Big Fish Games Blog

The Big Fish Babes were recently featured on Evening Magazine on King 5 in Seattle. The story tells of how the Babes came to know each other through their common interest in our games.

The Babes were invited to our Seattle office where they were given a tour of Big Fish Games' Studios by Jeremy Lewis (CEO), Paul Thelen (Founder), and Pat Wiley (VP of Studios). With the tour came an inside look at how Big Fish Games' Studios creates the Mystery Case Files line of games. These lucky ladies were even able to see content not yet released to the general public (how exciting!).

Paul took the time to sit with Evening Magazine and weigh in on the value of female gamers to Big Fish Games.

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Reach New Heights with Big Fish Games!

Our partner developers know Big Fish Games can take their games to new heights, but now we’re offering all of our partners the chance to reach new heights themselves – literally. We’re talking 14,411 feet, to be exact.

Starting this October, any developer who launches their game on BigFishGames.com will have a chance to win a trip to Seattle to climb Washington state’s famous Mount Rainier with one of the world’s premier high-altitude mountaineers, Ed Viesturs!

Ed will be your personal guide as you attempt to summit the fifth-highest mountain in the contiguous 48 states and the highest point in Washington state. Ed is one of only 17 people in the world to have climbed all 14 mountains on earth above 8000m (26,247 ft), so you’ll be in excellent hands. Additionally, we’ll take care of all your necessary climbing supplies and gear, as well as your flight to Seattle, ground transportation to Mt Rainier, five nights hotel stay and $500 in cash for spending money. You can even bring one friend with you as a traveling companion, although only the winner will be taken on the summit attempt up Mt Rainier.

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On August 18, 2009, the Big Fish Game Community will become Big Sea Games. Bigger and better than ever, Big Sea Games will feature many of your favorite games, redone with larger graphics and new challenges as well as a host of other features. It is the same community you know and love, but with more features and more fun.

Big Sea Games will launch with many of your favorite Game Community titles including Unwell Mel, Fairway Solitaire and L.O.B.E. If you have played on the Big Fish Game Community, never fear - your tokens and game progress will be making the move to Big Sea Games.

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We are very pleased to announce the acquisition of Grubby Games into our Vancouver, BC Studio.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Grubby Games, they have made several very successful and award winning games including Professor Fizzwizzle, FizzBall, IncrediBots, and My Tribe.

Patrick Wiley, VP of Big Fish Games Studios had this to say, "Grubby Games’ talents will help differentiate our Vancouver team as well as Big Fish Studios as a whole. On top of this, I am pleased to announce that Grubby Games Co-founder, Ryan Clark, will be heading up our Vancouver office."

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We are proud to announce the release of the new and improved Big Fish Games Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox web browsers!

The Toolbar offers instant access to all of the most popular Big Fish Games locations including Game Downloads, Online Games, The Forums, The Big Fish Games Blog (of course!), and Help.

You can also now search from anywhere on the internet thanks to the Toolbar’s integrated Search function, powered by Yahoo! There’s no need to navigate to a search engine any more. With the Toolbar, you’re already there!

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Big Fish Games was featured in the latest Seattle Business Monthly magazine. The article highlights "companies thriving in a down economy" in and around Seattle.

CEO, Jeremy Lewis was featured on the cover and was interviewed for the piece.

One interesting part of the interview came when Jeremy was asked who he is currently looking to for advice in this down economy. Warren Buffett? Bill Gates? Jack Welch?

Find out how Big Fish Games' CEO extracts business guidance from the world's first leader in casual entertainment by reading the article at Seattle Business Monthly. You'll also get the chance to read about several other successful Washington companies who are finding innovative ways to deal with current economic challenges.

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Speaking with enthusiasm and candor, Felix the Fish addressed the Patent and Trademark Organization in Washington, DC yesterday.

Dubbed, "The Ambassador of Fun", Felix introduced government officials to casual games as a way of helping reduce the overall stress level in Washington.

"Given the fragile state of our economy and the inherent stress it brings to Washington, we felt it was our duty to offer elected officials a way to let off some steam. What better way to forget about your day-to-day problems than with an hour of free game play?"

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On Thursday, April 9th, we announced the opening of our new European Headquarters in Cork, Ireland.

The new office will focus on multilingual game testing, customer support, and product localization. The creation of 100 new jobs is anticipated over the next three years. New job seekers will be required to have excellent customer communication skills, particularly in French, German and Spanish as localized games are offered for all three language speakers.

