Boomzap
Company Profile:
Boomzap develops, publishes and distributes independent casual downloadable games to audiences worldwide. Headquartered in Singapore, Boomzap uses developers from around the world, focusing on themes in Southeast Asia.
Its distribution network includes all major portals and distributors in North America, Europe, and Asia. With more than 15 years of combined experience in the video game industry, founders Allan Simonsen and Christopher Natsuume, have already sold millions of units in over a dozen entertainment titles for PC, PlayStation®2, XboxTM and NGage.
Challenges:
One of the greatest hurdles for a developer is getting the chance to meet with publishers, and having the opportunity to build demos to sell to these publishers.
With MDA's support:
Boomzap received funding to prepare a complete playable demo of Orchard, a casual game prototype, with the assistance of MDA’s IDEAS Game Prototyping scheme.
By having a completed demo, Boomzap was then able to show the game to potential publishers. In the case of Orchard, it was signed to Majesco, the publishers of Cooking Mama and Psychonauts. Without the demo, Boomzap says that it would not have been able to finalise this deal as quickly or easily, or on such positive terms.
Boomzap also received support via Singapore booths set up at international trade shows. One of its first great success stories was Jewels of Cleopatra, a game that was published by Encore. The publisher sales meeting was held in the IDA/MDA sponsored booth at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2005. At that same E3 Boomzap also began the process of signing the game that was later to become Hoyle Enchanted Puzzles to GameTrust, which brought in more funding. Gametrust eventually cancelled the game, but Boomzap was able to take what it had developed so far and sell it as a new project to Encore. Having a Singapore booth at that conference was of huge assistance to Boomzap.
Outcome:
Majesco has announced that it is expanding its focus from casual DS and Wii titles to the PC with Boomzap’s Orchard, which will be the company's first game published for the PC download market.
In July 2008, Boomzap signed a very large game development agreement with online game publisher K2 Network to build an Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game. This was on a Digital Content Development Scheme grant through the MDA, but in the early negotiation stages, Boomzap met with K2 at the GAMBIT studio. Boomzap says that having the support of the MDA lent credibility to the Boomzap proposal and helped in finalising that deal.
In addition, Boomzap has shipped 8 casual games in 3 years, all of which have been distributed around the world, some of which were top sellers in their channels. MDA support helped Boomzap weather financially difficult times and also gave the company credibility in the region.