It’s been a little while since Disney paid $563 million to acquire Social City developer Playdom. Since that time, Playdom has put out plenty of games on Facebook like Gardens of Time and Gnome Town (to name only a couple of their titles), though everybody just knew that the developer was going to start putting out official Disney games in the near future.
It’s been a little while since Disney paid $563 million to acquire Social City developer Playdom. Since that time, Playdom has put out plenty of games on Facebook like Gardens of Time and Gnome Town (to name only a couple of their titles), though everybody just knew that the developer was going to start putting out official Disney games in the near future.
Currently, details about a Disney title from Playdom are still hard to come by. Speaking to Inside Social Games, Playdom CFO Christa Quarles explained, “As you can imagine, The Walt Disney Company is very protective of certain assets. There are things that have to have the right artists and art direction that can actually fit within [preset] standards. There’s an appreciation of that particular IP that’s required.”
Playdom has revealed that its San Francisco-based studio, Dream Castle – the folk behind ESPN Sports Bar & Grill – will probably be the first group to work on an official Disney project (though all of its studios are currently working on a multitude of various games).
“We’re not talking about specifics yet,” DreamCastle Vice President & Executive Producer Kenny Dinkin said when he spoke to Inside Social Games. “We’re trying to get the word out there, though, that if you love Disney and you want to work on social games and you’re in San Francisco, there’s a team doing some really cool stuff here.”
The article doesn’t say so, but it’s probably safe to assume there was a huge wink delivered with that statement. Dinkin also went over some details about what will likely be included in his studio’s first Disney game, though he managed to keep things vague at the same time.
“Virtual goods like limited edition items is a big component of the game we’re building,” he said. “I think it goes beyond Mickey Mouse ears. You can imagine buying different movies, rides… there’s so many different things in the world of Disney IP that you can imagine collecting, buying, unlocking. You want to take care that things that become common don’t lose their allure in real life.”
From that outline, it almost sounds like Playdom is going to be including elements of Virtual Magic Kingdom in this new title. However, until anything is officially announced, we should probably avoid jumping to any conclusions right now. The one thing Inside Social Games was able to confirm about this new game is that it won’t be based on DuckTales.
In the meantime, if you’re interested in joining the development team, you should check out the Dream Castle job listings.
