Wall Street Journal looks at Vostu, the Brazillian Zynga

Here at Games.com -- The Blog, we've extensively covered the rise of social gaming in Europe and Japan (and America, obviously). But the social gaming phenomenon isn't just limited to these locales. It's also making inroads in places like Brazil, as the Wall Street Journal highlighted in a recent profile of Vostu, Brazil's answer to Zynga.

Though the company is based in New York, Vostu has found enormous success in the Brazilian social gaming market, which is built largely on top of Google's all-but-defunct social network Orkut, of all things. The company has found success updating traditional social gaming genres with a Brazilian twist in games such as Mini Fazenda, a Farmville clone that lets you "grow exotic fruits from the Amazon and build a carnival float with friends," and Cafe Mania, a Cafe World clone where players "can cook virtual dishes such as feijoada, a bean and meat stew."

By targeting the nation with the world's fifth-largest Internet-enabled population, Vostu has quickly become "very profitable" according to the piece, with 8.7 million players for its top game, revenues in the high eight-figure range and $15 million in venture capital from companies including Intel. Much of this success is surely due to the relative lack of targeted competition thus far -- not many American social gaming companies have translated their games into Portugese, after all. With success like this, though, we're guessing the Brazilian copycats will be flooding the market any second now...