Big Fish partners with Boss Fight to offer "deeper" casual games

Casual games publisher Big Fish today announced a new partnership with Boss Fight Entertainment, a studio formed earlier this year largely from Zynga's CastleVille team. The Dallas-based studio, which also has members who worked on core titles like Age of Empires and Halo Wars, are looking to Big Fish to publish its first game. Big Fish is now looking to lean a bit more in the mid-core direction.

The company said the move "demonstrates Big Fish's growing commitment to free-­to-­play games, and in particular, to free-­to-­play games that push casual gameplay in new directions by offering deeper engagement and player investment."

Boss Fight's new game will be announced later this year, but Big Fish is already promising that it'll be a pretty different genre and theme compared to Big Fish's existing portfolio.

Chris Williams, general manager and vice president of studios at Big Fish commented, "Big Fish is growing and changing..fast. It is not the company it was even a year ago. Successfully transitioning its PC legacy business to mobile, Big Fish launched 5 free-­to-play games in 2013, and more than half of its 2013 mobile revenue stemmed from those products. In 2014 the company will be focused on launching hit free-­to-­play games - some in genres that may be unexpected. The game with Boss Fight is one of those surprises, and represents a strategy of moving beyond the conventional casual genres and mechanics, investing deeply to build hits and grow our audience."

David Rippy, president and CEO of Boss Fight Entertainment, added, "We were impressed with Big Fish's ability to take Big Fish Casino and scale it worldwide to the #1 grossing app in the casino genre, and the only casino game to make it into the top ten of both of Apple's 2013 top-­grossing lists. We are confident that with our game and Big Fish's distribution and audience-­building acumen, we have a winning combination. "