Have you ever wished for an Xbox Live or a Playstation Network for your mobile device? If so, then Singaporean startup Moomee is about to make your wishes come true. Moomee describes itself as “the next generation of social chat apps, featuring collaborative gaming as its secret sauce.” The idea is simple: it’s a fully-capable chat app that revolves around gaming.
The Eureka moment
The inspiration for Moomee came when three friends in Singapore (pictured below) discovered that they were all playing the same game but couldn’t play with each other despite being in the same room. They could play with strangers, but not with their mates. Moomee is the antidote to this problem, as it allows gamers to sync their contacts with their Moomee accounts and play with any of their friends cooperatively or competitively.
Though co-founder Chris Low and his product go up against well-established social gaming platform giants like Line and Wechat, Low is confident of Moomee being able to stand on its own.
“The fact that the first button you see in our menu bar is the “games” button tells a lot about Moomee’s position in this crowded social chat app space,” Low says. At present, Moomee seems to fill a niche gamers have been missing, because who doesn’t enjoy rubbing their high-score in their friend’s face.
Moomee will also be able to connect you to other opponents anonymously around the world in matchmaking sessions. So even if you have no gaming friends, this could still be the service for you, and you might even make some friends to game with in the future.
The hook
From left to right: Tony Tan, Samuel Low, and Christopher Low.
Moomee also made the decision to emulate Microsoft’s Gamerscore idea in the form of Moo points. These points can be earned by completing games, tasks within games, or simply by playing well, and everyone knows how addictive point-collecting can be. When I moved to China and lost access to my Xbox Live account, I literally had stress dreams about my friend’s scores rapidly overtaking mine.
Just in case Moo points didn’t sound addictive enough, Moomee is also going to be including stickers similar to those used by Line, Wechat, and other chat apps. Some of these will be attainable only by paying with Moo points, and some will require specific tasks to get. That’s a recipe for some serious bragging.
Moomee has already attracted some serious interest, with Silkroad Equity investing US$500,000 into the project even though it hasn’t yet launched. It’s slated for release on October 31. The VC funding allowed for two years of stealth development. Moomee has also partnered with Viwawa, a leading casual game platform also with investment from Silkroad Equity, to help publicize the launch.
The challenge
However, Moomee’s success will rely on widespread adoption more than anything else. In order to accomplish this, Moomee will focus its launch on Southeast Asia. It hopes to gain traction predominantly through marketing to Viwawa’s estimated five million users, and then by word-of-mouth.
Low is confident that the Moomee team, which has a combined fifty years of experience in developing social chat and game apps, understands enough of the market and people to make this complex ecosystem work, and get gamers on board.
Since Moomee is focusing on Southeast Asia, it has chosen games such as mahjong and Texas Hold ‘Em variants that appeal to the local audience. Low couldn’t give me details about upcoming games, but assured me that Moomee would be venturing to North America and Europe when it had a solid user-base and suitable games.
It’s possible to be skeptical here and ponder if Moomee can make it in the vastly different North American and European markets since it’s cutting its teeth on Southeast Asia, a market made relatively easy to conquer thanks to Viwawa having already paved the way with a decade’s worth of experience. This connection with Viwawa also begs the question as to whether Moomee will eventually follow it down the casual gaming path.
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“Moomee may be Asia’s next Snapchat – or better”
According to Low, the company is going for a “quality over quantity approach” with the games it chooses, and will be highly selective about what is allowed on the platform. It has a ‘preferred developer program’ which gives developers up to 80 percent of net revenue from their games, and anyone interested in working with Moomee can apply at its website.
But having the games and the traction are only two parts of the problem, the third being the competition. Wechat and Line are similar social mobile platforms that are aggressively pursuing the casual gaming market in this region. Line has close to half a billion registered users around the world, with a significant proportion of those likely being in Southeast Asia. With Line being used so extensively throughout the region for both messaging and social gaming – and with Wechat spreading quickly beyond its native China – is there any room for a startup such as Moomee?
Low believes there is, citing Snapchat, whose investments recently valued the fledgling chat app at US$10 billion. Low believes that Moomee can be Asia’s Snapchat – or even better, since it is working with a focused, games-based revenue model “designed from day one”. While this might sound optimistic, it isn’t impossible, given the rise of mobile gaming and the lack of a coherent mobile gaming ecosystem.
The success or failure of Moomee will hinge on whether it can get the games, the users, and whether it can find its niche among chat app giants like Wechat and Line. That being said it has the support, both financial and otherwise, to give it a chance to stand on its own.
This was first published on our sister site, Games in Asia.
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