From the linked (and more interesting, IMO) NY Times piece:
Draw Something is the creation of OMGPop, a social gaming start-up in
New York that has been churning out titles for the last four years, but
has struggled to produce a hit. Games like Cupcake Corner, a bakery
simulation, and Puppy World, in which players care for virtual canines,
both gained modest followings but failed to catch on among a wider audience.
“For a long time, we made games that did not get any traction,”
said Dan Porter, the chief executive of the company. Draw Something,
however, “was a crazy out-of-the-box success,” he said.
Draw Something has charted a turnaround for OMGPop, whose finances
were flailing. Its original founder, Charles Foreman, left the company
about a year ago. Although the start-up raised $17 million in venture
financing, the company had nearly burned through that reservoir. Now,
though, Mr. Porter said, the company earns revenue in the six figures,
generating more money for the company “in a day than we used to in a month.”
Similar parallels to Rovio here, it's interesting to hear about how many other games they made before they found their massive hit.
Also interesting to find out that they were nearly out of cash.
I heard from a friend that used to work there that they were oddly averse to making mobile games- until recently all their games were Facebook-based. Draw Something is one of the few they actually prioritised as a mobile app, and it paid off.
This is the story! I was interested in this company early on because the products were great - I was playing the progenitor to this game, "Draw My Thing", four years ago - so I agree that there's more than luck going on here. For all their talk about "trying for years", it's telling that a search for OMGPOP on the App Store basically only yields three games.
Their main aim seemed to be to become a platform (albeit consisting of their own games) more than making hits. So they were reluctant to build iOS or Android-specific things (their early efforts were half-hearted compared to their impressive web games) and they were slow to build on Facebook as I recall.
Also interesting to find out that they were nearly out of cash.