5th Planet Games acquires To Be Continued

5th Planet Games, a company that developers collectable cards, recently acquired To Be Continued, a game design consulting company in New York. This means that 5th Planet now owns To Be Continued’s current and future projects, including collectable card games (CCGs) based on “The Walking Dead,” and (gulp) “Twilight.” Two unnamed Hollywood properties were netted in the deal, too.

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5th Planet Games, a company that developers collectable cards, recently acquired To Be Continued, a game design consulting company in New York. This means that 5th Planet now owns To Be Continued’s current and future projects, including collectable card games (CCGs) based on “The Walking Dead,” and (gulp) “Twilight.” Two unnamed Hollywood properties were netted in the deal, too.

Prior to the acquisition, 5th Planet and To Be Continued worked together on a 2011 Facebook CCG called Clash of the Dragons. 5th Planet hopes that this new, more intimate partnership will strengthen its position as one of Facebook’s top CCG developers.

“[To Be Continued] are experts in their domain and they bring a ton of intellectual horsepower to the team,” Braden Moulton, the Chief Business Officer for 5th Planet, told Inside Social Games. “[Co-founder] Brian David-Marshall is the official Magic: The Gathering historian and announcer of the Magic Pro Tour. [Co-founder] Matthew Wang has a depth of financial and entertainment industry experience. With that background comes networking and reaching new partnerships — we’ll be announcing a major new IP very soon that is a direct result of working with the TBC team.”

The team at To Be Continued will (wait for it) continue to work on the aforementioned “major new IP,” as well as established IPs like Clash of the Dragons. 5th Planet Games hosts its titles on its own site, as well as Kongregate, and it hopes to launch its games on Chinese networks later this year. Clash of the Dragons and Dawn of the Dragons are also being prepped for a mobile launch. In other words, like many social game developers in recent months, 5th Planet is looking beyond Facebook.

“I know Facebook is working to improve the experience for mid and small size developers, but right now we’re experiencing exponential success outside of their ecosystem,” Moulton told Inside Social Games. “We’re aggressively pivoting to other platforms and markets that are more favorable to our business. Acquiring TBC strengthens our push to these markets by increasing our product velocity and improving game design for our demographic of core players.”

In the early aughts, Nadia fell into writing with the grace of a brain-dead bison stumbling into a chasm. Over the years, she's written for Nerve, GamePro, 1UP.com, USGamer, Pocket Gamer, Just Labs Magazine, and many other sites and magazines of fine repute. She's currently About.com's Guide to the Nintendo 3DS at ds.about.com.