Cyber cafe waiter turned entrepreneur

To prepare for the change, iDreamsky has already signed Cookie Run, a top game in Korea and Sonico Dash, one of the most popular game brands in Japan. Lyndon said that his company has worked on the localization of the two games and plans to launch them in China in 2014.

Despite the fact most of the games iDreamsky has brought into China are big in their home countries, it doesn't mean the company makes easy money.

Lyndon said in Fruit Ninja, iDreamsky added Chinese blades for cutting the fruit and localized backgrounds. In Temple Run, the company had to optimize the Western monetization strategy, which asked players to buy virtual gems to revive their character.

In the Chinese version, players can revive their character either by buying virtual gems or directly paying two yuan. Lyndon said it is all about impulsive buying behavior.

He is confident the launch of Cookie Run and Sonico Dash will help iDreamsky continue to secure its leading position in the mobile game industry in 2014.

Lyndon refused to reveal iDreamsky's revenue, but he said that the combined monthly revenues of Fruit Ninja and Temple Run exceed 50 million yuan. According to China Mobile Games and Entertainment Group Ltd's most recent financial report, the Nasdaq-listed company reported revenue of about 98 million yuan between July and September.

Lyndon said money is not a big issue for iDreamsky, while admitting that the mobile game market in China is changing rapidly with a new batch of competitors.

Apart from companies such as China Mobile Games and Entertainment Group Ltd, which both develops and publishes games, Tencent Inc, whose mobile chatting app WeChat has more than 400 million users, has also developed its own games and gained an increasing share of gamers on its service.

Lyndon said there will always be room for channel operators, for example Tencent, in China's increasingly crowded mobile game market. But it doesn't mean that there will be no room for independent publishers such as iDreamsky, he added.

There were more than 600 mobile game publishers in China at the last count. Lyndon predicted that in another year or so, there will be consolidation, which will leave two to two dozen players in the mobile game publishing sector.

"We started to invest in game studios in 2012 to offset the risk of not developing games ourselves. Now we just need to focus on what we do best," he said.