8][9] The game reached 2.5 million active users per month, 580,000 active users per day, with a 23 percent retention rate.[8][12] An average play session lasted greater than 30 minutes, players averaged between three and four sessions a day, and retention was over seven months.[13][2][8] The game earned a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, with over 500,000 votes.[7] Gamezebo gave Backyard Monsters 4.5 out of 5 stars, and said, "To release a game of this calibre for free on Facebook is a real achievement."[14] Backyard Monsters won the Mochi Award for Best Social Game of 2010.[15]
2011-2014
After a company name rebrand in late April 2011, Kixeye launched War Commander and Battle Pirates on the Facebook Games platform. These games stood as the only midcore action games with real-time combat at the time. Both games grew immensely, with a majority of users joining organically in a six-month window between 2012 and 2013.
In 2011, VentureBeat stated that Kixeye's game War Commander "Represents a big step forward in the evolution of Facebook games." Facebook banner ads continue to draw in new players.[9]
In 2012, the company sparked a small controversy after they released a video advertising for programmers that an article interpreted as sexist, and which the article argued represented a common problem of sexism in tech industries. A response from their female vice president of engineering stated that the video was misinterpreted by the journalist, and was not intended as sexist.[16]
Later that year, Kixeye took action against racism by laying off employees reported for misconduct, following a former contractor post on Tumblr.[17]
In 2013, Vega Conflict, a spiritual successor to Battle Pirates set in space, launched on Flash but was quickly rebuilt in Unity. The game became Kixeye's first cross-platform title, with players able to play on mobile, Steam, and browser.[citation needed]
2015-present
In 2016, Kixeye launched mobile game War Commander: Rogue Assault, the prequel to War Commander. [citation needed]
In 2019, Kixeye headquarters moved from the San Francisco office (now closed) to the Victoria, British Columbia office, and Clayton Stark was appointed CEO.[citation needed]
On June 3, 2019, Kixeye was acquired by the Stillfront Group for US$90 million.[18][19]
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List of games
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