How BrainWars escaped Japan and won over users worldwide

This post has been previously published by our friends at Ignition. It has been slightly modified from the original.

Produced by Translimit*, BrainWars launched on iOS in Japan this past May and proved to be an instant hit with downloads exceeding two million by August, and surpassing five million by October. The mental training game manages to score over 95% of these downloads from overseas – an unusual feat for a Japanese app. We caught up with BrainWars developer (and Translimit CEO) Hiroki Takaba to find out the reason behind its success and why they chose to develop the app.

*Editor’s note: East Ventures, an investor in Tech in Asia, is also an investor in Translimit. Please see our Statement of Ethics for more details.

Origin of downloads for the iOS version

BrainWars: The First Project

Translimit was established in January 2014 by two former CyberAgent Group employees, Hiroki Takaba and Takuma Kudo.

The company’s first project and product to launch was BrainWars; a competitive brain training app for smartphones. The game matches players in three rounds of quick-fire puzzles (20 seconds per round) and points are awarded based on six attributes including speed, memory, judgement and mental arithmetic.

The app matches users automatically with one another and even allows each player to monitor their global ranking in real time. Unlike knowledge or language based games, BrainWars features simple and straight forward puzzles. These mostly revolve around basic math and/or memory, making it easy for anyone to pick up and play.

Samples of BrainWars games

“After founding the company, we were looking for business ideas and BrainWars came to mind,” explains Takaba. “But we didn’t set up the company to specialize in developing games. At the time, we were looking at how we could establish our company within the market. Since both Kudo and I had experience developing games at CyberAgent Group, we figured that focusing on games would give us the best chance at success.”

Failed overseas ventures at CyberAgent Group proved invaluable

A major factor in BrainWars’ success lies in Takaba’s experience at CyberAgent Group. His first two years with the company was spent supporting human resources where he was in charge of the company’s core systems. He was then assigned as a server-side engineer for the next three years where he was involved in developing and maintaining services aimed at overseas markets.

“Ever since elementary school, I’ve always wanted to start my own company,” says Takaba. “But I wanted to become a system engineer first so I decided to join CyberAgent Group. At the time, they were at the forefront of online business and had just setup their US headquarters in San Francisco to expand their overseas ventures.”

However, every overseas project Takaba was involved in during his time with CyberAgent Group ended in failure. The first project he worked on, Animal Land, was shut down after just one year. At the time, Facebook games were extremely popular and Animal Land shared many similarities with hits such as CityVille produced by US based social media game developer, Zynga.

Takaba attributes the main reason for the project’s failure to its late entry into the market. By the time Animal Land had launched, the market was already on the decline. For him the project became a harsh lesson on the difficulties faced when developing services for overseas markets.

Brain training with non-verbal communication

5 things all Japanese apps must consider in order to compete globally