Zynga Brings CityVille To China With Tencent Partnership

CityVille creator Zynga will bring its popular city management game to China under a new localized name, Zynga City, thanks to a partnership with the region's popular internet service portal Tencent. According to the company, Zynga City will feature new content, decorations and architecture catered to a Chinese audience, as well as "culturally relevant game mechanics" and events that will correspond to Chinese holidays. Zynga City development is being led by the company's Chinese studio, Zynga China, which was founded in 2010 following the company's acquisition of local social game studio XPD Media. "As a social game developer, Zynga fully recognizes the value of Tencent’s Open Platform and their professional service capability," said Zynga China GM Andy Tian in a statement. Gamasutra published a feature interview with Tian earlier this year in which he said that the company was "watching [the Chinese] market very carefully" before jumping in. A beta version of the game will be launched on Tencent's Pengyou platform in the coming days, with a wider launch on its other platforms, including OZone, to follow via the Tencent Open Platform initiative. "We are expecting that more and more international social game developers will bring their popular games to Tencent Open Platform for Chinese Internet users and this will support the rapid growth of the social game market in China, which is good news for all social game developers," said platform GM Lin Songtao. Tencent, which recently acquired League of Legends developer Riot Games and operates many internet and mobile services in China, is coming off of a first quarter that saw a profit increase of 61 percent on revenues totaling nearly $1 billion.