Starting your own company is a learning experience for everyone. The founders of JOY Entertainment are no exception. The indie studio first formed in 2012 with the goal of bringing high quality games and joy to players everywhere – but the road to success is often paved with hard-learned lessons.
Initially, the founders all worked at Gameloft SEA while focusing on their indie studio part time. While they all have history working on big mobile titles, co-founder and CEO Le Giang Anh says not devoting all attention on the new studio was a fatal mistake. In order to really make a quality game, Anh recommends focusing 100 percent of your efforts to your indie project.
The studio’s first project, a simple 2D title, took nine months to finish with a result that, according to Anh, was unsatisfactory. In addition to realizing they needed to devote more time to their studio, the experience also provided another important lesson for JOY’s founders: Learn who your audience is and what they want.
“In 2012 and 2013, we wanted to make the game we love,” Anh says. “Now we want to make the game our players love. We didn’t care enough about users: How they think, what they like. From those mistakes and lessons, we grew and changed our mindset.”
A Shift in Focus
Deciding to scrap their original project, the team refocused their efforts and decided to head in a new direction: 3D eSports games. This direction was chosen since eSports is among the fastest growing trends in both Asia and the mobile games market. In addition to changing the direction of their games, there were some other things that had to be sorted as well.
Not having a team that meshed well proved to be another initial stumbling block for JOY Entertainment. Eventually though, a team came together that was able to work well with each other and move the company forward in a positive direction. The team also solidified their workplace processes so that in the future the company wouldn’t count too much on a “hero in the team.”
Anh now describes the workplace culture as one that is young (the average team member age is 24), passionate, friendly, and funny. Additionally, Anh says, “we are flat. Everyone can raise his voice and others will listen. We work together, eat together, and,” Anh adds amusedly, “sleep together.”
Making Better Games
With a quality and well-oiled team in place, the company has now released two games: Captain Strike and We Are Heroes. Captain Strike, the first game released, found success in user acquisition – garnering 500,000 users its first month. It is also the first shooting game for mobile in Asia. But the game has also had a low level of monetization. Anh attributes this to trying to copy a PC style of game rather than modifying the style and monetization methods to reflect a mobile userbase (the company now uses an in-app purchase monetization model). More recently, JOY Entertainment has worked to greatly improve the gameplay and monetization of Captain Strike. They plan to release it in China with collaboration from a local publisher.
We Are Heroes is the next-gen RPG + Strategy title in which they have invested two years of development. It has built on all the lessons JOY Entertainment has learned so far and the team is excited to bring its unique features to gamers everywhere. “I believe users will love them,” Anh says.
But JOY Entertainment isn’t one to rest on its laurels. The team is constantly looking at how to tweak and improve the quality of their products. One thing currently being considered is the timing and placement of testing. Currently, the team tests after an alpha version of the game is built. Developers also test the results of their work whenever they complete a task as well. However, Anh is currently mulling whether or not to add more layers of testing to the current process. Currently, they are looking for the investment to scale up the team, grab the Southeast Asia market and eSports market, and develop an in-house mobile gaming community hub.
The company also does its best to maximize on the power of social media and virality that comes hand-in-hand with eSports – and they believe building in-game communities is just as important as building a good developer-user relationship, with Anh noting that they spend a vast amount of time and resources on guild and clan features and events in their games.
At the end of the day, JOY Entertainment is still working hard toward its goal of building high quality games and bringing joy to the gaming community in a way that hasn’t been done before. “We used to work on the biggest mobile projects,” Anh says, “but we are confident we can make things even better for our gamers.”
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