A crappy video game led this entrepreneur to make a new gamer community

The founders of Mediacraft are lovers of video games, but have never actually made one themselves. Mediacraft is a gamer-curated community featuring gaming news, tips and tricks, and reviews. The founders hope it becomes the place for gamers to enjoy life and games.

Ryuichi Tanaka of Mediacraft.

Games help make life more fun.

The team comes from a group of board game friends who still gather once a month to play. Their favorite game was an F1 racing game designed by Mediacraft founder and CEO Ryuichi Tanaka. Players could roll the dice to rev their car’s engine then move the game piece forward. “Games help make life more fun,” smiles Ryuichi, “Games bring people together, they are a way to communicate.”

Ryuichi grew up playing the NEC 88 family computer which was popular for games in Japan before the NES even existed. His cousin Takeshi, who is also part of the Mediacraft team, remembers playing an adventure game with Ryuichi. “The game was not complete but it was sold,” Takeshi says.

Mediacraft team playing board games together.

“The controls didn’t really work, you had to put in commands to move,” laughs Ryuichi. “We didn’t even know what the commands were.” The two sat there trying to figure out how to move around. “It ended being a communication game.”

Inspired by Line

Before Mediacraft (full disclosure: both Mediacraft and Tech in Asia are backed by East Ventures), Ryuichi worked for several gaming companies. When the messaging app Line came out in 2011, Ryuichi had the idea to create a social app for gamers. The idea was not approved by his company but Ryuichi felt strongly about it. So he left to start an app called RockU Talk.

After working with gamers for three years, Ryuichi felt that information was scattered and that there was no one place for gamers to share their experience. While keeping RockU Talk open, the team launched Mediacraft in December to give gamers a full media platform.

He’s avoiding Japan and targeting Southeast Asia because Japan’s getting old.

Ryuichi sees Mediacraft’s custom editing interface as the main difference between it and other blogs. He says the design makes pulling information like quotes, videos, and pictures from different sources easy. The second big difference is the community. Gamer focused, Mediacraft already has 400,000 monthly active users and is looking for more curators. The startup is making money through advertisements, but the team is developing a payment gateway that can be used to buy games and make in app purchases.

The entrepreneur is avoiding Japan and targeting Southeast Asia because Japan’s getting old. He points out that Southeast Asian gamers mostly are in their 20s. “The game market in Japan is fighting for a limited number of aging users,” says Ryuichi, “Southeast Asia isn’t profitable right now, but looking at it long term, if you can survive it has potential.”

Mediacraft is not interested in game play streaming services like Twitch, but it is thinking about what other media to include on the site. In addition to games, Ryuichi says curators are interested in anime. Lately there have also been many requests for more Pokemon content. Some users ask Ryuichi, “When will the new Pokemon be released?” To which Ryuichi responds, “I don’t know! Ask the game company!”