Scott Kirsner of the Globe dives into the difficulties of building online games, outlining the path of two companies here in the Hub: Hangout Industries and Ayeah Games. Both companies had raised capital: $12 million for Hangout from two well established VC firms (Highland Capital and Polaris Venture Partners) and $530k for Ayeah’s FanSwarm game (from LaunchCapital, CommonAngels and others).

We included Hangout Industries in our Boston Startups 2010 Deadpool list; however, CEO of the company Pano Anthos told us promptly at the time that this was not the case and that he was currently seeking outside investment.

Kirsner cites Highland Capital’s Bob Davis, who reported that he left Hangout’s Board in 2010 and told Kirsner he would “be really surprised if there have been any employees of the company beyond early fall 2010.” As for Ayeah’s FanSwarm game, founder Doug Levin told Kirsner that they had taken the game offline and were “trying to figure out what to do with it.”

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