5th Planet Games, which makes free-to-play Facebook titles like Dawn of the Dragons and Clash of the Dragons, said today that it had raised its first round of outside funding in five years of existence — $3 million in growth capital from DCA Capital Partners and Moneta Ventures.
In the Sacramento exurb of Rocklin, Calif., 5th Planet’s location alone makes it unique among California’s other gaming startups, which tend to be clustered near Los Angeles and San Francisco. But, also uniquely, it actively avoided taking outside money for years, with an independent attitude of “we’ll make games for ourselves.”
“It was a nice badge to wear,” 5th Planet President and COO Braden Moulton said in an interview with Re/code. “We control our own destiny, we own our own mistakes.”
However, after a couple years of rapid growth, revenue was flat between 2012 and 2013, coming in at around $10 million in both years. That’s pretty good, but Moulton said he wants the company to be more like Kabam, which in 2013 grossed $360 million, up from $180 million the year before.
“It felt like we were as far as we were gonna get on our own,” Moulton said. The 70-person company plans to use its new capital to ramp up marketing and get new games out faster.
In fact, it’s been two years since 5th Planet launched new IP, although like many free-to-play gaming companies it treats its games as live services with regular content updates to keep players coming back. Moulton said getting smarter about how to manage those services is on the list, since to date 5th Planet hasn’t retained a dedicated analytics expert.
“Kabam has a team of probably 50 people who do nothing but toy with Excel spreadsheets and min-max the stats,” he said.
In the next three months, 5th Planet plans to launch at least two games. While previous titles were made for Facebook and the flash game portal Kongregate, the new ones are being designed to be mobile-first, Moulton said.
Paul Balo is the founder of TechBooky and a highly skilled wireless communications professional with a strong background in cloud computing, offering extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing wireless communication systems.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
