Berbicara Tentang Game Bersama General Manager Unity 3D Wilayah Asia, John Goodale

Kami telah menuliskan banyak post tentang perkembangan industri game di Indonesia dalam beberapa bulan ke belakang. Kami bahkan percaya bahwa tahun 2012 ini akan menjadi tahunnya industri gaming di Indonesia. Akan banyak perusahaan game muncul tahun ini menyusul perusahaan yang sudah terlebih dulu hadir seperti Agate Studio, Altermyth, Toge Productions, dll

Salah satu faktor pendukung yang penting adalah penyedia engine/platform, persis seperti yang ditawarkan Unity3D. Bagi mereka yang belum pernah mendengar Unity3D, itu adalah tool untuk pengembangan video game, visualisasi arsitektur, dan instalasi media interaktif. Singkatnya, membantu orang mengembangkan game di environment 3D.

Lingkungan pengembangan Unity berjalan pada Microsoft Windows dan Mac OS X, dan permainan yang dihasilkan dari tool ini bisa dijalankan di Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, iPad, iPhone, serta platform Android. Unity juga dapat menghasilkan permainan di browser yang menggunakan plugin Unity web player, bisa digunakan di Mac dan Windows tapi belum kompatibel untuk Linux.

Dailysocial mendapat kesempatan untuk berbincang dengan John Goodale, General Manager Unity 3D untuk wilayah Asia. Sedikit latar belakang tentang Goodale:

John Goodale adalah General Manager Asia-Pasifik untuk Unity Technologies dan bertanggungjawab secara langsung bagi seluruh kegiatan operasional di wilayah Asia. John telah berkecimpung di industri game selama lebih dari 20 tahun dan telah memegang beberapa posisi kepemimpinan dalam karirnya. Di awal kariernya, ia fokus pada monetisasi game sebagai produser, manajer pemasaran produk, direktur perizinan dan manajer unit bisnis di permainan Sega penerbit, Activision dan Turner Entertainment.

Sejak 2007 ia berfokus pada pengembangan game di Asia, membangun dan memimpin tim besar dan meluncurkan bisnis Asia untuk perusahaan game engine sebagai General Manager Asia, Gamebryo, CryEngine dan sekarang Unity Technologies.

John sempat tinggal dan bekerja di Jepang, ia fasih berbahasa Jepang, dan telah melakukan bisnis di Asia selama lebih dari 20 tahun. John tinggal di Boise, Idaho dengan keluarganya tapi menghabiskan lebih dari 80% waktunya di tahun ini dengan melakukan perjalanan di seluruh Asia.

Tanpa basa-basi lagi, ini berikut wawancara DailySocial dengan Goodale:

Continue reading Berbicara Tentang Game Bersama General Manager Unity 3D Wilayah Asia, John Goodale

Rocket Internet indicates e-commerce expansion in Indonesia

The mother of all clones, Rocket Internet, a Berlin-based internet company that specializes on ripping off successful internet companies and scale it locally, has indicates that they’re expanding to the SEA region. As Sarah Lacy puts it, they are the worst kind of entrepreneur. There’s no commitment or belief in what they’re building if memos like that one above are to be believed– they’re just shallow profit-seekers.

And shameless as they may be, it’s not stopping them to expand to Asia. Our friends at SGEntrepreneurs just posted the news that Rocket Internet is launching Zalora (Zappos-clone) in Malaysia and is soon launching in Singapore. It just comes naturally that the clone-meister will soon enter Indonesian growing internet market.

And so they are.

Continue reading Rocket Internet indicates e-commerce expansion in Indonesia

Talking gaming with Unity 3D’s John Goodale

If you can’t tell just yet, we’ve been giving a lot of buzz about Indonesia’s growing gaming industry for the past few months. I was clear that 2012 is going to be the year of gaming in Indonesia. More gaming companies established this year with fierce incumbents like Agate Studios, Altermyth, Toge Productions,etc.

The potential benefactor for this industry, is engine/platform provider, exactly like Unity3D. For those not familiar with the name, Unity3d is a tool for video game development, architectural visualizations, and interactive media installations. In short, it helps people develop 3d games.

Unity’s development environment runs on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, and the games it produces can be run on Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, iPad, iPhone, as well as the Android platform. It can also produce browser games that use the Unity web player plugin, supported on Mac and Windows but not Linux.

Dailysocial got the chance to talk with John Goodale, Unity 3D’s General Manager for Asia region. A bit of background about Goodale :

John Goodale is the Asia-Pacific General Manager for Unity Technologies and is directly responsible for all of Unity’s operations in the Asia region. John has been with the game industry for over 20 years and has held several leadership positions in his career. During the early part of his carrer he focused on game monetization as a producer, product marketing manager, licensing director and business unit manager at game publishers Sega, Activision and Turner Entertainment.

Since 2007 he has focused on game development in Asia, building and leading large teams and launching the Asian businesses for game engine companies as General Manager Asia of Gamebryo, CryENGINE and now Unity Technologies.
John has lived and worked in Japan, is fluent in Japanese, and has been doing business in Asia for more than 20 years. John resides in Boise, Idaho with his family but spends upwards of 80% of the year travelling throughout Asia.

Without further ado, check out Dailysocial’s interview with Goodale below.

Continue reading Talking gaming with Unity 3D’s John Goodale

Delivering Indonesia’s top tech news to your inbox. Introducing, Dispatch

I have received enormous feedback from Dailysocial readers I met offline who feels that the RSS subscription they receive via email is rather spammy. And as a growing company, we learn from our mistakes and keep improving Dailysocial.

