"[Gamania] has been burnt before in its efforts to court the west: cartoon property Hero 108 had been developed with a view to release across multiple territories and multiple media, meshing the animistic mythologies and martial arts of the east with a thickly lined, iconic style that fits well with Cartoon Network's western output. As an animation it took hold with a young audience. The game, meanwhile, tanked across all territories. Different members of Gamania's management offer different reasons, [Gamania CEO Albert Liu] holds that the divergent production cycles of animation and game made it difficult to maintain a parity across the two developments, ultimately ending in two mismatched products. The TV show appealed to the very young, but the MMOG proved too complex for that audience.
[Gamania's chief strategy officer, William Chen,] meanwhile, points to Hero 108 as a bump in the road of localisation. The team was so intent on creating a global product that it ended up with a transcultural compromise that satisfied no one. "At some point during development, [Hero 108] lost its unique quality because we wanted to respond so literally to the feedback [from each region]," Chen says. "This is a huge lesson for Gamania. It's really hard to develop a game that appeals equally across all territories. Perhaps World of Warcraft is one, but that has accomplished something that almost no one else has. WOW is its own case and doesn't tell you much about how other games will perform - and even in Asia, that is very popular in one or two markets and not doing quite so well in others."
Hero 108's MMOG has been pulled back into development for the time being, with a mobile and tablet minigame collection launched to tide fans over. ~Edge (December 2011, #234)
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Source: Play (UK), August 2010 (#194) || Digital distribution (via OldGameMags)
