ngmoco Acquires Touch Pets Developer Stumptown Game Machine

Riding high on the success of last fall’s Touch Pets Dogs, ngmoco has just acquired the game’s developer Stumptown Game Machine for an undisclosed amount. With several games in development and concerns about adequate resources mounting, Stumptown’s Andrew Stern said the acquisition “just made sense.”

“It gave us the resources to grow more and do even bigger, more exciting, innovative products together,” Stern told Gamasutra in an interview today. “The vision that Ngmoco has, and I have, for the project I want to make is very well-aligned, so it just made sense to join forces.”

While neither Stern nor his Ngmoco counterparts would confirm what games the studio currently has in development, some hints were dropped about the direction things might be going. It was also confirmed that this new collaboration allowed Stern to add Richard Evans, whose previous works include Black & White and The Sims 3, to the Stumptown team.

“I see there’s a lot of potential for deep, more sophisticated characters and narrative situations combined with social networking,” says Stern. “Richard and I and the rest of the Stumptown group are planning big things.”

This isn’t ngmoco’s first acquisition in recent months. Back in February the company acquired Freeverse, the developer behind Skee-Ball, Warpgate, and the recent Flick Baseball Pro. Prior to that they had snapped up Epic Pet Wars developer Miraphonic. Now with a third studio added to their increasingly impressive portfolio, we can’t help but wonder who’ll be next.

[via Gamasutra]

Jim Squires

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Jim Squires is the Editor-in-Chief of Gamezebo. Everything you see passes his eyes first, so we like to think of him as "the gatekeeper of cool stuff." He likes good games, great writing, and just can't say no to a hamburger. Also, he is not a bear.