Social game leader CrowdStar has raised $23 million in a first round of funding led by Intel Capital and Time Warner Investments. The company plans to use the money to double its headcount and expand on a global scale.

The deal shows that social gaming has attracted some very big investors and continues to have be a magnet for attention, but CrowdStar’s own journey shows how tough it is to compete in the market for social games on Facebook, venturebeat.com reported

CrowdStar was founded by Suren Markosian in the summer of 2008 with funding from YouWeb, the incubator run by entrepreneur and angel investor Peter Relan, who will be speaking at our GamesBeat 2011 mobile games conference. Markosian was an internet entrepreneur. Jeffrey Tseng, a video game industry veteran, joined them a couple of months later.