A mobile game designed by a Guadalajara media company where players assemble and sling tacos has been downloaded more than one million times in more than 180 countries.
In the game called Taco Master, which was created by Kaxan Media Group, players have thrown together roughly 500 million tacos using an array of ingredients.
Rafael Cantón, Kaxan’s CEO, said members of his company came up with the idea for the game during one of their brain storming sessions. They decided it had marketing potential and would fit within their vision of building family friendly media products.
Developing the initial version of the game cost 100,000 dollars. The game has been most downloaded in Mexico, China, the United States, Italy, Spain and Indonesia.
The game is available across multiple smart phone platforms, including iOS, Android and Windows phone. It costs 99 cents for the iPhone and 1.99 dollars for the iPad, and is free on other operating systems. Still, Cantón said sales of the game aren’t the main way a company that builds mobile applications is going to make money.
“The main goal is not the game itself, the game is a channel for marketing and for licensing,” Cantón said.
Kaxan has now introduced its characters to thousands of people around the world and can sell the images to those who want to use them for marketing. Also – with one million downloads – companies that want to place their products within the game know that it has a wide reach.
The media group, which is less than five years old, includes Kaxan Animation, Kaxan Games, Kaxan Studios and Kaxan Campus. A 3D animation film – El Secreto del Medallón de Jade, or The Secret of the Jade Medallion – produced by the animation team will soon premier in Guadalajara. Also targeted at families, the movie tells the story of a grandfather who goes missing and the adventure his grandkids must undertake to find him.
At Kaxan Campus, the media group trains students in the multimedia arts giving them an opportunity to pursue a career in that field.
Part of the media group operates out of Guadalajara’s Software Center, a facility that houses high-tech companies just north of Plaza del Sol Shopping Center.
While Guadalajara has long been known for its strength in electronics manufacturing, members of the city’s tech sector have realized it’s also going to take innovative ideas for it to stay on the forefront of the industry. Kaxan and other companies at the software center are representative of that effort.
After all, as Cantón said, manufacturers are going to keep moving to wherever the labor is cheapest. But if a region is coming up with new ideas it will have a more stable economy.
Along those lines, Jalisco Governor Aristóteles Sandoval recently created a Secretary of Innovation, Science and Technology to cultivate high-tech companies in Guadalajara. The position is held by Jaime Reyes Robles, a former executive with Hewlett-Packard and Kodak who has already created a relationship with representatives of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That partnership led to the formation of a Mexican company called MIT Enterprise Forum Mexico, which will help entrepreneurs in Mexico find resources to develop their emerging businesses.