The State Of Mobile Game Developer In Indonesia 2024
Arsanesia was born in 2011, during the golden age of mobile game developers. At that time, Nokia was a major catalyst, vigorously supporting and nurturing the game ecosystem from grassroots community movements to business support. This era saw the emergence of many mobile game developers like Agate, Own Games, Wisageni, Nightspade, Touchten, Tinker, and many more. However, as the mobile market became increasingly saturated, many local game studios found it challenging to survive in the mobile space. Over the past three years, we’ve seen many new game developers emerging and making games for PC. Even developers who were previously focused on mobile have shifted to creating PC games (including Arsanesia :p). Nevertheless, some studios continue to make mobile games, such as Own Games, Gambir, Game5Mobile, and newer studios like Dreams Studio, Akhir Pekan, AimToMite, and others.
I’ve previously discussed why many local game developers are making or transitioning to PC games in this post. Now, I want to share my personal observations of developer friends still in the mobile space. One thing we all agree on is that the top 100 grossing games in Indonesia are dominated by foreign games. The reality of making video games is that it’s a borderless market. Once we enter the field, we compete directly with global players. It’s like a local neighborhood soccer team competing against Manchester United. There’s a significant disparity in production budgets, marketing budgets, and talent quality. But this makes it interesting because, despite these conditions, our local game devs can still thrive in mobile. Here are my observations :)
The first movement I noticed is making games that are highly localized with high virality potential. As Indonesians living in Indonesia, we have the advantage of knowing local trends before our global competitors. And when we talk about viral, we talk about visibility. These are games that, with their local uniqueness, can elegantly stand out in the store. Examples include Own Game’s Lato-Lato, Gambir’s Warung Seblak Nusantara, Akhir Pekan Studio’s Kantin Sekolah, or Kajewdev’s Ternak Lele. These games are very local and have a unique appeal to the Indonesian community. Their advantage is in organic users, which can be relatively easier to acquire. The CPI might also be less competitive as the bids for these keywords are not too crowded. I feel this is a very potential path worth exploring further.
The second movement, which is less common, involves local game developers aiming to compete regionally or even globally. The challenge for highly localized movements is the low CPM from ads or the small LTV from their games due to Indonesia’s buying power as a developing country. For those aiming to compete regionally or globally, they face studios with much larger production and marketing budgets. Fortunately, we know that the game genre landscape is very broad today, so if we pick the right fight in the right area, we can also succeed. Some examples of local game devs taking the global pathway include Game5Mobile’s Happy Glass, Alegrium’s Cash Inc, Minimo’s Mini Racing Adventures, Gaco Games’ Epic Conquest, or Dreams Games’ Cat Legends.
For me, both movements are great. I want to see local games with local themes thrive in Indonesia. But I also want to see our local game devs conquer regional and global markets. Hopefully, we’ll see more successful and excellent games from Indonesia in the future. What we need now is knowledge, opportunities, and access, which aren’t as readily available as in the premium indie game realm. With more success stories, hopefully, these resources will become more available in Indonesia.
