Astro Ape

Astro Ape Studios was a mobile game development studio founded in 2009 by Chieh Huang, William Fong, and Christopher Cheung. The company's genesis can be traced to a unique blend of talent: Huang was an attorney, Cheung a consultant at Goldman Sachs with a knack for digital art, and Fong an enterprise solutions programmer since the age of 11. Leaving their corporate careers, the trio started the company in the basement of Fong's grandmother in New Jersey, driven by the desire to create engaging experiences for mobile platforms.

The studio focused on developing casual, socially-connected mobile games for the iOS App Store. Their first release, "Office Heroes," was a satirical simulation of office life that quickly found success, climbing into the Top 50 apps on iTunes. This initial triumph prompted a move to New York City. The company operated on a game-as-a-service model, managing live products with ongoing updates and feature roadmaps. Building on their initial success, they released subsequent titles like "Dessert Heroes," "Monsterz Revenge," and "Vegas Strip City," with each game reaching the Top 50 on the App Store. The studio leveraged its core technology and the network effect from its hit games to expedite development and cross-promote its portfolio.

In September 2010, Astro Ape secured a seed investment of an undisclosed amount from the Japanese social games giant DeNA. This partnership was part of DeNA's strategy to expand its presence globally and led to Astro Ape developing games for DeNA's MiniNation platform. By August 2011, after a period of rapid growth that saw the team expand to 18 people, Astro Ape Studios was acquired by social gaming powerhouse Zynga for an undisclosed sum and was rebranded as Zynga NY. The founders were integrated into Zynga's structure, with Huang becoming Director of Game Design and Fong taking the role of Director of Engineering.

Keywords: mobile game development, social gaming, iOS games, casual games, game-as-a-service, DeNA, Zynga acquisition, Office Heroes, Chieh Huang, William Fong, Christopher Cheung, Zynga NY, mobile entertainment, app store games, simulation games, social network games, startup acquisition, New York gaming, New Jersey startup