Interview with Gamenauts CEO about Mobile Gaming Industry in Indonesia (Part 1)

This month, San Francisco based gaming publisher Gamenauts has sent the message to gaming developers all over Asia that it's ready to help them bringing the mobile games to US market. Gamenauts has signed four game developers from Indonesia and Malaysia and will promote their games in 2013. We have been talking to Stanley Adrianus, Founder and CEO of Gamenauts, about the situation of gaming industry in Indonesia. Here's the Part 1 of the interview:

We are interested with your Asian game publishing program, where you invite game developers from Asia to bring their games to US market. Why you're so sure that these games will be able to penetrate US market?

The seed to Gamenauts' publishing initiative was started after our collaboration with Menara Games from Bandung on Ninja Fishing, which reached #7 on Top Paid Apps on US, UK, Canada, etc. and now had over 10 million downloads.

Following this big success, I'm convinced that there are other developers in Indonesia that has the game development talent to create another hit in the western market.

The new global mobile games industry has leveled the playing field and commercial hit games are now being created by developers in countries, such as Indonesia and other SEA countries, where such opportunties weren't previously available. Any hit games can now be produced in any country, as long as the talent and passion is there.

I believe the important factor is in having the right partner with a keen knowledge of the shifting trends in mobile game in the west. Based on our track record, experience and resources, we believe that we can help local indie developers in Indonesia break into the market.

As a publisher, we offer funding, game design/UI support, monetization analysis and marketing support. All developers will keep their IPs of the game and they will receive revenue shares from the games.

We've signed up to publish games with Menara once again and Artlogic Games, another developer in Indonesia who is widely known for Epic Wars, their big hit series on Flash. We're also publishing games from 2 developers in Malaysia - Kurechii and Nerdook Productions.

Furthermore, what's your perspective about Southeast Asia gaming industry, particularly in Indonesia?

In terms of the games industry in Indonesia, I think there's a tremendous amount of local talent in the region. The country has been a hotbed of Flash game development, where the low barrier to entry to the market has empowered smaller developers to make a name for themselves. A lot of the young developers who grew up on video games now have finally the tools to fulfill their dreams and make a living as game developers

Although I'm very optimistic about the future of the Indonesian gaming industry, I also think there will be some growing pains. Some of my concerns are:

• Reliance on advergaming model. Right now, there are many game studios in Indonesia that developers advergames for other companies. I believe the path to a long term success for a game studio is in investing and creating its own IPs. Creating advergames to service a bigger company's brand may be good for the business in the short term, but I think this will create an over-reliance on the model which in the end may be hard to get out of.
• Lack of greater awareness of the global games industry. I think some local developers lack the awareness of the overall trends in the global games industry. I'm worried that some studios are chasing after older platforms without realizing it soon enough. In terms of game genres, many developers in Indonesia have grown up on Japanese & Korean games and are inspired to create games with anime aesthetics. I think this is a difficult endevour because they will be competing with much more established and larger companies from overseas. Moreover, anime/manga has been on the decline in the west for the last few years, risking games with such style to be labeled as niche. I'd advocate to go with a genre or aesthetic style that can fit a more global audience.

But as I said, I have a lot of faith local game developers and I think Indonesia will soon be much more recognised and appreciated in the larger global games industry.

Please stay tune to follow the second part of the interview that will be published tomorrow.

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