From a Small Coffee Shop to a Mobile Game Powerhouse: The Story and Success of PATI Games (part 2)From a Small Coffee Shop to a Mobile Game Powerhouse: The Story and Success of PATI Games (part 2)

One simple idea, three young founders with a dream, and the story of how they created one of biggest smash hit mobile games ever to come out of South Korea.

Ellis Pak, Blogger

July 2, 2013

2 Min Read

PATI Games began in a small Seoul office with 5 members, Alan among them. The 5 members of the founding team were all either colleague roommates or ex-coworkers, all from engineering backgrounds, all owners of a stake within PATI Games. No one believed a small, unproven dev studio without seasoned game development veterans would be able to succeed in such a competitive social game market, but Alan had a dream, and he moved heaven and earth to make that dream happened.

We've got the experienced game developers and now we've got a designer in the form of the new hire, Yooree Kim. Now what?

No proven cafe sim game on the market? No problem, we'll just iterate until we get it right.

No external or VC funding? No problem, we won't need it.

Everything was a gamble and everything was a risk, but Alan felt he had an advantage. Whether it was his actual hands-on experience as a coffee shop owner or his burning desire to build a successful game, Alan put his singular focus on his new project "I Love Coffee". All the eggs were in one basket.

Screenshot of game in early stage

I Love Coffee Browser

At times, Alan's founding team had disputes, heated arguments. Some of them didn't think a game like this would work... others that they shouldn't put so much emphasis on one game alone. Alan listened to them, but still forged ahead. In the end, they stuck together and completed and launched "I Love Coffee" in July, 2011 on the popular Cyworld browser platform.

team member passed out after overnight launch crunch

After launch

From there it was only logical to move forward and they eventually launched the game on the Taiwanese platform Yahoo Minik the following November soon followed by the Chinese launch on Sina Weibo. With these launches proving themselves Pati Studio proceeded to push their game onto Facebook Thailand in April of 2012 then immediately in June, the game was on NHN's Naver social games platform.

"I Love Coffee" was a smashing success. But it was only the beginning of the rise of PATI Games.

logo of ILoveCoffee