So who the hell is Ultizen, you ask? Ultizen is one of those mysterious outsourcing companies, based out of China, that basically have their hands in many different gaming pies at once. They do everything from concept art to full-on programming to porting, providing services to everyone from small indie outfits to the big names in the industry. It helps to think of them as game development mercenaries. They're the A-Team of the gaming industry, and they love it when a financing plan comes together. Hit the jump for the full press release.

Ultizen Games Secures $6 Million in Series B Financing
— Funds Will Be Used for Continued Rapid Expansion Through Acquisitions—

SHANGHAI, China & LOS ANGELES—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Ultizen Games Ltd., a game development and outsourcing company, announced today that it has secured $6 million USD in a Series B funding round led by Taiwan-based venture capital firm PAC-LINK, with participation from Japan-based VC firm Japan Asia Investment Co. (JAIC) and CyberAgent, a leading on-line advertising agency and media representative company. The Series B funding will be used to support company’s continued rapid growth through acquisitions. Ultizen’s North American offices are located in Los Angeles.

Ultizen closed a $1.5 million USD Series A round of financing from Shanghai and Boston-based Dragonvest Partners in late June of 2007, and grew from 70 to 350 employees within the company’s first year of operation.

With the largest talent base in China, reliable security to protect client intellectual property (IP), excellent quality control and an outstanding record of on-time delivery, Ultizen provides the highest quality game art development outsourcing services to North American, European and Japanese clients ranging from “top 20” gaming and media companies to small and mid-size studios.

Ultizen Games’ 350-person studio provides game development services including game design, porting, programming and art. A certified Microsoft XBOX Live Arcade game developer, the company plans to launch its first title on the XBOX platform in the fall of 2008.

“China has become the biggest game development and art outsourcing market in recent years and we believe the market will continue to grow exponentially in the near future. With the advanced technology and more than 350 talented developers, Ultizen has the potential to become the market leader in the industry,” said PAC-LINK General Partner Allen Hsu. “In addition, the web-based casual game industry has shown tremendous growth. As an early mover in this segment, we believe that Ultizen will become a dominant player and, moreover, have great potential to expand from a developer into an influential publishing and operating company in this segment.”

Founded in January 2005 by gaming industry veterans Lan Haiwen and Wu Jun, now Ultizen’s CEO and Vice President, respectively, the company has achieved rapid success, and has grown to be one of the top three independent game studios in China, both organically and through the acquisition of Beijing-based Mo-Star Limited, a well-established game content provider on China Mobile’s game portal platform. The company maintains studios in Shanghai and Beijing, China and opened an office in Los Angeles in the fall of 2007.

“Ultizen’s leadership team, Lan Haiwen and Wu Jun, combines a deep knowledge of the gaming industry and the Chinese game development market with a sophisticated understanding of the needs of game development and media companies around the globe,” said Dragonvest Partners Co-Founder and Co-Managing General Partner Jesse Parker. “They have done an outstanding job of attracting and retaining the top talent needed to support rapid growth and address their clients skills and resource requirements while maintaining a high quality standard.”

Ming Hsu, General Partner, PAC-LINK and Tetsuya Tsuda, CEO of Japan Asia Investment (China) Co., Ltd. will join Dragonvest Partners’ Jesse Parker; Ultizen Vice President Wu Jun; and board chairman and Ultizen CEO Lan Haiwen on the company’s Board of Directors.

“Ultizen’s track record of profitable growth is a validation of our capabilities and the top- and bottom-line business benefit our clients derive from partnering with us,” said Lan Haiwen. “The addition of PAC-LINK, JAIC and Cyber Agent to our investment team provides us with the resources to aggressively expand our leadership position among China-based game development and outsourcing companies to address the huge market opportunity the thriving global gaming industry presents.”

Disney Interactive Studios General Manager Graham Hopper was quoted as saying that Gamestar will contribute to his company's "global growth plans" and new products.

... Following the acquisition, Gamestar will help with existing projects but may move on to developing original games for the Chinese market, Variety reported.

The terms of the acquisition were not divulged, but considering the excitement over the Chinese market, it seems to be unsurprising that Disney would want to throw their hat into the ring.

Disney game arm to buy Chinese developer [Business Week]

[Winking Entertainment CEO Gary Zhang] remembers that even three years ago foreign companies had their online games outsourced in China because of its low production costs. But now it is not only about the cost, but great market potential as well.

"The United States and Japan have rushed to the market, which means they have to find a Chinese partner to sustain the business. Conflicts between foreign companies and domestic operators (are common), as we can see from the past," he says, adding that well-developed outsourcing companies like Winking might be the best solution.

PlayNoEvil predicts "it is quite likely that these companies will grow to be the next generation of publishers and that these outsourced firms will be buying the traditional computer game publishers."

Fund and Games [China Daily via PlayNoEvil]

Epic Games has formed a Shanghai-ased outsourcing division to come up with assets for its games, as well as third-party developers. The idea is to use the skilled communist working class to cheaply make assets that you normally have to pay twice as much for if you hire an American or stinking European.

How well is it going to work? I'll let American McGee answer that question, talking about the advantages of using English-illiterate meat puppets with no autonomy of their own to help develop a game.

U.S. game development teams are really creative, brilliant, innovative—and they're really headstrong. A guy that I'd hire to be a junior artist would try to force an idea into a game and hijack the production, throwing a major monkey wrench into the process. That's the Western development team. It's the opposite with the Chinese team. If you come up with a good idea and you give them good direction, they'll stamp it out. Problem is, they will not deviate a f***in' inch from what I say. So the challenge is coming up with enough of a good idea, and...like, I find my days are now 80 percent just giving directions. And it's really frustrating and really annoying and boring, but it works. Otherwise, I've had people following orders until there was nothing else to do. They just sit there and stare at the screen.

How well did employing brainless automatons with no inspiration of their own to help balance out American's pedestrian 'vision' work out for him? Check it out for yourselves. Florian Eckhardt

Epic Games forms Shanghai-based outsourcing division [Gamesindustry.biz]