Therefore, we’re officially launching DSPATCH (read: dispatch) newsletter for Indonesia’s tech enthusiasts. DSPATCH is focusing on delivering tech news with all the juicy stuff that comes with it. We’re delivering tech news from the country, region and occasionally significant global news to your inbox every Monday morning, in english. Better than coffee.

Continue reading Delivering Indonesia’s top tech news to your inbox. Introducing, Dispatch

Memperkenalkan Newsletter Dispatch

Berdasarkan feedback yang saya terima selama ini, banyak pembaca Dailysocial yang merasa di-“spam” oleh RSS feed yang mereka terima melalui email. Dan banyak feedback yang saya terima dari pembaca dan rekan-rekan di industri yang tentunya bisa memajukan Dailysocial sebagai blog teknologi, kami terus belajar.

Oleh karena itu, hari ini kami meluncurkan DSPATCH (baca: dispatch) newsletter. Kami akan memfokuskan Dispatch ini sebagai channel untuk pembaca sekalian untuk mendapatkan update dari berita-berita teknologi Indonesia, regional SE Asia dan juga berita signifikan secara global. Tidak hanya itu, kami juga akan menginformasikan gosip, rumor seputar industri teknologi Indonesia.

Continue reading Memperkenalkan Newsletter Dispatch

JuraganGadget: E-Commerce Service For Gadgets Only Officially Launches

During the time, e-commerce services especially for gadgets is dominated by Bhinneka, the old player that has been up and down in the world of Indonesia dotcom. However, they finally get the new competitor namely JuraganGadget that is just launched in Jakarta several days ago.

As part of their promotion, JuraganGadget doesn’t charge shipping fee for Jakarta and its surrounding area. In addition, one of my favourite is the support of Paypal so I can use my credit card to shop without worrying about the security issue. Unfortunately when I tried to pay using Paypal, error is still appearing and finally I decided not to continue on purchasing.

Continue reading JuraganGadget: E-Commerce Service For Gadgets Only Officially Launches

DealKeren Rebranding Menjadi LivingSocial Indonesia

Mengikuti akuisisi yang terjadi bulan Juni 2011 lalu, Dealkeren kini berubah nama menjadi LivingSocial Indonesia dan merubah alamat website dari dealkeren.com menjadi livingsocial.co.id. Tampilan websitenya-pun berubah yang tadinya “mirip” dengan Groupon menjadi tema standard LivingSocial. Situs dealkeren.com mulai hari ini juga di-redirect ke LivingSocial.co.id.

Dealkeren sendiri mengklaim telah memiliki market share sebesar 65%, jauh mengalahkan saingan terdekatnya Disdus (Groupon Indonesia). Revenue bulanan dealkeren sendiri mencapai $250k atau lebih dari Rp. 2 milyar. Amir sendiri menulis tentang Dealkeren tidak lama setelah akuisisi bahwa mereka mentargetkan 1 juta pengguna di akhir 2011.

Di akhir tahun 2011 lalu Dealkeren juga berpindah ke kantor baru mereka di sebuah gedung perkantoran premium tepat di tengah-tengah (kemacetan) kota Jakarta. Adrian Suherman, CEO Dealkeren belum merespon terhadap pertanyaan kami mengenai target Living Social Indonesia setelah rebranding ini.

Dealkeren Rebrands To Living Social Indonesia

Following the acquisition in June 2011, Dealkeren now rebrands as LivingSocial Indonesia and change their website from DealKeren.com to LivingSocial.co.id. The layout also changes from a very groupon-ish theme to LivingSocial’s standard theme and layout. Starting today, Dealkeren.com redirects to LivingSocial.co.id.

DealKeren claims to have 65% market share in Indonesia, defeating it’s closest competitor Disdus (Groupon Indonesia). Their monthly revenue reaches $ 250k and keep growing. As Amir wrote after the acquisition, DealKeren targets 1 million members by the end of 2011.

Sometime in late 2011 they also relocate their office to a premium building in the center of Jakarta (and its traffic jam). CEO Adrian Suherman is yet to respond to our request for comment on their target after the rebranding.

Blaast Reaches 10k Downloads, Attracts Local Developer Community

At the end of 2011, Blaast mobile platform began to open access for general users, especially for low-end mobile users (Nokia, etc). Although Blaast only did soft launch and released as beta version, but it has reportedly been downloaded for more than 10,000 times with the majority of the downloaders from Indonesia.

The Finnish mobile cloud platform is now working with carrier XL for the app distribution. Until now Blaast only can be used by XL customers and no information yet about the availability for other providers. Blaast is first launched in Indonesia because of the substantial market of low-end mobile device, a perfect market test-bed for these types of mobile platform. Continue reading Blaast Reaches 10k Downloads, Attracts Local Developer Community

Tiphone Mobile Indonesia (TELE) Goes IPO Prices Increase 11% On First Trade

Tiphone, a local low-end phone manufacturer, on January 12 is officially listed in the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). On their first day, share value is up 11% (Rp. 345 per share from the previous price Rp. 310 when it’s opened). Currently there are 1.35 billion shares offered to the public out of 4 billion shares owned by major shareholders. Tiphone offers 25.23% of their total shares to public.

Tiphone expects to raise Rp. 418.5 billion from this public offering. This will be used to pay the debt of their subsidiaries while the rest are used as working capital. In the long run, Tiphone expects Rp. 1.65 trillion market cap from this IPO.

Tiphone currently led by Mr Hengky Setiawan; Mr Ferry Setiawan as Commissioners; Mr David Tirta Wijaya, Mr Tan Meijaty Jawidjaja and Mr Lie Pin are in the board of the Director. According to company data, in June 2011 their revenue almost reaches Rp. 3 trillion with Rp. 70 billion net profit.

Continue reading Tiphone Mobile Indonesia (TELE) Goes IPO Prices Increase 11% On First Trade