Based in Shanghai, the start up isn't just focused on the fast-growing domestic market.
Despite its small size, it's also happy to target a worldwide audience, as CEO Caffrey Lee explains.
Pocket Gamer: Can you give us some background on MagicBone?
Caffrey Lee: MagicBone Games is a mobile game developer and publisher from Shanghai, China.
We began to focus on mobile game development in 2009, and our most popular game Pyramid Run achieved the #1 position for the top free app on the US App Store and in other countries.
This inspired our whole team so much and we will continue to work hard to create more fun games.
The Chinese mobile market is growing very quickly so why are you also looking to release your games in the US and Europe?
Yes, the growth of China's mobile internet market is very fast: China is now the world's second largest mobile traffic consuming country after United States. And China has a large population.
With the further spread of the mobile network and devices in China, it's very likely to become the world's largest market.
We live in China, so we can feel the changes in our daily life, but for us, we hope to create games that can express without national boundaries.
Games that are popular worldwide like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja perform quite well in China. This shows excellent games can be successful in any country and culture, and this is what we have been always pursuing.
Do you think there are any differences between China and Western mobile gamers?
Based on our experience and observation, Chinese mobile gamers have high standards for game graphics, and they love games with rich content; western gamers are tolerant of graphics, but more strict of unique gameplay.
But although eastern and western gamers have different demands, they have the same serious attitude to games. This further strengthened our belief to create good games.
Lots of your games are based on the Temple Run mechanic. Why do you like that gameplay so much?
Temple Run is a remarkable game - the outstanding creativity and high quality gameplay created its global success.
Racing and action are two most favourable game types, and parkour games are the killer combination of both. I'm big fan of parkour games myself, and our goal is to make parkour games more fun and interesting.
Three of MagicBone's parkour-type games
We are trying to improve the game in terms of graphic quality, gameplay, and multiplayer modes in the future. We believe it will be a very meaningful attempt.
You've released some games on iOS and some on Android but no game on both platforms. What's your strategy?
We were concentrating on iOS platform previously, however, with the rapid increase of Android device activations, it's become an important platform that we can not ignore.
We will launch more Android games, include games ported from iOS and games that are designed solely for Android. We usually develop a game on one platform and then port across platforms based on gamers' feedback.
What are the biggest challenges being a Chinese mobile developer?
Just like the rapid growth of the Chinese market, there are new Chinese mobile games developers every day, so we face fierce competition.
The good news is the mobile game market is still in the early stages, and we believe that as long as we are creating games that our gamers really love, we will have no fear of any challenge.
What should we expect from MagicBone Games in 2013?
In 2013, we will releases more types of games. In addition to the parkour games that we are good at, we plan to launch some casual and strategy games.
Creating high quality games enjoyed by people worldwide is our ultimate goal. We are truly grateful for the support of our gamers over the past years. Please stay tuned for our upcoming games. Thank you!
Thanks to Caffrey for his time.
You can check out MagicBone Games here.
