An unanswered question from his childhood was the driving force that led gamer Chanin Vanijwong to set up his own business to develop games for Thai players. As a child, Chanin spent a lot of time playing games, and among friends of his age, he was a good player. But despite enjoying the games, he always had a question in his mind: why did all the games he played come from overseas?

Even though the young Chanin couldn't find an answer, he promised himself he would do something beyond playing games.

After graduating with a master's degree from the Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University (Sasin), Chanin, at the age of 23, realised it was time to follow his promise.

In 2000, Chanin and his brother, Chanindej, set up their own business to develop games. But the young entrepreneur wanted more. He wanted his company, CyberPlanet Interactive, to build up Thai-brand games for international markets, as well as for Thais.

"I wanted to make my company follow the same path as other famous game publishers like Electronic Arts," says Chanin, who is now 29 and the company's chief marketing executive.

For him, gaming is a huge industry. He believes the value of the worldwide industry will outstrip the value of Hollywood movies and the music industry combined, and his company has the opportunity to share in this market.

"There is nobody that has never played a game [of some kind]. I think playing games will never die as long as people need entertainment. So I hope my company will be able to share a few slices from this cake," he says.

More than that, Chanin hopes to follow a successful business model created by software giant Microsoft, in developing software products under its own brands and selling them around the world. Following this model, he believes his company will be able to generate more revenue every minute from its sale of software licences.

The young executive has blended knowledge from his bachelor's degree in telecommunication engineering from Thammasat University with the MBA from Sasin to form up the distinguished business model for CyberPlanet.

He says his technical background has given him a good sense of logic and a thorough understanding of game development, especially online games, while his MBA knowledge has helped him in the business scenario.

His years as a consumer and hardcore gamer have also given him an understanding of gamers' needs. He says these experiences have helped him to understand the market and generate ideas for games to serve market demand.

CyberPlanet started in late 2000 with only three people - Chanin, his brother, and a friend - and registered capital of Bt1 million. A year later, he succeeded in attracting investment from One Asset Management, which bought a 44-per-cent stake in CyberPlanet through its SME Venture Capital Fund. The company's registered capital was raised to Bt9 million.

"Most of the money was used in the company's largest project, called Magic Chronicle, an online real-time strategy game. We spent around Bt7 million and two years to develop this game," Chanin says.

Magic Chronicle was recognised as the top entertainment application at the 2003 AsiaPacific Information and Communication Technology Awards. The game was also licensed to Hewlett-Packard (Thailand) to bundle with its consumer PC products on the Thai market in 2002.

After that, the company increased its registered capital to Bt24 million in 2003, Bt45 million in 2004, and Bt100 million in 2005. Its shareholders are still Chanin and his brother, with a 51-per-cent stake, and One Asset Management, with 49 per cent.

CyberPlanet has developed many edutainment games, such as Moontra Kid, an anti-drug game, Otop City, a game about travelling in Thailand, and CEO City, a CEO-governor game. They are distributed free to children through schools.

Believing that demand for games is not limited to the use of PCs, Cyberplanet has used its expertise in software development and animation to create a number of mobile games that run on five major operating systems: Windows CE, Palm, Symbian, SmartPhone and Java.

Apart from getting a one-year exclusive deal to bundle games on Hewlett-Packard PCs, the company also won a contract from Nokia to put games on Club Nokia, a site where Nokia users in 40 countries can download entertainment material.

CyberPlanet also struck a deal with SonyEricsson to bundle games into the Ericsson P800 on both local and international markets.

It has another agreement with Multi-Link - the sole distributor of a Pocket PC named O2 XDA - to bundle games on to these devices in four markets: Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Recently, Chanin and his brother revised CyberPlanet's business direction with the aim of becoming a leading game development company on the international market, as well as locally. The business strategy has changed from developing PC games for online players and games for mobile devices to focus on developing casual console games.

The aim is to develop console games to supply the worldwide market for Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation II devices, of which there are millions in use around the world.

"We are now an authorised game developer for Nintendo DS and we also have a licence to develop games for Sony PlayStation II. We plan to enter the global market with a supply of console games to some countries in Europe, the US and Singapore," Chanin says.

CyberPlanet recorded revenue of Bt90 million last year and Chanin hopes the figure will rise to between Bt130 million and Bt140 million this year. He aims to drive the company's revenue performance to grow by 30-40 per cent every year.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation