Dear BORA community.
Today’s partner introduction we present UNIT5. UNIT5 is a game developing company where it develops and serves casual and puzzle games that are easy for anyone to enjoy. We have interviewed with Choi Joon-Won, the CEO of UNIT5.
Q. Please introduce yourself briefly.
A. Hello, my name is Choi Joon-Won. One of the co-founders and present CEO of UNIT5. I majored in architecture, which is a little far from games or platform services. Before starting the UNIT5, I served as a general director of development for the first ten years in a startup, that developed community and content platforms and functional games. In UNIT5, I am responsible for business planning, marketing, and development of games and content platform.
Q. What kind of company is UINT5?
A. UNIT5 was founded in January 2014 and is now in its sixth year. We are developing casual puzzle games utilizing our character IP called “CUBIE.” Recently, UNIT5 was known as a casual indie game studio that competes with cuteness due to the media exposure gained by the main title game: “Cubie Adventure” which won prizes at Google Indie Game Festival and Busan Indie Connect Festival from 2017 to 2018.
Initially, UNIT5 had the goal of developing and serving cloud-based content platforms, along with the development of casual games. At the beginning of the establishment, the content platform and game business maintained the ratio of 50:50, and then it became more concentrated on the games business. Now we have decided that platform business development is to be a long-term goal and currently focusing on the gaming business.
Q. You said you’re also preparing for the content platform business. Could you please explain it in more detail?
A. As a content platform business, while Naver or Daum webtoon was starting to grow, we dreamt of being a platform where animated webtoon contents were available. At that time, we already had a proven technology foundation, and the goal was to make it the most viable platform for webtoons to grow.
At the same time, we prepared for the game service when mobile game services were expanding rapidly on the Kakao platform. The sense of loss that we could not get in the market at the early stage, due to fierce competition at the time, motivated us to be more successful. And there was also a part where we expected the mobile game market to grow even more.
While the content platform was a time-consuming and large scale business, many people became interested in our game, because it was an uncommon casual game at the time. So, we have naturally put more emphasis on the game side, and we have been conducting our business accordingly.
Q. Could you please introduce the beloved game “Cubie Adventure”?
A. “Cubie Adventure” is a representative title that shows the direction of the game genre we’re aiming. It will soon be the second anniversary of its launch. We’ve worked hard for a long time, and we’ve been working on it for almost two years to create a character called “Cubie.”
When preparing for “Cubie Adventure,” most game companies were focusing on the RPG genre. There weren’t many people working on puzzle genres, and even less on casual genres. It has already been five years since we started developing the “Cubica Race,” which was the predecessor of the “Cubie Adventure.” A year in the game industry feels like a decade. And, the market situation has changed a lot since then.
At the time, the market expanded tremendously due to the mobile adaptation of Kakao Games and RPG genre in Korea, and an increase in the age group that enjoyed playing games and Global increase in mobile devices supply. Due to the nature of mobile devices, I thought that the casual and puzzle genre that is easy to enjoy would eventually become trendy, and the game we have been focusing on for a long time “Cubie Adventure” was exactly that. Now that various billing models and advertising models have settled in place, there seems to be a lot of space for casual and puzzle genres to challenge the market.
“Cubie Adventure” is the most important title for us because it is the starting point for the character story and the world of “Cubie.” It has a lot of content, but there’s also a lot of stuff that we can’t show because of the genre of the game. So, we’re making a series of games using Cubie’s IP and world view. Casual action genres will be the main stage that features “Cubies,” and we will release four to five titles within this year.
Q. It’s fascinating that the company’s IP with inherent character is serviced in series. Is there any other IP or genre besides “Cubie”?
A. As with “Cubie,” we are aiming to brand individual artworks by designing IPs with unique characters in-house and facilitate synergy between different brands. We will also explore different genres and IPs through many experimental projects.
This year, we are aiming to brand “Cubie” and “Sushi.” “Sushi” is a new IP that we created to pioneer the puzzle genre. Last year, we carried out worldwide service with global publishers under the title “Push Sushi.”
Unlike most dominant puzzle games that implement cookies, candies, we have applied a character “Sushi.” And we were able to witness the popularity of ‘Sushi’ from global users due to the characters innate likeability. About 150 different types of sushi characters made for Push Sushi will be used as the main concept for future puzzle-related series to serve our character IP branding, such as “Cubie.”
On the other hand, many games are also being created to be serviced in Google Play and App Store, the largest markets on mobile platforms so far. We believe that the games that can connect and be serviced in the blockchain ecosystem unlike services that dependent on traditional mobile platforms will be the biggest change in the next five years. Therefore, we have been developing blockchain games at the same time.
Q. What type of blockchain game are you developing?
A. The blockchain games that we are developing are divided into two main categories. First, branching out services of the games that are proven on today’s mobile platforms, and we will combine them with the blockchain ecosystem. For this purpose, we have built a development pipeline based on HTML5 that can most widely secure the service platform, and we have developed the first title of “Push Sushi for BORA” with HTML5.
The second kind of blockchain game is not designed for mobile platforms, but for finding new forms of gaming in the blockchain ecosystem. We are preparing to introduce a new type of blockchain game that takes “play’s joy” as a priority rather than “collecting and selling,” such as “Crypto Kitties” or “Go Cryptobot.”
Q. So how does the collaboration with blockchain platform BORA go on?
A. We want to combine and link individual games into the BORA ecosystem. Because BORA is focused on the DApp ecosystem which promotes content application distribution and user activity, new market opportunities arise for companies that develop and serves related games. Branded casual and puzzle games such as “Cubie” and “Sushi” are served in series, and the way they work is to function as a single game service platform. The user pool becomes a shared user pool that supplies new users with each new release.
We also want to move further into this concept and incorporate the chain and token economic structure of BORA. Sharing the token economic structure on the BORA platform extends not just user pool but also the ecosystem within the game to function as a linked structure. This will also make a big difference in the way games are being developed today. We believe that the service model of games limited to current advertising and in-app purchase will be expanded to a completely different kind of concept, so we are exploring new possibilities by conducting many experiments related to this.
Q. Is there a more specific example of how to utilize game-related BORA token structures?
A. For example, you solve puzzles in a “Sushi” puzzle game within BORA platform, and you will recieve BORA Shells. Then you can use these shells to buy a character in “Cubie Adventure” or join in “Cubie Race.” If you win BORA Shells again, you can buy content from other services.
Goods used within traditional games were collected and exhausted individually in each game. I think it’s important to note that by applying BORA’s blockchain technology to share the BORA Shell between each game, users can expand their activities indefinitely rather than staying in a single game.
Q. Thank you for your detailed reply. What do you expect from this collaboration with BORA?
A. Unlike traditional platform providers, BORA shares currencies(i.e. BORA shell) and minimizes fees on entry and transaction. Because we possess a mutual goal to expand our platforms and share our platform users, I think the benefits of the service in the future are endless when the service becomes stable. Users can also make use of acquired currencies from our games in other BORA platforms, and vice versa, so we will have a much different form of user pool from the existing platforms. For example, traditional platforms are more concentrated on the user movement and loyalty.
Also, the various use-cases that the BORA platform will offer are being transparently disclosed and documented from independent elements within the existing game. We hope that with these elements, even small games that we enjoy lightly can create big elements within a large shared platform.
Q. Finally, could you please tell us about your plans and goals.
A. This year, we are preparing to launch our signature casual and puzzle lineups aggressively. In the case of “Cubie Adventure,” international service is conducted by us directly. Since we started our domestic service in the early days, we have received a lot of support from Apple and Google. Global services also have a common worldwide preference, not only in particular cultures, so we are now preparing for more updated global services with our partners in China, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
Other games are also being prepared for publishing agreements. With the service know-how we have built up, we are trying to secure our own unique user pool by serving a number of casual lineups sequentially.
For blockchain games, we are preparing to join the initial services in line with the launch and expansion of the BORA platform. At the beginning of the launch, we will start with a service synchronization of familiar and proven games, and we will introduce new forms of collect/trade-type blockchain games with the BORA platform through continuous experiments and data accumulation. I hope you’ll be interested in UNIT5’s new blockchain games with the BORA platform.
If you’d like to play various games of UNIT5 that we introduced, please refer to the following site.
Google Play
App store
Website: https://bora.boraecosystem.com/
BORA ISLAND: https://island.boraecosystem.com/
BORA Lagoon: https://lagoon.boraecosystem.com/
BORA Atoll: https://atoll.boraecosystem.com/
Telegram: https://t.me/boraofficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bora_ecosystem
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_ECXkBdIBp-_Rs9DdGjHyA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BORA-752657065111307/
Medium: https://medium.com/boraecosystem
Email: contact@boraecosystem.com
