MinoMonsters runs a pokemon clone with four stars on the App Store. Koduco Games made two clones and an iPad port in two years. OMGPop seems to be a reasonably successful arcade portal. Of the three, none have very high PageRank. None of the three have exited. Now it’s true, none of them have completely failed either. But I would be very surprised if any of them except possibly OMGPop has really made it. They also have been around for six years and have a comparatively large staff.
Of course, this is a really small sample.
The most charitable way I can interpret this is that if the OP wants a startup incubator and a short-term exit strategy, they shouldn’t try Y Combinator. The most charitable explanation for the dearth of YComb video game startups is some internal bias in their screening process.
I agree. While I have all respect in the world for YC, it’s just not the place for game startups. I was thinking more along the lines of Joystick Labs.
Granted, he’s only considering a short term strategy.
As far as I can tell from the Unofficial YComb list, there have only been three video game startups through them: MinoMonsters, Koduco Games, and OMGPop.
MinoMonsters runs a pokemon clone with four stars on the App Store. Koduco Games made two clones and an iPad port in two years. OMGPop seems to be a reasonably successful arcade portal. Of the three, none have very high PageRank. None of the three have exited. Now it’s true, none of them have completely failed either. But I would be very surprised if any of them except possibly OMGPop has really made it. They also have been around for six years and have a comparatively large staff.
Of course, this is a really small sample.
The most charitable way I can interpret this is that if the OP wants a startup incubator and a short-term exit strategy, they shouldn’t try Y Combinator. The most charitable explanation for the dearth of YComb video game startups is some internal bias in their screening process.
I agree. While I have all respect in the world for YC, it’s just not the place for game startups. I was thinking more along the lines of Joystick Labs.