RockYou goes green by acquiring 3D eco-platform TirNua

Social game developer RockYou has had its fair share of ups and downs over the past year. With huge successes with their game Zoo World, to a major layoff in October that left behind a smaller team, it's been a rollercoaster for the Redwood City, California company. Last week they announced the acquisition of a small 10-person team that has been working on TirNua, a 3D Flash-based virtual world creation platform.

RockYou's hopes behind TirNua are to make sure they can supply for what they believe will be a growing demand for synchronous (or real-time) gameplay. Many people think that the success of asynchronous games on Facebook is only because no one is creating fun realtime games yet. So far, this hypothesis has yet to prove itself as games that are large multiplayer virtual spaces have yet to be successful. Ohai launched a full-scale MMORPG in City of Eternals, which failed to capture an audience that could support the game's continued development.

This acquisition seems like a gamble in a new direction for RockYou, which could very well play out to the company's benefit. It all depends on whether Facebook game players are interested in more sophisticated gameplay that you might see on a downloadable PC game or console game, or whether Facebook is the king of platforms for small casual asynchronous gameplay.

What do you think? Do you want to play sophisticated 3D games on Facebook, or are you happy with the kind of games we play on Facebook now?

[via VentureBeat]