Last month, mig33 launched its developer program together with Japanese partner GREE at Chijmes Hall, Singapore. The event also introduced the 12 initial game developers from seven countries who are partnering mig33 in this program.

From initial impressions, the partnership is something both companies would benefit, both from user and developer standpoints. On the one hand, we have GREE, the Japan-based mobile social networking service and developer, which has about 27 million users in Japan, trumping Facebook’s 3.8 million local users.

Not satisfied, it’s been expanding aggressively beyond their home turf, by first acquiring San Francisco-based OpenFeint, then partnering with China’s Tencent and now mig33. These strategic acquisition and partnerships has seen the GREE platform’s reach grow to roughly 800 million users. “Our initiative is to set up a standardized format,” said Daisuke Kobayashi, who handles international partnerships for GREE.

The partnership ties in nicely with mig33′s growth strategy. One of the world’s largest mobile-first communities, mig33 has about 50 million registered users are are heavily focused on emerging markets. When asked about the details on the mig33-GREE collaboration, mig33′s CEO and co-founder Steven Goh said that they are “looking to their leadership with regards to the GREE API.”

Helping game developers look beyond Facebook

Since the mig33 and GREE platform would share a common API, game developers can create for both platforms, providing them with the ability to scale. According to Goh, developers can choose to build for the Facebook platform but risk being crowded out by the top ten developers there or they could choose to build on the mig33 platform, which provides them with access to a mig33-GREE-Tencent-OpenFeint shared user base that is larger than Facebook’s.

One of the companies benefiting from this partnership is TheMobileGamer. According to its CEO Alvin Yap, “We are getting a very good gaming platform combined with a network with a lot of users. It is good for us because the opportunity means that you can reach a lot of people in a very good way.”

The gaming industry is changing dramatically with mobile gaming coming into play. Goh sees a shift in the way developers deliver games to users, moving away from its reliance on apps and focusing more on using social networks. What social networks have over app stores, he says, is that they provide better discoverability and better engagement.

mig33′s services helps these developers market and monetize their games while allowing game developers to do what they do best: build games that are fun. This opens up opportunities to regional developer groups who are good at building games but may lack the resources to market and monetize on their games. Many of these developer groups resort to being “outsourced farms for bigger brands” such as Electronic Arts and Zynga, as seen by mig33′s vice-president of business development Chris Chandler.

“A lot of these companies are hidden and  by doing this [mig33's platform] we are giving them a chance to step up and show what they can do on their own as well,” Chandler said.

mig33 believes that the way to help regional game developers succeed against the influx of games from the West is by providing them a social service that is relevant to the local market — which is the core value behind what mig33 does for game developers, from their invitation systems to how marketing and monetization activities are carried out.

“We are dealing with local and relevant problems and solving this problems for game developers. And it ends up creating a far more vibrant ecosystem that is relevant for game developers and their markets,” said Goh.

He also advises game developers to build for the markets that you know and love and not to try creating fun games for people that you do not know. When asked if there was a secret recipe to developing a successful game he said, “You have to make it fun.”

Sounds simple? Think again.