[Guest Post] Online game in Indonesia and its monetizing strategy

Editorial: Today’s topic is gaming, an industry that knows no age and continue to exist in various forms ranging from gaming consoles to social mobile gaming. The most important question for gaming startup is, how’s the monetization? In here Didiet of OneBit Media will try to share insights about the gaming business model in Indonesia.

There is an interesting phenomenon in social media lately in Indonesia. Some of the platform began to declare themselves as an online game platform. Friendster, as written in DailySocial, a social media platform ever rising and is very popular in Indonesia, to re-launch itself as an online gaming platform. In addition to Friendster, mig33 which has tens of millions of users in Southeast Asia began planning to sell virtual goods in the Asian market and moved their office to Singapore. Even Nokia held a Game Developer War which I see quite successful capture and publicize the potential seeds of local game developers Indonesia.

First step into the game industry, I was quite logical considering a website as well as a platform now cannot rely solely on the number of hits alone. Other parameters such as hang time also determines how attractive a website and a platform in the eyes of users, and gaming is the most surefire way to keep the user using the website/platform. One key to the success of Facebook is the existence of those games that made by ​​Zynga on that platform that managed to attract new users to be a Facebooker and also adding value to existing users by providing engangement media through online games.

Basically an online game is not a new thing in Indonesia. Game publishers like Lyto who managed to take billions of dollars in revenue from Ragnarok Online, Rising Force Online, and many more. There is also Megaxus with Audition Online which brand with the name AyoDance in Indonesia, and most recently that the author knows of is Point Blank, published by Gemscool. Maybe their names are less popular in the startup world in Indonesia, given that most Indonesian startup is web-base, but their monetization model is one of the most successful in Indonesia. The issues such as the lack of online payment system and the low adoption of credit cards are not holding them back from monetizing their users, and beside the fact they do have a community that has thousands of members.

Their way of monetizing player is using the most familiar way in Indonesia, namely the sale of virtual goods. They also issued a voucher in some nominal whether physical vouchers or through gateways like GudangVoucher (GV), IndoMOG and similar services. Vouchers can be exchanged for cash or coins to be exchanged later with the virtual goods that exist in their game. The method is virtual goods more attractive to the users in Indonesia rather than subscription. With selling virtual goods they can promise their game free for lifetime but requires certain items to make it easier to conquer the game, or just to beautify avatars like what happened in Audition/Ayodance. Yes, a variety of beautiful and blink-blink accessories and will raise the prestige of the holder of the characters.

Continue reading at Daily Social EN

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