Mobile gaming company Kabam The secret of a low-key fortune

Kabam's team is working (picture Source: Kabam Company) The mobile gaming company headquartered in San Francisco Kabam at first glance it's not like a successful gaming company. The company's CEO, Kevin Zhou, is only 33 years old this year, not a talented graduate of complacent, nor a high-profile company. The company's core clients are gamers, not housewives, and are not always known. And its business does not depend on any social networking platform, such as Facebook, which means the media will not be able to speculate on which industry is a bellwether for its rise and fall. Although its background is simple, but the achievement is impressive. All of Kabam's games are open to users for free at first, but their revenues are in a balanced, explosive growth and have become one of the heavyweight players in the mobile gaming arena. Kevin Zhou said: "Four years ago, our company is in a pastry shop upstairs, the company only 25 people." Today, we have more than 700 employees worldwide, half of them in San Francisco, others in Austin, Beijing, Seoul, Vancouver, Berlin and other locations. "The geographical difference is very important to the game industry, although all the so-called" electronic games "are essentially similar, but the player's favor to them appears the absolute localization tendency. So Kabam has "localized" all its games in its Berlin office, translating the Games into 16 different languages, and making appropriate changes to the game in the context of national culture and "national conditions", with the exception of South Korea. Kevin Zhou said South Korea, although only 60 million people, but its number of mobile gamers are basically the same as the United States, so the company specifically in South Korea to establish a dedicated local studio. Kabam is a VC-funded private company with three major businesses. One is to create a game of their own brand, such as the Kingdom of Arthur (Kingdoms of Camelot). The second is to work with big Hollywood studios, such as The Hobbit (Hobbit) series, which the company collaborated with Warner Bros. (Warner Bros.), and Warner Bros. is also the "Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings" (Lord of the Rings ) The production side of the series. Warner Bros. 's head, Kevin Sujara, recently joined Kabam's board, and Warner Bros. also made a big investment in Kabam. Warner Bros. and Fortune magazine's parent company, Time Inc, is also a subsidiary of Time Warner Group Warner. On the independent development and cooperation of production, KABAM has developed 11 games, the average production cost of each game around 5 million U.S. dollars, of which a large number of design, programming, animation and production are completed in the studio in Beijing, Kabam Beijing StudioThere are currently 250 employees. Kabam's third business shows its cleverness and mind. It specializes in the United States to set up a department to help outside the United States (especially China) game developers to develop, release games. Kabam then translated and localized the games against the American market, as Kevin Zhou said: "We push these games and our own games to each other's markets." "Today's gaming industry has grown so complicated that some big vendors have launched specialized gaming consoles, and some game companies specialize in simple games for Facebook users." By contrast, Kabam's strategy is unique. Kabam games are free to download, making money mainly by selling game props, such as swords, armor and other props and a variety of "consumables" (such as red, fill the blue "functional Drink"). Kabam the focus on the so-called "core" game, that is, the narrative is huge, more difficult complex games. Almost all Kabam games can operate on smartphones or tablets. This contrasts with Zynga, the "casual game", because the casual games are designed for the desktop era. Kevin Zhou added: "Our users spend an average of two hours a day online." "As a result, some of the most popular games in the company have been paid handsomely, particularly the Kingdom of Arthur, which has been online for four years." The Kabam company supports 30 payment models, with the largest revenues available through itunes and Google wallets. Game makers must have the ability to make the most of the camera. Just two years ago, Kabam's entire business depended on Facebook, which now has 70% of its business from iOS, Android and Amazon. The game market is changeable, Kabam company established seven years, nature has also gone through a lot of Gougou. It has also gone through four business "key points", from social networks to sports communities on Facebook to sports fantasy games to mobile games on Facebook, not counting the current major business. It can be said that Kevin Zhou himself is a successful localization of the model. He was a Taiwanese immigrant who grew up in suburban Los Angeles, and later entered the University of California at Berkeley (the University of California at Berkeley, where Kabam company had just bought out the title of the school's gymnasium) and, after graduating, was an investment banker, Tech executives and venture capitalists started the Kabam company more than seven years ago. Kevin Zhou said that this year Kabam company's operating income will exceed 325 million dollars, and has realized the profit. This is inseparable from the contributions of die-hard fans, and a handful of hardcore gamers are "burning money" in the game every year for tens of thousands of dollars. Kabam Company may never be a household nameIndustry, but as long as its business model continues to earn money, the company should not be too concerned about this. (Compile: Pak)