Zynga closes Dallas studios (Formerly Bonfire Studios and NewToy)
Yesterday Zynga announced the shocking news that it was closing its Zynga Dallas and Zynga With Friends studios. Prior to Zynga’s acquisition of these teams they were known as Bonfire Studios and NewToy respectively. It was not long ago back in February 2013 that Zynga’s Chief Operating Officer, David Ko announced that it was merging all of its Texas operations under a single office as part of cost cutting moves for the struggling company. Now it seems those cost cutting measures have gone even deeper resulting in the layoff of all staff from the studios formed by Ex Ensemble Studios members. Read more
Zynga with Friends releases “Hanging with Friends”
Zynga’s “With Friends” studio, who used to be known as NewToy have just announced their latest game to hit the iOS market – “Hanging with Friends”. Taking the hugely popular “With Friends” series further, this new game is based around the traditional Hang Man game. One player is tasked with choosing a word while the other player has to guess the word by guessing which letters match the word. The player guessing only has a limited amount of guesses before the game is over and normally that player is hanged when the game is over. That’s not necessarily very positive so Zynga have brightened up the concept and made it feel a bit more positive – say hello to pretty colourful graphics! Read more