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan said the decision by the company to establish its headquarters in Ireland was a major coup and would lend a positive slant to the IDA’s continuing efforts to attract investment into the country. She was stateside Thursday, April 16th visiting Big Fish Games' Seattle office during the morning hours.

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Announcing Faunasphere, a browser-based massively multiplayer social game where players adopt lovable and quirky creatures called Fauna and collaborate to create and explore shared virtual worlds.

Faunasphere has been in development for nearly two years and we are all excited to see it enter the last leg of development. Faunasphere was started by a company named Thinglefin who Big Fish Games acquired in 2008. Thinglefin was founded by Toby Ragaini, the designer of Asheron's Call and The Matrix Online, along with Jeremy Friesen, and Ryan O'Rourke.

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Just a quick note to wish all our fans a happy and safe St. Patrick's Day!

See if you have what it takes to find the leprechaun and unlock the mysterious Chest of Wisdom in Riddle O'Day. This game is free to play in our Game Community and offers a new riddle every day.

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On Sunday, March 15th, a group of Big Fish Games employees got together in Seattle to run in the 25th Annual St. Patrick's Day Dash and boy, was it cold!

Snow is pretty uncommon in Seattle, but this winter has been quite an exception. It's hard to believe we're still seeing flurries in March. It definitely made for a unique running experience and who doesn't like that?

The race went off without a hitch. We all warmed up nicely once we got moving and everyone finished with no problems.

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Last night, Glenn Farley of King5 News, Seattle reported on the continuing growth of Big Fish Games in the face of the global economic slowdown. Highlighting total downloads for 2008 (400 million) and growth of 70 percent for the year, Farley showcases the Big Fish culture and gives viewers an inside look at our Seattle office.

CEO Jeremy Lewis sat down with Farley and weighed in on our continued success.

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On Thursday, January 29th, Nick Wingfield of the Wall Street Journal visited our Seattle office to do research for an article titled, "Out of Office: Job Loss in the Age of Blogs and Twitter".

The article, which appears in today's Wall Street Journal, discusses how the internet is acting as a social anesthetic for Americans "grappling with layoffs and grim economic news".

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The recent Big Fish Games / Harlequin partnership announcement has made its way to New York City! The licensing agreement was featured on the Reuters Sign in Times Square.

The 7,400 square foot digital billboard captured the headline, "Harlequin and Big Fish Games Announce Licensing Agreement" while the smaller photo board featured the Big Fish Games logo.

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Big Fish Games was featured last night on Q13 Fox Seattle News!

Reporter Amy Allen and crew visited our Seattle office to do a piece on Puget Sound companies that are still hiring despite the current economic situation.

Paul Thelen (Company Founder and Chief Strategy Officer) and Peter Anderson (Vice President, HR & Recruiting) were featured along with several BFG employees.

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On January 23rd, Big Fish Games and Harlequin Enterprises Limited announced a new licensing partnership. The agreement will see Big Fish Games publishing a new line of interactive games beginning summer, 2009. The games will be inspired by Harlequin Presents, the most popular romance-novel series in the world.

Additionally, Harlequin will publish a branded series of books inspired by the Mystery Case Files series of games and written by Harlequin's bestselling authors beginning the second quarter of 2010. The award winning Mystery Case Files line of games has sold over 3 million units and is widely recognized as a leading franchise throughout the gaming world.

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Word around the fish tank is that a complete remodel of the Big Fish Games Online Games section is coming soon. We put on our hard hats and ventured into the engineering zone to get a sneak peek at the new design from Product Manager Gina Lopez. Shhh, don't tell - we brought back screenshots!

First off, the Online Games section is getting a new orange background to help distinguish it from downloadable games and the Game Community.

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We've received a lot of interest in the plush Fish toy we've been mailing out. Just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know a bit about it.

The Fish toy is a free reward to all Game Club members who have maintained their membership for 12 consecutive months. We want to reward those of you who have been with us for over a year and let you know how much we appreciate your loyalty to Big Fish Games. These toys are not sold or given to anyone else so be sure to take special care of your happy new friend!

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Welcome, fellow gamers! Now you have two options when you need a break from fighting crime in your favorite Mystery Case Files game - the Big Fish Games Forums or the Big Fish Games Blog.

If you're wondering what this is all about, it's our way of sharing what happens within Big Fish Games and around the gaming industry with you. We'll be bringing you daily game insights, in-depth interviews with key gamers and game developers, upcoming game release sneak previews, and more. We're even thinking about blogging about you.

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