Game Studio Chocoarts Raises Money From Angels, Builds Branded Games

Jakarta-based game studio, Chocoarts, just raised a round of seed funding from several independent angels. The investment sum and the angels are undisclosed. With the new cash injection, Chocoarts’ co-founder Mega Denditya wants to hire more digital artists to make their games more visually appealing.

He is also looking out for business development people to push the business forward. The company’s business model isn’t just purely on advertising, pay per download, or virtual goods. Chocoarts believes that using games as a brand engagement platform is also a potential business model for game studios. He told me:

What we view as a potential business model is ‘games as an engagement platform’ for brands more than just a display banner in game applications. Indonesia as the fourth most-populated country with a very unique content consumption and digital behavior which will be the perfect starting point for us.

It’s very much like how Electronic Arts (EA) is building countless versions of its FIFA football games across all platforms. It promotes the sport, football clubs, players — but at the same time, provides entertainment for football fans across the world.

Chocoarts is in fact working with one of the football clubs in the Indonesian Premier League (IPL). Chocoarts will be providing a game engagement experience for the club’s fans. The game is planned to be launched in April when the new IPL season starts.

While smartphone usage level continues to rise in Indonesia, Chocoarts is focusing largely on feature phones for now. Mega explains to me that although smartphones are the way to go in the future, in a developing country like Indonesia game developers would still have to cater for the majority of the people who are still on feature phones.

Mega and his team are optimistic about their game studio and the Indonesian market. Like any entrepreneur, Mega has huge aspirations:

We plan to be a global player with a solid foundation as the best game studio in the fourth most populated country in the world.

Big plans indeed, Chocoarts. Let the games commence!