Funzio scores big with third million-plus hit on the iPhone

Funzio is three for three on the iPhone. The social-mobile game maker’s latest release, Kingdom Age, had more than 1 million downloads in its first five days on the Apple iTunes App Store.

Kingdom Age is a “high fantasy” title where you can battle monsters and beef up your skills in a single-player mode. Or, you can compete against your friends in multiplayer combat.

Since the game launched on April 19, players have trained more than 5 million troops. And players have fought more than 20 million battles, said Jamil Moledina, vice president of business development at the San Francisco, Calif.-based Funzio.

“In five days, more than 93 years of total time was spent playing the game,” Moledina said.”The amount of time people spend in the game is much higher than our previous games.”

Modern War, for instance, had 50 years of game play in its first five days. Funzio’s Crime City game also hit the top ranks of the App Store. And right now, all three of Funzio’s games were ranked in the top 25 grossing apps on the App Store during the past weekend.

“We can’t recall another example of this happening,” Moledina said.

It is exceedingly hard to do, considering that mobile games have to spread either via word of mouth or relatively expensive advertising. Being featured by Apple is a big way to get noticed, but not one that companies can count on.

This is one reason why Funzio may be raising a lot of money right now, possibly raising $50 million at a $350 million valuation.

Moledina said the mobile game market is starting to mature, and ad costs are going up.

“To play by the rules, you have to spend money on advertising,” he said. “You also have to make a game that is really fun to play. That’s a key part of how our games have wide appeal.”

Moledina said users have rated all three of the games at least 4.5 out of 5 stars. And each game has also had good promotion. Apple featured Kingdom Age as “new and noteworthy” and on the “hot” section. While the first two were definitely male-oriented hardcore games, Kingdom Age has wider demographic appeal, Moledina said.