The Ludicrous, Hard-Won Success of Draw Something Devs, OMGPOP

[News Portal]

Draw Something is easily the new Words With Friends. Every office’s new obsession (promotions are won and lost over terse games of Words, surely), it’s made such an impact that Zynga have reportedly just purchased Draw Something studio, OMGPOP, for about $200 million doubloons. It’s a success story similar to that of Angry Birds’ devs Rovio (who’ve now set their sights on being “bigger than Disney) – and just like Rovio, it was a long time coming.

Read full article by Toby McCasker

[Slaine]

The one problem I have with Draw Something is that if you have say, sausages for fingers, as I indeed appear to, the fine detailed required to draw something that doesn't look like a cat vomited on the screen which was then nibbled on by the dog is near impossible unless you have a device that is A4 and uses a stylus! Even I can't tell what I've drawn half the time!

Having said that, I'm glad they persisted. I hadn't heard of the game a week ago, and now I am firmly entrenched in about 15 games at once!

[Mekon]

Hehehe, seems like the CEO has a rather different definition of "a couple" to me.

“This was our 35th or 36th game. It was a culmination of all of the things we learned from our mistakes,” (...) “I tell investors that if you want to invest in a startup, you have to expect the first couple of games won’t work.

35-36 games is a "few" more than I'd expect it to take them to "get it right".

[mindsnare]

OMGPOP use to be a flash based multiplayer game website for quite some time. In fact one of the games was a variation of Draw Something. Basically all of their games were variants of popular games like bubble bobble, mario kart and tetris but with a multiplayer slant.

I like Draw Something but the UI is awful, needs heaps of improvement.

[Schikitar]

Yeah, I must admit I became an iSheep and had to take a look, did a few drawings with some randoms who I DGAFA and got over it in about a day. Uninstalled.

So far, Plants v Zombies is the only game I've been addicted to and actually finished. They are only kids games though, much prefer something more immersive on my PC or PS3...

[BurntToast]

$200 million!
Wow!

The wife found this game about 3 or 4 weeks ago and we havent stopped playing it daily since.

[nafem]

chicks are all over this game ay, get flooded with new drawings from link to facebook.

everyone has it!

[Mythor]

Been having a giggle with this with a few friends. Pretty simple idea done pretty well given the restrictions of a mobile phone.
I'm not a great artist and having to draw with a finger doesn't help... but part of it is coming up with good ideas to represent some of the words. Without just writing the word.

I wish they'd stuck it out as an indie instead of selling to Zynga, who'll no doubt shove all kinds of **** into it. But if they came out of it with $200mill it's really hard to blame them for the sale. That's a "never have to work again" size payout.

[wazzuppi]

BAHAHA zynga have just wasted their money

this games just a fad, it will be moved on by something more fun in a few months, i find it fun but just a gimmick

Zynga really made a stupid move

[unspoken]

I agree with the above, it will be like that scrabble one... word something.

[Pulviriza]

The only problem with the game is it keeps crashing on my transformer tablet. When it works though, I have great fun with it.

First word I had to guess was 'spinach' represented by a fairly bad representation of popeye, with a bowl of yellow leaves with an arrow from it to his mouth, and a large green leaf in the top corner pointing to the bowl.
The worst word I had to guess was my friend sucking at representing 'USB,' I spent a bomb on that, should have been easy.

[JackAttack]

It's defs an interesting game. Playing with actual friends rather than randoms is more fun obviously.

Heaps of people just write out the flipping word like a retard. I respond by drawing a particularly large and hairy penis, wait for them to respond then cancel the game with them.