Cyber cafe waiter turned entrepreneur

Having a dual model can sometimes lead to conflicts of interest if a studio promotes its own games over a third-party title or even borrows ideas from a third-party studio.

"We are like those parents who do not have their own children. We want them badly and people can trust us to treat them like our own," said Lyndon, who started his career as a waiter in a cyber cafe in Hong Kong after graduating from high school and has since held many top positions in high-profile game companies before setting up his own in 2004.

Founded in 2009, IDreamsky, is the third company Lyndon has set up. According to him, both his first company - a virtual currency farming company - and the second one - a game consulting firm - were successful, thanks to all the games he played for years and especially the one-and-a-half years of work experience in the cyber cafe, which gave him a deep understanding about regular gamers' habits and behavior.

Starting as an outsourcing developer for smartphone applications and games, iDreamsky, the company consisting of six staff decided to get involved in the mobile game industry in 2011. "The market was not viable in China at that time, but we all believed that mobile gaming was the future, as the trend in the United States and other developed countries has shown," Lyndon said.

They decided the best way to help the startup company to transform from nothing into something in a short time was to get the contract to publish one of the top Western mobile games in China. So iDreamsky set its eyes on the top four games at that time: Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, Talking Tom Cat and Fruit Ninja.

Lyndon, who speaks fluent English and is in charge of all the company's overseas business, tried the first three studios but all failed initially. "Fruit Ninja became our last and only chance," he said.

Although there were many Chinese companies wanting to bring Fruit Ninja to China, iDreamsky stood out because of its unique pitch. "Many competitors promised them money and high returns As a small company, which didn't have much in the way of capital resources, we promised them that we would help build up the game's brand in China and, surprisingly, they bought it," Lyndon said, adding that his company was the only Chinese company that flew to Australia to do a face-to-face proposal, which also proved to be a valuable tactic.

It turned out that it was a wise decision for Western mobile game developers to tap into the Chinese market in 2011 because it was not mature and therefore there was not much competition. The good timing made Fruit Ninja a big hit in China in 2012 and its success of Fruit Ninja led to the success of iDreamsky.

The days that it courted game developers and begged for their exclusive dealership rights in China are over for iDreamsky. About 600 mobiles games turn to the company every month, hoping to be published by them.

Compared with two years ago, the Chinese mobile game market has now taken off to an extraordinary degree. With China being the largest smartphone market in the world, iResearch Consulting Group, an Internet market consultancy, predictes revenues from mobile games would reach 9.19 billion yuan ($1.5 billion), this year, up 371.1 percent from 2012.

According to Niko Partners' 2013 Chinese Mobile Games Market Report, the number of gamers in China is expected to jump to 288 million in 2013 from 192 million in 2012. In 2014 there will be 390 million - more than the total population of the US.

Lyndon said that China's mobile game market will continue its boom in the coming three years with the increasing penetration of smartphones in the country, the building of the fourth-generation network and the falling prices of high speed mobile data packages.

However, he also predicted that the window for Western game developers to break into China's market is closing because of the rise of South Korean and Japanese game developers.

"The quality of (South) Korean, Japanese and Chinese mobile games has been increasing rapidly. And because of the proximity of cultures, (South) Korean and Japanese games are more suitable for the tastes of Chinese players," Lyndon said.