JuiceBox Games
JuiceBox Games builds games with soul to deliver the best entertainment experiences.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| investor | €0.0 | round | |
$2.5m | Seed | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
JuiceBox Games was a San Francisco-based mobile game developer founded in 2012 by a trio of Zynga veterans: CEO Michael Martinez, CTO Jason McGuirk, and Creative Director Zak Pytlak. Having worked on successful titles like FarmVille and Zynga Poker, the founders sought to create smaller, more agile teams and target the 'mid-core' gaming market—players looking for more depth than casual games but accessible on mobile platforms. Their journey began in their CTO's dining room before they quickly secured an office and a significant $2.5 million seed funding round in July 2014 from investors including Initial Capital, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, and Maveron.
The studio's business model was centered on free-to-play mobile games for iOS and Android, generating revenue exclusively through in-app purchases. Their first release, HonorBound, launched in February 2014 and achieved considerable success. This fantasy role-playing game, which combined character collection with strategic battles, was downloaded over 5 million times and generated $8 million in revenue, peaking as the #31 grossing iPhone game in the US. The game was designed to adapt popular Asian game mechanics for a Western audience and featured a score from Bobby Tahouri, known for his work on HBO's Game of Thrones.
Despite the initial success of HonorBound, the company's reliance on a hits-driven strategy proved to be its undoing. The studio expanded to 36 employees and invested its earnings into its second game, StormBorn, which launched in October 2015. However, StormBorn failed to gain traction, achieving only 10% of HonorBound's installations. This shortfall in revenue meant the company could not fund the development of a third title. CEO Michael Martinez later reflected that the company bet everything on each game launch, a strategy he described as "a terrifying place to be". After three and a half years of operation, JuiceBox Games shut down in March 2016.
Keywords: JuiceBox Games, Michael Martinez, Zak Pytlak, Jason McGuirk, HonorBound, StormBorn, mobile game developer, mid-core games, free-to-play, RPG, Zynga alumni, San Francisco startup, venture capital, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, mobile gaming, in-app purchases, game development, video game studio, startup failure