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If the U.S has Zynga and Playfish, Singapore has Manga Castle, a manga-styled social game maker.
Despite just 1 year into the business, Manga Castle has achieved considerable success with investors and users.
With over 15,000 likes on Facebook, Manga Castle’s product has proven to be well liked among manga and social game lovers. We’ll let Sylvia, CEO of Manga Castle, to share with us more about her start-up.
1. Hey Sylvia, for a start, give us a brief introduction of your company.
In short, Manga Castle creates manga-styled social games on Facebook powered by a behavioral engine. Besides Facebook, our games will be hosted on mangacastle.com and game publishers’ sites.
2. What inspired you guys to form this start-up?
Our desire to bring happiness to the world inspired us. From gathering a manga community to providing awesome gaming experiences, we want to make the world a happier place.
This is really what kept us going, through the late nights and through the tough times.
3. Sweet! I’m happy. Share with us the journey, from the founding stage till now.
Our interest in manga sparked the creation of a manga blog. After gaining a strong following, we thought about how we can better engage fans. The idea is to introduce manga-styled social games.
As we create our first game, we realized how difficult it could be. It’s an art, heavily relying on intuition. You never know whether your game design is providing the engaging gaming experience that people desire! That’s why we decided to take a different approach to building games. We wanna delve deeper into why people play games, what emotions they experience during the game play and how to push the right buttons! The end goal is a behavioral engine, where developers can research and based their games on.
It is an exciting journey for us. To create the best user experience, we turn the art of making games into science. I love exploring the reasons behind different preferences and behaviors. My co-founder, Wu Di, combines and transforms technology, psychology, and behaviors into the behavioral engine.
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4. Behavioral search engine and an open platform for developers? Elaborate please.
The behavioral engine will allow developers to create engaging gaming experiences for manga fans.
For example, what are the differences between males and females, young and old? To create the best experiences for females below 18, what are the sights and sounds to use? What will best motivate them to take specific actions (i.e. Invite friends, publish news feeds, buy virtual items)?
The behavioral engine will provide proven methods with supporting statistics for games developers.
5. What are the successes and failures experienced so far?
Manga Castle has several significant achievements. We have gathered a manga community with over 15,000 fans and are about to launch our new game, Magic Castle. On funding, we have received idea development grant and YES! Startups grant from Spring Singapore.
As for failures, we would say that we were not as focused as we currently are during the formative stage. Over time, we learnt that focus is key and we now have a good vision of what Manga Castle is going to be. We see failures as opportunities to learn.
Sylvia (left), Wu Di (right)
6. Any tips to budding entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurship is a journey. Through this journey, you will make new discoveries about yourself. Listen to both your head and your heart. Do what you really want to do. Have a clear vision and work damn bloody hard!
Join Manga Castle on Facebook today.
