拉美最大的社交游戏发行商Mentez今天宣布，该公司从总部位于纽约的Insight Venture Partners处获得了一项投资。Mentez将利用这笔资金来拓展其社交游戏组合，发展拉美地区业务，并巩固其作为该地区首选游戏发行商的地位。

mentez

Mentez联合创始人和首席执行官Juan Franco说：“我们发现拉美地区对娱乐性和参与性社交游戏的需求正不断增长。来自Insight Venture Partners的这项投资将可以帮助我们在我们处于支配地位的市场——巴西进行扩张，并帮助我们利用拉美更广泛的机会。我们一直在为Mentez的这一新增长阶段打基础，并且Insight Venture Partners充分支持我们的拓展计划。”

Orkut是巴西占据支配地位的社交网络，每天的活跃用户超过5000万人。Mentez在Orkut上管理着超过21款社交游戏，在Facebook上管理着7款，每周吸引的活跃玩家超过2200万人。今年早些时候，Mentez与Playdom签署了一项协议，在Orkut上发行该公司的游戏——主要是《Tiki Resort》和《Bola》。

Mentez还在巴西运营名为Paymentez®的先进可选支付网络。该网络为玩家提供了7种可选支付方式，接受未在巴西广泛应用的信用卡。这包括由 25,000家网吧组成的专有网络和遍布巴西全国的超过100,000个零售网点。

Paymentez®是该公司的旗舰产品，可帮助开发商有效开发巴西价值数百万美元的虚拟货物市场。目前Paymentez每天处理的交易超过45,000项。

此外，Mentez还协调与卡夫（Kraft）、沃尔玛（Walmart）、三星（Samsung）、现代（Hyundai）、美国运通（American Express）和二十世纪福克斯（20th Century Fox）等消费品牌之间的促销活动。例如，卡夫在社交游戏《Happy Harvest》（Colheita Feliz，开心农民）中提供了数百万颗特殊的可可籽，玩家可以使用这些可可籽来种植巧克力树。然后便可以收获或者偷窃最终产物——巧克力块，或者将其作为礼物送给朋友。该活动持续了4周，对名为Mini Bis的卡夫品牌巧克力块进行了推广。玩家对该活动十分欢迎，在YouTube、Twitter和该国的数百个博客上对这种概念大加赞扬，从而使该产品获得了空前的知名度。

Insight Venture Partners于今年早些时候对亚洲领先的社交游戏公司6Waves进行了投资。Insight Venture Partners董事总经理Jeff Horing说：“我们对拉美的多家社交游戏发行商进行了考虑，我们认为，Mentez除了作为领先的巴西社交游戏公司之外，其强大的管理团队还拥有能够在毗邻市场获胜的经验和战略。Mentez的优质内容、强大的玩家群体以及与开发商的关系将可以推动该公司持续成功。”

Mentez为有意打入拉美市场的游戏开发商提供端到端服务。该公司一开始提供以下服务：对开发商的游戏进行翻译和本地化；为有关拉美假日和活动的具有重要文化意义的虚拟项目提供建议并进行打造。一旦游戏在Facebook或者谷歌（Google）的OpenSocial平台上推出，Mentez便通过游戏内置广告和大规模的公关计划来帮助推动游戏的访问量。Mentez还负责社区管理——帮助解决拉美地区的客户服务问题。

Mentez在Orkut上管理着20款最受欢迎游戏中的12款。包括：《Colheita Feliz》（Happy Harvest）、《Segredos do Mar》（Ocean Secret）、《Vila Magica》（Party Town）、《Vidas nas Pasarelas》（Fashion Life）、《Bola》（世界杯足球）、《Piratas do Caribe》（加勒比海盗）等等。

mentez games

根据融资协议，Insight Venture Partners董事总经理Jeff Horing将在Mentez董事会任职。

Social gaming firm Mentez has raised a round of funding to build games for the Latin American market and Brazil.

New York-based Insight Venture Partners  has invested an undisclosed amount of money into Miami-based Mentez. Mentez will use the money to expand its portfolio of social games across Latin America and Brazil. It currently has 21 games on Orkut, the dominant social network in Brazil. Mentez also has seven games on Facebook, which is more popular in the rest of South America.

Some of those games were created by Playdom, which signed a distribution agreement with Mentez earlier this year. Among the popular Playdom games on Orkut are Tiki Resort and Bola. Mentez also operates a lot of its own games like Happy Harvest (“Colheita Feliz”), a farm game.

Juan Franco, chief executive of Mentez, said in an interview that Mentez has 12 of the top 20 games on Orkut, which is owned by Google. That’s a big deal because Orkut has 52 million active users and Brazil’s population has embraced social networking in a big way (Orkut users visit the site 26 times a month, on average). In Brazil and the rest of Latin America, Mentez has more than 22 million weekly active players, or those who come back once a week to play.

The opportunity in Brazil and the rest of Latin America is so big that Franco believes it’s a unique opportunity for expansion. Brazil has more than 201 million people and last year had more than 75.9 million internet users. Within a couple of years, that could cross 100 million users, which is about the current internet population of all of the rest of Latin America combined, said Franco.

The Brazilian market has drawn other game companies; Aeria Games opened an office in Brazil last week.

Mentez also has its hooks in Brazilian users beyond games. It runs an alternative payment network in Brazil called Paymentez, which gives seven alternative payment options. That’s because credit cards are not widely used in Brazil. You can go into any one of 25,000 internet cafes or 100,000 retail locations across the country and find Paymentez cards. Paymentez is processing more than 45,000 transactions every day. Mentez also runs special offers with brands like Kraft, Wal-mart, Samsung, Hyundai, American Express and 20th Century Fox. Kraft offered millions of special cocoa seeds in Happy Harvest that players could plant to grow chocolate trees. The chocolate bar could then be harvested, stolen, or given to their friends as a gift.

Jeff Horing, managing director at Insight Venture Partners, said he believes Mentez has the management team and strategy to win in the related markets in the region. Franco said that Mentez is making money from its users, thanks to the alternative payment systems. The company’s games are free-to-play, but players can purchase virtual goods with real money. Roughly 3 – 5 percent will buy virtual goods in Brazil, generating revenue for Mentez. By comparison, those rates are 2 – 4 percent in Latin America, 1 – 2 percent in China, and 4 – 6 percent in North America.

Franco said the company develops its own games and also works with outside developers. Its internal teams in places such as Brazil and Colombia help architect games to have local appeal, so that the games are culturally relevant. Franco believes the future will be in games made by Brazilians for the Brazilian market. The company was founded in 2007 and has 40 employees.

Rivals include Vostu, which says it has the most traffic for a social game development company in Brazil. Daniel Kafie, chief executive of New York-based Vostu, says his firm has more than 20 million monthly active users on Orkut. The company has 150 employees and is backed by Intel Capital and General Catalyst. Vostu has three major games on Orkut, while Mentez has nearly two dozen.

Mentez scored big with its first game, Happy Harvest, which debuted about a year ago as a localized version of a game that was popular in China. Franco has more than 15 years of experience creating information technology operations in Latin America. Andy Kleinman, general manager for Latin America for Playdom, said that it was an easy decision to tap Mentez in the Brazilian market as the distributor for Playdom’s games. That’s because it so dominates the top ranks and can easily cross-promote games. Franco said the company is making money and was not seeking investment; now, it will use the funds to expand more rapidly than planned.（source：business wire/venturebeat）