Big Viking puts up $10 million for HTML5 Messenger publishing

Big Viking Games has started a $10 million publishing fund aimed at developers interested in creating content for Facebook's new Instant Games program.

Instant Games will make 17 titles playable directly through Facebook Messenger and News Feed, including both the classic (Pac-Man, Galaga) and the new (The Tribez: Puzzle Rush, Endless Lake). Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz yesterday, Facebook's director of global games partnerships, Leo Olebe, countered a question about the problem of monetisation at this early stage with one of his own:

"'What is the value of being a first mover on a platform with over a billion people a month on Messenger and 1.8 billion people on Facebook.com?' If you think about that question it's probably easy to derive the answer."

Canada's Big Viking Games is a "founding launch partner" for Facebook's Instant Games platform, and it is marking the occasion by establishing a $10 million publishing fund for HTML5 Messenger products. According to Albert Lai, Big Viking's CEO and co-founder, the fund will "allow us the flexibility to work with other studios, IP holders, and companies looking to enter the HTML5 messenger gaming market."

"In the 1990s we bought all of our digital content on compact discs, which now seems crazy given how easy it is to access high quality content on the internet," Lai said in a statement. "We believe that we will soon look at the App Store with the same lens, and that the future of gaming on mobile is highly social, instantly playable, and high quality."

Big Viking was founded in 2011, and has been fully committed to the HTML5 since 2012. It acquired the data firm Gallop Labs at the start of 2016, and last month it raised $21.75 million to fund its ambitions for the HTML5 space. At the time, Lai said that Big Viking's plans would require a further $60 million in funding, to be raised at an unspecified point in the future.