It is some achievement for 6waves to have established such an exciting brand identity, and reputation for quality, in the competitive world of social and mobile games publishing. CEO Arthur Chow founded 6waves in 2008, together with Rex Ng, Chris Lee and Terry Wong.
“First, as a start-up we have embraced risks and tried to be innovative in building our business,” Chow explained. “We pioneered game publishing on the Facebook platform and, because of this, we have brought many games to users worldwide. “Second, we’ve focussed on quality and set the bar high on the games we choose to publish. Our staff are all keen players and they do understand our users’ needs and expectations.
“Finally, there’s our innovative marketing. We’re able to leverage social networks and also focus on localising games to resonate with the local audiences and ensure our games are popular.”
Like many startups, 6waves went through its share of ups and downs before establishing itself as one of the key players in the gaming industry. “We began in a small office in Hong Kong that was less than 100 square feet in size, and with a staff that consisted of just the company’s four co-founders,” Chow recalled. “Since then we’ve expanded and now have a total of 150 staff worldwide and offices in Tokyo, Taipei and Beijing, in addition to our headquarters in Hong Kong.”
6waves’ growth has been made possible both through partnerships with developers from around the world and by creating its own games in-house. “We have now published over 300 games with total cumulative installations of over 350 million.”
The company’s initial hits came in 2009 with Facebook games that included Happy Harvest, Happy Fishbowl and 古惑仔 Online. “At first we grew by taking advantage of Facebook’s increasing worldwide user base. We then saw an opportunity to move into mobile gaming and we shifted our focus to the mobile space.” The business currently publishes games for iOS, Google Play, Amazon Appstore and selected regional platforms, such as Yahoo! Mobage and Mixi Japan.
Funding has been key to the expansion of the business and 6waves has raised a total of US$32.5million from leading game publisher Nexon in Korea and VC Insight Venture Partners in New York. And the outlook continues to look bright for the company. 6waves’ top grossing game Age of Three Kingdoms 逐鹿三國 continues to top sales charts and several exciting new games are set to be launched before the end of the year.
“We have signed a few quality games including a RPG (role playing game), a resource management/simulation game with an airport theme, and a casual match bubble-shooting game that has done very well in other parts of Asia,” explained Chow. What’s more, the company’s CEO said he felt very optimistic about the future of the games industry in general – especially given advances in mobile device technology. “We will also see virtual reality open up new opportunities for gaming on this new, immersive platform.”
Source: South China Morning Post, 6waves
