Boss Fight Entertainment creating Age of Empires style RPG “Dungeon Boss”
Boss Fight Entertainment is the name of the studio whos staff are made up of the ashes of what was Zynga Dallas and originally Bonfire Studios, who were formed from the ashes of Ensemble. Phew! Thats alot of ashes and changes for these folk! The studio is lead by President and CEO, David Rippy, Chief Creative Officer, Bill Jackson, and Chief Operating Officer, Scott Winsett. All of whom are Ex-Ensemble staff. Read more
Video game music interviews Stephen Rippy – new music!
An excellent interview has been posted over at vgmonline.net featuring Stephen Rippy – “Music through the ages.” The interview covers all aspects of Stephen’s career from his time at Ensemble Studios working on Age and Halo Wars to post Ensemble work with Zynga working on Castleville. We also learn about Stephen’s new recently released album “Mainland Static”. Read more
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
Delving into Castleville – new trailer and interview with Kotaku
Earlier this week Zynga Dallas published the first trailer for their upcoming Facebook game adventure “Castleville”. The game follows Zynga’s existing “ville” series of games such as Farmville, Frontierville and Cityville. Looking at the below trailer it can clearly be seen the game will be taking forward similar game mechanics ans art style of previous games in the series. Lets take a look at that trailer now: Read more
Zynga Dallas announces Castleville
Things have been quiet for the Zynga Dallas crew who used to be known as Bonfire Studios. Infact, we haven’t heard anything from them since they were acquired by Zynga this time last year. It was a pleasant surprise to see Zynga announce the studio had been working on an exciting massively multiplayer social game called “Castleville”. The press release reads as follows: Read more
Buyouts and Acquisitions – ngmoco acquired by DeNA and Zynga may have paid $6.3 million for Bonfire Studios
Shortly after Zynga acquired Bonfire Studios last week, Ngmoco the publisher of Bonfire’s We Farm game has also been acquired by DeNA a mobile and social games giant in Japan. DeNA is paying a huge $403 for ngmoco as reported by Gamasutra. This acquisition will enable DeNA to expand its market share from its Japanese region to cover the West as well with ngmoco’s titles according to the official press release as below: Read more
Zynga acquires Bonfire Studios. Studio to become “Zynga Dallas”
Some very interesting news has just surfaced in the last hour. Bonfire Studios is no more following the acquisition from social gaming giant Zynga. You may recognise Zynga for its incredibly popular (and successful) MySpace and Facebook applications, FarmVille and Mafia Wars. It would seem as though the creative minds at Zynga recognised the talent at Bonfire with many of its staff having heritage from Ensemble Studios. Here is the press release straight from the horses mouth:
Yeehaw! We’re thrilled to announce that Zynga is moving into the world of boots and BBQ today, with the acquisition of Bonfire Studios. Bonfire Studios brings world-class talent and an impressive résumé to the Zynga team, some of their employees having created popular PC and Xbox 360 games, such as Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and Halo Wars. Read more
Bonfire Studios announcing a new project tomorrow? (Or later this week)
If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Bonfire Studios website you will have noticed they have changed the webpage with a brand new teaser image!
Bonfire Studios working on “Gamechest” for Xbox Live on Windows Phone (Updated)
Bonfire Studios have updated their website with a teasing image showing what they might be working on. The image shows four different types of games being Solitaire plus board, card and logic games. It looks like these games could be bundled in one game titled “Game Chest”. Take a look at the image below!
(Click to enlarge) Read more
Bonfire’s We Farm tips
I hope any readers with iPhones and iPads have been getting stuck into Bonfire Studios’ first game “We Farm“! The crew over at Bonfire have updated their studio blog with some tips on tricks to help you become a better farmer and get the edge over your friends. The blog posting also contains the id’s of some Bonfire staffers – make a note and you might find yourself playing with someone from Bonfire Studios!
Check out the Bonfire Blog for all the farming tips you need!
